Today we went to the beach at Manuel Antonio for the first time...it was beautiful, and we were thinking "this is why we are doing the travelling!!" Unlike the beaches in the med, it was quite quiet (as you can see from the photos) and you don´t have to fight for space on the sand or in the sea. Although we did stay in the water a little too long and came home a bit red! So from now on, we will only go to the beach after 2pm. I am already getting stare...

Hola! We are now safely in Quepos in Costa Rica, which is right on the Pacific coast. We arrived into San Jose 3 days ago but only stayed one night as we had to get here to do our Spanish course. It was no great loss as it didn´t seem like a particularly nice city and only worth going to to pass through. Our hostel (Costa Rica Backpackers) was really nice. It had a small pool, hammocks and even a cat that slept on top of the computers! But it had a 24 hr guard ...