After the hassle of the Costa Rican border we arrived in San Jose, the capital well ahead of schedule. We decided to not see much of Costa Rica and come back a different time when we can give it our full attention and see everything the country has to offer.

This meant we just decided to stay in San Jose and do a day trip before heading to Nicaragua.

We got to the hostel we'd booked for the next day because we hadn't expected to get to San Jose so easily and it was really far out of town and really hard to find. Eventually the taxi driver found it and we were told off for not booking ahead even though I had emailed them saying there was a chance we would get there early and we were giving them money! Who complains at people who are giving you money?!?!

We headed out to the supermarket because our room wasn't ready, they had just left it dirty since the last people rather then clean it straight away. The supermarket was massive! And it had a lot of choice! We bought food for lunches and dinners which made us happy. Our room was tiny. Literally a mattress on the floor but it was cheap and we had a TV that worked! We asked about day tours but the guy said he couldn't go tomorrow. It was really annoying seeing as it was just him driving us round for the day and we were paying him $100! We decided to stay an extra day as we were ahead of schedule anyway.

With our day off we did pretty much nothing. We got laundry done which they told us was $7 but charged us $14 which is an outrageous extortionate price! I don't even think at home a hostel would charge £10 for one load of laundry! I was also absolutely covered from the hips down in bites, or an allergic reaction. I had like 500 bites and they were incredibly itchy so I really didn't want to do anything at all apart from sleep! Dan didn't have one bite on him, typical! We found a burger king half an hour walk away so we took a stroll there and back as there was no where else to eat around the hostel, and went to the supermarket again to buy yet more food.

Our next day started early, 6:00am we drove to an area called la fortuna. First we stopped at Angeles cloud forest which was really cold due to high elevation. Here we saw a few different types of hummingbirds. We carried on and then stopped so our driver, Carlos, could have breakfast and then he took us to the side of the road where in 30 seconds he had caught a blue jeans frog with his cap. The frog was tiny and bright red with bright blue legs (hence the name) he said that it was poisonous but it wouldn't kill you just make you sick, and that you couldn't touch them because their body temperature was much lower then ours so a touch would kill them within a week.

Dan told him he wanted to see some sloths even though we have already seen 5, so I told him I wanted to see a toucan as we hadn't seen them since Brazil. Wouldn't you know 5 minutes down the road he spots a three toed sloth asleep in a tree. It wasn't moving but you could see it quite clearly.

Another 3 minutes down the road and he spots a two toed sloth moving. This one was young and completely active right by the roadside, Dan finally got a decent picture of a sloth (it only took seven of them) and so his wish was fulfilled!

We stopped off at a little waterfall to swim, it was freezing! There were also little fish in the water and a tiny pool of tadpoles! After we went through la fortuna town which is by a volcano and you could get good views of it. We continued on to the lake which was pretty but they stuck a big ugly tower in the middle of the lake which spoiled the pictures. We stopped off at a viewpoint over a bridge and spotted a big iguana in the tree really close to us. I didn't know iguanas even climbed trees! Carlos told us that Jurassic park was filmed near here and also the movie After Earth, with Will Smith and his son, apparently the volcano that blows in that is la fortuna volcano. We've never seen the movie so we can't comment if it looks similar.

Our final stop was to some hot springs where you could just relax and lie in the river, at some points it was over 40 degrees! There were also some lizards there that could run across the water! It was so cool to watch them! The river was quite crowded with locals though as it is the easter holidays but we still stayed nearly 2 hours.

I was so tired! I ended up sleeping in the car, and Carlos had a late lunch back where he had breakfast and we stayed in the car; knackered!

Suddenly Carlos opened the door and asked if we wanted to see a toucan! That did wake me up and we rushed out, right by the road on a tree!! It was a male calling a female and it had big green eyes! Its crazy that with that big beak you can still not really see them in the wild unless they've been pointed out! Yay a toucan!

We made dinner and then went straight to sleep. The next morning after breakfast we were dropped to the bus stop that buses to the border go from. The queue was massive! Huge! It was the beginning of easter. Buses were meant to go every hour but instead they put one on every half an hour. It still took us until the fourth bus before we got on one 2 hours after we had arrived at the stop. That was because every mother and their dog was pushing in. Your next door neighbours nieces teacher, would let entire families push the queue. It was absolutely ridiculous!! And so people that didn't know anyone had to queue the longest! Like us!

Eventually we got on a bus they had rented for the overcrowding and it was a crappy public bus not a coach, so the 6 hours were very uncomfortable! This also put us way behind schedule and we were worried we wouldn't make a ferry we had to get on the Nicaraguan side.

Eventually at 4:30 we got to the border! We were worried it would be a fiasco like the other one but it was OK. We had to pay a 'tax' to leave and were told to go to a machine. The machine took my money but no receipt to prove I had paid said tax. We told the woman and she said we had to go pay the tax, we argued over and over until we were blue in the face that the machine had taken my money and I had paid the tax, her response: ' you need to go and pay the tax'. Helpful. Eventually a man told us we had to go behind the bus station, through a building to go pay the tax for foreigners. We stormed off in a huff having wasted precious minutes with the stupid woman. We got to an office behind the bus station but it turned out this was for people to register cars or something and our 'window' was actually a bus parked next to the office and we paid a man through the window of the bus. Very professional. Even here in a 3 person queue with a policeman with a gun people STILL pushed in and does the policeman care?! No. He actually told me it was my fault and I should be queuing in front of some stairs blocking anyone that came past rather then down the side of the bus a whole one foot away. My mistake! We FINALLY got through! And then stamped into Nicaragua. It was way after 5 now all that messing around had held us up so long.

We hopped on a bus then changed our minds and hopped in a cab to rush to try and make the finally ferry. The sun was setting and we raced all the way there but we had missed the ferry by 20 mins!! So annoying! We stayed in a hotel next to the ferry dock until morning, it was surprisingly nice with air con and really good WiFi we didn't want to leave!