Central America
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Eastwards To The Caribbean
The time has come to move on and bid farewell to La Fortuna and its imposing, looming volcano, and farewell to all of the great things that the Arenal area has to offer. Our week in La Fortuna has been so full of experiences and activity that we’ve barely mentioned how settled we’ve felt here. This town may be a popular destination for visitors to Costa Rica, but for us it’s been just the right blend of plenty of options without being over cooked. Recommendation wise, our favourite restaurants have been Snapper’s House with its fabulous seafood, a sumptuous family run Peruvian restaurant named Chifa La Familia Feliz, and a…
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Adventures & Adrenaline In La Fortuna
We’ve had some pretty amazing adrenaline adventures before – whitewater rafting, tombstone dives, even a bobsleigh run – and now La Fortuna goes into our history as a place where we have matched or even surpassed those thrills. Ever thought of coming down a mountain via zip wire? Nor had we, until the temptation was just too strong…. It’s on the Monday that whoever is in charge of La Fortuna weather throws a few switches and changes a few dials. Heavy cloud cover replaces bright sunshine, regular bouts of torrential rain flood the soakaways and send everyone running for shelter, and the imposing Arenal volcano disappears from view completely. The…
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La Fortuna: Lava Flows And Laughter
With mountains and volcanoes meaning a lack of decent roads, transport options from Monteverde to the Arenal region are limited, with the road option being long and laborious. Most travellers therefore take the route known locally as “jeep boat jeep”, although these days due to its popularity the “jeep” bits are by minibus. A 90-minute ride along unmade roads which are really nothing more than farm tracks brings us to a muddy slope at the edge of Lake Arenal, where large white egrets hunt for fish and swallows swoop overhead. There is a regular stream of minibuses depositing travellers here, bringing enough people to fill several of the little boats,…
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Ending The Year
Well, happy new year to everyone, let’s hope it’s a good one. Given that you read our site, then it’s safe to assume you’re interested in travel; our best wish for all people interested in travel is that we are now nearing the time when we can get out and see the world again. For those who are hesitating to make a decision, we have travelled as much as possible during these last two difficult years and we haven’t felt any more unsafe whilst travelling than we have back home. We haven’t mentioned in our posts that we BOTH caught COVID (thankfully only very mild symptoms) – and we caught…
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Into The Cloud Forest: From The Sea To The Sky
Bidding farewell to Reymar is like saying goodbye to a friend, he has been one of the most helpful and sociable hosts we have ever had on our travels. As we pull out of Quepos bus station, we are very conscious of leaving the lovely high temperatures behind as we head towards the colder air of the mountains and cloud forests. The bus journey from Quepos to Monteverde is a bit less comfortable than the earlier journey from San Jose, in fact it borders on gruelling by the end of the long day. First it’s three and a half hours along the Pacific coast to Puntarenas where, after a bit…
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Quepos: Animal Magic & Other Stories
By the end of our second day in Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio, we have covered every inch of its trails and hiked to every corner, and had many wonderful close encounters with amazing and exotic creatures. For our third day in the Park, we hire a guide to see if we can dig deeper and see things which our untrained eyes may have missed. But first, that second unguided day is truly magical. It really is very hard to put into words the unbridled joy of seeing exotic wildlife at close quarters, and marvelling not just at this wonderful, environmentally conscious country, but also at the magnificence of nature. In…
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Quepos And Manuel Antonio
A few random and unconnected facts. One: At the last official survey, there are 932 species of bird in Costa Rica – that’s more than the whole of the USA and Canada put together, pretty impressive for such a small country! Two: Since we began travelling together in 2011, we’ve kept a record of every place outside GB where we’ve stayed at least one night; Quepos is number 144 and the first one ever that starts in the letter “Q”. Three: This place puts the “rain” in “rainforest”. Wow, when it rains here, it really means business, we can honestly say that in all our travels we have never seen…
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Birds & Paradise: Our First 24 Hours in Quepos
“Ahhh I see”, he says as we explain our travel philosophies, “so you’re just a couple of retired travel bums like me”. Oh, we like that. So much so that had we thought of it ourselves, we may well have been the “retired travel bums” instead of the “hungry travellers”! Like our good friends Terrie and Charles, this guy (sorry bud, we didn’t catch your name) is from Oregon, but spends a lot of time in Costa Rica and he gushes heaps of useful advice as we sip yet another cup of fabulous local coffee. Sometimes you just meet the right people. As we hang around in the busy and…
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Into Costa Rica: San Jose
With COVID protocols and admin overcome, we have made it, and on Tuesday December 14th we finally arrived in the Costa Rican capital ready for what is planned to be a 7-week tour followed by a detour to California before we head home. If the traffic on the way into the city is anything to go by, then San Jose is one heavily congested capital. It takes over an hour to inch our way through heaving, chugging giant trucks, buses belching fumes and huge numbers of less than pristine cars, from the airport to downtown San Jose. Darkness falls during that hour, and brings with it just a hint of…
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Markets: Look Away Now (Maybe)
Now, we know this set of photographs won’t meet with everyone’s approval, so just a quick warning: if you find pictures of animals in markets offensive or revolting, you might want to look away. But the truth is, markets across the world are fascinating places, and part of that fascination is in seeing things you wouldn’t see back home, even if some do have a certain yuk quality. Like lots of travellers we seem to have amassed a rather large collection of market shots, but these are some of the more “out there” ones from our archives…. Live eels, Riga…. Edible bugs, Oaxaca…. Delicious chocolate drink (despite appearances!), Ocotlan, Mexico……
