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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Time to gear up a bit after a few days of relaxing on the beach… Again, here´s a brief summary of the stuff we did. We might just be kidding ourselves but our assumption is that you prefer looking at pics over reading text anyway ;)

So after staring at palm trees, now and then with monkeys flying over our heads, we decided to do take a more active approach and go to Manzanillo by bicycle. Easy ride, nice stuff to see and the ´hike´ in its park was quite something different, though we did blend our walk with a lot of breaks on the beach (hey - what would you do if beach and road were parallel!?)

After Manzanillo it was time to have a fun traveling day, going a bit up north to Tortuguero. What´s in a name, the place is all about sea turtles topped off with some other wildlife as well. Again, see the pics to get an idea on the place. Here´s a brief description; no roads, hardly any people (believe it or not), lots of canals and an empty beach. We did see nesting turtles on the beach though it was a bit outside the season :) along with this experience we got soaked but the good part is Mayo has now overcome her fear of severe thunderstorms ;)

24 hours of Tortuguero is enough to cause claustrophobia, so we went on to Turrialba. Primary target: rafting Rio Pacuare (class IV-V). Unfortunately elements weren´t working in our favour but we did see some nice ruins instead. Due to time constraints we left Turrialba the day after, but plan to come back here to execute the rafting plan :) After Turrialba (and yet another day of bus rides) we arrived in La Fortuna, next to the infamous Arenal Volcano. It´s that things that is supposed to spray ash and lava all the time, and we´ll see about that tomorrow. So far we visited a waterfall (La Catarata de La Fortuna) and some hot springs, which were so incredibly fake we didn´t even bother taking pictures of them (couldn´t avoid visiting, stuff was included in our deal with our guy at our cabina…). Again, see pics for further impressions!

If you´ve come all the way down here by reading - congratulations! If you didn´t… thanks for visiting and have fun viewing another batch of photos!

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Mayo on beach...

Secluded beach - there´s something behind the trees which we managed to hide away :D

Yet another friend

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