Arenal Manoa La Fortuna

<br> After completely exhausting ourselves with hiking and zip lining in the same day, we decided it was time to get a move on to the next town: La Fortuna. The town can be reached by a long, bumpy 7 hour bus ride or with the new ´jeep-boat-jeep´option, which totally carters to tourists. We paid 20 bucks for our ride, not bad considering we thought we had to shell out 30 dollars. So once again we packed our belongings, said a sad goodbye to our down ...

Hi everyone. The engineer didn´t turn up today so we couldn´t move on to the next stage. But there was still plenty of work to do. The girls were working away on the septic tank but still not finished. They are at the stage where they need to be helped out of the hole. Kathleen had an interesting ...

... side of the pool. The force of the water against the rocky side of the pool was causing the water to splash up so much that the level of the pool there was fluctuating wildly. This was where mild panic started to set in, as I was struggling to keep my head above water, and there were no cracks in the rock that I could use as hand-holds to either try and climb out, or at least, to hold onto so I wouldn't keep going under. As I was being bashed against ...

... kneed tarantula, it was a female and she was huge...the guide then enticed the tarantula out with a big stick, and this point Emily thought she was going to vomit!! We also saw some Cane Toads, and the best part was that we found a sloth, although it was very difficult to see because it was curled up in the top of the tree, but you could see its long coat and its arms with the binoculars, we saw it have a bit of a scratch too.

Well it's not really day one, but who the hell cares about what happened in the 20 hours travelling we did? And anyway, after a proper night sleep at El Rodeo the chore that is long haul seems like ages ago. Today is our first day of the trip proper, a 4 hour journey from San José South West towards the Pacific Ocean then South on the mixed roads, through Palm oil plantations to Manuel Antonio. Today's head count is as ...

... Natasha and Oli had a little swim, i didn´t fancy the cold choppy waters, instead i looked like a pervert sitting on a rock, taking pictures of everyone in the water. That afternoon we booked a jungle walk tour where we saw howler monkeys and loads of birds and plants. We then had a stop off by a river to get a good view of the volcano when it went dark. A spec of lava could be seen coming down near the top of the volcano with bonoculars, but it was pretty much an excuse for ...

... a half journey to La Fortuna - a town set in the midst of the extremely active Volcan Arenal. Not to worry, the whole time we were there, we saw very little because of the dense black clouds which covered the town, raining the whole time we were there. Cabinas Sissy was a nice enough place to stay, but we did little except a wee bit internet, washing, bought new troosers and wandered about this very ´highland resort´type town. And no, the volcano didn´t do anything....

... with a young Tica named Carolina Carvajal. She has been studying English for about three years and does well. She is waiting to get into the National University here in Heredia and really wants to be proficient with her English. We sat at a picnic table in the school gardens and jumped from Spanish to English whenever we felt like it. She told me how much she liked Oldies music because it was easy for her to understand the ...

... map, said that our other compañera who was acting as a guide, was fired, and lead us out of the forest at top speed. We got to the car and devoured the apples and crackers we'd brought along. Anyhow, I could continue writing about all the rest of my adventures on this trip, but sadly, my time is up and I've got to catch the bus. To sum up: I highly recommend a trip to Monteverde if you're ever in town and don't forget to stop at the Monteverde Restaurant!