I squeezed myself into the back seat of the top deck of the Lancha and immediately got chatting with 33 year old German Frank. He was 6 months into a year long holiday, having started with 2 months of Spanish school in Cuba then worked his way down to Nicaragua. He was heading to Santa Cruz on the island to meet some friends he made - I was heading to Santa Domingo because the guidebook said it was a beach, and I was hungover so thought that sounded great! Whe...

I arrived at the Costa Rican / Nicaraguan border town of Penas Blancas (te he!) and the nice lady riding next to me held up her passport to give me a heads up that we'd arrived. The money changers were 15 deep at the door of the bus and hounding us as we walked through to get out luggage from under the bus. I grabbed my bag and probably took out a few of them swinging it onto my back! I headed off in the direction I thought passport control was, and continued ...

The shuttle taking us from the lake to La Fortuna dropped each person at their hostel. Three of us had no accomodation so looked at a couple of hostels before being dropped at 'Gringo Petes Too'.  By the time we arrived there, we were chatting away, so I shared a room with Aussie Kate, and Canadian Sharon decided to get a room for herself. The girls knew each other as had both only just finished a Tucan trip as well! Their's started in Cancun & finished in...

43. Monteverde - 29 May On my way from the Punta Arenas ferry to the Monteverde bus, (which might I add was a much longer walk in the Costa Rican sun than I had anticipated and left us all red & drenched in sweat!), I met Aussie Renee (originally from Newcastle) and Canadian Matt.   It was nice to have some company for the half hour walk and to help find the bus stop!  We found it easily enough and didn't wait too long to board the bus which, took 3.5 ho...

Wow what a cool place Montezuma was!  I can only describe it as my Costa Rican mini Byron -  Byron before it got too popular! May is low season, so crowds were low as it is supposed to be the rainy season.  The weather was great though - similar to Brisbane summer with storm clouds & thunder rolling in most afternoons, threatening rain but not always delivering! I stayed at a place called Luna Llena & splashed out on a private room for my 5 night bea...