Costa Rica And New York, March 2009

27th February to 1st March - San José And Puerto Viejo

It probably says something about San José that the only photo I took was of some money in the safety of our hotel room. Although we didn't manage to get into any trouble, one of our group did have his money belt sliced off by a waiter in the cafe he was sitting in - the same waiter then didn't seem too fussed that he couldn't pay! Luckily we only spent a day in San José before heading off to the safety* of Puerto Viejo, which can only be described as ridiculously laid back. Even the countless stray dogs couldn't be bothered to get stroppy with us. From here we toured Manzanillo National Park with enthusiastic local guide Ricky, who managed to find us a good selection of wildlife to look at and poke, including pit vipers, sloths, spiders, huge wasps, and some quite rare poison dart frogs. We all let a beautiful female Golden Orb-Web spider crawl all over us, leaving a trail of super strong silk behind her. I've read since that they will bite and leave a scar, but she wasn't aggressive and nobody got hurt. Some of us also unintentionally let Leaf-Cutter ants crawl all over us, and their painful bites drew blood.

After a few days in Puerto Viejo, we travelled to Tortuguero, mostly by very fast boats on rivers through dense forest. Travelling at at least 40mph (I reckon), we occasionally stopped dead when our hawk-eyed guide or driver spotted something twig shaped and twig coloured in a tree full of twigs. This always turned out to be a well camouflaged animal, and the next five minutes usually consisted of everyone saying "I can't see it" before eventually spotting what the driver or guide had seen from several hundred metres away from a speeding boat.

* apart from the wildlife, of course. We saw more venemous stuff than you could shake a stick at - not that you'd ever want to aggravate such stuff with a stick.