So we had 7 days to explore Costa Rica before the girls headed home from San Jose, so this is what we got up to.

From Liberia in the north, where we stayed on our first night (not much happens here apart from people organizing where to go next) we organized a taxi to take us to Santa Elena in Monteverde. The drive up took 3 hours and the scenery was great. Green hills and a bit of livestock…a bit like home in a way, also with a lot of coffee plantations. From Pension Santa Elena we organized our activities, and after lunch we went zip lining! It involved climbing a few ladders and getting harnessed to a cable and flying across to the other side of a valley. I think we all lost a few years after doing the Tarzan swing. The longest cable was over 1Km, a great buzz and with that one we got to fly in the "superman" postion!

In the evening we went on a night hike to Santa Maria Finca, we immediately spotted 3 sloths, which were scratching themselves and being unusually active considering they sleep for 18hrs a day. We also saw glowing beetles and a tarantula, a green viper and leaf cutter ants doing their thing. Laura even managed to find a scorpion in the reserve office when we finished our trek, another year lost for Laura!

The next morning we were up early and off we went on our jeep-boat-jeep trip to La Fortuna. This should have been a stunning journey but the weather was rubbish. When we got to La Fortuna a burrito I had eaten the day before had caught up with me, so I spent the avo in bed. The girls however went and enjoyed the local hot springs, the stories I heard were that one of the slides gives the worst wedgies and Laura lost another year off her life when a guy landed on her head coming out of a slide.

The next day we hiked to a water fall and chilled there and organized our next shuttle bus. The final Costa Rican journey was to Montezuma, a beach town on the Pacific. We relaxed here for a couple of days. Initially we were a little disappointed with the beach as there was a lot of litter, but by our last day, things had got a lot cleaner, so maybe we were just unlucky with the tides. We watched a bit of surfing and found a good hotel for the odd cocktail. It was a pretty nice place to spend our last few days with Laura and Katie. As has been the recurring theme on the trip our night sleep was interrupted when Laura heard rustling under her bed. All I found was a nibbled pack of crisps. El rato!! I think the girls are glad to be home now so they can catch up on their sleep!