Here's a quick Year in review.
On the 19th May, I asked Tan if she would like to take my hand in marriage and share the rest of our lives together. She said "Yes!!"
After a call from a mate, Brendo, we took the plunge to move overseas. Tania and I both finished up with our long term employers for a change of scenery in Canada.We have visited another six new countries (not including Panama) on this years adventures. We have experienced some amazing things and wild weather. We have had a ball and so glad we started this North American adventure (which has now extended into Central America!)
Here is some video highlights!!
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada - the Maid of the Mist tour at the foot of Niagara Falls. An absolute must!
Cape St Marys, Newfoundland, Canada - the most foggiest place we have visited to date and the wind was so strong!
Points North, Saskatchewan, Canada - first time in a massive helicopter, a Bell 205 or Iriquois (ex-Vietnam chopper) with Jimbo. A fantastic day!!
Points North, Saskatchewan, Canada - Tan got to see her first snow fall. After that we were the only people out in it watching the big fluffy flakes falling from the sky. Oh yeah, we lived at an airport for a while.
Points North, Saskatchewan, Canada - first time driving in a snow storm!
Raven Camp, Saskatchewan, Canada - watching the lakes freeze over from nothing to 5cm thick in three days. I'm in a t-shirt in -8 degrees throwing rocks onto the ice! We lived in a tent by this lake.
Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA - one thing we weren't expecting to see in 2007. Breath taking!
Playa Del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico - I convinced Tan to parasail. It was so tranquil floating 100m in the air over the aqua blue waters of the Carribean.
Volcano Pakaya, Guatemala - standing at the toe of a slow moving, active lava flow watching new crust being made in fromt of my eyes. A geologist's dream!
These are some of our favourite vids of 2007 and we look forward to sharing more adventures in 2008. Happy New Year!!
Being a Sunday and a wonderful day everybody wanted to go to the Volcano. The queue of tour buses was long but most them weren’t full. We did the 10 minute walk to the crater through low lying shrunken cloud forest. Volcano Poas has a large cloudy blue crater lake with steam rising from the surface. The crater is 1,320 mteres wide and 300m deep and sits at an altitude of 2,574m above sea level. The water temperature in the small highly acidic rain filled lake is 40 degrees and the pH approaches zero! Small fumaroles were billowing the acrid smell of sulphur.
Either side of the volcano in the valleys, one towards the Caribbean coast were filled with cloud which was quickly rising up the valley. The look out was somewhat crowded and after Max’s (our tour guide) poor speech on the volcano, we bailed. We took the windy trek up to the Lagoon Botos, another crater filled with rain water. On the walk we saw some squirrels, adding to our fascination for these furry little creatures. The surrounding cloud forest formed a canopy over head. 
There was one plant, called the poor mans umbrella with large leaves. Tan protected herself from the sun for a while.
We had a traditional lunch which in Costa Rica includes rice and beans. These are staples for this area. Grecia is a town along the way and here after the first church burnt down and the second was demolished from an earthquake, some Germans come to the rescue and supplied the town with steel frames to build the church. The steel sat in the park outside the demolished church until one of the German team come back to show the Ticos (Costa Ricans) how to construct it.
In the park we played under this dome that had great acoustics.
We had some great talks with Sheila was a nice girl from Washington DC, who had just about finished her trip around Costa Rica. We got some tips and decided we should go surfing (or learn to) at Manuel Antonio on the Pacific Coast.
The reason for visiting Sarchi was to go to the ox cart factory. It was Sunday so it was all closed up. No problems, our guide showed us through. Imagine going to the factory and turning the power on (in this case it was through the use of diverting water into a water wheel which rotated all the belts and pulleys) to show some tourists? Well Max did and it was great. The belts run saws, lathes, planes and rotated some of the wheels. 
The factory was awesome. No electricity and rustic with rusty corrugated iron, over grown with grass and aromatic wood shavings. The ox carts are no longer in agricultural use but are used for decorative and festive purposes. It’s good this long running traditional factory continues as the ox carts they produce are unique and brightly coloured and we appreciated the work that goes in to making them.
Next stop was the co-op, a huge souvenir shop, with some ultra-tacky stuff. The wooden toucans and tea candle volcano were highlights. To be fair, the co-op had some really good stuff but we weren’t too keen on getting anything as it was the start of our trip here. The co-op had a huge ox cart wheel, but no record books for this one. Tan still hasn’t let me buy anything tacky (or has she???) 
Back at the hotel, Tan hung out on the spacious balcony before going to meet our group for dinner.
Not wanting to leave the hotel as we had to provide our passports to get our luggage, which turned up thirty minutes later.
With the luggage safely in our room, we headed off to have a wander in the city. Four blocks south, the seediness disappeared to Central Avenue, a pedestrianised street which extends for nine blocks. Families were walking along the street and people having fun out doing their Saturday morning shopping. We found Plaza de la Cultura, like a mini Piazza San Marco in Venice (not really) with kids feeding and chasing lots of pigeons. 
We found our next hotel to find out what the plan was for tomorrow. Nothing until 7.30pm, so we arranged a tour outside of San Jose. Back along Central Ave, we had to visit the Museo de Oro Pre-Columbino. Here we learnt about Costa Rican history, the foundation of the nation, herbal medicine from the huge variety of trees and plants and the history of gold and it’s use in the culture.
Afterwards, we went to Café Parisienne in the portico of the Gran Hotel Costa Rica. Very swish and we were both in our best thongs too! I ordered a Costa Rican beer, Rock Ice with Lemon. Here I was thinking it was a beer with lemon. I was right in some ways but so wrong as well. It was like a horrible chelada (like in Merida) in a bottle. Half lemon juice and half beer. It was terrible!! Not I was smiling here only moments before tasting the beer! 
On the way home we walked through the Mercado Central. These markets were winding down with some stalls closed. It was mix of souvenirs and homewares with a large section dedicated to produce and local eateries. We were bemused by the chicken feet and livers for sale but the clincher was the pigs head hanging up for sale! 
We came back admiring the view from our room. Rusty corrugated iron roofs and the occasional burning pile of rubbish. 
We are both happy to be heading out to see the real Costa Rica tomorrow, small villages and a volcano!! 
We were about the only people there are that time of the morning and we had to wander around for ages until a coffee shop finally opened and we could get our café fix.
Our baggage and ourselves had supposedly been checked through to our final destination, San Jose in Costa Rica. We had five hours to kill in Panama with not a whole lot to do. We ate lunch at the one and only café in the airport, wandered around the shops and exhibits and tried to sleep for a while. 
Dan had the Panamanian equivalent to a VB, a Balboa, and bought two very expensive and ultra-tacky fridge magnets of the canal.
Our plane (Mexicana Airlines) left on time and we were off for a short 50 minute flight to San Jose. We landed at San Jose, cleared immigration and headed down to baggage. It became obvious after around 30 minutes of waiting that our bags weren’t going to arrive. An airline representative came and over and between his poor English and our even poorer Spanish, he tried to find out which part of the world our bags might be in. No luck though. We then got palmed off to another representative from the airline who bore the full force of my fury at them losing our bags. We filled in our paperwork, were told to come back in 24 hours if our bags had not arrived and we would be eligible for an intial $100 US compensation. We left the airport (along with a number of other people) with literally the clothes we were wearing and a small daypack each and not all that confident that we would every see our bags again.
A quick side trip to Cancun on Boxing Day to pick up some left luggage. A feast of Mexican at Gory Tacos really hit the spot. The food was much better than the name suggested.
We really haven’t done much in Playa, it’s all about relaxing and getting everything ready for the next adventure to Costa Rica. We leave tomorrow.
We spent most of the afternoon and evening talking with friends and family in Australia where it was already Christmas Day. It’s strange as it doesn’t really feel like Christmas away from family and friends.
We had a pre and post dinner Christmas drinks and the owner of the hotel was drunk and kept us awake until 3am in the morning!
