Bristol and Salisbury, England

After a long and tedious trip from Costa Rica to Bristol we have fallen into the tender and generous excessive care of Mhairi MacKay. The English summer is behaving exceedingly well and it is a shock to us all to be in a place with an abundance of our "normal food", general tidiness, an excess of tea (if you care for such things) and people speaking English. All this and the place is uncharacteristically cheerful as the English have progressed to the second round of the World Cup (albeit with pretty ordinary performances although this doesn't seem to have upset the locals).
So while in Bristol in the lovely hands of Mhairi for a week we have hired a car to travel around the west of England from her base in Bristol and today went to Salisbury (lovely cathedral, quintessential village with delightful buildings) and Stonehenge which Ciaran in particular thought was fabulous.
And Romany's treat was a face painting at the Bristol Zoo - truly a busmans holiday after our time in the National Parks of Costa Rica but a good time was had by all.

Leaving Central America - highlights and lowlights

In our last 24 hours in Central America we have been giving thought to the best and worst of our travels so far. Some unanimous and some less so (but the judges´ decision is final) so the list follows
Favourite country - Guatemala in a land slide; what´s not to like about a country with great Mayan ruins, live volcanoes, OTT Easter parades, colourful people and crazed bus trips.

Top three destinations - Easter Island, Tikal (Guatemala) and Antigua (Guatemala)

Nicest people - Belize; you have to like a place where the local radio makes announcements to "Be nice to tourists" and the people listen. Everyone just wanted to chat, be helpful and be certain you were enjoying their country. Honorary mention to Nicaraguans; very friendly people and especially the young man in Granada who, when asked for directions to a restaurant, walked us across town in the opposite direction he had been taking.

Best hotel - Hotel Oasis in Granada, Nicaragua. Beautiful private room with cable tv, a swimming pool, free internet, tea and daily 10 minute phone calls anywhere in the world (except Denmark!?) and a friendly vibe. Honorary mentions; Hotel Hong Kong in Chitre, Panama with a 3 pool water park including hydroslide and no other guests so it was all switched on whenever we wanted it and the Jungle Party Hostel in Antigua - pokey room but really welcoming and inclusive of the kids.

Favourite animal - Sloths especially within touching distance in Monteverde, Costa Rica(although the kids liked the insects and snakes they could handle). Honorary mention to leaf cutter ants; you have to admire the industry of something so small yet so relentless that they cut paths on the jungle floor.

Best Wildlife encounters - Cahuita National Park, Costa Rica. Close up snakes, sloths and monkeys who stole bananas and pooed in Susie´s bag. All set in jungle with the option of popping out to a Caribbean white sand beach for a swim when you got too hot.

Best bus trip - through the Guatemalan highlands from the Mexican border to Huehuetenango. Awesome gorges, mountains, fearsome hairpin bends, a chicken bus driver in an insane hurry and a bus full of Mayans in colourful traditional dress.

Best laundry - frighteningly clean and vacuum packed in San Cristobal, Mexico. Honorary mention; 6c an item in Leon, Nicaragua if we provided the soap powder (and the lady led Susie literally by the hand to buy it) so a whole load for 88c.

Best guided tour - Mayan village tour out of San Cristobal, Mexico. Great guide, the colourful Mayans and a church overwhelmed with lit candles, icons and the occasional chicken being sacrificed.

And we will not miss
Thieves - five encounters; a bicycle snatch and grab that got Susie´s empty sunglasses case in Comayagua, Honduras and a pickpocket who got Blair´s drivers license and divers card on a bus in Costa Rica being successful (but probably both rather disappointed). And a snatch and run thief who grabbed at Blair´s camera strap in Panama City but only broke the strap at the time as Blair was holding the camera (tight), a pickpocket in Antigua who couldn´t get into Blair´s zipped pocket during an Easter parade (and looked very apologetic) and two young guys who trailed us through a market in Antigua but eventually lost their nerve when repeatedly stared at.
Insects that bite!

So many people with guns (and bullet proof vests) guarding everything from banks to toy shops especially in Guatemala and Honduras.

Looking for a new hotel in each town; 49 different hotels stayed in but perhaps 200 looked at.

Sitting in cafes and restaurants waiting for food and bills, sometimes up to 3 times a day

Sweating - espècially when combined with a thin film of dust, sunscreen and/or insect repellant

Misunderstanding and mangling Spanish (although Susie has used both the past and future tenses in conversation and made jokes that the locals kindly laughed at)

Being stared at.

Footpaths that either don´t exist or are hazardous underfoot with Romany in particular being upended on multiple occasions.

Having to put toilet paper in the bin rather than down the loo - particularly if the bin is not emptied for more than 24 hours and it is hot (and it always is)

Over-rated; Health concerns (no significant illnesses in 4 months travel for any of us). The wet season - one month into it and it hasn´t stopped us doing anything yet (although one spectacular shower made us unable to croos the road to our hotel for half an hour).

Commendations
Susie; family spanish expert and conversationalist, adherence to children´s schoolwork, no haircut or colour for 4 months confirming she is really a red head (not), repairing Ciaran's broken sandle by sewing it together with dental floss (successfully)

Blair; paranoid attention to security foiling several thieves (and rather stupidly chasing the other 2), financial and itinerary planning (obsessive guide book reading)which nearly always worked, haircut in Nicaragua which included eyebrows, ear and nostril hair.

Ciaran; assistant hotel finder in all temperatures, unerringly finding something poisonous on jungle walks (and wanting to pick them up), nicest big brother sometimes under extreme provocation

Romany; charming locals with big blue eyes (and allowing over-affectionate same to embrace her without complaint), unfailingly finding something nice about the crumbiest hotel room (quote - "Ciaran, this hotel has a toilet seat that doesn´t fall on you when you sit here"), excessive pursuit of orange juice for breakfast.

Tortuguero, Costa Rica

Our final destination in Costa Rica (and Central America)was the Caribbean village of Tortuguero, right in the middle of one of Costa Rica´s most famous reserves. It was reached by 4 bus rides (enlivened by the commentary of Costa Rica´s first world cup game and the ensuing roar from the passing houses when Costa Rica scored, with one father and son running out onto their lawn and then back into their house waving their arms. Oddly enough there were only women on our bus at that time.). Then a river taxi. The river taxi was an adventure in itself through very narrow channels at first and then into a widening river with encroaching jungle all the way. The return journey on the same boat was notable for the sighting of a 3.5m crocodile on the river bank. And scraping over some of the sand banks of the low river - the rainy season hasn´t yet swollen the waterways.
All of the jungle around Tortuguero is accessible by water channels and so a 6am canoe trip was our quiet way of getting to see things including lots of birds, monkeys as usual, blue jeans frogs and otters. A lovely way to look at wild life.
Including this Caiman (one of many) photographed by Ciaran.
Tortuguero itself is a wonderfully laid back Caribbean town with no vehicles and only sand footpaths for its 1000 permanent inhabitants. A wonderful way to finish with Central America (we are trying to ignore having to be in San Jose for our plane trip).

Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

From Cahuita we took a day trip to the beach town of Puerto Viejo which is the current coolest hangout for 20 somethings in this part of the world (so being old codgers naturally we didn´t stay there). But it does have lots of bikes to hire and we got this tandem for Blair and Ciaran and a single seater with a passenger seat for Romany. Romany the slave driver kept exhorting Susie to peddle faster and telling her she wasn´t tough enough when she couldn´t keep up with the guys. But it was nice to be on bikes despite that, even allowing for the pothole ridden roads and the single geared flattened tyred machines. Some serious sweating was done by those unaccustomed to such exertion.
On our return to Cahuita this two toed sloth was climbing along a power line adjacent to the main street (not much of a main street so he wasn´t disturbed except by us). Great to watch him move so deliberately with the expected energy efficiency but quite a respectable speed (for a sloth).

Cahuita, Costa Rica

Our last land border crossing from Panama back into Costa Rica was preceded by a fabulous jet boat taxi trip from Bocas del Toro through old banana plantation canal waterways worthy of the Shotover jet! After a short taxi trip we had to walk across this one lane rusting bridge back into Costa Rica and then bus on to Cahuita.
Cahuita is a sand street Caribbean town right next to the Cahuita National Park, one of Costa Rica´s most visited parks. For good reason - we got dropped off at one end of the park and walked through 8km of jungle and white sand beach spotting animals all the way.
The kids particularly liked a troop of white faced monkeys who had learnt that tourist equals free food and were very bold and inquisitive, coming right up to us and probing bags if they were not watched closely. While we watched one managed to steal half a banana out of a woman´s hand when she wasn´t looking!
Apart from the monkeys (Howlers as well as white faced), there were sloths, stingrays in the shallows of the Caribbean beach,racoons, squirrels and Susie´s favourite, this brilliant Eyelash Palm Pit Viper. Highly venomous but fairly calm and approachable in this tree. It was one of two snakes we saw this day (the other a vine snake)
This town is so near to the National Park that we had a sloth, agoutis, a toucan, some green and black poison dart frogs and a large green iguana pass through the back garden of our hotel while we were there. Our hotel was nice enough to back onto the jungle but still impressive.