White water rafting

Our previous taxi driver picked us up at 6am for the 7am ferry back to the mainland. There we met Katelin and got a taxi ($18) for the half hour drive up a very bumpy road to Omega Tours Ecolodge. It's a beautiful jungly place near the Rio Cangrejal in Pico Bonito owned by a German couple. The husband has built the place from scratch and done a great job. We have two rooms, sharing a bathroom with 2 other rooms but they are unoccupied so we have the place to ourselves.

We went on one of the walking trails within the property's grounds and got some lovely views and passed orange and rambutan trees, plus saw a small red snake with black bands which apparently could kill you before you made it to hospital!!

At midday we had spaghetti (and saw a squirrel - who knew they were here?!) and waited a short while for our food to settle and then donned life jackets and helmets. We spent an hour or so swimming in the river and jumping off rocks. It was fun but a bit slow paced for my liking - we seemed to spend ages waiting for no reason. Hannah held a horrible jumping wolf spider.

Then we boarded our raft and spent an hour going down class 2 & 3 rapids. It was great fun but fairly tame and a bit slow as we stopped between each rapid to discuss the next one. Katelin managed to unexpectedly fall out towards the end and was swept across a few rocks but luckily nothing too painful. At the end we purposefully flipped the boat and all fell in. Anna freaked out thinking a spider was on her; turns out a little fish was caught in her life jacket.

We enjoyed dark n stormys at happy hour and then went searching for fireflies but there weren't many around. Anna and I shared nachos, veggie lasagne and homemade ice cream (360L). The food is quite pricey but very good and big enough to share luckily.

Anna and the barmaid, Helen, serenaded us with the guitar. As we sat at the bar we could hear a tiny frog making a lot of noise, plus a ton of cicadas.

Price: $70 including room, rafting and lunch.Read more