48 hours in Quito

Quito wasn't on our list of places to visit but flight times necessitated it on our way to the Galapagos.
Having been told that Quito had come on massively over the last decade or so, this wasn't born out by our first impressions of the city. Our drive in from the airport gave us a good view of somebody getting beaten up (apparently a regular Friday night occurrence after too much rum) and when we ventured out for breakfast the following morning, our short walk to the "central hub" of the new town, was through some pretty run down areas - and the hub itself was pretty underwhelming.
Our food experiences on the first day were no better - a pretty dire breakfast of over cooked eggs and cheap coffee (despite having some of the best coffee in the the world here, apparently many equadorians prefer Nescafé instant!), an average sandwich for lunch and a dinner which should have been nice turned out to be very undercooked salmon (Sam likes pretty pink salmon - but this was cold and practically still swimming). Throughout the day we (mostly Sam) did manage to experience some local delicacies, including humeta (corn stuff) and empinadas (fried pancake with cheese filling).
Thankfully the food improved significantly on the next day - a great breakfast in a place called Swiss Corner (including poached eggs in mushroom soup - slightly weird but very tasty!), sandwich lunch in the Plaza Grande Cafe (including some tasty plantain, sweet potato and yucca crisps, and a funny fruit drink with maize), the best hot chocolate Alistar has ever had and a great local dinner in Attioche (we can't remember the names of all the dishes we had, but the corn kernels were superb). Brian & Jackie (Sam's parents) had arrived for this day so enjoyed the good without the bad...

The city did have some other highlights, including:
- a trip to Mitad del Mondo (middle of the earth) and Inti-nan - Quito is the only city in the world on the equator and is also where French scientists did a lot of work to prove the geometry of the earth. As well as getting to see the coriolis effect in action (see next post), we also learnt about some of the ancient traditions of indigenous tribes and got to see an amazing local dance

- pretty plazas - Plaza Grande (or de la Inpendenzia) was our favourite
- stunning churches - in one of them we got to see a bonus live music and dance show

- an imposing statue on top of a hill, with a great panoramic of the city and the surrounding mountains

We also managed a trip to the hotel gym - proving either how unfit we are, or the effect of altitude (Quito is just under 3000m).
All in all a good weekend: Quito wouldn't be top of places we'd recommend to visit just now - but given it's superb location in a basin surrounded by snow capped volcanos it certainly has potential.
We're now off to the Galapagos for a week, where we think internet connection will probably be non-existent, so you'll have to wait a while for the next chapter...(we failed to upload this in time, and you've probably realised by now that we've been out of contact for the last week!)

Beach bums in Montezuma

We've spent the last few days in Montezuma, a hippy beach town on the southern tip of the Nicoya peninsular. On our drive down from the cloud forests, we finally got a good view of the monkeys we'd heard howling on numerous occasions, just on the edge of the road (transpires you don't need to go to the national parks to see the wildlife here - our best sitings of sloths, snakes and monkeys were all on the side of roads, with tourist bus drivers our helpful spotters!).

Following an early start, we reached Puntarenas in very good time, joining a long and slightly disorganised queue to get the ferry across the gulf of Nicoya. Thankfully we made it on to the next ferry, for a very pleasant crossing (much more pleasant than the bumpy roads that had preceded).
Montezuma itself was pretty much as expected - a ram-shackle town full of beach bums/surfers/hippies - we obviously blended right in! We were staying just out of town, up and down some very steep, bumpy roads (anyone noticing a trend?!), and across a very narrow bridge, and despite pretty average directions, we managed to find our accommodation with only a couple of wrong turns (a name on the gate would have been helpful). However, we can certainly forgive the directions, as the cabin was perfect - a bed with a view out to sea, the small but well equipped kitchen, an outside shower, a nice little terrace and a stunning view from the top of the cliff - we both immediately knew we'd want to make as much use of it as possible over the next few days:

Peter, the owner, had a lovely labrador, who quickly made herself acquainted with us...and was relatively well behaved (as an aside, if you don't like dogs, Costa Rica isn't for you - they are everywhere - every house seems to have one, plus lots of strays, several on the beaches, etc, etc)
One morning, we woke to hear something on our roof making a racket. We wondered whether it might be one of the dogs - but upon closer investigation (a little later) - turned out to be a pretty decent sized iguana:

Our days in Montezuma were filled with (very) long walks along the beaches (with a random dog obediently walking alongside us for about an hour of one of them), regular swims in the delightfully warm sea and some good quality time with our kindles.

We also had regular fly-overs from well organised flocks of birds:

And nice sunsets (although the pictures make them look slightly better than they were...)

Having celebrated UK new year over Skype with our friends that were at Sarah & George's house, we wandered down into town, to find a street party in full flow, complete with some pretty amazing fire dancers, and the obligatory free-style firework display to welcome in 2014 (we're not sure which was more risky, that, or Hamish's attempts at Sophie and Jamie's wedding)

Having struggled to drag Sam out of the sea on our final morning, we were eventually on our way back to Liberia to catch a flight early the next morning. The drive was a little eventful - an early wrong turn (signposts are pretty few and far between in many places) led to a(nother) longish drive through Costa Rican countryside, and another river crossing - with Sam needing to add 'river depth checking' to her other roles as navigator, DJ and waiter:

That evening, we enjoyed a good typico Costa Rican meal in a soda (basic local cafe) in Liberia town centre - an appropriate end to our brief but very good trip round northern Costa Rica.

The sights of Monteverde

We went on a walk with no fee,
To see a huge, hollow Fincus tree,
With a skip and a hop,
Sam had climbed to the top,
And for miles around she could see

 

This was followed by a hike at night,
To search out animals with torch light,
We were amazed by what we saw,
Coatis, porcupine and macaw,
But the deadly snake gave us a fright

And so to the famous forests of cloud,
Where the animals and birds were so loud,
The continental divide,
Two oceans, one on each side,
Were not seen despite there being no crowd

For the coffee there is wide acclaim,
The climate and terrain give it fame,
The production takes time,
To ensure each drop is sublime,
No more will it all taste the same

The rest of our stay in Arenal Volcano National Park

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)

 

Christmas Day in Costa Rican Sunshine

Our first full day in Costa Rica - Christmas Day none the less - certainly didn't disappoint.
But going back a day, we arrived into Liberia (a city in Costa Rica, not the country!) at midday. The airport had the best border guard to passenger ratio we've ever seen and you even checked in with the hire car company whilst waiting for your luggage which meant that the whole arrivals process was as efficient as something you'd expect from the Swiss. However, sadly it is becoming clear that this was not indicative of the rest of the country. We ended up being very fortunate to be able to pick up our hire car; various other people were told despite having bookings, that they had no cars left. Somehow in all this, they'd decided to reserve one for us - which meant they had to sneak Alistair out the back, so everybody else wouldn't see. Whatever was going on we were very pleased that despite having to wait a while we got a car, as after three flights we were starting to get weary.
A LONG drive later and we arrived at our first destination at night.
We awoke to glorious blue sky, Sunshine and the imposing Arenal volcano:

The place we are staying (Essence Arenal) is a funky, vegetarian, Eco lodge which has it's own farm and great views of the volcano. The downside is that it is many kilometers up a dirt road, although we soon discovered the faster you drive, the less you feel the bumps....

On a walk about the property what looked like a line of moving leaves turned out to be some industrious ants:

You can't walk up the Arenal volcano, but you can get up the slightly smaller chap Cerro Chato to the right of it, which was our mission for the day:

Being dormant, this volcano has a lake in its crater...

...which made for a refreshing dip after a sticky jungle hike:

The hike also had a variety of wildlife from the small, but heavily armoured...

...to the fluffy:

So all in all a great way to spend Christmas - and all that is left for us to do is wish all our friends and family a very Merry Christmas!

Costa Rica here we come

Apologies for the somewhat intermittent blogging so far...having got into the day to day rhythm of a skiing holiday there never seemed to be that much to say on any given day. We're sure that's going to change though - starting with our 10 day whistle-stop tour of Costa Rica - including Christmas near the Arenal Volcano, a couple of nights in the cloud forests of Monteverde, and then to the chilled out beach town of Montezuma for New Year.
Ski kit safely back in the UK, we're now left with apparently all we're going to need for the next 7 months! The official weigh in is still to come - but we're happy, for now at least, that we've stuck a good balance between backpack weight and comfort (although this has involved the purchase of various pieces of somewhat overpriced lightweight kit over the last few months!).
A very long journey with an overnight layover in Miami hasn't dinted spirits too much...looking forward to arriving tommorrow!

Final thoughts on Banff

All in all a great start to our trip. Snow could perhaps have been slightly better - but a reasonable amount of fresh snow on and off over the last week kept things interesting and even gave Sam a decent powder day (Al was recovering from a strained back - which, as at time of posting this is thankfully well on its way to recovery).
We enjoyed skiing in both Lake Louise and Sunshine - the former with slightly more vertical and wider choice of runs, but the latter with some great little areas, particularly off Wawa chair (unfortunately Delerium Dive wasn't open during our trip).
The area is famous for its wildlife - our highlights were a wolf that walked past Sam on the piste, numerous Elk around the town and a Racoon (or similar) running through the trees (we weren't quick enough for any photos I'm afraid!).
Having never done it before, we had been slightly apprehensive about the bus journeys up to the resorts, but it was fine, and gave us a great opportunity to fit in our twice daily Spanish lessons (thanks Moira and Jess for recommending Michel Thomas - we can certainly add our recommendation too!)
Banff was a good town to stay in with a very wide range of restaurants and bars (see other post) and lots of other stuff going on - we fitted in Jonny Cash tribute band, quiz night at Bruno's, the parade of lights, a slightly underwhelming Rail Jam (snowboarders getting towed along a small amount of snow shovelled onto the street and up a jump onto a rail), the hot springs (definitely worth a visit) and a trip to the cinema to catch The Hobbit.
Our accommodation at Irwin's Mountain Inn was pretty much as expected - having a fridge and coffee making facilities worked well for us (daily cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch), bed was huge, and bedroom was a good size. We were disturbed on a couple of night by extremely noisy neighbours, but other than that slept very well. And the hot tub provided a good way to relax our muscles at the end of each day.
So, all in all it has been a great way to relax and unwind before our back-packing adventure really begins...