For the past three weeks I’ve been traveling around Central America with Becky and some friends. We’ve burned our white wintered skin on the beaches of the Caribbean, we’ve shivered in shorts and t-shirts at 10,000 feet above sea level, we’ve swam in thundering waterfalls, snorkeled with sea turtles, and gotten up close an personal with a sloth.

We decided to go back to Costa Rica (we went in 2004 for our honeymoon) as we really felt we had not done it justice last time we were here. We spent over two weeks wandering around the country:

After a one night stay by the airport in San Jose we started in the Caribbean town of Manzanillo just a stone’s throw away from the Panamanian border. Manzinillo is literally at the end of the road. We rented a house in the jungle and spent three days wandering around the beaches and jungle

We then went to the famous La Fortuna/Arenal Volcano region. We swam under the 75 meter La Fortuna Waterfall (unfortunately Becky snapped her left foot’s baby toe like a twig here while climbing on the slippery rocks), hiked on Lava, and enjoyed the town.

We then proceeded on extremely bumpy roads to Monte Verde, home of the famous cloud forests, zip lines, and the soon to be famous Don Juan Coffee plantation. Here we zipped hundreds of feet above the forest ground on thin cables, toured coffee plantations, and went on a night walk through the jungle. We also picked up a new traveler in Monte Verde, Winston. This was the name affectionately given to Becky’s new cane/walking aid.

From Monte Verde we went back to the capital city of San Jose for a night. It’s well…. not the greatest place on earth.

After a quick 12 hour stay in the city we went south over the highest point in Costa Rica (brrrr…) and traveled to the town of Sierpe where we got on a boat and traveled out to a wilderness jungle lodge type thing on the Osa Peninsula. We stayed there for four nights, sat through two wild thunderstorms, saw dolphins, sea turtles, monkeys aplenty, white faced coatis and many more animals, swam in the waves of the pacific, enjoyed the local cuisine and our tour guide Jorge, and sweat more than we though was possible.

We then retraced our steps back to San Jose for another short 12 hour stopover. We got up before dark, made our way to the TicaBus station, and made our way up to the Colonial town of Granada, Nicaragua. In Granada we rented what turned out to be a giant luxurious mansion (more on this in future posts). We walked the colonial streets, peered into the heart of an active volcano and went swimming in the deepest water hole in Central America. It also turned out that Nicaragua was in the midst of a transportation strike which made getting about a little stressful.

After our week in Nicaragua we can back to San Jose and parted ways with our travel companions. They needed to get back to Canada. Becky and I stayed a night in San Jose then caught a very bumpy and empty plane to David, Panama. From David we drove up (rented a car) to the sleepy retirement community of Boquete. We arrived last night to a spectacular mist/setting sun over the town. Our accommodations are quite possibly the nicest and most affordable place we’ve ever stayed in. We’re here for the next ten days. We have semi-high speed Internet so I’ll be working from here and we’ll spend some mornings and evenings exploring the town and it’s surrounding countryside.

We’re back in Canada on May 29th. Photos, videos, and more details to be posted in the weeks to come.