Costa Rica....
Our travel day from Nicaragua to Costa Rica didn't start well when the lady who booked our international bus ticket was waiting for us at the highway pickup point because she stuffed up our booking. Her stuff up meant we were sitting at opposite ends of the bus, which was completely full and the AC was broken. Edwina took charge of the situation though and asked the second biggest guy on the bus who she was sitting next to, to move and sit in my seat. Lucky for us he said yes, as he got the pleasure of sitting next to the biggest guy on the bus. these two Latino beefcakes (probably from rival drug cartels) were crammed up against each other, one pressed against the window, the other spilling into the aisle, and trading beads of sweat for the entire 6 hour journey... I think we got lucky with that one. The luck was short-lived though, as the bus driver dropped us off at a junction in the middle of the highway in Costa Rica with no one around and told us a local bus would eventually come to take us to our destination, monteverde, up in the mountains. Waiting on the side of a busy highway is never good, particularly when 2 gringos with backpacks and a surfboard are hungry and tired, but a bus came eventually and took us the remaining 45km up the mountains (in the cracking time of 3.5hrs). We were very happy to get to our hotel (camino verde) after 12 hrs of travel to sleep, though during the night our neighbors roof blew off due to the crazy winds they get at this time of year, and the vigilante sheet of roofing flapped vigorously (great adjective) against our window all night.... Not much sleep either.

Costa Rica got much better after all that drama, and on our first full day we did a trek through a rainforest in the clouds, and an adventure zip line experience. I didn't have high expectations for the later, but it was surprisingly fun, and included a 'superman' line that goes for 1 km and takes you approx 100m+ over a valley at some points. The 'tarazan swing' was also good, which is like a mini bungee swing.

After Monteverde, we paid the cash to get a private transfer to the pacific coastal town of Jaco, famous for surfing, fishing and prostitutes. Our shuttle had an other couple in it from south africa who fled their homeland in the early 80's to set up a new life in Melbourne. They had us in awe of their traveling stories from the last 50 yrs, including numerous trips around the world by sailboat (and airplane) with and without their children at various points... Anyway, we got to Jaco by lunchtime and I was in the water surfing at a break called Playa Hermosa by early afternoon in pretty big barreling waves that broke up and down the beach. I surfed there and Jaco main beach for the next 4 of days, but the swell dropped off a fair bit by the time we left. Also in Jaco, we saw a free Donovan Frankenreiter concert (similar style to Jack Johnson) in the street on the Saturday night and everyone was drinking everywhere. The police shut the concert down early due to poor crowd control, but it was good while it lasted.

Our last stop in costa rica was puerto viejo on the carribean coast. Another full day travel cross country to get there, and our bus got a flat tyre which delayed us, but we also saw another bus that had crashed off the road, so a flat didnt seem so bad (we had to pick up some of the stranded passengers from the other bus). Puerto viejo is good for surfing in December/January, but there wasn't much of a wave for our visit, so we just hired bikes and went exploring the coastline. On our morning walk on an isolated beach, we ran into an American ex-pat called 'captain zero'. He tried to sell us some pot, and as part of his sale pitch, explained that a book had been written about him from his former life, exporting 10 tonne of marijuana from Colombia after the Vietnam war to enable him to travel the world surfing forever. He seemed a little crazy, but we googled him and it looks legit, so I'll be buying the book when I get home..... Oh, and in case you were wondering, there was no sale made (we treat our bodies like temples and opted for a 10km run). this seemed to make the poor old captain sad - he said he needed the lunch money.

Next stop - Panama....

Chad