While Away...

Up until now, our travel has mostly focused around culture, food and activities so Estación Biológica Tamandúa was the first place we went herping (looking for reptiles and amphibians) and wildlife watching properly. Therefore, here follows a blog post purely about wildlife! Birds in particular, are extremely diverse in Central America. Unfortunately, Greg and I are not bird experts and our interests mostly lie in reptiles and amphibians. However, I think we both appreciate birds a lot more now. A common feature of Estación Biológica Tamandúa, was the hummingbirds which flittered around the flowers planted around the buildings. We did not realise how angry, noisy and territorial hummingbirds are. We would constantly hear angry squeaks and a sound like a hover craft and a pair of hummingbirds would chase each other through the room, close to colliding with our heads. The hummingbirds were also extremely inquisitive. They would fly towards us and hover at eye level for a few se...

We set off from our Hotel at 5.30 in the morning and met a quad bike who took us up to the Lodge. The Biological station is about 4.5km from Drake Bay along a muddy track which crosses 5 rivers and two streams. Although it is a fun quad bike ride, during the rainy season, the station is often cut off due to road conditions and high river levels. Upon arrival at the station we briefly met the volunteers we were replacing whom had stayed for 2 weeks and assured us we would have a great time. They were then quickly whisked away by the Quadbiker and we were left on our own. Now for a little more on what was our home for over a month and a half. Estación Biológica Tamandúa   is a jungle lodge set in the tropical rain forest next to the Corcovado National Park. The Corcovado is the largest park in Costa Rica and covers about a 3rd of the area of the Osa Peninsula. The only potential drawbacks with the secluded location were the lack of internet and hot water. The latter is true of ...

Again apologies for the lateness of this post. In the jungle it is easy to lose track of time! Continuing from last time..... Time was ticking- we were aiming for a volunteer project in Costa Rica, so it was soon time to leave Nicaragua. We decided to skip Isla Ometepe (one of the most popular destinations in Nicaragua), as we would be returning to Nicaragua after volunteering in Costa Rica. So we headed off on a chicken bus to Rivas, with hordes of other travellers mostly on their way to Ometepe. A couple of French girls invited us to share their taxi to the border and caused us a great amount of stress when we found that they were heading to Ometepe instead. Needless to say, we wasted some money, half an hour and many frustrated/angry words on the taxi back to Rivas and were unceremoniously dumped on a street next to a man selling puppies in a cage, to wait for the next bus to the border. Great Tailed Grackles at dusk in the central park of Liberia Once we got on the b...

Apologies once again for the long time between blogs, but Bryony and my time has been mostly spent in the jungles of the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, away from internet. Alas, this experience is for a future blog. For now we must continue to report on our time in Nicaragua and the first parts of our Costa Rican adventures. In the last blog we had just finished at the Carpe Diem project and headed back to civilisation, also known as Leon. The first port of call was a couple of days dealing with the fact my phone was not coming back to life. After a stop at a phone repair place in the town we found out that the screen had failed. The cost of repair was greater and not as guaranteed as buying a new phone, effectively making the decision for us. Searching for a phone in Leon was an interesting experience. Nicaragua, like many of the Central American country is becoming a new market for the big phone companies. However, the price of most phones built for the US or UK markets are still pr...

Nicaragua part 2: Sorry Just realised we never uploaded this blog! The next day we ate some breakfast, then headed off to the bus stop to get to our Workaway. We originally intended to take a taxi, but someone tried to charge us $2 each so we decided 2km wasn’t all that far after all. We jumped on the bus to Poneloya and were surprised to find many other tourists on the bus heading to popular beach of Las Penitas which is adjacent to Poneloya. After getting off the bus, it was a quick walk to a bar where we had been told to get a boat across to the island. Isla Los Brasiles is a small peninsula, mostly made up of sand and mangroves that is separated from the mainland by a small river estuary. The boat ride took about 5 minutes with an approximately 40-minute walk through mangrove forest to reach Carpe Diem. Arriving as sweaty tired messes with unwieldy backpacks we were struck by the beautiful palapa made of wood and palm fronds, cob cabañas and the amazing beachscape less than 10 ...

Friendly cats and kittens We left San Salvador at 5am on a bus. After multiple changes and crossing into and out of Honduras, we arrived at the Nicaragua border. For some reason, this turned out to be the most annoying border crossing so far. According to the official at the border, we should have informed Nicaragua we were entering a week in advance. After finally establishing that we didn’t have to, we were let through the border. We hopped on a bus for 5 minutes to our destination: a homestay/hostel near Somoto Canyon. Somoto Canyon is a reasonably well-known attraction in northern Nicaragua. Although most people join tours to access the canyon, we opted to do the canyon ourselves as we are confident swimmers and the route is easy to follow. We set off at 8.30 in the morning and walked along the road for about 30 minutes. We arrived at the river near the small village of La Playa, and set off up the river. In hindsight, we probably should have taken a track just before the r...