From Tortuguero, we had a rather long day of travelling although the distance we travelled wasn't actually that far. We caught the boat back along the canal (no thunderstorm this time) then four buses to get us to Cahuita, further down the Caribbean coast. We met a family with a five year old boy doing the same journey and couldn't believe how well behaved he was considering we spent eight hours travelling! Fortunately when we arrived in Cahuita, our first choic...

After failing to see nesting turtles in El Salvador and Nicaragua we decided to head to a town called Tortuguero or 'Turtle Place'. We had to cross from the Pacific to the Caribbean Coast to get there so we spent a night in the capital, San José, on route. We hadn't heard anything good about the city so we weren't expecting much but were pleasantly surprised by the area around the University, which was where we were staying. The area had a lot of energy and we e...

We left the mountains of Monteverde and headed to the Pacific coast and the Manuel Antonio National park. The early 6am bus (which was the last bus of the day!), the 7 hour journey and the return to the heat just about finished us off so the rest of the day unfortunately had little merit. Thankfullly the national park the next day more than made up for it. The next morning we caught the 20 minute bus to the Manuel Antonio National park and found out why it is ...

The slightly crazy Nicaraguan border and the 2+ hour wait at a Costa Rican road junction was definitely worth it to get to Monteverde. The last bus ride of 38km took us on an 1.5 hour trip steadily uphill along windy roads with beautiful views across the country. We arrived into rain and cold and found our cosy hostel which was more like a chalet. We went out for some dinner and quickly discovered that Costa Rica really is as expensive as everyone has been tel...