This was a day basically for getting back to San José airport and our plane home, a journey of some 140kms. All three of us were on the same Air France flight to Paris leaving shortly after 19:00. From there…

This was our last full day in Costa Rica. Tomorrow we’ll be heading for San José airport. We’d done the various cloud forest sites that Mr. Leader had planned, so today he thought we’d head down out of Monteverde further…

We’re staying in a 3-bedroom house above Monteverde. I know I’m getting repetitive but I just have to show you our shower; the wiring to the shower head is particularly inventive, I thought. Can you imagine wiring like that in…

We are at 1500m in the town of Monteverde; actually we are a very slow couple of kilometres outside the town up one of the many steep gravel/stone/rock roads. I had unwound from the slightly traumatic inbound journey using both…

We left Liberia for Monteverde today. We were intending to spend the morning at another reserve southeast of Liberia before getting on the road proper to Monteverde, so we left our collection of bags in one of the motel rooms…

Having crossed to the Pacific side of the central backbone mountain range of Costa Rica, today we headed back up to the mountain range to visit another volcano: El Rincón de la Vieja. Mr. Leader had been disappointed at his…

Hitherto we have been on the Eastern side of Costa Rica, on the so-called Caribbean slope. The country is divided, pretty much down the middle, by a volcanic mountain chain, to the west of which is the Pacific slope. Today,…

Against my expectations, I actually kept the pillow in place and managed some sleep in my single bed with its makeshift headboard. This morning we discovered the attraction of staying in Santo Domingo. At Mr. Leader’s traditionally early hour, we…

Today we moved on from Iguanitas Lodge. It had a parting gift for me before we hit the road, though. One of Costa Rica’s nine species of Rubyspot damselflies was posing advantageously in the garden. This is a very clean…

The lodge in question is the Laguna del Lagarto Eco Lodge as favoured by the American author of the Costa Rican Field Guide to Dragonflies and Damselflies. As is usual, our leader keeps a constant lookout on the sides of…