Day 2 Wednesday 26th September: climbing into the Rain(forest!)

Mike writes:

5.00AM start from Atlanta to catch an early flight to Costa Rica via Fort Lauderdale. We arrived in San Jose, collected our car

just as the heavens opened and headed off down the Pan American highway across the Cordillera Central – reaching 11,000 feet – with the rain forest living up to its name.

Low cloud obscured spectacular views which were glimpsed only occasionally through the mist and rain. Despite Costa Rica’s reputation for appalling roads, they were pretty good with only a couple of sections washed away by landslides. Our average speed was severely constrained (to about 20mph) by numerous trucks crawling up the mountains.

If that’s typical of Latin American roads we won’t be in Ushuaia until Christmas 2030!

We reached our salubrious accommodation – Rain Ecolodge – by 4PM.  This one definitely won’t break the bank. It’s a shed in someone’s garden in the hills but none the worse for that. Local hostelries were distinctly average but beer was purchased and we retreated to the shed to provide the mosquitoes with an evening meal.