Volcan Arenal & Cahuita, Costa Rica

Leaving Nicaragua, the people we had met and all the good times we had was sad and we were really pretty iritable heading into Costa Rica. The border crossing was the usual drag of unmarked buildings, absolutely no direction or guidance, mysterious forms and stamps and hours of waiting around in 30 degree heat. We struggled through it, on our first night in Costa Rica Alex had his gloves stolen and that didn´t help our mood too much. The incredible beauty of the region was distracting us a little from our iritability and it was starting to slowly win us over, as so many people had promised that it would. We headed for Volcan Arenal, a famously active volcano that can only be viewed from a distance, sadly the few days we spent in the area were cloudy and we didn´t see the night time glowing red lava and explosions that you can see.

We moved on to San Jose BMW to get our bike some care and attention. The service was fantastic, they treat their motorcycle travellers like royalty. The manager was so helpful, attentive and welcoming and had such an obvious passion for motorcylces. We had been driving around for hours lost, in nightmarish traffic and going from highway to highway searching for the place so we were feeling too great when finally we found it after asking another BMW motorcyclist where it was. The bike was restored to its former glory and we were on our way after only a couple of days. San Jose like a lot of central american cities was not too thriling so we made tracks as soon as we could.

Our next stop in Costa rica was Cahuita a beautiful Carriean town with a gorgeous beach and beautiful rainforest right by the sea. We had a lovely waterfront apartment which included a kitchen and we were itching to do some cooking after months of being at the mercy of the local food. We saw white faced monkeys, spider monkeys, sloths, tree lizards, giant blue butterflies (not their official name!), a tiny yellow snake, a small baby python, a racoon and another type of ant eater. The forest was teeming with wildlife, we didn´t have to search too hard to find these animals. We watched one white faced monkey steal a coconut from another group of monkeys and then climb the tree next to us and bury his whole head in the coconut, the other monkeys were looking on as he licked his tiny monkey fingers clean, they looked on open mouthed and furious as he polished off the whole coconut. We sat delighted and enthralled.