Volcán Arenal (Linda Dunford)

Yesterday we decided to do a little something more interesting with our day of travel. We booked ourselves on a trek to La Fortuna that uses various modes of transport, bus, boat and horse.

We were picked up at our hotel and drove for about two hours to a bus stop along the edge of Lake Arenal. There we met our guide 'Nixon' who introduced us to our horses. Linda got the youthful frisky dude and I got the old and tired one. After rudametary instruction to both of us we started our journey. Nixon was the ultimate gentlemanly 'buchanero'. Through broken Spanish and English we chatted away as we ambled along the shores of Lake Arenal. He was full of information and showed us all manner of wildlife from monkeys, squirrels, ants, wasps, numerous birds (the colourful small ones to vultures) and took plenty of photos of us at especially picturesque spots. We rode for two and a half hours and then stopped for watermellon and pineapple at the shore. It was a nice pit stop as my ass was killing me! more...

View full photo

When it rains in Tortuguero, it pours, and when it clears it is one of the most beautiful areas in Costa Rica.

The very small village of Tortuguero is nestled between the powerful Caribbean Sea and the scenic Tortuguero River. It takes only minutes to walk the dirt trails from one side to the other and while there are handful of local hotels and restaurants there are no cars as there are no roads to come by. Travel to the area is only by plane and boat, rush hour is a few dugout canoes paddling the quiet river and noise is the hum of the occasional boat motor droning on in the distance like the buzz of a bumblebee. In this quiet stillness the surroundings seem to come alive. And alive it is! more...

MyTripJournal customers using paid (standard or premium) sites have access to a number of tools to preserve their cherished memories. These are listed in your Archive Center (link from your Update Center) and include:

1. Html archive. This is a back-up copy of the visitor's view of your website, including your maps, written entries, video clips and photos in computer display quality. When you hit 'download html' your website is sent to you by email as a 'zip' file. Once decompressed by you, you need only open the file called 'index' and your site will open on your PC.

2. Guestbook. While the html archive includes guest messages that you've chosen to display to your visitors, the 'Guestbook' archive allows you to download all messages remaining in your in-box. This will include any messages you've elected to keep private but not deleted. Hit the 'Download Messages' link from your Archive Center.

3. Premium subscribers are also entitled to download their original quality photos. This will usually provide you with a much higher resolution version for printing purposes, which you may easily burn onto a CD. Premium customers are, of course, also entitled to request a CD or DVD of their website in the mail, without cost.

Your material can be archived either before or after your website closes, provided it has not yet been deleted from our storage system. Within reason, you may archive your material as frequently as you wish.

For further details on archiving, please visit your Archive Center or our FAQs.

In May and June we asked whether you would be interested in the ability to order a printed memory book of your MyTripJournal website.

Your survey responses indicated a strong demand for printed memory books. We also learned that customers would prefer their books to be configured in different ways.

We are proceeding to investigate how best to configure these in an attractive, cost-efficient way, and hope to be in a position to provide more info late in the summer (or winter for those of you Down Under).

We sincerely appreciate so many of you having taken the time to respond.