Costa Rica

I met up with Inga in Liberia, Costa Rica, a large town near the Nicaraguan border after a particularly painful border crossing (is there any other kind??) which involved my passport not being correctly stamped on the Nicaraguan side meaning I had to go back over, and the bus promptly dumping my bag on the footpath and taking off without me. Damn you Tica Bus!!!

Our first stop was Rincon de la Vieja, a national park with a volcano, bubbling mud and steam vents and some beautiful waterfalls.

Lovely spot for a swim but bloody cold

A Coati

Next was Volcan Arenal and la Fortuna to watch the volcano spit out some lava and swim in the hot thermal river nearby. Upon checking into our hotel Inga noticed her credit card was missing and when I looked into my bag the pocket where I always put my passport and credit cards was also empty. hmmmm that´s not good......

We frantically raced down to an internet cafe to call our banks to cancel our cards (which ended up taking over three hours with a dodgy connection) and then unfortunately had to check into a much cheaper hotel for the night and as we had almost no cash on us and prepared to leave in the morning for San Jose and Ingas place.

That morning I reached into my bag for some clean socks and lo and behold, wrapped up in a pair of underpants(??!) was my passport and cards. No idea how they got there but at that stage I really didn´t care as I´d just dodged up to a grand in wasted money and at least a few weeks of lost travel time waiting around for replacements. And the nearest Australian embassy was in Mexico City.......

That evening we went on a tour to see the volcano (and a fleeting glimpse of some lava) and hot river and jump off a waterfall (out of the 20 people who jumped I was the one who landed on a rock. My ankle is only just better now, more than three weeks later) .

The volcano seen from Lake Arenal

the waterfall

We caught the bus to Monte Verde the next day to check out the famous cloud forest and also for me to have a go at some ziplining, which included a 1km ¨superman¨ over the valley and 16 other lines of various length through the canopy.

Apperently these forests are among the most biodiverse places on earth:

This line is about 560m long (for a brake you grab the cable with a gardening glove!)

On the way to Monte Verde we stopped at a little local restaurant for some really good comida tipica, a set menu lunch of typical local food:

Beans, rice, meat and salad, with drink for 4 dollars

As it was now Sunday we headed back to San Jose for Inga to go to class the next morning and myself to get out to Tortuguero national park on the Carribean coast to see some turtles laying eggs on the beach. That night we headed out for a few drinks and dancing with some friends of Ingas from university and got an earlyish night in preparation for a big day.

The trip out to Tortuguero was half the fun, with an hour long boat trip through the myriad small streams and rivers that criss cross the area

The actual turtle tour was at night with no photography permitted (it blinds the turtles) which was a little disappointing as seeing a 200kg turtle haul itself out of the sea, lay a nest of several hundred ping pong ball sized eggs and shuffle back to the ocean is a pretty cool thing.....

Every year over 40,000 turtles come to this one beach to lay their eggs, it looks a bit like a warzone with craters everywhere

After another night in San Jose it was goodbye to Inga and Costa Rica and hello to Panama, courtesy of yet another 24hr bus ride........