We decided to stroll up to the free waterfall today & was joined by Suzie. This however turned out to be a b**** of a hike! The walk was about 2 hours with most of it up bloody steep hills & part of it through the muddiest path I've ever come across. Rach & I did OK through the mud, but poor old Suze ended up about 8 inches deep in it & needed pulling out!! The one thing I must say is that I was most impressed (as was she), that Rach who doesn't d...

Everyone at the hostel goes to bed early & gets up early, so we were at breakfast by 8am. We caught the shuttle bus down to the Volcano Observatory, passing a snake about 3.5 foot long along the way. The driver informed us that it wasn't poisonous, it just whipped it's prey to death! That was encouraging before we started walking the trails through the surrounding rain forest! But when we arrived, it was p!ssing it down. We had a coffee & chatted to an a...

Another gorgeous breakfast with the really sweet Columbian couple that owned the place, along with a couple of Canadians (who'd turned up late last night), who gave us a few pointers of places to go in Central America. We then hopped on the bus for 4hours west to La Fortuna. We got there at about 1pm, only to find out that the collection service from the hostel, (which is about 40mins drive away in El Castillo), didn't arrive until 5:15pm. Consequently we spent t...

Strolled round to catch the 9am public bus up to Volcan Poas (2704m). Even though the volcano has a reputation of getting covered in cloud by 10am, the bus still stopped at a local restaurant during the what-would've-been a 1.5hr trip, meaning we didn't get there to 11am!! But we got there & started walking towards the main crater, when a fiery-throated hummingbird stopped us in our tracks, hovering about 1m from our faces, before flitting rapidly off. That f...

I thought we'd walk to the bus stop this morning, completely forgetting quite how far it was. D'oh! As a result we were dripping in sweat & dying by halfway. However a break with a 'rude' BK breakfast (yes, more Western food!) enabled us to crack on & catch the bus the whole 40mins down the road to Alajuela. Unfortunately, when we got there, none of the taxi drivers knew where our hostel (Casa Tago) was. So we had to wander the streets until we found an I...