San Jose, Costa Rica

On our journey from La Fortuna to San Jose we stopped for an amazing day of white water rafting on class 3-4 rapids. This was one of the highlights of the trip for me, and the scenery down the river was really beautiful. Luckily I managed to stay in the boat the whole time! I got to ride at the front of the boat on one rapid and that was so much fun!

It was only a short ride on then to San Jose. The final evening we all went out for nice meal and then to a local bar. Over the next few days everyone gradually left to catch their planes, although some of our group were carrying on with the trip to Panama. A few of us ended up staying at Costa Rica Backpackers for a few nights, and 4 of us ended up having flights at exactly the same time so it was nice to stay with some of the group to the end of my trip! San Jose was nice to walk around, although not as pretty as many of the cities we had recently visited.

The flight home was pretty uneventful, and the change in Miami was very easy! It is nice to be home for a couple of weeks now before going away next week! I'm going to carry on the blog again in January for my next trip, and then into my year in Orlando!

La Fortuna, Costa Rica

During our stay in Monteverde I did a really great Hanging Bridges tour through the rainforest. The bridges are suspended high above the forest, and made for a great walk and to see all the amazing plants here in Costa Rica!

The next morning we travelled here to La Fortuna, which only took a few hours. After organising our activities for the next few days I explored the local town and relaxed around the hotel. This morning we visited the waterfall at La Fortuna, which was amazing to see. After climbing down to the bottom we swam in the waterfall for a while (which was freezing!). The current is pretty strong in the water!

Tomorrow we are traveling to San Jose, which is where I will be flying out of in a few days time. We have a day of Class 3-4 White Water Rafting tomorrow though on the way which I am so excited for!

Monteverde, Costa Rica

Hello from the final country of my trip, Costa Rica! But first the last couple of days in Nicaragua.

We left Granada in the morning and caught the chicken bus to where we needed to catch the ferry over to Ometepe Island. After an hour long ferry, we arrived on the island. It was great to see the volcanoes on the ride over.

After arriving we headed to swim at Ojo de Agua, which had a pretty fun rope swing into the water.

We were staying with local families for the 2 nights here, although the home stay set up was very different to the one in Guatemala. It's a local community and many of the houses on the road host visitors, and there is a communal area with hammocks, wi-fi and canoes and bikes to rent. 5 of us ended up with one host, and our house was really nice. I ended up getting my own room and bathroom, and it was much nicer than some of the hotels recently!

Sunset over the lake

The next morning we were up at 5:30am for breakfast and then the majority of us went off for the day to hike Volcan Concepcion. I had originally wanted to do the smaller volcano hike, but there weren't enough of us for that one! Concepcion is 1600m, but I stopped at the 1000m viewpoint which was plenty for me! It was a tough uphill climb through the forest. When we got to 1000m it was so windy! After staying up there a while a couple of us went back down, and then it was back to the hammocks at our homestay for some rest!

Volcan Concepcion

As it was Halloween that evening, we all exchanged our costumes the other day and painted our faces in the Central American style of white faces with black designs. It was a fun evening!

We have just arrived in Costa Rica this afternoon - we had a quick wander around Santa Elena just now, and tomorrow we will be exploring the cloud forests of Monteverde.