So we were up early to get to Rivas, where the Tica Bus was going to pick us up, take us across the border and drop us near Monteverde. The 2 hours to the boarder went just fine, then we had to queue for 2 hours to clear immigration, and here is where we experienced our first real scam crossing the border! Costa Rica requires evidence that you are leaving the country, however for some reason they would not accept our flight tickets as proof….very annoying. So we had to go back out and buy another Tica bus ticket. A lot of people just get the cheapest option, which is going back the way we came, but we decided there was no point throwing away money, so our hand was forced and we bought a ticket from San Jose down to Panama City. Apart from this the border wasn't too bad, and we got dropped off on the side of the road a couple of hours later to head into Monteverde. The sign said 30km, so we thought about 45mins later we would be there…what we hadn't anticipated was the "quality" of Costa Rican roads!!!2 hours on a bumpy dirt road later and we were there!!!...by this time it was about 6pm so all we had chance to do was book our zip lining tour for the morning!

So we got picked up and taken to Extremo Canopy early in the morning, Phil wasn't convinced that extreme was exactly what she wanted….but it turns out she was more than happy with it!!!So we got all our safety equipment on and looking rather fetching headed out into the rainforest for our briefing! 2minutes later we were hooked up to cables, flying over and through trees!!!We loved it, as you can see from the videos, it was great fun! The highlight for both of us was Shane doing the Tarzan swing. Unfortunately we didn't get this on camera due to a technical malfunction (Phil lacked skills on this occasion!)…but Shane got pushed off the platform, next things you know "OH..... MY...... GOD" is echoing though the rainforest…much to Phil's delight…followed shortly by Shane laughing his head off as he enjoyed the swinging part after the shock of the initial freefall!!!...very entertaining!!!

After this all that was left to do really was the SUPERMAN…as you can see from the videos, for the majority of the zip lines you are in a sitting position, but for this one you are lying face down towards the floor. Phil wasn't sure she wanted to do it at first but loved every second of it!!! The videos give you a good idea of the journey and what you look like doing it!

We hung around for the afternoon as our bus to San Jose was at 2pm, 5 hours later we arrived into the capital which has a reputation as a bit of a hole!!!We came across our first taxi scam, telling us that the hostel we wanted was full but he knew of a great room that we could have for only 70us dollars!!!Funnily enough we passed on his offer and ended up in Nomads hostel, a lovely family run place. We needed to book our ticket to Panama the next day, so we really only had a short time here, but we didn't find it all that bad. From the pictures you can see some mad trees we came across as well as the national football stadium.

Unfortunately due to the boat sailing on Sunday we had only a flying(in more ways than 1) visit in Costa Rica….guess we have to leave something undone to come back to! So we were off at midday for our 14 hours bus trip into Panama City