Day 1 usa Morning! Sadly we didn't get much of a chance to recover our sleep - we awoke early as Derry had been asleep for a long time on the plane and in customary fashion her stirring awoke Finn and me (Alan) as we were sharing the room. The other girls also awoke reasonably early. We made potentially the wrong choice by having the highly priced (but very large!) hotel breakfast (we subsequently discovered there was a great diner virtually next door which fed ...

Today is the long awaited and much anticipated chocolate tour. Costa Rica is no longer the important power it used to be in chocolate production, but we didn't know that, so there aren't a lot of producers around. However, Siena had found this one on the web and we were about to give it a go... Our driver, Sterling, picked us up at 8 after a yummy pura vida breakfast. He turned out to be a good guy, good English, enthusiastic, chatty and we all liked him. He was...

The last few days have been less eventful - with one notable exception. Mainly this is due to most of the family (in fact everyone except suzanne) being down with a poorly tummy. Nothing serious but it's kept us all quiet and not wanting to stray too far from a loo! The first day was just a quiet day - after a scrumptious breakfast again in elisabeth's colourful dining room, we all chilled by the pool for a while, (potentially the source of tum trubble) the ret...

Day 11 The early morning sunshine, howler monkeys or loud bird cries woke us again early, well before 6. We killed 2 hours before breakfast watching toucans from our balcony (no, it's true, not the opening line from some romantic fiction novel). Breakfast hugs greeted us from Elisabeth and her Mexican friends, and a colourful breakfast with a huge spread of fruit, cheese, bread, granola, eggs, ham, cucumber, jams, cake, pancakes. Fantastic, outside in the gard...

Day 10 Another Leaves & Lizards breakfast - with all the other guests and lots of stories about the booms and lava from the volcano during the night while the kids played with the sloth, parrot, dogs and turkey chicks. Then looking out the window we saw Finn and Derry waving from on top of a horse being led around the garden. It's animal heaven here for Finn and Derry! Making the most of having wifi we loaded up more photos and journal to the blog before pa...