As it turns out, Matapalo was not the only fabulous place in Costa Rica. After six excellent days in the Peninsula de Osa, we travelled north along the coast, first to Dominical, which is very much a surfer town, with some of the best breaks in Costa Rica, but which, at the same time affords beginners the opportunity to get their butts on and off a surfboard - thus a natural stop over point for me. I spent three days surfing, first on a 9.2 foot board, and then on a seven-eight. They appear enormous on land, and woefully small and insecure in the water. Conversely, and perversely compounding the experience with the board, the waves and general state of sea is the opposite:from the beach the waves seem rather pitiful and the water calm, but when trying to make your first waves, they seem to rush at you with the general intent of obliterating your puny attempts to tame them. Initially it was all just a mad washing machine of water, noise and lots of sideways crashes, but as with all things a little bit of perseverance (and - importantly - investment in a rash vest) pays off in the end. The surfing was interspersed between some great meals, the best of which were probably the sandwiches at Tortilla Flats right on the beach - this is a very basic lodge for the majority of surfers here, and also has a pretty jacked-up restaurant with said sandwiches, excellent coffee, and my favourite beer of Costa Rica - Bavaria Gold - always served very cold. It rained pretty much every afternoon, and by rain I mean proper tropical downpours, but this was fine, and helped keep the evenings cooler. On recommendation of the gang we met at Matapalo, we spent our last few days at Manuel Antonio - another hour and half by car north on the coast. This is a part of Costa Rica which did not even have regular road links well into the 80's, and it is quite beautiful. It is perhaps the quintessential Costa Rican fare - lush green forest along the shore of a beautiful gently curving wide beach, with coastal mountains in the immediate background and of course the ever presence of a wide variety of birds (and other creatures - there seems to be a surfeit of iguanas here, even though they are apparently endangered). Monkeys were again seen and heard around breakfast and sunset times, even though strangely we saw more monkeys at our hotel than inside the famous Manuel Antonio national park. The trip through the national park was a two hour stroll that felt somewhat like a trip through an over sized zoo (I guess at some level all national parks including in SA could be termed this way) - but was extremely ably led by our excitable and excited local guide Gama - who managed to find a number of small and large creatures alike on his single zoom lens that we would never have seen - and made the few dollars we paid absolutely worth while. Seeing both a three and two toed sloth (I was not actually counting) was rather strange but brilliant - what odd creatures (apparently, in an effort to avoid jaguarundis which hunt them, they only come down from the tree-tops every 10 days or so to defecate - talk about s***ting youself when you need to take a s***). All in all, Costa Rica was more than worth it, the American influence and apparently ever increasing commercial presence despite. The Ticas, as Costa Ricans refer to themselves, appear to me to mostly mean it when they great you by saying 'pura vida' (the pure life!) - they seem to be aware of the precarious balance between development and conservation, and are proud of their (mostly non-violent - a big difference to other central american countries) heritage. It was with sadness that I said good bye to Ilana and Costa Rica, and headed off to Columbia, via a four hour stop over in Panama.