Costa Rica

After our mad trip to the states, Sharon and I had our first little adventure into Latin America, as TGM would say - how good!!!

Our attempts to pack as much into 1 week as possible was slightly hampered by the public bus system, the wet season and one nimble fingered local who swiped our daypack and passports from a bus the night before flying home, aside from that, the trip was amazing.

Our first stop after landing in San Jose was a small national park (Manuel Antonio) on the west coast where we got a few glimpses of our most sought after attraction, sloth's! These 3 toed, stoned looking, moss covered creatures were just awesome, the one is this photo was holding a baby, but after waiting for 5 minutes to get them both in the shot, this sloth had blinked twice, and it was evident that was about the most movement I would get out of her, so we moved on. We hired a guide for a few hours, which proved invaluable as this long time local had action man eagle eyes, and could spot things we never would have seen or noticed. Plenty of monkeys, bats, monkeys eating bats, lizards and one inquisitive badger who was determined to get into my bag he didn't mind me throwing sand in his eyes and was so tame it took several short clips around his head with my jandal before he was sent on his way to accost the next group up the beach. Wiki - Manuel Antonio

Our second stop landed us in the Monteverde (Spanish for green mountain), this small town is a ecotourism hotspot for exploring the nearby Monteverde and Santa Elena cloud forests.

Our journey up to Monteverde (4500ft) in a 1960's BMW bus on a muddy cat track road, was eventful to say the least, I shared the backseat with a very drunk middle aged gringo who keep leaning over me to shake my hand in his vice like rancher grip whilst showing me his lovely toothless smile. After about 4 hours of this I felt intoxicated myself from breathing in his rum breath, and was constantly worried that if I didn't shake his hand, he would start a fight, luckily a seat was vacated for the last 20 mins of the journey and I could enjoy the rest of the bumpy ride into Monteverde in peace.

Monteverde is the wettest place I have ever been to, it hammered down for the 4 days we were there, and mist gets into your hotel rooms and makes everything wet. After resigning ourselves to this, we picked up some gumboots and were off doing flywires through the misty jungle canopy; night walks where we encountered tarantulas, tree frogs and bright lime green tree snakes; day tours, where we encountered humming birds, Coatis and the most lush forest you could imagine.

Monteverde is also know n for its excellent coffee, a tour of the Cafe Monteverde co-operative showed us exactly how coffee is grown and produced and how coffee is good for you !!(our guide was 30 and had been drinking coffee daily since 3 years old and he seemed OK) Wiki - Monteverde

I can also recommend probably the best backpackers I have ever stayed in, Pension Santa Elena

These guys are about 1 min walk fro the hub of town and can offer awesome advice on what to do while here.