At 4am I was woken by what I thought was someone jumping on my bed. What the hell??? I sat up ready to punch someone in the throat, only to find no one there. I then realised that the entire room was shaking!! Earthquake!!! 4.9 magnitude. As soon as it finished I went straight back to snoozeville!! As you can tell I obviously wasn't too concerned about it!! I did get a little sleep in this morning... 7.30am, and it was glorious. As soon as I was ready I ...

This morning we went on a guided tour of the National Park. We met our guides, and we walked the couple of minutes up to the park from our hotel. In we went and we started spotting things straight off the bat. Frogs, crabs, lizards, and insects...I know they are not the cutest, but they are essential to a tropical forest. I was really hoping to see more frogs today, which I did, however I didn't get to see the elusive green tree frog. We continued on our wal...

This morning we left Monte Verde, and made our way by minivan to Manuel Antonio. The drive took us down from the cloud forest to the coastline. The roads, especially coming down the mountain were steep, narrow and bumpy dirt roads. The view, nothing short of spectacular!!! One thing I noticed today whilst we were driving was the distinct lack of check points along the way. In all the countries we had visited prior to Costa Rica, they all had a very strong mi...

This morning we headed straight up to the Monte Verde biological reserve. We met our guides up there, and they were the same ones from last night so we knew that they were good!! The animal spotting started in the car park, with our guide setting us up with a tarantula. As much as I hate spiders, I still feel the need to look at them and take photos. Crazy!!! We started on a trail....and within a minute we had already spotted a hummingbird nest with chicks i...

Hi ho, hi ho it's off to Monte Verde we go!! This morning we left La Fortuna and made our way to the beautiful cloud forest of monte verde. Firstly, we caught a minibus to Lake Arenal, where we were met by a ferry. Now I don't know if it is a good sign when about 50 vultures are sitting on top of the hydro electricity tower, just above where we are about to board our small little boat. Not a reassuring sign really. However, vultures or not we all happily pac...