Lovin' Los Angeles

Our flight back from New Zealand to the UK was via LA, with a rather long two month layover. This meant that the end of Honeymoon Part 3, and our three year wedding anniversary was to be spent in the City of Angels. We were determined to go out with a bang. We'd booked a hire car in advance and two nights 'aboard' a mystery hotel on lastminute.com. There wasn't much mystery though. With lastminute describing it as 'an iconic hotel on water' - a quick google revealed that we were to be staying on the Queen Mary - one of Britain's most famous pre-war Ocean Liners, now resident at Los Angeles' port at Long Beach.

As you might imagine, we were pretty excited about all of this and so once we'd gotten over the extreme driving/navigating to get us from the airport to Long Beach we thoroughly enjoyed exploring our home for two nights.

View from our porthole

It's only taken three years but we finally managed to get ourselves a free honeymoon upgrade - from normal to deluxe double - thankyouverymuch!

HUGE bed in our cabin
which hadn't changed a bit from the 1930s!

The original shower taps with
salt and freshwater options - alas no longer operational

The Queen Mary looking as impressive as ever

After two months of rice and beans, tacos, quesadillas and the like we were very ready for some proper American food. A quick bus ride over to downtown Long Beach and we found a craft beer house which was doing $3 pints that night and had a rather epic food menu. Cue a very long decision process which resulted in us both having enormous burgers. Yum!

Decisions!

With a tiny bit of room left we popped next door to a diner and shared a milkshake for some old school romance.

All American

And a bit more adventuring around the hotel/ship before bed...

As far as the eye can see

The next day we were up and off (well, after a quick all you can eat breakfast). Our plan was to drive straight to Hollywood which is easier said than done in the massive sprawling city that is LA. We managed it though and were soon parking up and walking the famous 'Walk of Fame'.

Me hanging with Marilyn

The Walk of Fame

A few stars

Carpe diem - we agree

Matt also made a new friend

Next up - a drive along LA's famous Mullholland Drive. We'd heard that a lot of the world's biggest stars live here and whilst we didn't spot anyone, we did get a stunning view of the Hollywood sign.

Honeymooning in Hollywood

And generally loved cruising along what must be one of the most beautiful residential streets in the world!

Matt and our wheels

After an hour or so of driving we left LA behind and were driving through the hills of Southern California. Really stunning countryside and definitely an area which could form the start of a pretty awesome Californian road trip! (one day...)

Welcome to California

A quick stop in Malibu and we realised we hadn't eaten since our epic breakfast. D'Amore's pizza place, with its self proclaimed number 1 rating, sounded just right so we popped in and ordered a slice each. As it turns out, a reality TV show 'Malibeauties' was being filmed there that afternoon, following the owner's wife (an ex Baywatch star) as she went about her daily glamorous life in Malibu. We were deemed 'perfect' for a brief appearance in the show. Our parts involved eating pizza, talking about pizza and, well, that's about it. It was great fun, if a little bizarre - we've decided not to give up the day jobs just yet.

Pizza to the Stars - that's us by the way

Soon enough we were heading back to the Queen Mary on the six lane freeway, ducking and diving amongst these beasts:

Just a little run about

A quick freshen up and we were ready for a night out on the Queen Mary. This last night of the trip/honeymoon happily coincided with our three year wedding anniversary (not sure how many people can say that). We decided to splash out and enjoyed a perfect evening eating and drinking and celebrating what has undoubtedly been the best three years of our lives.

The Observation Bar

An 'Old Fashioned' cocktail for Matt and bubbles for me!

More bubbles over an absolutely delicious dinner

The next morning there was just time to pop over to Santa Monica and Venice Beach (Muscle Beach) before heading to the airport...

Santa Monica Pier

Giving those swimmer's arms the love they deserve

Before we knew it, it was time to board our Air New Zealand flight back to London, bringing this mad, wonderful three years to a close. Fingers crossed someone's there to greet us...

Welcome to the Jungle!

With La Fortuna disappearing into the distance, accessed by the famous jeep-boat-jeep with no jeeps in sight, we were heading even further in to the middle of nowhere, the Caribbean Coast. Good things come to those who wait, and after a taxi, bus, walk, bus, boat, boat, walk - we were finally at our destination. Slowed down by dried out rivers, broken down boats and terrible roads we were hoping it would be worth it! 

Billed as a "Little Amazon", Tortuguero is an isolated village sitting on a narrow strip of land between the wetlands and the sea, surrounded by national park and no roads.

The first boat of the day

Within minutes of getting off the boat, we could see the area was teeming with wildlife. Here's a scary amount of eagles soaring overhead, ominously following us.

The birds!

 It was good to be back on the Caribbean, but no swimming this time due to bull sharks and rips!

All to ourselves

As the island is only reachable by boat, there's no motorised transport at all. Everyone is going slow on foot, or wobbling around on modified kid's bikes.

Rush hour traffic

With three nights in Tortuguero, we were always keeping our eyes peeled for the big ticket animals that we wanted to spot:

What's that?!

Sometimes you could look hard and see nothing. Sometimes, you'd be laid in a hammock relaxing and the wildlife would come to you. This cute little couple slowly (and we mean slowly!) lumbered above our heads into our garden:

A rare moment of being awake

Hugs

It's a hard life being a baby sloth

With the wetland national park on our doorsteps, we thought best to hire a professional's eyes so that we didn't miss too much. Looking around town, we thought we'd go for the most legitimate looking establishment we could find. This one looked promising:

Supporting local business!

Up before the sparrows could fart at 5am, we wandered down to meet Castor and his boat for a morning tour of the natural canals by canoe. He had an amazing talent for spotting and hearing things a long way off, however camouflaged. But our first spot of the day were these parrots, sounding like an old married couple arguing.

I told you it was a left turn...

Things got harder to find though, Castor had to park us right in front of this iguana so we could see it. Shortly after the Iguana spotted us and fell into the water, apparently they can swim!

Chillin out, relaxin, maxin all cool...

Looking for breakfast

Another hard spot!

It was great touring the waterways, just us and another bigger boat - well away from the big motorised tour boats.

A lesser spotted boat of Germans

But sometimes we were the ones being watched and followed...

A spider monkey!

Me? Posing? No... but do take a photo

Some of the lizards got a bit too big for our liking. These cayman crocodiles can leap 2m out the water!

Creepy

Hide and seek

A big hope for us was to see some toucans, just before turning round we got the spot!

You reckon I've got a big beak? Have you seen yours?

Whilst other birds were a bit happier to be seen...

Flapper

A tiger heron searching for brekkie

And the monkeys reappeared again, to wave us goodbye.

King of the swingers, the jungle VIP

With a day pass for the national park that was good for the whole day, we ventured back in by foot in the late afternoon on the trails. Sadly all we saw without an eagle eyed guide was some lizards. Doing, the, erm, natural thing that lizards do.

Lizzy style

On that perfect, romantic segue... that pretty much ends our time in Costa Rica and Central America, with only one night in the capital San Jose before we fly out to Los Angeles for two nights and then home. It's been a great two months exploring this little corner of the world. Feeling brave, we ventured out to the town's one and only nightclub - definitely a place that's just for the locals. But wow, do the locals have a good spot for a beer and a sunset view. Three years of honeymooning, and we're still having a blast.

Cheers!

High, not dry, in La Fortuna

Coming down from the 'highs' of the Extremo Canopy Tour we sadly said goodbye to Monteverde and set off for the fabled 'jeep-boat-jeep' transfer to La Fortuna - another of the pearls in Costa Rica's crown.

Despite the jeep-boat-jeep not actually involving any jeeps at all, the journey was super enjoyable - with epic views all the way on jeep ride number one (read minibus):

Costa Rica is stunning

... our first views of Volcan Arenal on the boat leg across Lake Arenal:

This volcano only stopped erupting five years ago -
the locals are weirdly gutted! 

And a quick, second jeep ride (yes, you guessed - another mini bus) took us all the way to our digs for three nights - Cerro Chato Ecolodge - a collection of cabins in a lush setting overlooking the volcano.

Just time on arrival for a quick explore around town and a 'casada' (typical Costa Rican lunch/dinner). This was the best yet and worthy of a photo. Chicken, rice, beans, fried plantain, coleslaw, mashed chickpeas (we think) and the best thing on the plate, mashed yukka. This stuff was the bomb!!!

Delish

Another night walk home accompanied by the dulcid tones of toads, a mini snake being attacked by a million ants (there's nothing these bad boys can't do!):

Completely defence-less against the unstoppable ant force

... and this little gem outside our room:

Matt was "maybe 90%" sure it was dead, so picked it up.

We were up bright and early the next morning for a day of hiking. The owner of our lodge had recommended hiking to Cerro Chato, a green lagoon set in a volcanic crater in the shadow of the big one. There was the minor caveat to his recommendation that it's a pretty tough steep climb. Undeterred we set off.

Sweaty after half an hour we wondered
why we weren't horse riding instead

The hike to the top was, it turned out, as hard as described but well worth it for this stunner of a view

Personally I'm pleased it's not still erupting

Cooling off in the jungle

The lagoon itself was a further 20 minute hike down an even steeper path:

Tempting cool water!

Just got to get down to get in!

And relax!

A lovely refreshing swim later we headed back up and then back down to more beautiful views:

Finally emerging from the jungle

The local livestock - huge ears!

By the time we got back we were ready for another cool dip - this time in the little plunge pool where we were staying:

Fun times

The next morning we decided the one thing we needed more of was watery fun, so another hike commenced, this time to the Catarina Waterfalls. Again, you never know whether to believe the hype but these were absolutely epic:

It must rain here sometimes. A lot.

A bit more wildlife spotting near the entrance:

What a tail!

Before getting to the bottom:

Power shower extreme

Hiking the full loop:

Swing bridge time

And finally getting in!

Matt heading in for a good scrub

That afternoon we decided that yet more exercise and water was in order so we went on a run around to the other side of the volcano to one of the many hot springs resorts. This one had the added bonus of a butterfly garden, ant farm (why??) and crocodiles.

Getting up close finally to one of the
beautiful butterflies we've been admiring.

The main reason for selecting this particular resort was the fact that it has slides - for adults! Combining hot pools and slides was, it turned out, a dream result. Endless fun for Matt, and a chance to soothe aching limbs for me!

SPLASH!

Only one more stop left in Costa Rica - a tiny peninsular on the Caribbean Coast - only accessible by boat. Hopefully no jeeps this time... Or swimming required, as the crocodiles will be wild this time!