Costa Rica, being the next country south of Nicuragua, is known for its environmental beauty, American tourists and higher prices... This didn´t make it a priority stop for us, and as we soon found out, it´s all true!

Far more developed than the other countries we have visited in this region we headed for San Jose more to get a ticket to our next destination than to experience CR. Unfortunately we arrived on a weekend and had to wait until offices opened, which meant 5 days in total in our friendly youth hostel. Still, personal admin has to get done somewhere.

Having finally worked out our next steps, we booked a tour to the Tortuguero National Park, known as a mini Brazilian rain forest. This took us via the Chiquita banana factory which Nat loved, an injured animal park where we met our first Toucan, and a roadside sighting of a two toed sloth spotted by our expert driver who pulled over so that we could check it out.

The main part of the tour was by boat and we saw a huge amount of bird life, crocodiles, and another sloth. We were also surrounded by Manatees (also known as sea cows) but they were below us so no snaps were taken.

(By the way, apparently in the 80s the Costa Rican government decided to scrap its army and direct all military funding to education and health... it is now known as the Switzerland of Central America)