Costa Rica Baby

After visiting the Panama Canal we headed to the seaside town of Santa Catalina with our mates Kate and Crum. The boys had good intentions to surf but a little down time got the better of them. Next we did a mammoth road trip over 2 days to Costa Ricas capital San Jose. We stuffed up the exchange rate for the first couple of hours so can definitely vouch for the fact that Costa Rica is $$$!

After one night of sushi, wine and cable TV we headed to the Pacific Coast town of Montazuma (or Montafumar due to some good conditions for growing and smoking pot). We trekked to a waterfall, got scared out of the jungle by a load roar which later turned out to be howler monkeys, explored the jungle meets beach and paid a visit to Santa Teresa 1 hr away where Glen had an uneventful surf and I lazed on the beach and watched monkeys play in the trees. It was a great 3 days but off we went again...

We caught our bus-ferry-bus to our next stop of Montaverde which is in the hills of Costa Rica. We walked 3 hours of trails in Cloud Forest in search of animals but with our lack of guide all we found was 100's of beautiful hummingbirds at the artificial feeders. It was a lovely forest though and I'm sure you've seen that great photo of the elusive "white whale" found in the jungle.

Next we headed to Volcan Arenal via van-boat-van. We signed up for an amazing 7hr tour with the local philosopher Noel. We took a 90min walk through jungle where we saw Toucans, the ass end of a sloth, howler monkeys, spiders and apparently the eyelash of a snake??? Yeah I dont get it either. After that we headed to the volcano at dusk to see rocks and lava spewing (well tumbling) out with a fantastic glow. Great for photos...however we had a battery incident so we headed to the nearby hot springs/spa centre for some much needed destressing.

We are now in Nicaragua (after a 5am bus) on the Pacific coast in San Juan del Sur. We hope to head to a beach camp tomorrow then Ometepe then speed through Honduras to Guatamala and Belize. Best wishes to Nhi and Adrian who are hopefully now proud parents. Glen thinks Adju (Adrian Jnr) is a great name!