El Encanto Bed and Breakfast Inn Cahuita

... is to walk the Parque National Cahuita trail. The park is a nature and marine reserve protecting an offshore reef as well as the coastal forest. <br>It is supposed to be 8km and a bus ride back from the other end near Puerto Vargas.<br>We have been told we will see monkeys, sloths and maybe snakes. It is basically a path that follows the coast about 10 to 20 metres back from the beach.<br>After a couple of km we come across a river flowing into the sea ...

... die falsche Forschungsidee...<br><br>Was die Faultiere auch besonders gut koennen, ist, uns das Herz zu erweichen. Wir koennen gar nicht genug in ihrer Naehe sein. Da wir ja ueber Nacht bleiben, haben wir jede Menge Zeit dazu. Selbst unser Abendessen verlegen wir in ihre Naehe. Buttercup ist inzwischen ein Star unter den Faultieren geworden und wohnt in ihrem eigenen Korb. Sie ist extrem neugierig und mag offensichtlich die Naehe zu Leuten. Wir wurden extra angewiesen, sie ...

... photos of these tiny, magnificent birds. It then became beach time! We went out, swam, dove under the waves and enjoyed the warm turquoise water. I tried to boogie board but I prefer to wave dive and just float around. The sun, which becomes VERY intense around 10:00 a.m., must be monitored. I recommend SPF 30 for anyone without a tan. If you have a tan, I say SPF 15 and then if you are dark, SPF 8. We prefer Maui Babe (www.mauibabe.com ...

... before I jump on a flight in the next few hours to Barcelona. The trip has been fantastic with so many stories and a few more which I decided not to include so will have to tell you about them personally when I see you all. I can´t really believe that it has all come to an end, however not to worry I now have another list of places that I want to travel to so there might be a new pod with more adventures in the not to distant future.

... crazy like 280 million bunches of bananas annually from Limon. It is likely I saw the next banana that will be on your morning cereal. Mind boggling. Limon was an interesting little town and easy to cover in one day. The feel of the place reminded me a bit of both Zihuantenajo and Old Acapulco. The architecture was mostly concrete construction with a little creole influence every few blocks. The mix of people was amazing as well. Chinese, Black and Europeans like San Jose. I heard ...

... take a boat around Cahuita point because there were so many turtles, and now they are really on the brink of extinction. Through to the 1980s, 99% of all turtle nests were poached! People can sell the eggs for about 80 cents each, so a nest of 100 eggs is definitely a lucrative find. Cahuita is the most important nesting site in Costa Rica for the critically endangered Hawksbill turtle - and there are only I think 7 nesting females now. We work with leatherback, hawksbill ...

... got cable TV and have the internet, but it is close. The paved road ends a few miles before the town (and continues unpaved another 13 kilometers to Manzanillo, the end of the road), there are no mega-resorts (or anything over two stories that I can tell), and it is super laid-back surfer/stoner meets Costa Rican descendants of Jamaican and Barbadan slaves/workers brought over by United Fruit to work the banana ...

... that the howler monkeys were misnamed and that they actually should be called roaring monkeys, because the noise they make is a lot closer to a roar than a howl. The next morning we woke up to a torrential downpour. And when I say "torrential downpour" I really mean a torrential downpour. I have never seen rain so hard and loud. I finally gave up on sleeping and listened to the rain from my hammock on the front porch and began reading King ...

... in cell towers and microwave antennas and 4-wheel drive vehicles regularly make the ascent to maintain the hardware. Great! "A road," I thought, "this will be easy!" I couldn't have been more wrong! I have no idea how any 4x4 could make it up that "road" when I, with my two legs and two hands, had trouble navigating the slick, rocky stretch of trail. It was supposed to take 4 hours but took us 7, probably ...