Finishing with friends

Fifteen years ago I came over to the USA on my first ever year away.  I was 18, had never been on a long flight before and saw the year as the biggest adventure of my life so far!  That year change my life and ignited my passion for travel.  I lived with an American family taking care of the twin girls.  Today, I am still friends with the family and usually make the hope over the ocean once a year to visit.  The twins are now 15 which makes me feel quite old! 

So that is how I have ended my year of travel, back where it all started 15 years ago.  We took our usual trip to the mall for some shopping but also ventured further north to the outlets this year.  My love of shopping is always well fueled here as Delaware has tax free shopping so it's always a little cheaper, which of course means, you can buy more things!!  We also visited the gym for a Zumba class and swim.  Supporting Kelsey at a hockey game and watching movies filled the evenings easily.

With all of our purchases after the
first trip to the mall.



Smiles all round after a fun Zumba
class with Jen!

After a lovely visit with my friends in Pennsylvania, I hopped on the bus to New York to catch up with my other American friend.


Maura and I met 5 years ago in Australia when we were both nannies in Sydney and have stayed friends ever since.  This year was an extra exciting visit as she is pregnant with twins!!  (The fact that both my American friends will then have twins is kind of funny!)


Here's what I got up to in New York...

Maura and I visited Wave Hill Gardens and
listened to a great Blue Grass band.

Met Minnie and Mickey mouse
in Times Square.

Went to see Mary Poppins and Sister Act
on Broadway.

Wandered around the museum of modern art.

These are the booties I bought in
Guatemala for Maura's babies!

And now the year is over, the blog is finished and it's time to go home.  Here are a few facts about it...

• Weeks away - 47
• Countries visited - 13
• Flights taken - 20
• Books read - 49
• Mile travelled - many thousand!
• Favourite Spanish word - ferreteria (which means hardware store!)
• Favourite countries visited - New Zealand and Guatemala
• Favourite food eaten - sweet plantain throughout Central America

I have had an amazing time this year and in many ways this has been the best of the three separate years that I have spent travelling around the world.  As always, I have the next destinations in my mind and plans are already being laid for the next holidays.  Now it's time to start a new chapter by moving to Colombia and teaching in an International School.  It's time to be a normal person who goes on holiday for 2/3 weeks, well in theory anyway!!

Farewell Costa Rica, farewell Central America

With the final week of volunteering finished, I said a very sad farewell to Lorena, Jorge and Mariela.  I had so appreciated everything that they had done for me over the four weeks and enjoyed living with them so much.  Talking to Lorena really helped me get more confident in speaking Spanish and I loved joking with her and Jorge!  I couldn't have wished for a better, nicer family to have had the pleasure of living with.


With 6 days left in Costa Rica I headed back to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast.  It had been a place that I had really enjoyed visiting previously and there were a few things in and around that area that I didn't have time to do before.  Arriving Saturday morning, I got a bed (forked out the extra expensive of having my own room as it's so much nicer!) in a lovely hostel, unpacked and managed to kill about 8 mosquitoes in the room within 15 minutes.  Spotting a few more, I ventured to the supermarket in search of 'Raid', the wonderful stuff that kills mosquitoes.  Interpreting what I could of the Spanish instructions, I sprayed the room and then vacated for the recommended 30 minutes.  On my return, the floor of my room resembled what can only be described as a mosquito graveyard!!  About 50 dead mosquitoes decorated the floor.  Having successfully ridded my room of the dreaded bugs (both alive and dead, and knowing that I would then sleep soundly each night) I went out for a stroll around town and found that this time round it was much quieter with much less people but still had the relaxed Caribbean charm and laid back feel.

The marvellous, mosquito killing 'Raid'!

With each afternoon of the 3 days I had there spent relaxing, reading and interneting, I made the most of the mornings and on Sunday rented a bike and cycled the 12km down to Manzanillo.  Jo, Amy and I had previously made it half way, to Punta Uva, but I wanted to explore a bit further.  The cycle ride was pleasant and relaxing, taking my own pace along the flat, gently windy road that lead through the dense jungle.  I stopped at Punta Uva (definitely the prettiest beach along this stretch of coastline) for a rest and stroll before carrying on down to Manzanillo.  I discovered a crowded, long expanse of beach and a few restaurants.  A leisurely lunch delayed the 12km ride back to Puerto Viejo.

Wildlife on the cycle ride
down to Manzanillo.

Playa Manzanillo.

Monday morning I ventured further north to the Aviarios del Caribe.  A sloth sanctuary where orphaned and injured sloths are taken care of and where possible released back into the wild.  Every since my first sloth encounter in Brazil in 2007 I have loved these adorable mammals and wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to get up close to them.  The sanctuary had both the 2 fingered and 3 toed sloth varieties at a variety of ages.  The babies were by far the cutest and although the 2 fingered blonde sloths are cute, I totally adore the 3 toed sloths.  They are always smiling, have the cutest little noses and groovy patches around their eyes.  The tour was informative and interesting and I loved that fact that I could watch the sloths for as long as I wanted.

Posing with the sign!

'Sylvana' having a weigh in.

Seriously, I just adore the cuteness!!

With 3 days completed, I decided to head back to San Jose to escape the humid heat and vicious mosquitos and spend my last day taking a tour of Volcan Poas.  There are so many volcanoes in this part of the world and this one is very easy to visit that I thought it would make good use of my last day.  The tour that I took arrived at 10am and I had read in the Lonely Planet that it clouds over around then, so I briskly walked to the main crater and luckily got a really good view.  The crater was pretty spectacular, with a bright turquoise pool of steaming water.  I was glad I made the visit, although think it would have been better if I'd had the achievement of hiking up to the top rather than being driven.

The impressive crater of Volcan Poas.

Central America has always a part of the world that I had wanted to visit and my four months here has not disappointed in the slightest.  I have had the pleasure of travelling with friends, begun the long, tricky road to learning a new language, discovered a serious liking for plantains, seen beautiful scenery and met friendly locals.  Along with the walking that I did in New Zealand, this has been my favourite part of the entire year away.


I leave Costa Rica tomorrow, heading to the USA for the last 12 days of my year away.

The draw of adrenaline

Another week flew by and I was a good girl and didn´t take the Friday off this week!  This week the children started to listen to me a tiny bit more, I spoke more Spanish and experienced my first earthquake siren.  Here´s a few pictures of the life I´m currently leading, well, for 4 more days anyway......

My house.

My cosy little bedroom.

Jorge, Lorena and Mariela -
my Costa Rican family.

The outside area at the centre where I work.

Interactive 1 - the class
where I work.

The children in my class.  They may look cute,
but they are very naughty!

This weekend saw a return to the beautiful lush, green cloud forests of Monteverde.  When Jo, Amy and I were here last time I really wanted to do another canopy tour.  Amy wasn´t keen, as her and I had already done one in Panama and Jo was scared of heights so was a definite NO!  However, the draw of being able to fly through the air like ´Superman´was enough for me to want to do it again!!  Its amazing what things adrenaline makes you want to do!

So, Anthony, Adrienne (two other volunteers) and I jumped on the bus Saturday morning, arrived before lunch in Monteverde and after some long debating, decided on the canopy tour with ´Adventura´, a company with 11 cables, one where you can fly like superman, one abseil (which turned out to be more like a very short fireman pole drop) and a 54 metre tarzan swing.  I was not enamored with the tarzan swing or the abseiling, but was desperate to do the superman cable.

It didn´t disappoint and although it was pretty scary (I didn´t look down) whizzing along a long, high cable, only attached by ropes from your back, hands and feet free, it was awesome!!  However, the tartzan swing was a whole other story. I did do it, but can´t say that I particulary enjoyed it.  I had my eyes shut, the guys pushed me off and I think my screams could be heard throughout the whole forest!  My stress levels at the bottom caused a panic attack as I was so worked up by the end!  Having laid down and managed to get back to breathing normally, I was proud of myself for doing it, but won´t do anything like that in a hurry again.

Adrienne, me and Anthony all kitted up and
raring to whizz down some cables!

At this point I was still undecided as to
whether to jump or not.

I walked out here with my eyes
shut.  The bridge wobbled A LOT!

This isn`t actually me, but you
get the idea of what I did!

Didn´t have a picture of the superman cable
as the photos were too expensive, so I
decided to draw a little diagram!!

It´s now back to Palmares for 4 final days of work.  Four weeks of volunteering has certainly passed really quickly!

A weekend at the beach

My second week of volunteering passed quickly and without any problems.  I now know the routine of the centre and what the children do when, which always makes things easier.  I was a little bit cheeky for my second weekend and took Friday off as I wanted to venture a little further afield and needed an extra day.


Manuel Antonio is a small National Park on the Central Pacific coast of Costa Rica.  It's white sandy beaches are lined with wild jungle and monkeys can be seen playfully swinging through the trees that line the beaches in the park. It's extremely popular with tourists so is definitely not a place off the beaten track.  However, I'd read and heard great things about it and really wanted to visit.


A simple and easy bus route took me from Palmares to San Jose and onto Quepos. Quepos is the town 7km north of the park and I decided to stay there for more amenities, cheaper accommodation and easy access to the return bus.  Arriving at 11.30am, I checked in, dumped my small bag into the room (being sure to grab a good bed first!) and then headed out to jump on a bus down to Manuel Antonio village and the beach.


The short, windy and hilly road hugged the pacific coast all the way down and ended up in a tiny village by the sea.  The beach by the town was outside of the park boundaries so was visited at no cost.  It was long, gently curving and with pounding waves, not unlike those that Amy and I saw at San Juan Del Sur.  After a little wander around the town, the heat of the day meant that the only place to be was in the sea!  I jumped some waves, got badly pounded by a couple and generally enjoyed the coolness of the water.

The main street in the town of Manuel Antonio.

Playa Norte - outside the park, 
next to the town.

Saturday was another hot day and the day to enter the park properly.  I booked onto a guided walk through the park as this always increases your chances of seeing wildlife.  Being as popular as it is, the park was packed with tourists which was a shame, but didn't take away from the excellent wildlilfe spotting.  The guide had a tremendous telescope which allowed us to get up close, well, visually anyway, to the variety of big and small animals in the park.  My sightings of sloths increased as we found lots and lots in the trees. However, I got my first sighting of a two toed sloth, and a baby!  There were also lots of monkeys and creepy crawly types of things.

A tree crab.

Colourful grasshoppers!

Mummy and baby two-toed sloth
(taken through the telescope).

With the wonderful guide, Miguel.

Wild flowers dotted the jungle tracks.

After the guided walk, I strolled around a new trail to some view points of the coastline before heading down to Manuel Antonio beach for a refreshing dip, followed by an afternoon of reading under the shade of the waving palms.

View of Manuel Antonio beach from the
walking trail round the headland.

Enjoying the beach, ready to find a shady
spot to spend the afternoon!

It's been a lovely weekend here and I'm glad that I visited.  It really is a beautiful part of the country.  I certainly haven't visited anywhere else where cheeky monkeys frolic around in the trees while you sit and watch from the soft, sandy beach!

With one free weekend left, best I get thinking about how to use it to the best of it's possibilities!

Back to Costa Rica and back to work!

After a very long wait at Belize airport (so long as unfortunately, the ferry times didn´t fit in very well with the flight times) I arrived in Costa Rica, rather late and rather tired.

I was met at the airport by a very friendly lady from the volunteer organisation who took a group of us to the hostel in Alajuela.  I was jammy enough to get myself a single room rather than a dorm bed as it appeared that all the beds in the room were taken and most people were asleep already.  I ended up with a huge double bed, own bathroom and air conditioning!  To say I was happy in an understatement!

The next morning, after a brief orientation of what to do and what not to do during the project, we headed off on the public bus to our various desitnations.  I´m living in the small, country town of Palmares, which is about an hour west of San Jose.  It´s very peaceful and the main source of work is agriculture.  The town is surrounded by green, rolling hills.

The view of Palmares town as I walk down
the hill to work each day.

I´m luckily enough to be living with a delightful Costa Rican family.  The mother, Lorena is so friendly, kind and really quite funny!  Her and I have a lovely chat after dinner each night.  She doesn´t speak any English, but is very patient with my Spanish!!  Her cooking is delicious too!  This is by far the best homestay of the three that I have done.  Also in the house are Jorge, the husband and Mariela, the daughter.  Mariela is supposed to be learning English, but HATES it and won´t speak it!  Her friends say I should practice with her!



Lorena and I on the front porch of the house.

The first week of volunteering has been a little odd initially, but by Friday I was more familiar with the routines and what I had to do.  The children are three to four and quite mischievious, especially the boys!  I play, chat, sing and dance with them and it is fun, although not when they are being naughty!  Syliva is the teacher in the class and she is very nice too.

There are some other volunteering in children´s centres in the area and we headed off to San Jose this weekend for a bit of culture in the capital of Costa Rica.  We visited the Museum of Contemporary Art which was as wacky as they usually are and wandered around some of the many plaza´s in the city.  Early afternoon the rain set in so an afternoon of relaxing at the rather nice hostel was opted for.  Evening saw a visit to the cinema for a hilarious film entitled ´21 Jump Street´!

Passing the time with a game of chess, draughts
or dominoes at the tables in the park.

The pretty plaza by the central bank.

Surrounded by pigeons in one of the plazas.

Spices for sale at the Central Market.

We returned to Palmares on Sunday afternoon and I can´t say that it is a city that has enthralled me really.  Next weekend we have far more exciting things planned...

A busy week in Belize

It's been the last week of my 3 months of travel in Central America and Amy and I have spent the whole week in Belize.


We arrived early on Sunday morning, into the Western town of San Ignacio and after a very early start (4.40am, with Amy having to scale the gate at the hotel and me passing all the bags over the gate, as we thought that it was locked, turned out it was very easy to open!) and border crossing, we found a hotel, followed by a cafe where we got a hearty breakfast.  After it was nap time!!


We booked two activities to do in San Ignacio and the first took us tubing down the Caves Branch River.  We were given a big inflatable tube and basically floated down the river, through two quite high ceiling caves.  I'm not a huge fan of caves and usually avoid going in, but Amy really wanted to do it so I decided that as long as I didn't have to crawl through any small gaps, I could manage it!

All set for the launch into the river.

Turned out to be super fun and not scary at all!  They gave us head torches and life jackets and after a short hike in the jungle, with a couple of river crossings, we made it to the entry point.  Comfortably fitted into our tubes, we floated peacefully along the river and through the caves.  The first cave was not that spectacular, but the second had pretty limestone formations and a freezing cold waterfall.

Floating through the first cave.

Classic silhouette picture!

We parked our tubes, climbed out over the side of the rock by the waterfall and went off to explore the 'Diamond Cave'.  This was my favourite part of the whole day as the cave was beautiful.  Every surface that you looked at glistened and sparkled like tiny diamonds as the cave rock was covered in quartz.  The limestone was also sweating, so tiny beads of water caught the light and it looked like fairy dust had been sprinkled everywhere!

The quartz in the 'Diamond Cave'.

Formations on the limestone 
created by water.

Mounting our tubes once again, we continued the float down stream and made it safely back to the start.  The tubing escapade has not cured me of my cave phobia, but it certainly was very enjoyable.

Floating, relaxing, enjoying the scenery!

Second on the agenda for San Ignacio was a trip to the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve.  It's an area south east of the town and obviously, as the name suggests is a pine forest!  We drove into the forest and visited the Rio Frio cave first.  It had lots of stalagmites but was nothing special like the Diamond Cave of the previous day.  We explored some of the waterfalls around the reserve and went for a swim at Big Rock Falls.  This was by far the most spectacular and gave you a nice massage if you managed to pin yourself under the falls for long enough!

The Rio Frio cave.

Rio on Pools waterfall.

Taking a dip at Big Rock Falls.

Next day we departed for Belize City and the zoo.  The city itself was pretty horrible and within the first half an hour, we had been ripped of by a taxi driver and a hotel owner.  Not a good start.  Our experience of the city didn't improve as we found no good food to eat and having wandered round, it was run down and very unappealing.  Luckily, we only stayed one night.


A bus ride back out the city in the afternoon took us to the Belize Zoo.  I wanted to go to spot some of the big cats and was not disappointed!  The animals in the zoo have all been rescued or born there and they live in natural surroundings.  We saw pumas, jaguars and ocelots, as well as various other animals.

The magnificent puma.

The resting jaguar.

Our final stop has been Caye Caulker.  An island 30 minutes boat ride from Belize city.  The small town has colourful wooden buildings lining the sandy streets and an unbelievably laid back, friendly feel.  We took a snorkelling trip out yesterday and enjoyed the varied sealife and colourful coral of the reef that runs along the Belize coast.  I was thrilled to spot a turtle, lots of sting rays and some sharks (friendly ones luckily!).

The quaint, sandy streets of Caye Caulker.

By the swimming beach on the island.

'The Budgetman' gave us some of the best food
that we ate on the island.

It's now time to close this chapter of travel and part ways with Amy.  It's been an amazing three months of travel in a fantastic part of the world, small but with so much to see!  I've really enjoying having friends to travel with and the excitement of deciding where we go and working out how to get there.


I'm flying back to Costa Rica tomorrow to begin the 4 weeks of volunteering that I signed up for.  This will be a new experience with new challenges.  Hopefully it will all be good!