The highlights of our last couple of days were:
- A free 4x4 tour of central Costa Rica: you won't find this in any guide book - mainly because it was just us getting lost! Having driven a fair way from our lodge through La Fortuna and onwards to a village called Venado, heading for some caves, we were just a couple of minutes from getting to the caves, when we decided they couldn't be this far, forgot the directions we had been given, and instead followed a map we had bought which had the caves marked on in a slightly different place. There followed a 2 hour drive through the most tiny and bumpy roads you can imagine (that made most bridleways in the UK look like beautiful roads to drive along) - before we finally returned to where we had originally turned around, and drove the extra 5 mins to the caves! And amazingly, we managed to maintain our sense of humour throughout
- The caving (when we finally arrived): excellent tour, great value for money, large extensive caves, huge numbers of bats (fruit, nectar and vampire) and large spider like insects - plus some climbs and squeezes through v. narrow gaps
- Kayaking on Lake Arenal: having picked up a double kayak from a slightly random one man band, and waded through mud to the launch site, we had the lake pretty much too ourselves, and spent a good few hours playing David Attenborough paddling through the reeds trying to get good photos of the wildlife:
- Chilled out afternoon in the garden/farm: after a short walk from our ecolodge (by now we'd moved from a room into a hippy tent where we could sleep with one side open with a view of the jungle and lake - and amazingly not get eaten by bugs), we arrived at the lodge's organic farm - which also had a lovely garden with pond, table and hammocks - the perfect spot for a picnic, some reading and a siesta...
- Our best dinner yet: having read about a place called Gingerbread before we arrived, we had past it on our way around the lake to our lodge. So we decided to book a table. Our memory clearly wasn't great - what we'd thought was a c.30 min drive turned out to be nearly an hour! However, it was definitely worth it: we chose to sit at the bar in what was a stylish restaurant (Sam's favourite was the sliding ladder used to reach the spirits on the higher shelves). The menu had a relatively small number of starters, salads, mains and puds all to share - and all of which sounded delicious. We opted for the squid starter - perfectly cooked two ways (grilled and battered) - with a really good interesting salad (incl. avocados and sun dried tomatoes), followed by the fish tacos - divine Mahi Mahi in soft flour tortillas with rice, veg and avacado and creme fraiche sauces - absolutely amazing! And the portion sizes were huge as well - which meant that we walked away from the evening with half of the taco's wrapped up for us to eat the next day (and having just eaten them, we can confirm they taste just as good the second time around!) Sam wants to tell you how she successfully achieved cold chain storage for the 5 hours between El Castillo and our next stop, but I've told her that's too geeky and dull.
- More wildlife: a close up of the rainbow parrot we'd seen every morning at breakfast, and, on our drive to the dinner above, a sighting of an armadillo (no pics I'm afraid)
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