Hey! I’m currently staying in the Monteverde Cloud Forrest Reserve in Costa Rica. After leaving Mexico, I spent roughly a week in Guatemala, in the town of Antigua. Its a lovely colonial town with a great atmosphere about it. It is surrounded by three volcanoes, one of which is currently active: Pacaya. This volcano I climbed with a guide and got up close to some flowing lava… quite an experience (photos).
From Antigua, I took a bus down to Managua. This bus took two days, with a night stop in San Salvador. I also stayed one night in Managua. Both San Salvador and Managua seemed like rather dodgy places with very little to offer in terms of tourism. From Managua I moved down to the shores of lake Nicaragua and stayed three nights in the small town of Granada. Its quite a nice place and I had a good time there… pity the weather was bad though. I climbed Mombacho, the volcano overlooking Granada, but got soaked at the top as it was pouring down constantly. I was hoping for a good view over the town and the lake but the clouds surrounding the summit made it a disappointing climb all in all.
I left Granada yesterday on a bus that took me across the border to Costa Rica, and stopped at the Monteverde Nature Reserve. This high altitude rainforest is home to howler monkeys, jaguars, pumas, sloths… we went for a four hour hike at 7am today but saw very little wildlife. Its a very large reserve with very few trails going through it, and therefore it is hard to encounter many animals. Tomorrow we’re going for a dusk hike with guide which should give us more chances of spotting some nocturnal animals. Apparently they have lots of tarantulas and giant stick-insects.
I’ve been travelling with a Canadian dude called Jason since Guatemala and we’ve got plans to travel together all the way down to Panama. In a couple of days we’ll probably be heading over to the Caribbean coast and a place called Tortuguero where its the hatching season for turtles. Hopefully we’ll se a bunch of baby turtles making their way from the beach to the ocean, by night.
From there, the plan is to move down the coast and cross to Panama. Just across the border is Bocas del Toro, a group of islands where we’ll both be doing our Open Water diving course over three or four days.
I’ve been trying to change my flight home since I now realise there’s no way I’ll be making it as far as Lima in the next 3 weeks, but it turns out my fare is impossible to modify. What I’m gonna do is end the trip with a few days in Panama City (and canal) and buy a flight from Panama to Lima one or two days before I fly to Europe. I guess Colombia, Ecuador and Peru will have to be left for next time… pity I didn’t forsee that when I booked the flights.
Hopefully I’ll write again soon and put up some photos of the cool animals we’ll get to see…
Looking forward to seeing ya all soon, take care…
