Hello from Nicaragua! After La Vida Activa I decided to call it quits in Costa Rica and cross the border to this place! There´s basically 2 ´open´ crossings between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, one by road and another by crossing a river (Rio San Juan). Decided to take the latter, as it would lead into a little less-explored territory in the south-east of the country. So far so good, river crossing went smoothly and after having crossed the official border it was like ending up in another world. Quite intriguing… but all the more interesting!

The next day I went down Rio San Juan, a river surrounded by dense jungle and lots of wildlife - about 2 hours down there´s a small village named El Castillo which is quite isolated but offers some interesting things to see and do. There´s an (unlikely) fortress in the middle of it, used to keep pirates from entering the country and the village really has an atmosphere of its own. I´d also like to make specific mention of two Dutch people who are busy setting up a very substantial form of eco-tourism in the area. El Castillo won´t be the same for long as many people have started buying up land but they seem to be developing one of the best forms of eco-tourism I´ve come across so far; please visit their website NicaNature!

It was here where my money started running low so a small trip back up the river to get money from a bank seemed necessary - if only they wouldn´t have stopped accepting Visa cards since a short period of time… This left two options; take a 10-hour bus ride (one way) to another ATM, or get money in Costa Rica. Well, 2 hours (and 6 Visa stamps) later I got what I needed :) Boat schedules didn´t turn out to be in my favour to go back so I decided to make a little turn and cross over land this time. It´s hard to say, but this land crossing was probably one of the craziest border crossings I´ve been to so far… having to block people and threaten with getting the police is not something I do every day ;)

Anyway, false start… ended up in San Juan del Sur (southwestern Nicaragua)… and there´s absolutely worse places to crash down! The place is laid-back, the beaches are nice and the surfing is great fun! When it comes to the latter, I´m still class ´S´ (the S is for sucks) but everyone needs to learn anyway…. right?! Also seeing nesting sea turtles was interesting, besides the fact we were surrounded by hundreds of them!

That´s all for now, I´ve got quite some more things on the programme so keep coming back ;) And thanks for all feedback I got lately!

Note: due to constant electricity problems over here I haven´t been able to upload pics yet, will try doing so tomorrow. Sorry!

Update 22-Nov: Pics now available! I´ll try to keep it shorter next time!

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Street life - San Carlos de Nicaragua

Sabalo - small river community

Lunch swims right in the river ;)

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Hello once again and sorry for not updating the site for quite a while! During the last couple of days I´ve been pretty far away from any PC with a (decent) internet connection so it had to wait ;) On the other hand, it´s not like I didn´t do anything either of course!

First went to Monteverde / Santa Elena to visit its cloud forest reserves. Also ended up doing a canopy zipline trip … sure, this has nothing to do with wildlife watching (everything looks like broccoli and matchsticks from that far up anyway) but racing down a 750m steel cable over a valley is fun (pics are yet to be received, sorry!). Also walked the hanging bridges over the cloud forest, did a little hiking during both day- and nighttime (quite a difference) and eventually ended up in a bar with some friends I made locally (Hola Oscar, Chris, Otto, Chancho, Mayor!).

Next up was another thing on my to-do list… rafting Rio Pacuare, supposedly one of the best rafting spots on the planet or so… whatever, it was fun once again! If you´re browsing through the pics… I´m on the right-front position in the boat ;) Also explored some waterfalls around Turrialba and subsequently went down to Cerro Chirripo, a 3820m-high mountain. Still being disappointed with my Volcan Baru experience I just had to climb something else, preferably higher ;) Anyway, MISSION COMPLETED! It took a full day to reach the base camp and another (very long) day to reach the summit and get back down. We finally ended up walking a steep 3km through cloud forest in the dark… quite an experience! Oh and by the way… all European visitors can now stop complaining about the weather from now on, as it was freezing on the summit so I´ve probably been colder than most of you… HA!

Now taking a little break to recover - tomorrow I´ll try to get to Nicaragua and go down the Rio San Juan to the Caribbean coast. The area is pretty unexplored (which means there´s no electricity in some places, as I heard) so you might not hear from me for a while again. Enjoy the pics however!

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Cloud forest vista (Santa Elena)

Hanging bridge (Santa Elena)

Something different during a night-walk (Monteverde)

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So here´s a little ´exit-post´ - tomorrow (that is today by the time you guys in Europe read this ;)) Mayo will be making a final part of her trip, back to NL, back to the joy of cold weather and grey skies. Ain´t it wonderful!?

Once again we´ll update you on what we did, though most of it consisted of a chill-out (she can´t come back all burnt out!) . On our final day in Puerto Jimenez we decided to make a little walk and came across a small ´eco-path´… curious as we were we went down there. The sign said ´max 15 mins presence´ - and we soon figured out why; a large, happy family of crocodiles seemed to be living on and next to the path. Sounds like fun - and it was! See the pics for some happy shots - fortunately these crocodiles felt just as lazy as we did so we could walk out without any stress.

The day after consisted of a huge plan, which however didn´t come to execution due to … right … inclement weather! We regret writing our last post now… No kayaking, dolphin/whale watching etc. The beach was still fun though and we managed to get airplane tickets back to San Jose, thus making it easier for us to get out of this corner. After flying not-so-high we ended up in rainy San Jose, after which we decided to head (back) to Peninsula de Nicoya for a final few days of chill-out. The only flight available went to Benidorm Salou Chersonissos Tamarindo. Just stayed there for a day and off we went to laid-back Samara for a few days of real chilling. No big stories, it was just that.

The planned return trip by air had a fun twist to it as well; due to circumstances we wish not to comment on the weather, our flight got cancelled so we made a fun road trip, along with two Americans and a rented car. Alright, so we ended up where we wanted though it took longer than the planned 35 mins - but hey! it was a lot cheaper ;)

So Mayo is flying back off to you guys tomorrow and will be 100% available to all requests ;) Talk to you then!

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One Happy Crocodile

Our (almost) private airplane

Proof we were actually up there

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