Hallo allemaal!

Finally found some time to work on our blog again. We flew into Quito in Ecuador last night and are staying in Rio Amazonas (http://www.hotelrioamazonas.com/), a luxurious hotel which we are not accustomed to anymore so we are both very happy troupers at this very moment. Plus we have a very fast internet connection here in the hotel so we have fulfilled the popular request for more pictures and have uploaded a new photo series.

Costa Rica was great! It is really the perfect holiday destination. Linda and Marius, you will love it when you come over in November!

We spend three weeks studying Spanish in Monteverde and have learned a lot. For all your language geeks out there: we now know all the verb tenses in the infinitive and have started studying the subjunctive. This brought back some bad memories for Thomas who studied this verb tense back in school during French classes...and sucked at it. We are now also able to have real conversations in Spanish. In fact, half of the time our classes comprised conversation practice, whereby teachers try to involve you in discussions on all kinds of topics, from emancipation, gay rights, men beating women to the Islamic invasion in Europe...yes really. (Nathan, thanks a lot for the interesting discussions, quite unique to encounter a Republican American that has seen Fitna and has a nuanced opinion about it, hope we stay in touch!).

Other than Spanish classes, there was a lot to do in Monteverde. The nature surrounding Monteverde is absolutely stunning, unlike anything we have ever seen before. It is part of a cloud forest, which means dense jungle and lots of rain. At the same time it's also a farmland with lots of Quakers (farmers that emigrated from the US in the 1940's and 1950's to evade military draft), grass plains were many cows are chewing the day away. The combination is just very typical. Monteverde caters to the active nature loving tourist community and it is more or less a big theme park. You can book all kind of activities such as jungle treks, horse back rides, canopying (more about that later) in any hostel. Furthermore Monteverde has a number of wildlife museums where you can creep yourself out watching snakes, frogs and insects. Given that we had three weeks to spare there we did all the activities and visited almost all the museums.

Probably the most fun activity we did was canopying.

See http://www.monteverdeextremo.com/welcome.html. They attach you with a wheel to a big metal cable and then let you roll down the cable at an amazing speed from one end of a valley to the next. Not for the faint of hearted since the longest canopy was almost 800 meters long and 80 meters high. Part of the canopy tour involved the so called 'tarzan swing'. Here, they attach you to a rope, push you down a ledge, then you fall down about 10 meters before starting a huge swing of at least 30 meters diameter and you go back and forth like tarzan for a couple of minutes. You all should have seen the look of sheer panic on Mischa's face and have heard her squeal like a little pig... Unfortunately do not have a lot of footage of this historic moment as half way through it started raining like crazy...as always...

Our hostel was absolutely fantastic. The first two weeks we had a small room without windows, which made it very damp and fungussy and made our clothes smell like wet dog constantly. Our own mistake, given that our reservation had been for a room without private bathroom but we finally decided that a private bathroom would be the minimum comfort that we required...and this was the only room left with private bathroom. But we liked the owner Ronnie and his family so much that we just didn't bother looking for an alternative. They had a nice kitchen area where we made our homework and met a lot of travelers from all over the world (Nanette & Jeroen: heel erg dank je wel voor de biertjes. We hebben ervan genoten en er uiteraard een aantal op jullie gedronken!!). After two weeks, Mischa grew all kinds of allergies on her skin and around her eyes that made her eyes swell up like if she'd been beaten up and made everyone look at Thomas with disgusts. So we finally asked Ronnie if we could change room and he gave us a 3 person room with a beautiful view over Monteverde.

One weekend we did a hiking tour with Ronnie and his brother to a befriended farmer's property located in the middle of nowhere. On this land, Ronnie and the farmer build a beautiful and simple lodge that overlooked an active Vulcan called Arenal. It is hard to describe but this was probably the most beautiful place we have ever been to and an experience we will never ever forget. The water we used (to cook and wash) came from a little river, which ran just past the lodge, light was provided by candles and the view of the volcano was simply amazing, especially at night when you could see the lava running down the volcano. Everything was just so quite, with only the sounds of the animals in the forest ...nature in its purest form...perfect!! Unfortunately, we have no pictures to remember it. Our little Canon Ixus has died on us and we forgot to reload the batteries of our big camera before we went on the hiking trip. Big grumble!

After 3 weeks of studying it was time for a holiday ;-)). Following an emotional goodbye from Ronnie, his wife Yoselin and their beautiful kids Yazmin, Daniel and Jeremy, we traveled to a place called Playa Brasilito located on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. There we stayed at a beautiful little hotel conveniently called Hotel Brasilito (http://www.brasilito.com/) - Linda & Marius: zeker een aanrader, de zonsondergangen waren fantastisch! It was a big change from Monteverde: warm and sunny, something that we had not seen in over a month, a great way to reload the internal battery. Playa Brasilito and even more Playa Conchal next to it are known to be Costa Rica's most beautiful beaches. And we must say they were quite stunning. Kilometers of empty beaches, fringed by palms and forests, blue sea, what more do you need? Well...probably some action, which is why we booked a 2 hour squad tour over the beaches and through the jungle, rives and mud, awesome (see pictures)!!

We finally decided to take a giant leap and took a public bus back to San Jose from Playa Brasilito...and it sucked...bigtime. Almost eight hours rolled up with no legroom and temperatures of over 30 degrees, hardly any air to breathe and the strangest odors floating around the bus all the way trough. Yup, we have a long way to go to becoming hardcore backpackers...;-))

In San Jose we encountered our first real set back. A month ago we left Mischa's BCD (the dive vest that controls your floatation/buoyancy underwater) with a diving shop in San Jose and agreed with the owner that we would pick it up on the day before we would fly to Ecuador. Guess what: the store was closed on the agreed date and the owner of the diveshop never picked up his cellphone...ouch! We still have not heard anything from the SOB.... when we do get a hold of him, he is in deep trouble!!

Yesterday we celebrated Mischa's birthday. She is 33 now!! It was not the greatest day for a birthday: we got up at 03.30am to catch a plane to Miami at 08.00am and we arrived in Ecuador at 08.00pm. Totally exhausted we managed to grab a bite in the hotel before entering into coma at around 10.00pm.

Tomorrow, we will leave for a diving cruise to the Galapagos on the MY Deep Blue (http://www.deepbluegalapagosdiving.com/) and we will be looking forward to more Hammerheads and hopefully whalesharks, manta's and see lions. We will be back with more stories in a couple of weeks.

Hasta la Pasta!!

Thomas and Mischa