Blogs from Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 457

Less than two weeks left with my family...:( We´re back in school now--that´s where I started writing this. Since I last updated, I have: sung karaoke in a bar; been to ¨ladies´night¨at a club; fallen in love with reggaeton; found a boy--or rather, he found me; done ribbon embroidery; seen the biggest oxcart in the world; bought the Magician´s Nephew in Spanish--I´m on chapter 4 :); discovered smirnoff; gone to a mass where the music wasn´t painful :); stayed the night with Rebe in Poás--we went downtown in our PJs to get hamburgers at like 2:30 in the morning; seen Cars in the movie theater and most of it again in a class today--some things just don´t translate well, but it was still cute; decided that I hate this particular internet cafe and it hates me ... read more

So here we are safe and sound in San Jose, Costa Rica. We´ve made it all the way through five countries in the last six weeks with only the odd dose of ´Montezumas Revenge´to have troubled us! So we finally left our tour last week and had the last eight days to explore Costa Rica for ourselves. It was a bit of a relief to finish to be honest as we have been itching to travel at our own pace, eat when we want to etc. etc. So last Friday we set off for La Fortuna, a small town that sits under the shadow of Volcan Arenal, the 3rd most active volcano in the world. For both of us, this part of Central America was the real pinnacle of our trip during our planning stage. We´d ... read more

We met up with Nicki and Dani again on the black sand beach north of Cahuita, where we spend the day lounging, lazing and frolicking. It was interesting to watch the work of leaf-cutter ants, which operate in vast numbers to defoliate a tree piece-by-piece. Trish came back a nice shade of red at the end of the day. The hammock on our balcony was put to good use with some relaxation. ... read more

My first trip to prospect for property happened in April. I came down with my father in law and his close friend. While it was a great opportunity to bond with him, it was unfortunately a disaster in all other respects. The houses that we looked at were horrendous, very far from civilization, up huge mountains and on roads that shook our teeth loose. To top it all off, the realtors car overheated, making the trip that much more “exciting”. Coming back from that trip, we were ready to call it quits. Things were just dire, no properties, and out a lot of money for the trip. On a whim, we called another realtor, a wonderfully flamboyant Texan. He told me about a number of wonderful properties that they had and sent me the info on ... read more

We got up at the crack of dawn once again to go on a canoe trip, paddling through the rivers and jungle of the national park. We saw howler monkeys, spider monkeys, crocodiles, caymans, tropical birds and my favourite, a tarantula larger than my hand. The rest of the day was spent exploring around the village. We had the company of a mutt who decided that he liked us and followed us about wherever we went. In the evening we met up with Nicki (South Africa) and Dani (Toronto) who went on the canoe tour with us. ... read more