Hooning through the forest

Left Manuel Antonio and drove 5 hours north up into the mountain by mini bus to Monteverde Cloud Forest. Got to release our inner hoon on the 4 wheel bikes though spectacular jungle amongst the beautiful Blue Morphos Butterflies. During the practice run Tracey flipped the bike with Morgan from our tour group on the back..oops, for some reason she chose to go on the back of someone else's bike after that. We rode through creeks, through jungle vines trees and up and down muddy tracks. Deb competed with Peter for the title of biggest hoon...Peter won, but only just.

....we than drank cocktails in a tree.

Gourmet Costa Rican

Andrew rightly pointed out our blog was called Foodivore but there was so far no mention of food. Costa Rica is not known for its food and we can now see why. There's a lot of rice and beans, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Today's breakfast below, the square yellow thing is a piece of cheese that is a bit like eating a sponge:

There is some Mexican influence here but without all the bold flavours or spicy heat. However, mostly we don't get a chance to eat much as we're always on the go and there are usually no meal breaks planned on the tour. This may be the first holiday I actually may lose weight. The fruit is good, the fruit based cocktails, even better.

Sloth tales

Having left San Jose yesterday, we took our public bus towards Manuel Antonio. Sadly, the bus did not have goats or chickens...or air-conditioning on a 37 degree day with 90% humidity. That wasn't the worst of it but more on that later. Today we went to the Manuel Antonio National Park. Within 50 metres we saw our first sloth, well really a guide pointed it out, we spent ages trying to spot something that didn't move and looks like a branch but eventually we got our sloth eyes on. 

Other than sloths we also saw agouti, squirrel monkeys, white faced capuchin, raccoon (really), forrest crab, basilisk (not the sort that turns you to stone), hummingbirds and giant mating female spider that eats her tiny husband after sex...for which the main event was happening while we were there.

...the small mass at the bottom of the big female spider, is the man spider

Above is our tour group at one of the beaches in the national park, great bunch of people.

Debbie stayed at the national park that afternoon to continue her hunt for sloth and other exotic creatures, while Tracey went to tame the rapids with a few of the group. We had a choice of being in one of two boats, the first level 2/3 rapids for beginners and the second for crazy thrill seeking adrenaline junkies who wanted to be thrown into the water and hurled toward rocks. Tracey chose the first given her interest in maintaining all her teeth. There was a great stop part way along the rapids to walk to a waterfall. We all had a swim in the gorgeous pool at the base before continuing downstream. Photos on that one later. And by the way, two days ago on the bus Debbie's bag was stolen that included her passport, cameras, money, credit card...yep really, but not letting it ruin the holiday.

More from yesterday

Here are a few more photos from our tour to the La Paz Waterfall Gardens yesterday. We were the first to be picked up in the tour minivan which meant we had a city tour while we picked up the other tourists. We believe we were picked up first and dropped off last as we might have been embarrassed for the others to see where we were staying, everyone else was staying in five star luxury resorts...we're not allowed to flush toilet paper.  

Shortly we hop on a bus to Manuel Antonio National Park on the Pacific Ocean coast side of Costa Rica (next week we'll be on the Carribean side). We wanted to get a real Costa Rican experience so some of our tour uses public buses. I'm hoping for chickens and goats traveling with us today, apparently not uncommon.

Day 1- La Paz Waterfall Gardens

Made it out of Texas, having survived a cocktail or two after 30 hours of no sleep.

Started in Costa Rica with "two cans" (of diet Pepsi), continued with "toucans", a stow-away butterfly (may have smeered myself with too much banana) and an evil frog.

Met our tour group, many Aussies, couple of Brits and a Parisian, should be a fun couple of weeks. On tour from tomorrow.

Still in the international transport system

22 hours of travelling since we left home, only around 6 to go. Everything smooth so far...except our hair, clothes and lines under our eyes. Sitting in Texas in the Admirals Club with another glass of bubbly waiting for the final leg to San Jose

The journey begins..