Costa Rica: 19th December - 27th December
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| My first stop in Costa Rica was in the town of Liberia, and next day I took a trip to the nearby national park of Rincon De La Vieja. The centrepiece of the park is the (intermittently) active volcano of the same name, the lower slopes of which offer a variety of interesting landscapes, such as rivers through the jungle... |
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| ... bubbling Yellowstone-esque mud pools... |
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| ..and stunningly beautiful waterfalls where you can go swimming and fight with the local inhabitants (very belligerent crabs). |
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| There's also lots of wildlife, such as howler monkeys, and spider monkeys like this fellow... |
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| ...various kinds of lizards... |
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| ... and coatimundis, that are so used to being fed that they have no fear of humans at all and jump up on the picnic table to rummage through your lunch bag. |
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| From Liberia it was a short trip to Playa Del Coco for some more diving. But first yet another gratuitous sunset from the beach there. |
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| The diving off Playa Del Coco was pretty good, lots of eagle rays, white tip reef sharks and generally lots of big fish. |
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| Anyone who says diving is not an adrenaline sport has obviously never looked over his shoulder to see a four meter manta ray gliding silently up from behind, an arm's length away. Although they are perfectly harmless, they are still big animals and no matter how often I see them (which hasn't been often, admittedly), they never fail to take my breath away. |
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| It stayed with us then for the next half hour, until the end of the dive, swooping above us and below us and around us, evidently enjoying the encounter as much as we were. On one occasion, he passed so close to me that his wing brushed my mask as he glided by. Notice that he has some kind of remora or something hitching a lift on his back there. |
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| My favourite shot of the manta. |
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| For Christmas I went to La Fortuna, a town built in the shadow of Central America's most active volcano, Arenal. While there was never really much of a chance of a white Christmas in Costa Rica, I was hoping for a slightly less wet Christmas. It rained the whole of Christmas morning and the volcano was completely decked in cloud the whole time I was there. I never got even a peek of it, and certainly no view of the lava flows and explosions of hot ash and rock that I'd really wanted to see. So instead of a hike and a dramatic view of the volcano, I spent Christmas Day here, in the swimming pool of the Arenal Backpackers Lodge, in the rain :-) |
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| Although the hostel had a nice pool and hot water showers (rare on my budget), it was still crap, mainly because it had absolutely zero atmosphere and a complete lack of Christmas spirit. There weren't even any Christmas decorations. One of the guests had drawn a Christmas tree on a sheet of paper and stood it on the bar, but that was as festive as it got. Christmas struggles to feel like Christmas in the tropics at the best of times (spanish versions of Jingle Bells notwithstanding) but here there was no chance of any festive spirit. Luckily, there was a group of English & Welsh guys staying in my dorm so we did at least manage to generate some Christmas cheer at one of the local bars. The guys had a car, and we drove round the volcano looking for a break in the clouds where we might spot some lava, or at least a red glow on the clouds or something, but it was not to be. We did visit this amazing waterfall though, and went for a swim in its splash pool. |
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| On Christmas night we cooked a huge three course chicken and beef feast, quite an achievement given the hostel kitchen had a stove with just one burner, two saucepans and barely any cutlery or utensils of any kind. Happy Christmas!! |
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