A couple of buses later I rolled into La Fortuna - which according to my guidebook possessed one of Central Americas most active volcanoes - Volcan Arenal Unfortunately my guidebook was a tad out if date and I had missed the last bit of live lava by 4 years!! Still as you can see from the photos there were some pretty nice places to visit and I did get to see lava albeit cold and rock hard From there I wandered down the middle of Costa Rica and took in some of it´s wonderful National Parks
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| Sleepy Volcan Arenal |
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| Sleepier Sloth - I like his work ethic! |
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| At the Rio Celeste - the blue river |
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| Baby Parrot! |
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| Spiders Web on the way across the lava fields |
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| Misty view across the crater lake |
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| Cheeky Coatis clearing up after the tourists |
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| Yet another waterfall!! |
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| On my way back from the volcano |
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| The Continental Divide - on this side all the water drains into the Pacific - on the other beyond the clouds you can see mountains whose rivers drain into the Atlantic |
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| Glass Winged Butterfly in Monteverde National Park |
The coast was calling - more beach time was needed! I headed down the pacific coast to Quepos then the spectacular beach of Uvita - The Whales Tail - can you see why!!
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| Coati family cruising the beach for scraps |
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| Classic Costa Rican Beach |
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| The Whale´s Tail |
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| Uvita Beach - daytime... |
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| And at sunset.... |
From Uvita I went a bit off the beaten track to the Corcovado Peninsula and the enigmatically named Drake's Bay - named after our most famous pirate
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| Corcovado |
The Peninsula is very much the end of the line - several buses and a boat - it was like the TV series Fantasy Island as we approached the guys on the beach were shouting "El bote el bote" there was no landing pier so they had to wade in chest deep to carry off my backpack and I had to jump into the surf! What a way to arrive!!
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| The boat, the boat! |
The place was called Jaguar's Jungle - there were a couple of idyllic beaches nearby - the property backed onto a jungle full of spider monkeys wild pigs hummingbirds and wonderful butterflies
Just a few af the creepy crawlies found around Jaguar´s Jungle
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| Spider Monkey |
Breakfast was a case of foraging for bananas, water apples, starfruit and mangoes - all within a few minutes walk - now that's my kind of shopping!
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| Starfruit tree |
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| Cashew Fruit |
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| This is not the one I saw - I saw his brother who looks quite like him! |
There was also a coral reef a couple of miles off the coast - on a dive trip I was very lucky and saw a huge Manta Ray on the second dive - it seemed to like us and swam around, over and under us for 15 minutes - what incredibly majestic fish they are...
Routine Sunsets at Jaguar´s Jungle!
Sadly I had to drag myself away from this amazing place and once more it was a border run - this time into Panama
