Manuel Antonio

So as I say, after the GAP tour ended there were four of us who were planning to stick around in Costa Rica for a few more days, me, the big Swede (Eric), Mel and Carla.


No one seemed to be getting anywhere close to making decisions over what they wanted to do, so on the walk to our final meal I decided we ought to head to Manuel Antonio. Manuel Antonio is a small town on the Pacific coast famous for its beautiful national park and beaches therein. The actual town of Manuel Antonio is quite touristy so we decided the small town of Quepos nearby was the best option. I had read about a hostel called the Wide Mouth Frog which was meant to be nicest in town and had a really good pool. As always, I was sold.


The Wide Mouth Frog, definitely recommended


The hangout zone




After eating out almost every night for the last couple of weeks on the GAP tour we decided the well stocked kitchen at the Wide Mouth Frog was the perfect place to unleash our culinary skills. We cooked a delicious meal of fajita's with fresh guacamole, which would have been fine, except the ingredients cost us almost as much as eating out would have haha. Backpacker budgeting.

Me and the big Swede cooking


The pool, confused

As I said the main reason to visit Manuel Antonio is the beautiful national park, which despite it's relatively small size is rated by many to be the best in Costa Rica. I would agree to a certain extent as there is literally an abundance of wildlife to be seen

The park entrance, moments after this picture was taken Eric hit his head on the sign (which was followed by a lot of Swedish words I'd never heard before)

And when I say there's an abundance of wildlife I'm not lying, we found this little critter literally 100m into the park.

A little white faced monkey

If it wasn't for their red legs it would've been almost impossible to see these little (and not to little) land crabs.

Land crabs... everywhere

A giant bamboo tree

Overawed by the scale of the forest

In the average park or reserve you generally have to go looking for the animals, keeping your eyes open at all times for any sign of movement... Manuel Antonio isn't quite like that, there are animals literally everywhere. The below lizard was sunning himself right in the middle of the path.

Sun bathing

And I literally almost stood on the Iguana in the picture below. Being the polite young chap that I am I stepped off the path to let some American tourists pass and got a shock when that fella hopped out of the way.

Camouflage

Manuel Antonio is famous for two things, it's wildlife and it's beaches. The beaches are some of the most beautiful in the world, with turquoise waters lapping against palm fringed golden sands.

Possibly due to the above the national park tends to get very busy at weekends (to the extent they close the park on Mondays to give the animals some time off!) however through the week tends to be a little quieter. We went on a wednesday and even managed to find a beautiful completely abandoned beach to sit and have our picnic lunch.

Paradise

Lunchtime

After we'd had lunch and enjoyed the beach for a little while we headed on a bit of a trek up to the look out point, the only problem being we had our flipflops on and it wasn't easy going underfoot.

Flipflop trekking

El Mirador

This is the main beach in the national park and was again almost abandoned when we turned up for a much needed swim after our viewpoint trek.

Beautiful

After two or three days Mel and Carla continued their trip and set off back up to Nicaragua, which left just me and the big Swede hanging out. The next day we headed to the public beach in Manuel Antonio and had a lazy day of sunbathing and eating delicious bbq.

bbq funtimes

The public beach, again beautiful

Then a day later it was time for the big Swede to depart and leave just me down in Manuel Antonio. It was sad to partways with Eric as we'd hungout a great deal... another traveling buddy departed.

Adios the big Swede

I left Manuel Antonio myself a day later and headed back to San Jose to meet up with my fellow workers for the volunteer project... as one chapter of the trip comes to an end, so another one begins...

La Fortuna

From Monteverde we headed on to La Fortuna. On a map it appears these two little towns are quite close to one another, however due to the fact that all the land between them is Rainforest reserves its actually quite a journey. First we had to take a bus to Lake Arenal, then get a boat across it, and then another bus to La Fortuna.

La Fortuna sits in the shadow of Volcano Arenal, which incidently is one of the most active volcanos in Central America (and I actually saw it erupt when I was in Costa Rica last time).

Lake Arenal


Volcano Arenal in the distance


Our little ferry boat


One thing I forgot to write about in Monteverde was how much it rained... and how heavily. Well as the below photo shows, La Fortuna was no different.

When it rains, it pours!



There are many activities to do whilst in La Fortuna, however for me one of the most underated is a visit to Arenal Waterfall. Its an amazing waterfall where the valley suddenly falls away out of nothing. Its fun to swim in the pool too, and luckily the rain held off just long enough for us to do exactly that.

Arenal Waterfall


And again...

And again :)

Swimming

The big Swede explaining to me he'd lost his contacts

Downstream

While we were at the waterfall michael found this little critter underneath a rock. We assumed due to how flat the rock his body looked that he was unfortunately dead. After we'd taken a few photos Michael decided to give the little chap a nudge... at which point his tail shot up in the air and he scuttled back into his hiding place. It turns out he was just sunning himself in order to raise his body temperature, what with scorpions being cold blooded n all.

Playing dead

After we'd swum in the waterfall pool we headed slightly downstream for another little swim and found there was more than just us in the river.

Lots of little fishes

After a day at the waterfall we decided to head to the hotsprings that La Fortuna is also famous for. We didn't head to any normal hotsprings though, we headed to a 5star resort. Unfortunately again it was raining, but it didn't dampen our spirits.

Rain rain go away

Hot springs waterslide

The resort had a nice pool table and a darts board, me and Eric had a good few games of spears. The first one literally lasted about an hour haha, not so accurate.

Bullseye

La Fortuna would be the last stop of the tour before we finished in San Jose. A few of the group had a few more days in Costa Rica before heading home or onwards like myself. So we got together and under my guide decided to travel down to Manuel Antonio to see the beaches and national park.

Monteverde, Costa Rica

Our arrival in Costa Rica, and more importantly Monteverde, was very special to me and my time in Costa Rica was one of the most important things I was planning for my trip. This was because, as many of you will know, I had visisted Costa Rica and Monteverde some 12 yrs previously on a school trip to see how the school's fundraising efforts were being used at the Children's Rainforest Reserve.

It was actually quite strange to be back in Monteverde, not least because the town had changed and grown so much in the 12yrs since I was last there, it actually wasn't until our second day that I truely saw things I remembered from last time.

Our hotel terrace in Monteverde


And on the second night we actually ate in a restaurant I had eaten in 12yrs previously. The restaurant was called Johnny's Pizzeria and the food was just as delicious as it had been the last time I ate there. The below photo shows me and the big Swede enjoying a cheers in the restaurant.

Salud!!


Despite having two nights in Monteverde we only really had one day to explore the town and its surrounding reserves etc. The main activity everyone had planned for Monteverde was to go ziplinning. This involves being strapped onto huge ziplines (very similar to flying foxes) and hurtling through the forest canopy at breakneck speeds. Its a great way to see the flora and fauna of the canopy, and slightly more exciting than merely walking on the hanging bridges.

I have to say at this point it wasn't something that was particularly high on my list of things to do, and as such I decided to go for the slightly less adrenaline fueled activity of visiting an Insect house and Serpentarium at the same reserve.

The insect house houses the world's third largest display of insects, (all dead unfortunately) and was infact incredibly interesting. As no one else went on the tour with me it was a one to one tour with the guide, and I learnt a great deal.

Beautiful butterflies


Albino butterflies, I didn't even know these existed

There were some amazing insects on display, the kind of thing even in the Costa Rican rainforest you very rarely get to see. The below bad boys were two of the largest insects on the planet, the stick insect (or walking stick as they are known out here) was about 40 to 50cm long, and the chap next to him is actually caught and eaten as a meal in its native Africa.

Meals and walking sticks

Huge butterflies

As always though my personal favourites were the displays of scorpions and tarrantulas. They were amazing.

Look at the size of that African Emporer...

...And those hairy buggers too

Immediately after the insect house I had a tour of the serpentarium too, which was again amazing. This time the inhabitants were alive... which is always more fun.

Sydney snake

The snakes below were called Fer-de-lance's, they are the most dangerous snakes in Central and South America as they are among the most poisonous and also the most aggressive.

Fer-de-lance's

The snake below is called the Eyelash Pit Viper, and it's nickname is the death kisser. This is due to the fact it is known to bite workers in the coffee plantations in the face. Nice.

The Eyelash Pit Viper


Another little Sydney snake

Whilst on the tour I was also taught how to quickly identify whether a snake is poisonous or not. It is all to do with the shape of the eyes and the number of scales on the head. Now in my eyes, if your close enough to a snake to check these things you're also close enough for it to bite you.... I've decided to just assume all snakes are poisonous, I think it's safer that way!

All in all it was a very informative afternoon, and I feel I've now passed some of my knowledge onto you people too.

The Island of Ometepe

Having spent the majority of the last few days being based in towns or cities our next location was a little more remote, a little beach hotel on the Isle of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua.

The hotel


The beach



Ometepe's landscape is dominated by two volcano's. Madera Volcano stands at 1340m whereas it's larger sister, Concepcion, is 1640m. Me, Nick and Eric quickly formed a plan to hike Concepcion, and as a 10 to 12 hr hike it wasn't going to be easy. As you can see from the photo's below it's a very arid landscape once you get up past the mid point. The final leg of the hike has to be undertaken by crawling on your chest in order to get to the crater's edge and see in. The actual edge of the crater is apparently quite delicate and has been known to crumble and fall in.

Concepcion and Madera


Concepcion

Unfortunately due to recent flash floods on the island the hike up Concepcion was deemed too dangerous to undertake by our local guide. As such a few people decided to hike the smaller Madera. I however took my bat and ball home and decided if I couldn't hike Concepcion I didn't want to hike anything. haha. So instead I spent the day on the beach and did absolutely nothing. And what a decision it was, the hiking group returned, with the majority verdict being that it had turned out to be a lot of effort for nothing too special.

Michael following his return from the hike

Passing traffic on the beach

We only really had two nights on Ometepe (this is a GAP tour afterall, no time for resting!!) and on the second night it was Rosie's birthday. As such we all went out for a meal together to a new little restaurant just round the corner from our hotel.

Now one thing I've quickly learnt about Central America from our GAP trip is alot of the restaurant's don't really know how to cope with more than about six people... and with sixteen people in our group this has caused some interesting results. However this restaurant took the biscuit, from entering the restaurant it was four hrs before we got our food. And in fairness the only reason we got our food then was becuase our guide, Maria, had gone into the kitchen and taken charge. During this time we had an electrical storm which had caused a powercut and the big Swede had marched out (mental note - never deprive a large Swede of food after he's been on an 8hr trek haha).

Rosie's birthday cake

In the end it got so ridculous the only thing to do was laugh about it, and as I reminded people we were on a tiny island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua... things just don't work the same as back home.

Our next destination however would be a marked contrast to Ometepe and the rest of Central America, as it was onwards to Costa Rica.