The journey to the Costa Rican border from Ometepe Island was uneventful after the early morning ferry.

The weather at the border was dark and brooding. We paid $4 to exit Nicaragua and I changed some money for an ok rate (changed 330 Cordoba’s for 5,200 Colones and $60 for 34,600 Colones)

We stopped in Liberia for a very early lunch before pushing on to Monteverde. Frustratingly, our time pressure meant fast food and I was stuck with KFC for my first meal in Costa Rica, which seemed super expensive (£7.21 for a small burger meal).

In Monteverde I went for an explore around town. We stayed in Hotel Manakin which is up a steep hill from the main town. Coffee at the Choco Cafe, with a nice outdoor terrace was nice. I got a flat white for ¢2300 (£3.21). The aftertaste was absolutely lovely but overall the coffee was not as nice as the ones I had in Guatemala and El Salvador.

I joined some of the group for dinner at Thomas & Thiago and the food was excellent. I had a tilapia fillet served with potatoes and vegetables along with a guanábana smoothie for C12,209 (£17.50).

One of the most famous activities in Monteverde is the ziplining. We were collected from the hotel at 0730 (after being told to be ready at 7) and then were driven through the countryside into the forest and arrived at 100% Aventura. I had done some research and was so glad we went to this particular park as it’s rated as the best in the area. I paid $55 in cash (it’s $59 with a credit card).

We had a quick brief, stepped into harnesses and we were off! There are 9 zip lines starting with a short practice line and building up. Some of the lines require you to brake as you reach the end using the gloves they provide. It’s easier than you may expect. Part way round you can clip into an auto-belay and “rappel” down from the platform to the ground. The final two ziplines have auto braking and so you can zoom along head first, superman style!! One of the lines is the longest zipline in Latin America (1,590 meters, nearly a mile long)!! That was absolutely magnificent. It felt like flying and I even went underneath a bird of prey hovering next to the line. The line is long enough that you can really take in the surroundings. At the end of the ziplines you can do a Tarzan bridge swing which is also really fun.

I had a delicious lunch back in Monteverde at a place called The Open Kitchen. The town has a lot of places ready for Western foodies.

I spent my afternoon wandering around the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve and being surrounded by hummingbirds while I drank a coffee at Cafe Colibri.

My main hope for visiting the cloud forest was that I would see a Resplendent Quetzal but I imagined it would only be possible with a pre-dawn excursion.

How wrong I was!!! I didn’t have a guide because I didn’t think I could hire one in the afternoon (again, wrong). But anyway, I was waiting in a spot that I thought was the right place for Quetzales and sure enough, a couple of small groups came along and joined me. We waited for a while and then heard a distinctive call and saw a flash of green. The groups had telescopes (essential) and we managed to see two Quetzales over the course of about 30 minutes. A male and a female.

The Nuboso trail is a great one to try. I didn’t go the whole thing, just got to a spot that instinctively felt right and waited there. But the trail itself was beautiful!!

Next, I had one of the most decadent meals of my life. Bec, Leona and I visited San Lucas treetop restaurant and had a 9-course meal in a private glass-walled dining room with a spectacular view of the sunset over Monteverde Cloud Forest.

The food was absolutely fabulous and each course represented a region of the country and all together they wove together to form a story about Costa Rica and its people.

Monteverde was nice – a good blend of adventure activities, nature and relaxing. It’s a bit of a shock to the system in some ways (mainly prices) after working my way down from Guatemala but I can certainly see the attraction and it’s easier to get by for folks less comfortable winging it.

The next day we started off driving in a minibus in what appeared to be the wrong direction down very small lanes and then we were dropped off and had to walk down to a “ferry port”

To reach our next destination we took a strange ferry crossing from a place which seemed pretty unlikely. We had our own boat and had a pretty decent ding-a-ling.

We were bound for La Fortuna, the adventure capital of Costa Rica.

It was nothing like I expected, the place was sprawling along a main road. It’s very touristy and set up for tourist activities but I guess that’s not automatically a bad thing. Sort of similar to Baños in Ecuador if you’ve been.

Our first stop was Desafio Adventure Company which has a decent terrace but that’s about all I’d want to see there. We had to go there immediately to quickly figure out what activities everyone was going to do. There is an enormous range of options with anything from wildlife spotting to canyoning to Quad biking.

I decided I wanted to go caving and then go to the Hanging Bridges to go wildlife spotting. The caving trip left within an hour of us arriving so it was all a big rush.

In general though, I wouldn’t recommend this adventure company (there are plenty of others) – the briefing was an absolute shitshow and left everyone none-the-wiser. The payment desk took an indescribable amount of time to note down our activities and conduct a very simple calculation before taking payment.

So I jumped into a minibus with Bec and Vanessa to go caving. The drive was longer than we thought but that’s not an issue. We arrived at the Cavernas de Venado and found that the staff were lovely!! Top tip would definitely be to get a taxi ride (rather than a private transfer) and buy your entrance ticket at the venue – MUCH CHEAPER! We paid £125 and we could have done the same activity much cheaper.

All of the information we’d been given in the briefing was wrong. You can wear trainers or watershoes (or as a last resort you can wear the wellies they provide). You don’t need long sleeves or long trouser legs – it’s really warm in the caves and aside from protecting from mosquitoes at the cave entrance, the long sleeves add no value. You are likely to get absolutely soaked so the less clothing, the better in some ways.

The caving experience was absolutely amazing. It was genuinely surprising that we were allowed/expected to climb up through chimneys and squeeze through semi-flooded passages. There were larger passages that nervous folk could stick to but there were loads of opportunities to go through narrow places. The guide was really good too and showed us plenty of cool features and wildlife. Saw some fairly funky spiders as well as the cute little bats, and there are stunning rock formations in there.

When we got back to La Fortuna I went for a walk to get a feel for the place and then Bex, Vanessa and I went for dinner at Chipotles Tex Mex. I had beer, tacos and nachos.

Next morning I was up fairly early to grab a hotel breakfast before heading to Mistico Arenal Hanging Bridges nature hike. I definitely recommend a visit. It’s a really nice area to go for a walk, the bridges are such a good addition and you end up in the canopy and out above the trees frequently. We saw a reasonable amount of wildlife as well as pretty flora and waterfalls.

Back in La Fortuna, I went to Soda La Hormiga (the ant) for lunch and it was a really bustling place. Loved it. The food was good, all local standard fare.

After lunch I found the best coffee shop in town and spent some time at El Jardin de Frida.

Then I joined Richard, Sophie, Janine and Vanessa for a sloth walk in a rainforest right next to the road. It was great! We saw a healthy number of sloths and got a good view of Volcan Arenal shrouded in mist.

That night I followed the recommendation of my nature guide and headed to Selena Hostel to try and find a red eye tree frog. Vanessa came along and joined me hunting around down by the river and I had a very successful trip despite not finding any red eyes. It was fun scrambling over rocks to track down various froggy voices in the dark.

After the riverside adventure we headed up to meet the rest of the group for our final meal on the trip. And what a trip it has been.

I’ve got another week in Costa Rica to do a bit of diving and more tree frog hunting (success!!)