When you come to Monteverde, a lot of the talk is about Cloud Forests versus Rain Forests. The difference is that a Cloud Forest is at higher altitude, has less rainfall (3 metres per year as opposed to 4.5 metres), lower temperatures and higher humidity. This means that some of the vegetation and animals are…

We checked out of the Arenal Springs Resort and Spa early this morning to make our way to the next stop on the trip. Monteverde is known for its Cloud Forest Reserve. The town on Monteverde was established by Quakers from the USA who moved here in 1949 to avoid being drafted in the Korean…

Arenal reminds me a bit of some of the alpine towns in New Zealand. There are many adventurous things to do, like white water rafting, canyoning, tubing and crazy hiking. As we had a spare morning we opted to go to an organic chocolate farm, our kind of adventurous. It was a fantastic experience as…

Today was mostly another travelling day. As has been the standard at Pachira Lodge, the day started with an early morning rainstorm and more of the ‘werewolf’ howls from the Howler Monkeys. Our boat was leaving at 9, so we had to drop our luggage into the luggage boat at 8:30. There is pretty much…

On our second day at the Pachira Lodge we worked out why this place is in the rainforest. It bucketed down most of the night as storm after storm rolled through. We woke up to the sound of the Howler Monkeys, which can be heard up to about 5 kilometres away. They have a special…

I skipped the blog yesterday because I didn’t think another day of describing crazy traffic to Cancun airport, followed by a detailed description of transitting through airports as expected made for edifying reading. Needless to say we navigated Cancun to San Jose with a minimum of fuss that included a 30 minute stopover in San…

Today is day 3 of our rest break in the middle of the holiday, before we move on to Costa Rica. It will be a short blog today and another travelling day tomorrow. Again, we had a nice sleep in this morning prior to heading to the beach. We hired a Cabana for the day…

The main idea of coming to Tulum was to have a bit of a rest from touring life. We found last year without a break was quite tiring, so we factored in a break this time. The beach here is beautiful, almost as good as my favourite beach in the world at Caloundra. The view…

When I left you yesterday, I was rapidly running out of time before heading out last night, so I’ll pick up with lunch yesterday. We were recommended a place called D’lirous by our guide which has continental styled food, but he did warn us that the portions are enormous, an interesting concept in a country…

So it’s confession time. I realised after I posted last night’s blog that I completely left out our visit to Che Guevara’s Mausoleum in Santa Clara. This is a tasteful tribute to his life and his contribution to Cuba. It features many photo’s from his life, including his childhood in Argentina, to having his four…