I woke up at 5:25am in my damp, smelly, poky box room to find that none of my clothes had dried overnight. This room, at the 'right on' and 'charming' Hostel Lys (note to self: Lonely Planet guides are not written by people like me) is pretty much the worst place I've ever laid my head. With a rancid old foam mattress, a hole in the chipboard divan, some wood-eating bug and the obligatory broken mossie screens, it pretty much nails the backpacker stereotype. Fortunately after the flight from Jaco it wasn't hard to sleep, and so when I woke this morning I didn't feel as vile as I should at that hour.

After a highly calorific breakfast of rice and beans, ham, egg, cheese and bread - all of it fried - we took a boat trip to Isla Tortuga, which is an amazing beach and also a nature reserve. On the way we stopped off for a spot of snorkelling, which was fun despite low visibility due to plankton but then on the beach we had a barbecue fish lunch cooked for us, which was absolutely delicious. Yesterday evening I had fish with almonds - I think it was mahi mahi, or dorado - and that was also exceptionally tasty. I'm looking forward to rather a lot more fish on this holiday :-)

And then on the way back, something marvellous. Our captain - who looked so much like Val Kilmer I couldn't stop staring - spotted a pod of dolphins and swung the boat round to meet them. Just as you hear and see on the telly, they played around the boat, jumping our of the water, riding its wake, diving beneath it and surfacing the other side. It was exhilirating! I've seen plenty of other animals that you'd think would be impressive, like whales, sharks, lions and giraffes, but none of those animals left the same sense of wonderful thrill that we all got from seeing the dolphins. I can quite understand the effectiveness of dolphin therapy now.