We nipped over the border into Costa Rica to the little town of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, a scruffy little place on the caribbean coast. The weather was a bit overcast so we decided that it would be cool to hire a couple of bikes and cycle along the coast to visit a few different beaches. It was nice to be able to do some exercise without getting heat exhaustion within five minutes and we also managed to spot a big group of Howler monkeys hanging out in the trees by the side of the road. The nicest beach in the area was supposed to be Playa Uva but we weren't able to get onto it as there was a commercial being filmed. We did get to watch a helicopter delievering set parts though which was amazing: we'd never seen a flying house before!

From Puerto Viejo we went half an hour up the coast to the village of Cahuita. This little village is right next door to a nature reserve and so we thought we might do a little hike. Unfortunately, the day we were there it was minging weather and the mosquitoes were out in droves. This made us think that we should head inland to avoid the bad weather promised for the next week. Of course as soon as we got on the bus the sun came out and it was a baking hot for the 10 hours it took to get to Monteverde.

Anyway we eventually made it to Monteverde, a big area of cloud forest in the centre of Costa Rica. Having heard about the abundant wildlife in this country we figured the best thing to do was hike around a couple of the reserves and be amazed by all the monkeys, pumas and birds falling in our laps. This didn't quite happen; we only saw a few hummingbirds, some bitey insects and one squirrel. We certainly got a workout struggling along the muddy tracks in the humid weather though. This lack of wildlife was a little disappointing so we decided to make up for it by going to the local insect and frog parks. Seeing all the poison dart frogs and scary spiders we were perhaps a little relieved we hadn't bumped into them in the wild!