Hotel Portobello Puntarenas

... the way on another island! It was about a mile away. It was not as easy at is it looked. 6 of us swam our little hearts out!...Adriane, Katie, Leslie, Christin, Evan, Jeff and myself all got the best workout of our lives that day. It was pretty intense. It was a beautiful day at Tortuga Island and thank the Lord that we had our own little boat chartered for only 20$ each because most locals charter boats for tourists for 60-150$ easily. It was an epic weekend. Thank you God.

La Ensenada is a wonderful lodge. Wooden cabins louk out over the Golf of Nicoya. Our birdwatching tour starts here, that's for sure. Our co-travellers are birdwatchers. My daughter and I can hardly tell the difference between a pigeon and a heron, but that only makes it more fun! CR possesses 6 % from all wildlife and plants on this earth. 850 different kind of birds. France hardly 400 and it is about 10 times bigger. 25 % of the country is protected. "eco friendly" and "organic" our words ...

... after the beach or just after driving around. The water doesn't get too warm, so it's very refreshing. Alex and his wife Khalida are great hosts. In fact, they had a nice welcome basket with fresh fruit, some breakfast foods, guides to the area, and samples from a local vendor who makes skin care products. What you DON'T get at Agua Vista is a TV, Radio or Phone. For some ...

... flere :) De var meget højlydte og meget underholdende. På et tidspunkt kom de hen til os for at spørge hvor man køber det bedste hash i Tamarindo... hehe. Det var en rigtig god tur.. vi holdt pause tæt ved en lille strand, og ombord på katamaranen var der snorkeludstyr og kajakker. Vi blev dog på båden og slappede af.. efter bådturen var vi alle sammen i humør til at gå i byen, men klokken var kun 18 da vi kom i land, så det var for tidligt at gå i byen. Derfor ...

... Safer and Sensible do not really apply to Cocos, the waters really are varying degrees of dangerous and when you're clinging on for dear life to the rocks in the ridiculously strong currents at 30 meters you wouldn't insert the word sensible to any sentence to describe your situation. Still no sign of the 'Mega School' of Hammerheads or Silkies overhead yet but there was still 5 more days to it has to happen sometime doesn't it? Billy was beginning to feel a little ...

... ran into a bunch of dutch friends I'd met in my travels, it was fun catching up with them. I noticed this a lot in Costa Rica - running into travelers you'd met earlier. I think it's because there is no logical circut to travel CR, and every road leads to San Jose, so people are constantly bumping into one another in random tourist spots around the country. On my last day in Costa Rica I signed up for a rafting trip. I was picked ...

... and called a mutiny to stop so we could get pictures (but of course the driver had already stopped). After the canopy we rushed to see the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve. It is a long-runnning ecotourism project managed by the local school board and maintained and staffed by students of the local techical high school. The cloud forest is a green overload. All the trees are covered with moss and epiphytes. You kind of expect tarzan to jump out at you any ...

... town called Montezuma. So of course I just went to Montezuma. To meet them there. I grabbed a quick breakfast and waited at a small cafe right downtown Montezuma (downtown, really the town is like 1/2 block wide and has maybe ten establishments, beautiful beaches though). And I waited, and waited, and waited, went to the beach and waited, waited some more, and some more, going on like 6 hrs. now. So I checked my e-mail, called home and nothing. So I got a ...

... away pronto. We even rappelled down a platform and climbed back up via a cable net. All my Outward Bound experience finally coming in handy! We saw some trees. It was a really great view. The second to last cable was 780m, and took a little less than 1 minute. During that one, I looked around at the mountains, at my mom in the distance. Next time I'll strap a camera to my hand but really I could feel the wind whipping around my face and it would've ...

... wet ones at that. Our guide, Omar, gave us some figures about the amount of rainfall versus the amount of water collected from the atmosphere. I can't remember the numbers, but the long and short of it is that the forest doesn't need rain directly - it just absorbs all it needs from its atmosphere, all year round. That's why this is called cloud forest. And here's the first bridge. It's not all that high ...