With a more sociable 8.00am start Finn, Derry and I (Suzanne) set of for a day of horse riding.

All these tours start early - and the initial assumption is that you see more wildlife that way, or get out early while the weather is good because it will rain later - but after a tour of pickups from other hotels, then a stop at 'the office' to pay for the tour, then a wait for the bigger minibus to arrive from ferrying tourists to another tour, a 20 minute journey to the start base where they serve breakfast then change to a 4x4 truck (open sided cattle type) for a further journey into the jungle to get to the ranch, you realise that its seems to be what is called Tico time.

We got kitted out with horses - Camilla and Talia for Derry and Finn - and given a safety briefing by Frank our guide - the first person on the whole of our trip who seemed to have digested the Health and Safety and Child Protection manuals. The stirrups were more western style than British which made for interesting riding positions. We started off steadily along the rough roads, over terrain that 4x4's would have struggled with, with the occasional trot, which brought whoops of laughter and giggling from Derry and Finn. After 1.5 hours of riding you really felt like you were in the middle of the jungle with wonderful waterfalls. We reached a small lagoon at the base of a waterfall and all had a cooling swim before returning the way we had come, only this time much quicker as the horses knew they were on the home run - this pace being much more to Derry's taste.

Retracing our steps of the morning we returned to Costa Verde to meet the 2 chilled dudes back at the hotel and for us all to have some fun in the pool before venturing out for food at Kapi Kapi - which turned out to be the best food we have tasted in Costa Rica, but yet again this was not enough to keep Derry awake. Alan had the special for the day of Conger Eel - which was delicious!

Day 6

Our last full day in Manuel Antonio - and we had to start with another hour in the pool before we went down to the beach for some Pacific time. It was cloudy but warm (the weather) and the kids played in the sea (warm with some great rollers) while we read books. We decided to give the slushy maker on a cart a go and the kids each ended up with a cone of ice, covered with fluorescent flavourings and in Siena's case, topped with condensed milk!! An hour or so later we realised that the sun was stronger than it seemed and we were all turning a little pink - so we went on a souvenir hunt to get some cover and ended up with 3 sarongs for the kids (Finn's is for his bed at home but the girls' wore theirs and looked very grown up and glamorous)

Back to the pool again for a last hour or two of aerial somersaults, the funny dive club and filling swimming hats with water to throw everywhere. No wonder the kids keep falling asleep over their food! We gave them the choice of restaurant for the last night and they chose Kapi Kapi again (although I suspect we may have influenced them through our praise the previous evening)

Day 7

We had a great breakfast on the seafront before going to the wildlife refuge and butterfly garden for a 1 hour tour that ended up being 1hour 45mins (Tico time again - you get good value but you can't rely on the timings). Our guide was Roy who showed us all the butterflies - and scared us with the specimen case of cicadas and beetles - they were huge and all could fly. We learned that butterflies wings are waterproof, that their colour is as a result of the light reflection and that when lit from behind or held in water they are really brown, that some butterflies live for 2 days and some for 2 years.

Then we saw the crocodiles and caiman, ending with a couple of frog species for good measure.

By now we were much later than we'd planned so it was back to the hotel to pack and check out and get on the road to Arenal and the active volcano there.

We've mostly got costa Rican driving sussed - its nowhere near as manic as any of the first 3 countries we visited, in fact it's very similar to the uk. They do have more one way bridges tho' - including the'omygod' variety and those of lesser religions. One of the more robust ones was our lunch stop - kind of accidentally since we paused to look at the 20plus crocodiles who live under or near the bridge, and ended up at the nearby tourist trap cafe. Glad the bridge was strong, wonder if their main diet was overzealous tourist! We were glad of the GPS as they are somewhat inconsistent with their road signs, giving you a lovely big sign showing straight on to your destination, then within half a mile you come to a T junction with no signs!

The other main difference is the high proportion of our journey spent on gravel roads which exist neither on a map nor the GPS, are usually heavily rutted, need 4x4 and are invariably steep. So when our instruction said 3 km to go - about 15 minutes - we laughed.... until we drove it and found out! It makes us feel like intrepid explorers - especially when you close your eyes and ignore the mopeds with 3 passengers and a chicken speeding past you when you think you're in uncharted road territory!

The last 500 metres are past a seemingly pointless supermarket up this gravel track - who on earth would go there?! - watch out later as I eat my words!

Anyway we did finally make it, with all of us high on gravel adrenaline - to leaves and lizards, and steve & debbie's menagerie. First off was debbie's casual 'would you like to see my baby sloth?' which turned out to be a 5 month old, abandoned by its mother and close to pegging it. Debbie - an intensive care pediatric nurse - saw this as a challenge and was putting her skills to the test - as we arrived it was touch and go, but all the kids fell in love with this soft bundle of fur/hair who looked gorgeous if a little unnervingly still.

We turned our attention to the lively ones - 2 puppies, parrot, green tree frog, you know, the normal B&B sort of pets!! After a meal and trying to force feed sleepy children with food we came back to the log cabin with what promised to be glorious views, a wide window overlooking the volcano Arenal, oh and thousands of bugs in the rain! We were a little concerned this would be pachijal again, with all of us being spooked but after a while it seemed OK and clear that with the lights off we wouldn't be troubled.

The guys here have built 3 cabins, we are staying in monkey cabin; they all share the same views over the valley to the volcano, (cloudy at the moment in this case!) and all have the same noisy roves when it rains! Still, the kids were unfazed by noise and were quickly asleep. As were we!