Costa Rica

First of all congrats to all you guys who have recently gotten married, pregnant and given birth which is quite a few of you! Congratulations. Shands and I wish you all the best.

Costa Rica has been everything we expected and so much more.

We started in the North of the country at Rincon National Park where we hiked through rain forests at the base of an active volcano where there were hot geysers, bubbling mud pots and waterfalls to swim under while trying to spot some of the country´s Disney like cast of creatures ranging from howler monkeys to Toucans and Sloths.

About 25% of Costa Rica is now considered national park land and as we made our way further south on local buses the rain/cloud forests and volcanoes seemed to get more spectacular. Mount Arenal the 16th most active volcano in the world is where we did a tour to go and watch its daily eruptions, the only thing is they don´t tell you is that the volcano is covered with cloud all but 1 week of the year. But fortunately we did get to see some of the lava rocks tumbling down the side of the volcano below the cloud line, which was pretty cool. In Monte Verde we did a night hike in the cloud forest where we got to see all the creepy crawlys including coatis, gautis (super large rats with no tails), tarantulas. We also got to see most of the poisonuous dart frogs up there!

So with all that hiking done we headed to the Pacific Coast to the sleepy 1 street town of Samara. Where the locals cracked their first beer at 9am worked out at their home made gym and waited for the surf to pick up (see 1st photo below). It never really did so the 4 days we spent their were very relaxed where an evening body boarding session was about as hectic as it got.

From the Pacific we started to make our way to Tortuguero on the Caribbean coast. This is home to the number one nesting site of the Green Turtle, 40,000 arrive to nest at this time of year and it is also home to the rainiest of all rain forests and canals. Apparently it is the mini Amazon of Central America.
Seeing the turtles nesting was an amazing experience and the size of them took us by surprise! They were bigger than any we have seen whilst diving. Brilliant.

While exploring the canals we spotted Caimans, Crocodiles, Iguanas, river otters and loads of birds...not quite sure what they were all called.

On our way to our last stop we passed by San Jose which like most Central American capitals cities is uninviting and a bit overwhelming.

We finished off in Cahuita which is on the southern Caribbean Coast and our last stop in Costa Rica. It almosts feels like we have already left Costa Rica though and landed on a Caribbean island...