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It’s amazing how time passes. When we initially entered Costa Rica, we decided we wouldn’t spend the full three months there. It’s a small country after all, and pretty expensive. However, with the arrival of the Omicron variant, and our relaxed tour of the pacific coast, it seemed wise to give South America as long as possible to start reopening its borders. Besides, it’s not like we were running out of things to do. We had, at this point, seen the vast majority of what we w

We decided to wait out the weekend at our quiet spot on the lagoon in Arenal. Even on Sunday, this place was basically deserted which is a rare treat. We headed to the nearby restaurant with the hope of using the internet. Instead we enjoyed some local beers with a fantastic view of the lake, the internet as is often the case was present but not working.  We were planned to head north to Rio Celeste on Monday morning, but we had heard mixed reviews from fellow overlanders. Th

As always, it was a hot day. Now back on the Pan American highway at the coast, we crawled along in a line of trucks. While the roads were not challenging, being forced to drive at around 15mph was not good on the radiator which was running with only half of its fans. We just about managed to make it to the turn-off, without boiling anything and here the road started to climb. While we could go at a more reasonable speed, the bendy mountain road made it nearly impossible to g

After the success of the quetzal spotting the day before and managing to leave the very steep road out of San Gerado relatively easily (with a quick stop or two) and that meant that once again we were nearing San Jose.  We decided to stop off one more time at Laguna Don Manuel and treat ourselves to that lovely hot shower. The last time we had been there, we had been determined to hike some of the trails in the park but had never actually got around to it. Now seemed like the

From what would be our last beach spot for a while in Dominicalito, we planned to head up into the mountains. We were going to visit some nice looking waterfalls, but as it rained heavily all night we decided that it might not be worth it. It being around $20 to get in, we didn’t want to pay all that and then enjoy a muddy torrent. We had been told that Panama is great for waterfalls too, and even better, they’re free. So we continued up into the mountains. After getting our

While we are used to celebrating on New Year’s Eve, it seems that the Costa Ricans celebrate more on New Year’s Day. This became apparent at around 4.30am when a large truck pulled into the little clearing next to us and began to unload. By 6am we were surrounded and when the music started up at 8am, we were already packing away. Leaving our spot involved the moving of several cars and a tent, as we had been assimilated into a large family campout. Not really wanting to in th

We had debated for some time whether to head to the mountains for a colder typical Christmas, or whether to just go straight for the beach. Coming from a country where a normal Christmas day features cold, grey drizzle, we would be happy for some sun regardless. It seemed a little odd to think of Christmas in our swimwear, but why not? Ironically enough, the last few days on our drive south had not been the best weather. We had had some huge storms, and a few days of rain. As

It was the 6th of December, and one of our friends was planning to come and visit us for the lead up to Christmas. We decided to head to San Jose to meet Hanno and Kikki and borrow their tent as well as scout out a good base to spend a few days there when he arrived. This was also the first city to have a Subaru garage and had been where we had bought our parts back in Nicaragua. There was also a Volkwagen parts shop, what luxuries! The drive in was a good few hours and we de

With our long drive of the day before having done nothing for the batteries, we decided to drive a short way around to the other side of the bay we were stopping at and check out another spot which would have sun. A fresh water river runs this side of the beach too, which is definitely a bonus. Neither had any signal however, I guess you can’t have everything. We found a good level spot in the sun and ran into the river to cool off. The cats played with lizards in the long gr

Our first night in Costa Rica was a wet one and so we didn’t speak to the other camper who had pulled in late that night until morning. It seemed that slowly we were meeting more and more people on the road, perhaps things were slowly returning to normal. We could only hope.  While the campsite was a nice enough spot, the cats were going crazy being locked in the van and so we decided we would hike one of the three trails on the property and then head off to find somewhere be

After a relaxing week on Ometepe, we geared ourselves up for another border crossing. Everything was checked, photocopied and I created a rather long list of the steps required to firstly leave Nicaragua and then enter Costa Rica.  It was a Friday morning as we sat on the upper ferry deck, watching the mainland draw nearer. Once we hit the other side, we needed to take the cats to the vet, the final step before we could leave. Throughout the C4 countries, we had taken a rathe