30th September 2009 - 2nd October 2009 During our travels across Costa Rica we stopped over in San Jose for a night at Hostel Bakau (the best hostel ever!) where we met a couple driving a combie van. They were advertising for amigos to join them - we just had to pay for some petrol. It all seemed too good to be true as we had wanted to travel in a van so the next morning we jumped in and drove to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on the Carribean side of Costa Rica. ...

29th September 2009 - 30th September 2009 Tamarindo is a touristy place. So first thing's first we found a place to stay then retreated in the air con of Subway and got some western food into us. That night we had amazing meals of fish and pasta which we shared as always and enjoyed the live music in the restaurant. The musician played guitar and drums then used a special device to make his music play back live so he could then sing and play guitar to it. The n...

28th September 2009 - 29th September 2009 After a long ferry ride across a lake so big you can't see the other side we arrived at an island formed by two volcanoes a few kilometers apart that soar in the sky. We were swarmed by locals as we got off the boat with the "Where are you going? What do you want to do today?" questions we are used to from Asia. The island seemed very quiet so the locals were doing all they could for our business. We found a p...

22nd September 2009 - 28th September 2009 San Juan has some great surf beaches so we took advantage and decided to get some good days in consecutively to advance our skills a bit. The board and ride out to the beach (El Remanso) costs $10 each and we could try different size boards to find what we liked. When we were surfing at El Remanso we also had to be careful of stingrays as there were many there that would sting you on the foot in the shallow water. We sa...

20th September 2009 - 22nd September 2009 We arrived in Granada after an easy 2 hour bus trip and decided to stay at Oasis Hostel. It is in a great old building with a pool to combat the immense heat and we met up with our friends, Carlo and Toni from Leon. As we walked around the beautiful buildings we first saw a security guard bend over 90 degrees in front of us to inspect a local "bootie" that just passed him. We had a laugh about it but then I no...