Monteverde is the best known Costa Rica cloud forest but it was unusually cloud free and pleasantly warm compared to last week's chilly cloud forest, although fierce winds howl like banshees day and night here. Roads to the area are stony bumpy dirt roads, deliberately so to deter mass tourism and particularly cruise day trippers, but this is at odds with large billboards aimed at the adrenal adventure seeker. The suspended bridges through the canopy of the fore...

Costa Rica lies on a long fault with a big Pacific plate sliding under a Caribbean plate along the Pacific coastline, making it prone to earthquakes and producing 112 volcanoes of which 8 or 9 are still active. The most active is Arenal which first erupted in 1968 wiping out 3 villages and killing 90 people, as a result of which resorts have sprung up all around it and tourists flock there, including us. Up to 3 years ago visitors could watch lava flows from an ...

5am we are woken by a tremendous repeated noise which penetrates the earplugs, like a braking juggernaut? no, definitely animal - jaguar? wolf maybe? Getting closer, but I still didn't guess. Of course I had read about the howler monkeys in the rain forest, but was still not prepared for this deep, barking, howling, a very effective wake up call but with no control over the timing. During our walks and boat rides we saw several, velvety and brown in the trees as ...

Even I couldn't come to Costa Rica and not drink the coffee particularly as the arabica beans here are high on flavour but low in caffeine. It is certainly not worth asking for decaf of which they produce very little as the beans are sent to Germany for decaffeination (the caffeine is sold to Coca Cola) and the coffee goes back to Costa Rica for roasting and export. So decaf costa rican coffee bought in England will have clocked up a lot of airmiles. Only 3% of ...

Costa Rica was named by Columbus 'The Rich Coast' for the gold ornaments worn by the first people he encountered here. The major cultures, Aztec and Maya never reached here and the original tribes were largely wiped out by disease and slavery. It appears that many early Spanish settlers were Jewish converts fleeing the inquisition and so some three quarters of modern Ticos (Costa Ricans) have Jewish ancestry. The country is small, 120 miles from the Pacific to t...