This was taken right before I went up to the top of the Empire State Building. I was hoping to also include some pictures I took from up there, but they seem to have vanished. Hopefully I have them hidden away somewhere…

I think when I was a kid, my parents and I had driven through New York (not Manhattan, we had kind of skirted the round the actual centre of the city), and this was actually the first time I had visited the Big Apple.

So of course I had to take the mandatory Times Square photo.

This was pretty much as far as you could walk on the volcanic sand beach (that’s why the sand is black, not white), because you got to all these rocks which made it hard to walk any further (there’s even more rocks behind me in the picture).

The tiny red roof in the distance was the hotel that I was staying at, which as you can see, was pretty much the only thing around.

We on a hike through the rain forest in Costa Rica, during which it rained pretty much non-stop. I wasn’t complaining though, because it is, after all, the rain forest (and it was rainy season in Costa Rica as well).

It was really beautiful, and I quickly snapped this picture as our guide was leading us through the forest.

This was the view from where I was staying in Costa Rica. Like I said in another post, it was the rainy season, so it was often cloudy in the morning. But there were lots of sunny days too — if you’re going there, don’t be discouraged to go during the rainy season, it’s actually quite beautiful.

There were lots of days where it was nice to sit under the open bar in the afternoon when it was raining and have tea, coffee or a drink. Very relaxing — it was nice to just watch and listen to the rain.

As you can see, there was really nothing around this hotel. Monkeys were often swinging in the trees near the hotel, and there were great big lizards roaming around near the beach (not to mention all kinds of little crabs that were scurrying all over the place constantly). What a great trip.

I saw a few different volcanoes in Costa Rica (with this obviously being one of them). It was a cloudy day, but the weather cooperated for a little while and gave us a clear view of the volcano to take some pictures.

The much cooler (not literally, sorry for the bad pun) part of the volcano experience was seeing the volcano at night. There were actually big red-hot rocks that came tumbling down the side of the volcano (this is Arenal Volcano by the way, which you can see some cool pictures of here). Although there weren’t lava streams gushing down the side of the mountain (OK, I had hoped there would be), it was still really cool to see.

I went to a natural hot spring while I was in Costa Rica (which was fantastic in case you were wondering), and while I was walking back to the main building from the hot springs, I spotted this lizard sitting on a leaf.

Since it gets dark at around six o’clock all year in Costa Rica (being close to the equator I guess), the bright flash and dark background made for a surprisingly great picture. I had really hoped that this one would turn out well, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Near the hotel on the volcanic sand beach, there was a little natural pool (which was shallow and murky and not generally good for swimming in) which kind of receded into the jungle. These plants were growing directly out of the water, and made for a thick wall of vegetation dividing the beach from the forest.