Whitewater rafting in Costa Rica

I´ve been in Costa Rica for the best part of a week now, and on my last day I decided to go whitewater rafting. To be honest the river was pretty tame compared to the other rivers I´ve been rafting on - the Zambezi, Mekong and the Nile. There were a few grade 4 rapids and quite a lot of 3´s, but no grade 5´s. And noone fell out at all! And the raft didn´t flip over either. Mind you, on the plus side I didn´t end up with severe cuts on my face and I felt pretty safe most of the time.

I met some cool girls in my hostel in Monteverde, two americans and one brit, and hung out for a bit which was nice. Meeting people is one of the aspects of travelling and staying in backpacker hostels which I love.

Another week, another hurricane

We have been experiencing driving rain and thunderstorms but no strong winds. I´m about where the red dot is in this satellite image, in Granada.

Flying through the jungle

I left Leon and travelled to Granda with a Swiss girl I´d been hanging out with called Patricia and an American girl called Nadia. Granada was reasonably pretty and the nightlife was pretty cool, but one of the biggest draws for me was the canopy tour.

The canopy tour was advertised as an amazing experience where you would fly through the jungle. This it was, but they don´t tell you how unpleasant the journey to get there is. It was around 4 hours for the round trip on a really rocky path - not even a road just a dried out riverbed. Several times we had to get out of the 4 x 4 to remove logs from the dried riverbed, and the jeep was jumping around like crazy.

Anyway, after two hours of painful travelling we arrived at the canopy site. We were given a safety briefing and then had to climb up into the trees. We had a rope ladder, but the whole process was terrfifying. The maximum height we were at was 30 metres or 90 feet.

They claim you are attached to a safety wire at all times but in fact this is not the case, and there is a moment on each of the platforms where you are detatched and reattached for the next zip line. It is not unheard of for people to die doing this activity - for example the woman in this BBC News story.

I´m starting to worry that doing dangerous activities all the time is putting myself at risk. If there is a one in 10,000 chance of serious injury on each activity, surely my luck may sooner or later run out.

Anyway, I wouldn´t recommend doing this, but the rest of the time I spent in Leon was pretty amazing, and I had a cool time with Patricia.

Volcano boarding in Nicaragua

I travelled down to Leon, Nicaragua with Kris. One of the first things that caught our eye was a trip to hike up a volcano and then go down it on a modified snowboard. The drive to the site took an hour or so on a pretty sketchy road. Then the hike up was a reasonable 40 minute scramble in the heat. The views from the top were pretty amazing, and as soon as i get them emailed I´ll put them up.

Then I had to board all the way down. I kept asking the guide about injuries and he kept denying anyone had any, but when I pressed him he admitted that people had been pretty badly grazed, and I met a girl in a bar later that day who had damaged her knee joint to the extent that she was returning to the States as the quality of medical care was so poor.

I had no knowledge of this when I stood at the top of a 700 metre volcano however, only that I was terrified and that I wasn´t sure why I was doing this. Setting off I actually found it relatively straightforward, and the overall journey was pretty swift, and although I fell off a couple of times I didn´t seriously hurt myself.

That night I met a whole bunch of people at the hostel´s quiz night, and we all hung out together as a group for about a week or so, going out partying and going to the beach. Great days.

Training to be a Scuba diver

From what I had heard of scuba diving it was a really fun and easy sport where you could swim in warm crystal blue water. I've heard so many travellers tell me how great it is. So when I signed up for a course that was what I was expecting.

In reality it was one of the heardest things I've ever done. Really early starts like 6am, and very late finishes were the norm 8pm being the latest. Yesterday for example we srtarted at 6am and worked straight through till midafternoon, having breakfast - breakfast! - at 4pm. You have to be able to cart around lots of heavy equipment, you have saltwater blasted into your face, you get seasick, you have to understand lots of difficult pressure calculations, ou have to get up really early, work really hard all day and then do a test at the end. Its all pretty exhausting.

I guess doing a scuba diving course on the edge of a hurricane is not such a good idea, as although we missed the worst of the storms we still got battered a bit by some large waves and wind, and the churned up sea meant there was lower visibility.

But at the end of the day I'm now a qualified open water scuba diver and can now dive anywhere in the world without an instructor, so that´s pretty cool.

We did get to see some amazing things. The sensations you get are cool, and the fact you can travel in all three dimenions is great. You feel a bit like you are flying and you can glide around and above and below other people. Visibility on the last few dives we did was amazing.

On the outskirts of a hurricane

Hurricane Dean is the 9th most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Carribean by the US Dept of Meterology. Luckily we weren´t too near the path of the hurricane itself. You can see my position marked by the red dot above. We are right in the path of the swirling arms that define the strong winds around the hurricane itself.

We experienced a fair amount of rainfall and some pretty scary blustery winds. We've had to extend our scuba diving course by an extra day, and when we did get in the water visibility was poor because of the silt churned up by the weather.

The night of the hurricane was pretty cool. Me Chris and Tanya went out bar hopping and we managed to get free shots at one bar because the bar was having a hurricane promotion.

Climbing a volcano

Well we arrived in Antigua a few days ago, and yesterday decided to climb up a volcano. The journey to the site took about an hour or so in a minibus. Then we had to hike up to get there. The going was ok, but the terrain was a bit tough, and it took quite a while. We were going through pretty dense undergrowth and it was raining at the same time. We eventually reached the peak, and scrubland and woods gave way to a a black rocky lava field. To be honest at this point I was a bit disappointed as I was hoping to see somethigna bit more dramatic.

To see the fist video of us walking towards the lava click here

I took a few photos and then we kept on walking. Then in the distance I saw a red speck. It was some lava very far away, and while I was able to see it well with my naked eyes it didnt come out too well on the camera. I really wanted to go closer and to my surprise our guide allowed us. We got closer and closer, and the lava was really starting to flow now. What started as a small stream was now tens of metres long. And we were able to get so close. Eventually, after hiking for quite a while we were able to get within touching distance of it. The heat coming off it was incredible.

The second much better video is here, and you can actually see me in it.



We had been walking now for several hours and it was getting dark but we now had to get back. The hike through pouring rain down the side of a mountain through muddy jungle terrain was pretty scary. I slipped a few times, and our guide kept hurrying us along. It took another hour or so to get down and then get the minibus back. The whole trip took about 8 or 9 hours, and was terrifying and exhilerating in equal measure.

Living in a lilt advert

Travelling down to Belize took quite a while but when we got there it was amazing. We had sepctacular views and everyone seemed so friendly and nice. There was a really cool backpacker sense there which was great. And as the islands we went to - Caye Caulker and San Pedro - are on the carribean I felt like I was in Jamaica or advert for Lilt or something.

The puicture above shows the split in Caye Caulker - lieterally a split down the entire island caused by a hurricane in 2000.

We went diving in Caye Caulker and saw all sorts of animals including Sting Rays and corals. Tanya actually picked one up, which was more than I was prepared to do given that they are the animals that killed Steve Irwin (see story here)!

Video of the stingray

Down to Belize

We hung around in Cancun that afternoon, and decided to get a 6 hour bus down to Belize the following day.

The bus was pretty cool, met this random guy who claimed to be part of the former Mexican olympic field hockey team in 1978 which I was a bit dubious about. But he seemed to know a lot about the subject and then brought out an official guide with his name on it so it would have been a bit of a bizarre and well executed hoax if he was making it up.

We arrived in Chetumal and got a bus across the border to Corozal in Belize. We had an argument with the ticket guy who had charged us double and managed to get our money back. Then we hung out in Corozal waiting for a boat to take us to San Pedro. We waitred for four hours in the sun but it was nice enough and I started to chatting to fisherman who was oroginally from New Jersey. Peoiple here seem much more easy going than elsewhere.

We stayed in San Pedro one night and headed here to Caye Caulker, another island whjich reminds me of Jamaica. We've averaged over 9 hours a day of travelling so far so I think we'll stay here for a day or so to get our beariungs back. I was so tired yesterday I had to leave a meal early at about 8pm as I was so jetlagged. We've been waking up every day at about 5am.

Stranded in Cancun

Arrived in Cancun, only to find Tanya wasn't there. I had a crazy zip through the US, and my flight was delayed by 2 hours which left me 45 minutes to clear the three stage US customs and passport control and to check in and out my luggage. I managed it just but only by running to the departure gates and jumping queues. I arrived at the right gate with 12 minutes to spare.

Only to find I was at the wrong gate as they had changed departure gates. Nice!

So I then had to run again all through Houston and eventually got on the right flight with less than 2 minutes spare. When I arrived at Cancun however I found out Tanya hadn't been so luicky and had been stuck overnight in Atlanta.

I waited around in Cancun airport till midnight (which is about 6am english time), and then went to the centre of town in the pitch black to find the hostel.

We were reunited at the airport the next day when I went back to the airport.

Blind Panic

Right, so I'm off to central america in less than a weeks time. I can't speak any spanish really, I don't really know where I'm going or what I'm doing and I dont have any insurance yet. I'm really pretty nervous about the whole thing to be honest, and clearly spend too much of my waking day thinking and worrying about girls, and not enough planning this trip.

Somehow I've got to go all the way to San Jose from Cancun. Thats overland across six countries, using public transportation in third world countries with poor infrastructure, using a language I barely speak. Nice.