Costa Atlantica Cruise - Part 1

The first port of call after leaving Dubai was Fujairah, also part of the United Arab Emirates. As we didn't opt to do any excursions during our cruise, we just got off the ship here and spent a couple of hours walking around the town.

The next day we stopped at Muscat in Oman, which was probably one of the better ports of call. We decided to do the Big Bus Tour here, which was definitely worth doing as the ship did not dock in the main town centre. There are actually really nice beaches and waterfront areas in Muscat which we wouldn't have known existed had we not done the tour. Other highlights included the beautiful Royal Opera House and the Royal Palace.

Beach

Royal Opera House

I'll update soon about Khasab and Abu Dhabi!

Dubai

Hello!

So I thought it was time to restart my blog again - I'm just going to do a few catch up posts from Dubai and the cruise on the Costa Atlantica from last week, before getting up to date again with my travels here in Thailand.

We spent a couple of days in Dubai before the cruise and as part of a week long cruise you also dock in  Dubai for a night on either end of the week. Dubai was definitely the most exciting of the places we visited by far (although more about that will be written later!).

Atlantis

Our first full day in Dubai we spent at the Atlantis resort on the Palm. I have always wanted to visit here, and you can buy day passes to the water park, Aquaventure, for a reasonable price. We spent the day at the great waterpark and also visited The Lost Chambers, which was an amazing aquarium which had great theming! The Leap of Faith ride (which goes through a fish tank) was amazing!

Jumeirah Beach Park

The next day I met up with Laura and her boyfriend Mik, whose ship we would be going on for the next week! We visited the beach park, which you pay a small admission for but in return has better facilities such as changing than a public beach would have. You were also able to get great views of the Burj Al Arab from here!

Dubai Mall

Dubai has plenty of huge shopping malls, but the Dubai Mall is by far the biggest. We also visited Mall of the Emirates, which has an indoor ski slope which looked amazing! The Dubai Mall has over 1000 shops, so it is very hard to navigate, but it is the site of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. On our final night in Dubai we got tickets to go up the Burj Khalifa to the 124th floor and the views were amazing! Every evening they do a water fountain show and it was nice to see this from the top! The mall itself was pretty impressive, with a good mix of US and UK brands, although with my limited luggage space I had to resist shopping!

Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo

Inside the Dubai Mall is a huge aquarium, which forms a focal point for the mall, however for an admission fee you can go through the huge tunnel and also visit the Underwater Zoo located on the 2nd Floor. Although the tunnel was good, the Underwater Zoo was really enjoyable to visit with a great variety of fish and penguins (I am quite into Aquariums at the moment!).

Wild Wadi Water Park

On our final day in Dubai a few of us visited the Wild Wadi Water Park, which fortunately had just reopened on that day after being closed for January! It is a large water park located near the beach front and Burj Al Arab (which you got amazing views of from some of the rides! It has a great selection of rides, including a lot of ones which go uphill which is quite unusual! The biggest ride in the park starts in a sort of chamber and then it opens and drops you into the slide, which was scary but fun! There were also some amazing 4 person rides which we really enjoyed doing!

Will update again soon about the cruise and ports of call! :)

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.

Granada, Nicaragua

Hello from Nicaragua!

After a lovely lazy day on Roatan, we left the island the following morning for a very long travel day. The ferry ride was so nice this way, and we got to work on our tans on the outside deck for the journey! Our stop that night was in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, although it was really just to break up the journey to Nicaragua. The city was not very exciting and is pretty dangerous, so we just went to the mall in the evening and watched Ted at the cinema. I think most Central American capitals are like this, and not really places backpackers stay for very long!

The next day we had a 5am start for a 9 hour ride to Granada, Nicaragua. After a couple of hours we crossed the border, and then we drove without many stops to Granada where I am now. We soon went exploring down to Lake Nicaragua and the Central Park where we stopped to watch a socialist party event that was going on, which had some funny dancing competitions on stage. The evening was spent with a long dinner and drinks, making the most of the hot weather here. The buildings are really beautiful here, and our hotel is really in keeping with the style.

Our hotel in Granada:

Guadalupe Church:

We had a long day today starting off with a visit to Volcan Masaya. We drove to the top, but then spent time walking around the crater. You are limited with your time here because of the fumes as it is still an active volcano, although we walked around another crater and had great views over the site. We had to wear hard hats during our visit in case of lightning or anything hitting you!

Volcan Masaya:

Next stop for the day was Masaya, where we first visited a very random fancy dress shop as we are dressing up for Halloween in a couple of days time. We've each picked a name of someone and bought them a surprise costume! There was a really good market here too, so I was able to get some nice presents here. We stopped at an amazing viewpoint after lunch, overlooking Laguna de Apoya, which is in front of Granada and Lake Nicaragua.

Laguna de Apoya:

The last part of our day was a boat tour on Lake Nicaragua to see Las Isletas. A volcanic eruption formed hundreds of small islands, where lots of people now live. The sun was setting during our ride and it was a great end to the day.

Tomorrow we are moving to Ometepe, where we will be staying with local families. There are more volcanoes there which I am looking forward to seeing!

Roatan (Bay Islands), Honduras

I'm currently in Roatan, which is the largest of the Bay Islands in Honduras. We've been in Honduras now for 3 nights, with our first stop being in Copan. After a long travel day (luckily in a nice minivan) we arrived in Copan, and our hotel was in the centre of the small town. The town is about a 15 minute walk to the ruins of Copan, which is where we went in the morning of our full day there.

The ruins of Copan were great to see, although quite different to that of Tikal. They weren't on the grand scale of Tikal and took only about 2 hours to tour. The designs and carvings are much more intricate though, which I really liked. We were also able to see up close the Scarlet Macaw, which is Honduras' national bird.

Scarlet Macaw

Copan ruins

After the ruins I spent the rest of the day just relaxing around the hotel and the town. The next day was a very long travel day to Roatan, where we are now. We had a 7 hour or so drive to the port, and then a ferry to the island which was just under 2 hours. The water is really rough at the moment, so the ferry ride was not fun for me - as soon as we started they came around and gave everyone sick bags! We arrived on the island and after a quick stop at a supermarket (so exciting to go to a proper supermarket again!) we arrived at the hotel. We are staying in the West End, which has lots of restaurants and bars, although you can't sunbathe on the beach here as it isn't big enough.

Today we took a water taxi to the beach, where we spent most of the day. The weather isn't great here, and the boat nearly went over with some of the waves on the way there! After some pretty heavy rain we were able to enjoy the sun and beach for a couple of hours.

We've got another full day here tomorrow, then we are going back to the mainland of Honduras before heading for Nicaragua!