Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica

The Pacific coastline of Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio, is voted one of the best destinations in the country. A 6hr bus trip ($6) through grasslands and hills later we arrived in the gorgeous beach town, which is tiny but covered in thick coastal vegetion. The beach is beautiful with little islands in the distance, and some trees on the sand providing shade.

The beach by Manuel Antonio.

We got off the bus and looked for a hostel when a beach bum teenager showed us to a really lovely place Costa Linda Backpackers ($10/night). We spent four days here, relaxing, reading, getting in touch with friends and family and best of all, enjoying the National Park.

Inbetween the relaxing on the beach, watching squirrel monkeys playing in the trees, and eating cheap and delicious meals at our hostel we also planned to visit the National Park that is so highly recommened by Costa Ricans. Unfortunately, it was pouring with rain on the day we wanted to go, and decided to have a quiet day in.We needed time to recharge, the last few weeks have been quite intense!

Finally we had a chance to get into the Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio. Woke up at 7am to be the first in the park, ($10 each). People were asking for private guides to 'help spot animals', but that's a lot of money and I'll take my chances. I had to see a sloth, and it's face! Michael saw a baby sloth and rubbed it in, so I have to see one now!! We walked in the park, there are very clear roads and paths to follow. It's a tiny park, only 16.24 km. The guides were pointing out birds, monkeys etc, but nothing we couldn't see ourselves.

A zebra-look alike Grasshopper.

In fact, I was a machine! I was so desparate to see a sloth that I kept my eyes peeled, and we saw so many insects and birds that were very enjoable. While we walked towards the 'mirador' (lookout) we saw a whole bunch of monkeys. Sweet! Then we crossed a tiny wooden bridge and as I looked to my left I saw...a SLOTH! I almost squealed I was so excited! It was a perfect sighting, he was moving around, climbing down (and eventually up) the trees. It was amazing seeing such an active sloth and he looked right at us several times. It was the most dopey looking animal! We watched him for about 15min, he did his sloth thing by hanging upside down, and we could see the three-toes (with massive claws) very clearly.

Our first sloth face! It was climbing up and down for ages. Fantastic sighting.

Within those 15min not a single tourist walked past us. When the little guy disappeared into the thick vegetaion a group walked past. "Damn, you just missed a sloth!"..."It's ok, there are many here, we are in the rainforest", that's the response I got. I don't understand people like that. They didn't give two hoots about it, go back to the city, why are you even here?!

Anyways, we went to the mirador, where a really beautiful view of the ocean exposed a distinct line in the ocean. We don't know what that's from, maybe currents?

The ocean view, with the distinct line.

We walked back and the sloth was on his way back up the tree, in full view. I was waiting for people to come past so we could share the amazing experience with them, but of course, no-one came. Eventually a German tour group walked past and I said in my best German there's a sloth (Faultier) and they were rather excited! Yay, great success...

We kept walking and two Augouti's were browsing in the undergrowth. We spotted some vultures and a woodpecker. The path lead to a little beach protected in the cove. There were hundreds of little hermit crabs scutteling around - I love them, we had them as pets in Australia. We played with them and Rob and I had Hermit crab races. I won, it's my superior experience of knowing which hermie to choose :)

An Augouti, a large rodent.

Quick dip in the beach.

One of the many Hermit Crabs we played with.

Hermie!

A quick dip later we kept walking around the park. We decided to leave the park and on our way on the main path (a road) we saw a tree slanted down with a grey fluffy thing dangling in the middle. As we walked closer we realised it was a baby sloth, looking confused, dangling eye-level in the middle of the road! We couldn't believe it! What luck!! They are adorable, I want one! He was about 6 months old and hadn't learnt the art of camouflage or hiding for safety. It was so sweet, we watched it for about 30 min. So many people came, 'oh a sloth *click' and kept walking. Hmmm....not as excited as me. It's not a zoo, it's in the wild, and it's special.

As we walked out we saw 2 more sloths, and a ton of monkeys. We definitely didn't need a guide, and in fact the German tour guide came to me afterwards and thanked me for pointing out all the birds and animals. Years of going into the bush has paid off :) I love it!

The three-toed sloth in Manuel Antonio National Park.

The rest of the time we spent on the beach. We origionally wanted to go to Panama, but the only ATM in the town wouldn't accept my bank card so we had to borrow $1 from a car guard to get the bus to the main town (Quepos) to get money. Shame, what a sweetie. We are such hobos, bumming money form a card guard, but he offered....We gave him $2 back, so he doubled his cash. The last night we stayed in a hotel by the bus terminal to get a bus to Panama at 5:30am. *Joy*

San Jose, Costa Rica

After a long but beautiful bus trip to the capital city we met our friend Franscisco that we met in Tulum that one night we slept on the beach. He's really sweet and we stayed at his house. His mates and us went out for a few drinks to celebrate meeting again and to have a proper send-off to Michael, who is leaving at the crack of dawn.

Franscisco made us a wonderful Colombian breakfast, a kind of soup with eggs, potato and coriander.

We met a Korean! It was fantastic, we had soju, spoke Korean and reminiced about that wonderful country. We had a great night out and met a Costa Rican girl who had visited South Africa. It was all in all a great night. The next morning Mike left, and we slept in. We wanted to leave Costa Rica, as we are spending more time in Central America than we planned for, but the digsmates convinced us we can't leave Costa Rica quite yet. Franscisco helped us buy bus tickets to our next destination, while we walked through markets, streets filled with restaurants and coffee shops and watch kids being arrested for selling drugs. Just a normal day in San Jose!

Butterflies & Frog Garden, Costa Rica

Today's our last day in Monteverde, and Mike wanted to do something, anything, that didn't cost an arm and a leg. Last night he went on a night walk (we decided to save money and stay in) and he saw a baby sloth - and it's face!! I was livid :(

The only thing we found to do was the Butterfly and Frog Garden ($21). We had a little tour with a lady, and she showed us some amazing things. I thought of my wonderful godmother & friend - Ruth and Illa a lot. Wow, butterflies aren't just pretty fluttery things, they have evolved some highly detailed and fantastic patterns to evade predators, get mates and blend into the environment. They were in cages, so it was a little hard to photograph them, but we really enjoyed it and learnt a lot. Here is a photo 'tribute':

A butterfly on my head, it's good lucky I hear.

Pretty patterns.

Zebra Butterfly.

This is my favourite species - it looks like an owl!

The female.

The Morpho, it's so blue and beautiful, but you can never capture it on camera when it's flying!

See anything special?

It has adapted to look like a snakes head to scare predators. Fantastic!

The red-eyed tree frog, just waking up from it's siesta!

Pura Vida! The flagship spcies for Costa Rica posing perfectly for us!

Big fat toad that dogs get high on and go crazy for.

Blue jeans poison dart frog. Not a great quality picture, but a pretty and deadly little guy.

There he is in his favourite place, inside a bromelia.

And this little guy, cute tree frog relaxing on the leaf.

Monteverde Cloud Forest, Costa Rica

After our bus ride in which Chrissies's bag "disappeared" and was miraculously "found" (thank you pacsafe) we arrived in Monteverde with Michael. *Chrissie wants to jump in here and add a story from the bus, over to you babe!) The bus to Monteverde was a strange, but fun one. Rob was separated from us on the bus due to limited seats, so Rob got the iPod and I was left with Mike's incredibly "different" music. On the way to Ometepe, the song 'My Heart Will Go On" played and Rob and I made hand gestures to the song that brought Mike to tears. He said "how do you do those hand movements?" "It's easy, just try!". I saw he had Gangster's Paradise by Coolio (Claire and my Noraebang song), so we played it and that was the beginning of an adventure with Michael.

 In between the silent singing and dancing, the scenery was tranquil and peaceful, like a Cloud Forest should be!

We danced in silence the whole 2hours up to Monteverde. It was so much fun! He showed me a German song (Die Prinzen) and Aqua because they are Danish. OMG, it was the funniest shit I've ever seen, Mike was so into it - singing and dancing provacatively to the 'Bumble Bee' song. Haha! We love that guy, he has really opened up to us and we will miss him when he's gone.

*Back to you Robbie. So we are in Monteverde and we got some pizza and relaxed waiting for the next morning for our cloud forest tour and *GASP* zipline canopy tour with a "tarzan swing" (wonder what that is) at the end. So early the next morning we hopped into the van sent to fetch us and headed off to the cloud forest reserve, there were quite alot of people on the bus who were all excited for their zipline tour but none of which had booked the walk with the guide except for Chrissie, Michael and myself. So they all got dropped off first and we continued up the mountain and arrived at a wooden cabin where we filled in some details and met our guide.

The first plant we got an explanation of: The toilet plant, because it's leaves are soft like 2-ply!

After the formalities we started our hike. It was really nice up on the suspension bridges above the floor. We saw lots of different animals and Chrissie almost had a stroke when we saw wild caotis and the resplendent quetzal (the national bird of Guatemala and the name of their currency, they really are stunning!). There were tons of epiphytes, apparently up to 200 different species on a single tree! The high altitude (1400m a.s.l) and surprisingly low precipitation makes this a unique ecosystem with an abundance of diversity. We spotted two motteled owls perched in a tree watching us (wonderful!!) and several other types of birds. But...we saw our FIRST sloth! We have both been looking forward to seeing one. Spotting one in the wild was great but, unfortunately it was high up in a tree and all we could see was a bundle of fur covered in algae, apparently only 20% of visitors see their faces... 

 Coati (Roten Schnupperbaer!) foraging under the suspention bridge.

Rob, Chrissie and Michael in the Cloud Forest doing the Beatles Walk.

Motteled Owls watching us curiously from the trees.

Towards the end of the walk we had two more "challenges" from the guide. For the first we used a peice of grass to lure a large oranged-kneed turantula from its burrow, it was stunning and really big! The second was to climb up a strangler fig tree that killed it's host and after years the host tree rotted away leaving the tangled roots of the fig tree exposed making a perfect ladder for us to climb up! No problem for us though we all shot up the tree and walked the final suspension bridge to the next stop... Where we were supposed to start the zipline tour!

Orange-kneed tarantula.

Chrissie peeking out of the lattice work.

We headed over to the equiptment room and geared up; ready and willing to go. But first we had to be shown how to use the gear, no problem for us having rock climbed a fair amount in our time but important none the less. Having this all clarified to the group we headed out on our first zipline, it was great! We shot through the canopy and between the really big trees and then approched our landing area a wee bit fast and shot in at a rate of knots, but were fine! We continued along on the zipline tour and had to abseil down a massive tree in order to continue. The longest cable was 1km long and high above the canopy between two sides of a canyon, that one was really great and led us to the "superman". The superman it turns out is to add an additonal harness to yourself and zipline parrellel to the ground while stretching your arms out! It was great and if anyone wonders Chrissie has the footage of her doing it on video. This was the last of our zipline tour and led us to the grand finale the "Tarzan Swing".

All geared up and ready to go!

Chrissie trying to videotape while doing the Superman.

Robbie ziplining through the Cloud Forest!

 The Tarzan Swing is a massive suspesion bridge extremely high between two sides of a canyon on either side of the cloud forest. Its special difference is that it is not actually a bridge and the railing ends about a third of the way across the bridge; this is where they strap you into your gear.  They then tighten the ropes until you are almost completely being TORN from the bridge and the only thing holding you there is an iron gate that is slightly higher then your knees. Once they have you well and truely pulled to the edge they open aforementioned gate and shout jump (like you have an option) and the next thing you are plummeting toward terrafirma at an astounding rate! Chrissie did it first because she wanted video, so I like a fool walked out there with her only to see the height and watched her jump. In the process completely killing any confidence I had previously had. I had to wait for a few more people to go before me, then I tried to walk out and jump. Well, like I said you accelerate extremely quickly and all I could do was let out a massive scream on the way down, what a great feeling it was when the ropes tightened and  you reallised you may just see another day! (Gis and mum, you would have died! *Chrissie)

Robbie falling 50m from the dodgy suspention bridge!

On the way out we saw the next group coming in and getting ready, so I like an ass walked up to them and said "don't do it,  it is sooooo scary", shame,  the look on their faces! I only realised after I had said it that I  really freaked half of them out. However, I'm sure their confidence returned after they saw how harmelss the first zipline was!