Searching for dinosaurs...

Where do I start with talking about beautiful Costa Rica?? We were expecting to enjoy it, not least because this was the relaxation part of the trip, but we weren't expecting it to shoot up so high in our favourite places list!

On arriving in San Jose, we found our transfer and got in to a rickety mini van to travel to Arenal Volcano. We were very clear that we weren't in a hurry and were happy to enjoy the scenery, but Jesus seemed intent on getting us to our destination as quickly as he possibly could - flying around hairpin bends and over bumps in the road, and there are a lot of these... We were still in Central America after all. The last 10km of road was a track, which we were still merrily bumping along holding on for dear life... Andy was concerned that the van was either going to tip over of lose a wheel at one point, we were driving with two wheels in the gutter at the side of the road - smoother there apparently!

When we got to the Arenal Observatory Lodge we had a real Jurassic Park moment... The volcano is covered in dense vegetation, and the top disappears into a cloud.  The view from the lodge is stunning, with the man made lake in the distance, hummingbirds flitting about, huge butterflies, howler monkeys and coati's (like raccoons) wandering the grounds.  Very rainy up at Arenal, the volcano has almost its own ecosystem - the rain was like nothing we'd seen for a while - it was like a bucket of water was emptied onto the area. Sitting on the porch wondering if we were going to make it up for dinner and still be dry was doubtful for a while! 

There is a crater up there somewhere...

Some of the wildlife at the lodge, including the Pizote / Coati (raccoon like creature)

Getting to the lodge from our room involved walking through the grounds in the dark where torches were needed, every time I saw anything I was convinced it was going to eat me... We didn't end up seeing very much - but that didn't stop me jumping at every noise, leaf, twig or basically anything I could see or hear!  We'd stayed at the observatory because the volcano is still active, and on clear nights you can see the lava glowing at the top... No luck unfortunately - we only saw the top of the crater an hour before we left.

The view from our room

Arenal in a rare clear moment

Our full day in Arenal was spent on the sky trek through the rainforest.  This was slightly mis-sold to us... We had expected it to be a gentle stroll along hanging bridges through the tree canopy.  Not so much, this was a 3 hour hike up and down the mountain in the mud and torrential rain showers accompanied by wild turkeys and the odd howler monkey... We did find a tiny Costa Rican tree frog which was super cute, and saw some waterfalls. Both knackered by the end of it... So we went up e sky tram to a viewpoint at the top.  They haven't quite worked this one out, as the options are either to zip line back down, which we'd already done in Ecuador, or to just get back in the tram and return to the start - we were expecting something slightly more at the top than a platform with some wires travelling from it!  We met a group on a SAGA trip who were heading to the zip lines, half of whom were real daredevils and the other half of whom were petrified... We felt slightly ridiculous going back down in the team, as the 60+ year olds zip lined down! As an aside - if you haven't heard a howler monkey before - they are ridiculously loud, and quite indescribable... Worth you-tubing for a listen!!

The very rare wild turkeys that we came upon wandering on the path - they're very slow

Searching for dinosaurs

A hiding howler monkey

A soggy walk over a hanging bridge

On the sky tram

Zip liners...

After another night chilling out on the slopes of the volcano, it was time to move on.  We headed to the local town of La Fortuna, and proceeded to get very very drunk on cocktails, celebrating having completed our last bit of sightseeing for the trip as we were heading to the beach the next day.

As we'd gone to bed so early (Andy was asleep at 7.30), we were awake at about 4.30am... Good news as it gave us a few hours to try and get rid of our hangovers before out morning of travelling - another travel day, another hangover - we're just not going to learn...  The transportation was a little better this time, the bus had wifi - amazing!!!

Tamarindo was our stop on the beach, where we stayed in a beautiful B&B run by some really lovely people.  Tamarindo is often called Tamagringo, which seems a bit unfair. The town is basically one street along the beach, full of hotels, tourist shops, bars and restaurants.  Interspersed among them are juice bars and surf shops and schools... It has just enough local surf spot vibe left to redeem it from its nickname of Tamagringo... It's a cool town.  We spent a lovely few days relaxing, with the only challenge being deciding where to eat, and dodging the locals asking whether we'd like any drugs as we wandered around the town!

Awesome restaurant where you sit on swings at the table!

We tried surfing (thanks Claire!), as when in a Costa Rican surf town it really is essential.  I spent an hour terrified every time I came off the board that I was going to have a repeat of Byron Bay 2007 (snapped ankle ligaments and 6 months not walking for those that didn't know), but survived, although the waves were not our friends - the instructor said it was a bad day for beginners! Loads of fun, followed by obligatory drinks watching the sunset - life on the beach in Costa Rica is something. We could get used to...

Our last couple of days were spent at an incredible spa hotel up in the hills, where we would happily have never left. We were up there when the earthquake happened in Chile, so well away from the tsunami watch down on the shore. Before we'd been there a night, we were already planning a return trip... 

Amazing double cooked pizza made for us all by the chef

Andy with a glass of wine floating in the pool

Coco the chocolate lab who lives at the hotel

Huge iguana wandering around the grounds

Andy enjoying the cigars

The journey home involved a one night stop in San Jose, instead of the 7 hour bus we decided to fly... The airport was one step up from a dirt track, and the plane was very small.  You really do feel every gust of wind when you are in one of those, particularly when it is mostly empty... It was a long 45 minutes!  San Jose was a shock to the system, we missed the howler monkeys, iguanas and birds, not to mention the infinity pool and the clear blue skies. We weren't in the best frame of mind to get the most out of the city, as the going home blues had kicked in by this point.  Nothing left but to get rid of some of the clothes that really didn't need to come home, and repack our backpacks for the last time. 

Although we didn't see a lot of Costa Rica, we really enjoyed it, and will definitely be heading back - there is plenty more to see, and it is a country that is very different at other times of the year - we visited the coast in the dry season where it was very arid and dusty - in a few months time it will be green and jungle like again, more like the Jurassic Park type environment we were expecting!

Re-entry...

When the time comes to go home from travelling, it is always so bittersweet. 

Of course we have missed our friends and family, but skype and the internet make it so easy to stay in touch now that it really doesn't feel like 2 months since we've seen everyone.  There is no denying that we are both tired, invigorated and inspired by everything we have seen and done certainly, but we are becoming a little weary of living out of a bag, eating out constantly (sometimes you just want toast...), doing currency maths every time we want to buy something and travelling across countries and borders by various means of transport. It's fantastic fun, but tiring too. When scheduling this trip, I neglected to add the requisite days every now and then for battery recharging, particularly in the first month when we were on the move constantly. There was a real feeling of needing to fit in as much as we possibly could - having the opportunity to spend this time travelling in such incredible places meant that we had to make the most of it, something that we both feel we have; there are very few things we had wanted to do on this trip that we didn't manage to.  

But despite all of that, the thought of going home, even to our lovely friends and family and house, just feels so wrong. Knowing that this time next week I'll have had my first day back at work scares me, because I know that sitting here in Costa Rica writing this is going to feel like a lifetime ago by then. Getting back into a routine, eating actual meals, going to the gym, supermarket shops and commuting is going to feel so utterly strange compared to our last two months. I feel like I need another month just to sit and think about everything we've been so lucky to see, and really appreciate what an awesome trip this has been - it has almost been overwhelming in it's intensity.  We've travelled more than 27,000 miles, through 7 countries, staying in 30 different towns and cities (and places that can be described as neither of those things).  We've met fantastic people at every stop, be it locals that we've hardly been able to communicate with, or fellow travellers that we know we'll still be in touch with in years to come. The things we have seen have been so awe inspiring, there is so much to think about and reflect on.  Having to readjust to normality Is going to be quite a challenge.

I can't deny that we are both sitting here feeling sad, this is the end of an adventure that has been a year in the planning, and because it was so inextricably linked with the wedding it feels like that is now finally over and behind us as well. There will always be new adventures, nobody will be surprised to hear that we have lots planned for the rest of 2014 already, but nothing will ever be quite like this one.  This really has been the trip of a lifetime, and we are so grateful to everyone at helped make it so fantastic... I don't know how we are ever going to top it. 

Costa Rica updates in the next few days, I've run out of space on the iPad so can't upload any new pictures, it will give me something to do when the 7 hour time difference and jet lag kicks in when we get home. 

See you all soon...

Welcome to Panama

Arriving in Panama was a bit like arriving in Miami - they look very similar. Flying in we saw a huge number of ships waiting for their turn to go through the canal, from cruise ships to catamarans and tankers.

We checked in to our splurge hotel - Panama is so cheap it seemed silly not to stay somewhere a bit snazzy, so we chose the Hard Rock hotel.  It was huge, with 1500 rooms, not quite what we were used to, the previous hotel in Quito had 8!  We managed to negotiate ourselves an upgrade to a suite, blagging is something we have become quite skilled at over the last few weeks, and explored the craziness of the hotel for the evening. I don't know if it was the music constantly blasting from every corner, or whether I'd been listening to Green Day without realising, but I had the continuous urge to sing 'Welcome to Panama' in Green Day 'Welcome to Paradise' style for the whole time we were there...

The following morning was canal time, after the most ridiculous breakfast I think we've ever eaten - we were so overawed by the full American breakfast buffet experience that we felt we had to take advantage! 

We headed out to the place to board our boat for the canal trip, via a quick stop where Andy picked up a questionable hat, and settled in for the journey.  It was over 30 degrees C, so a nice day for a cruise down the river. We joined the canal at the Gailard Cut, before heading down to the Pedro Miguel Locks. 

We were following a tanker loaded with containers, with another one not far behind us. When we got to the lock, we entered with a catamaran cruise, and the tanker was pulled in behind us. The locks are 1000ft long, and 110ft wide, the ship behind us was 106ft wide, so a tight squeeze. The laer ships are held in place by electric tug type vehicles on the sides of the canal, they are maneuvered to ensure they are kept central and no damage is done to either the ship or the canal.  The 7 storey lock doors closed behind us, and the draining began, we dropped around 1m a minute, 9m in total.

The next step was the Miraflores Locks, where you drop 18m in a double set of locks. We had caught up to the tanker ahead of us, and it was good to get some perspective on the speed he water flows out when watching that being lowered as we waited to go through. There are grandstands next to the locks full of people watching the process - as a feat of engineering it really is quite staggering. 

Our favourite fellow passengers - watching them take selfies was brilliant!

They're expanding the canal to allow larger ships to go through, a large percentage of the ships currently in operation will not fit rough the existing locks, which are celebrating their 100 year anniversary this year. The new ones will mean that much larger ships can pass through, although the restrictions of the Bridge of the Americas and Centennial bridge on height, and the depth of the channel mean that some will still not make it, including some of the larger cruise ships. 

It was interesting to see the docks, for the ships too large to pass through, or for those that don't want to pay the passage fee (quite high!) they offload their containers at one set of docks, where they are transported by train to docks at the other side of the country - certainly time consuming, but quicker than a passage around the continent!

We were both really glad we'd made the time to visit Panama and the canal in our trip, it is so interesting seeing how they out the system together, and looking at the expansion work going on.  Panama City is very lively, although we only saw the old town from the bus as we didn't have much time to visit - one of the perks of staying in the Hard Rock was that Andy could borrow a guitar to play with (he borrowed 2), and I could lie by the pool for a day working on my suntan... Having been away 2 months we are both still remarkably pale!

Next stop Costa Rica, our last country already - not sure how that has happened!!!

Quito (Round 2)

Coming back to Quito was a bit of a shock to the system after the peace and tranquility of the Galápagos Islands.  The cries of birds had once more been replaced with the sounds of horns beeping constantly through the day and night, and the clear sea air seemed to have turned into smog.  Having said that, we had plenty to do in and around the city to keep us busy, so cracked on with it all as soon as we got back.

This started with our trip to Cotopaxi the following morning.  This didn't look good from the outset to be honest - it was drizzling and the clouds were even lower than they had been before we left Quito the first time.  We drove up to the volcano, and quickly realised we had forgotten about the temperature change that comes with altitude, a few more alpaca items were bought at a market stall - because you can never have too many scarves and gloves... We realised we may have been a little ambitious in our attempt to go from sea level to 5000m in less than 24 hours when we stopped at a lagoon for an acclimatisation walk on the flat, and couldn't go more than about 20 steps without feeling dizzy and light headed.  This was at the relatively low altitude of around 3500m.

Regardless we carried on, to the car park at the bottom of the path to the Refugio.  The car park looked like a building site, and the volcano was still shrouded with cloud, but we gave it a go anyway.  The plan was to start out here at 4,500m, and spend an hour climbing to the Refugio, and possibly even the snow line beyond. It soon became apparent that this was not going to happen, we made it up to about 4,750m against the wind, and were not enjoying ourselves.  On learning hat the Refugio no longer served hot chocolate (or anything for that matter), as a new one was being constructed, and our guide having told us that if we couldn't see the volcano we were climbing by now we were not going to if we continued, we decided to cut our losses and headed back down.  One highlight of the walk we did do was seeing a pack of donkeys appear out of the clouds ahead of us coming down the track, they were making the trek up to the new Refugio site heavily laden several times a day.  Determined as ever for a good picture, I came quite close to being knocked off the path by the donkey in the lead, apparently I was in his way, but the picture was worth it :) 

We were on the move again, to a hotel in the Mariscal area of the city - which we immediately liked as they gave us vouchers for a welcome cocktail on arrival! The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the lively area and watching the world go by, before heading to a trip advisor find for dinner - La Burguesa.  This was a burger with a view, Quito is beautiful by night.  The burgers were awesome, Andy (the connoisseur) rated them as amongst the best he has ever had!

The next day was clear when we woke up - so we went up to try the teleferico again.  The lady confirmed that today there was a vista, so we went up to the top of the hill and were treated to a panoramic view of the city, which really is huge - neither of us can fathom how it only has 2.3 million inhabitants.

The rest of the day consisted of laundry, some shopping and a nap, (travelling is tough you know!) before meeting up with Brandon and Leah, friends from the Galápagos! for dinner and drinks. With no shame we went back to the burger place from the night before - they were *that* good, and it was a big old menu to try!!

The next day was cloud forest day, and another change of hotels.  We left the city and went for miles through the hills to The Mindo cloud forest. First stop was zip lining. We'd heard stories of the bugs from people in the Galápagos, so I was fully prepared, tucking leggings into socks and wearing long sleeves despite the warmth.  Andy wore shorts and a t shirt, and forgot the insect repellent.  You can imagine how well that turned out, at one point his legs were running with blood from the bites. The zip lines were double cables, and the staff managed the brakes, despite this I screamed down every single one and had my eyes closed a fair bit as we swung over the canyons below. Andy loved it of course!

We then moved on to a Orchid garden and to visit the Butterflies and Hummingbirds, all fantastic.  We were in the wrong season for the orchids, but still saw a lot of flowers, including the Dracula and monkey faced orchids (I expect these are not the official names for them). The hummingbirds and toucans were incredible, we could have stayed watching them for hours. They are so tiny and beautifully coloured, and the noise their wings make is quite hypnotic. The butterflies were amazing, so many of them, typically despite trying to get one to come close enough to land on us, when one did we squealed! They're so delicate I wasn't expecting to feel them... It felt exactly like it was, that something was crawling up my neck!!

Smiling through gritted teeth...

Last stop was the chocolate factory, where we learned all about how chocolate is made from cocoa bean to bar. We tried the product at various stages through the process, it really doesn't taste very much like chocolate until very near the end.  The Ecuadorean chocolate is very dark - they don't mix with milk but with the cocoa butter, but even then the cocoa percentage didn't go beneath 65. We were treated to a chocolate brownie at the end and told the recipe... Which consisted of 8 eggs amongst other things. Very gooey!

On leaving Mindo we headed back to our new hotel - up on the side of a volcano crater. This was very desolate, and again shrouded by cloud, so felt quite eerie.  They had pet alpacas wandering around which we were please by, as they were the last of the 4 types of South American camelid we hadn't seen, always nice to have the full set (Alpaca, Llama, Guanaco, Vicuña)!

When the clouds cleared the next morning the view was incredible - you wouldn't even have known what was out there, and then the view just appeared.

Our last stop in Quito, which was pretty action packed looking back on it, was the famed Middle of the World monument. I had been wondering why Ecuador seemed to have he monopoly on the middle of the world, as surely other countries around the world also have the equator, but on looking at the map and seeing some of those countries (The Congo, Gabon, Somalia...) you start to understand why Quito, as the closest city to the equator - gets to make the fuss.

We visited the official monument, and took the obligatory pictures, finding it all a little odd.  The site is set out almost like a theme park, - in fact Andy's description of it was a Cold War theme park, but still takes itself quite seriously with statues of Ecuadorean presidents heads along the walkways, and official looking signs. This is made slightly ridiculous by the fact that the monument isn't even actually on the equator - which makes a mockery of the people posing on 'the line'. When building this they got it wrong, and when military GPS was used it was discovered that the actual equator was a few hundred metres down the road. 

Being enterprising individuals, there is now another site to visit, this one actually on the equator. This is a more lighthearted visit, with scientific experiments (ish) proving that the equator is a funny old place.  Water falls straight through a plug hole on the line, move the sink 1m either side, and it swirls down the plug hole in opposite directions. We lost our balance horribly (me even worse than usual) while walking along the line, and Andy managed to balance an egg on a nail. No mean feat! At the last second I remembered that we needed to get our passports stamped, (quirky stamp no. 5 for the trip), and then we went back to enjoy our crater view and hug the alpacas for the afternoon - our last one in Ecuador.

We've really enjoyed Ecuador, for a start it was nice to spend so long in one country at a stretch, we were there for 11 days. Definitely somewhere we wouldn't mind coming back to explore more in the future... After all, Andy managed to get out of the Andes without having tried Guinea Pig this time... So we'll have to come back one day!