The Gold Coast has been on of Australia’s leading tourist areas, with everything from wine vineyards to jet boats. Here are just some of the activities that people have been enjoying over the years. To start with there is feasting On Seafood. Since fresh seafood is a standard on most menus throughout Gold Coast, your choices for a seafood feast are practically endless. You can also purchase your own fresh seafood from Charis Seafood, Peters Fish Market or Ferry Road Market. Another option would be to hire a boat or take a chartered fishing expedition or crab cruise, and catch your own seafood feast.

The Gold Coast is famous for its many attractions and there are, in fact, so many that they have to be divided into different categories like extreme sporting activities, theme parks, historical attractions and museums just to keep them straight. Among the well known historical attractions is the Tamborine Mountain Pioneer Homestead, which is situated in the Tamborine District of Queensland’s McPerson Mountain Range and which gives visitors an idea of what it was like to survive in the district’s pioneer settlements of 170 years ago. Extreme sporting activities in the Gold Coast area include the Sling Shot Bungy, which is the only bungy jump on the Gold Coast, and which first hauls tourists 14 stories in the air and then lets them fly free.

Support a Local Team: For a day that the entire family will enjoy, you can watch an Australian rules football game, a rugby game, a basketball game, and even a local iron man contest. You are guaranteed to have a good time.

Treat Yourself To A Spa Day: There is an ever growing list of high class spa centers throughout the Gold Coast. If you are looking for the pleasure of walking around, in the daylight hours, in a plush and comfortable robe and slippers, while be pampered there are many places for you to visit. Some of the notable locations are Golden Door Spa Health Spa, Main Beach and L’qua Spa.

Take A Ride In The Sky: Although a ride in a hot air balloon is not cheap, prices starting at $175.00 per person, it is really worth the price. It is an grand experience, floating over the Gold Coast, taking in the spectacular views from Brisbane to Mt. Warning.

Gold Coast is a beautiful location to visit and a Gold Coast accommodation is easy to decide on, if you log onto www.goldcoastinformation.com.au. They have information on various Gold Coast activities, Gold Coast hotels and much more.

Are you planning your wedding? Where would you most likely want to go for your honeymoon? Are you dreaming of some exotic, secret hideaway perhaps - pure luxury; somewhere to be pampered?

Modern Bride Magazine has now placed Costa Rica in 6th place for dream honeymoon destinations while the Ask Men website considers a Costa Rica Honeymoon should rank in 2nd place for the honeymoon-most-wanted destination.

If you are considering a Costa Rica Honeymoon, where better to go to get it all organized than by the company known as Travelers Haven? This company customizes trips to Costa Rica - not just for those seeking a honeymoon destination but those looking for an adventure trip of a lifetime.

Travelers Haven can arrange a specialized spot for the naturist to hide away from it all; families wanting a sun-drenched beach holiday where the see is safe and the sand slopes gently into calm shallow waters - Travelers Haven is there to make all your dreams materialize.

Fulfill your Costa Rica Honeymoon dream with the expertise of Travelers Haven. In order to fit in with our customers’ schedule we fit the time-table around them - so, no set departure dates. Whether it is beaches with sugar-white sand that trickles through your toes, or fiery volcanoes, fishing or mountain biking - at Travelers Haven we have the package to suit you and, if our packages don’t quite suit - well, we will custom-make one just to fulfill your dream Costa Rica Honeymoon.

Travelers Haven is owned by Costa Ricans and we have the knowledge and expertise about our own country that we can apply to your dream Costa Rica Honeymoon. So, if there are any problems [and we make sure there won't be], we are here at hand, in Costa Rica to sort everything out for you. All you need to do is come along and enjoy yourselves.

If your idea of a Costa Rica Honeymoon is thrills and spills and plenty of white-knuckle squeals, then we have just the thing for you: horseback riding, white-water rafting and kayaking on the sea, a tree-top canopy walk and zip wire adventure should give you enough thrills to last you through until your next holiday.

The romance of a candle-lit dinner for two in the luxurious setting of one of Costa Rica’s many chic restaurants, watching the tropical sun descend below the horizon: is this not an exquisite ending to a perfect day while you are enjoying your Costa Rica Honeymoon?

if you want more information about Costa Rica Honeymoon, feel free to visit their website by clicking on the following link: Honeymoon in Costa Rica

On the North West side of La Fortuna nicely situated close to the Arenal Volcano and in 191 kilometers from San Jos , the Arenal Costa Rica Hotel Kioro is surrounded by the always scenic Costa Rican land and volcanic region, and the relaxing quietness and calmness of nature, offering an exceptional experience.

With an outside appearance of a typical hotel in Arenal, this simple yet luxurious hotel is a mixture traditional and modern life. While indulging in relaxing spirit and call of nature, in one of the 42 suites, offering best panoramic volcano and mountain view, everything is handy; the Arenal Costa Rica Hotel and its surroundings have to offer more than you can simply imagine.

The Arenal Costa Rica Hotel is something more than a luxury hotel; it is an Arenal resort and hotel, a settlement that boasts a great number of attractions and facilities, bringing to the Americas the luxury that is usually found in world famous resorts.

The Arenal Costa Rica Hotel promotes the conservation and preservation of the natural habitat, without any compromise in quality. Every room boasts local artefacts and colourful elements that reflect the traditional culture of Costa Rica.The hotel features rich and generous comfort, modern Costa Rican design and architecture, authentic flavours and style of this unique country and volcanic region.

The luxury hotel in Arenal, the Arenal Hotel Kioro features eight different pools with hydromassage, benefiting from the thermal waters of the region; staying in the pool is a perfect way to annihilate stress and unwind, away from bustling cities and rhythms.

The Thermal Waters of Arenal Kioro, mineral waters for the skin, we have 8 different pools all with excellent hydro-massages to annihilate the stress and to rest to the maximum opportunity.The Arenal Hotel Kioro allows the guests to enjoy the famous Costa Rican hospitality and accommodation, while feeling pampered and much cared of at this Arenal volcano hotel.

The hotel gives the guests the chance to experience in person the wildlife of the Arenal Volcano and the indigenous cultures that lay on the region, organizing small excursions in nearby areas, and all over Costa Rica. Whether you are going on a full day excursion to Venado CAves, or you want to go on a hike tour to the volcano, or just relax by the springs and pools, your stay at the Arenal Hotel Kioro is going to be a truly memorable experience.

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The teenage olive ridley sea turtle was just 15 years old as she waited 500 yards offshore in the warm, tropical eastern Pacific ocean off Ostional Beach in a small land that, more than 500 years earlier, Christopher Columbus had discovered and named “Costa Rica”, the “rich coast.”

The nearly daily afternoon tropical rains of November had slipped away as the marine turtle waited in anticipation. The moon was in its final quarter and, though she did not know why, it was having an effect on her.

As it has done for uncountable eons, the moon was gracing the earth with its timeless phases. Though she could not know it, it was drawing this olive ridley turtle ashore. She was not alone. At first, a few yards away, another Pacific sea turtle joined her, then a third, followed by a dozen, then hundreds, thousands, now tens of thousands of marine sea turtles. For more than 100,000,000 years it had been thus: vast migrations of ancient creatures, culminating when the moon was in this phase.

Life is always magical. Just a few months earlier, this turtle was foraging in the middle of the Pacific Ocean more than 2,500 miles away. And the tens of thousands now alongside her were scattered across several million square miles of ocean.

Although there was plenty of food far out in the Pacific, something had begun to stir within her. Hundreds of thousands of marine turtles felt the same timeless need to return to Costa Rica. They, and she, were all going back to where they had hatched.

Now, months later, she waited in the soft moonlight just a few hundred meters from her destination. She was ready. Over the thousands of miles she had traversed, she had encountered several different male olive ridley sea turtles in the clear tropical waters and bred with them in the deep ocean. Like her, they too were being affected by something unseen, a force nearly as old as life itself. It was something so compelling that her species had been going back to the same Costa Rica beach since the days of dinosaurs.

In the tropical night this olive ridley sea turtle was waiting. She had somehow returned to the very beach where she had hatched in 1995. We do not know how a Pacific marine turtle finds the exact beach where she started life. There are only a handful of nesting beaches on earth and they are not very big. In fact Ostional Beach is only a few hundred meters long. Now part of Costa Rica’s Ostional National Wildlife Refuge, it is almost certainly the most important olive ridley marine turtle nesting site on earth. Incredibly, in 1995, the year this turtle hatched, some half a million female olive pacific sea turtles had come ashore to nest here in huge waves. These massive invasions are called “arribadas.”

For fifteen years, the mother of this hundred pound marine turtle joined massive Costa Rica arribadas annually and she would have done so again except that she drowned in an illegal shrimping net just a few weeks before. Thousands more were killed by long line commercial fishermen. Even more died needlessly by swallowing plastic bags carelessly discarded. So many have been killed, the race is endangered.

Of course, the hundreds of thousands of olive ridleys just offshore know none of this. In the tropical pale moonlight, we can see them even though they are still half a mile away. There are now so many gathered that it almost seems one could walk on their backs for at least a mile and never get a wet foot. We can only gaze in wonder and awe as they gather silently. These ancient beings will never know that they were here long before there was a dinosaur walking the earth. They cannot appreciate our capacity for destruction or efforts at preservation. They only know that this little stretch of beach is where they’ve always come.

Then, though no one knows why, it happens. As quietly as they first appeared, as silently as they gathered, their patience has been rewarded and they begin to come ashore. A single olive ridley turtle followed by a second. Then there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands—even more than that—each intent on one task: bringing new life. All night they come. And all day, day after day. It is a wonder of magnificent Costa Rica and as timeless as the phases of the moon. It is the spectacular display of life called Arribada.

A Costa Rica scientific fin and satellite tagging project recently got underway at Cocos Island studying its green sea turtle and hawksbill visitors.

Conservation organizations and marine researchers spent about 30 hours going to the island in their pursuit for more knowledge about these ancient marine animals.

They are engaged in a kind of scientific working Costa Rica vacation that they anticipate will contribute to preserving these marvelous reptilian mariners now endangered in much of their range.

Cocos Island was described by the famous seaman, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever encountered. The small island, just nine square miles in area, lies some 340 miles off the Pacific shoreline of Costa Rica, almost halfway to the Galapagos Islands.

It was not the tropical sunsets and beaches that captured the imagination of Captain Cousteau. Its beauty is just off its shores, under water, in a place that Costa Ricans have voted as one of the Seven Wonders of Costa Rica. It is there that one finds priceless treasure: vast schools of fish, porpoises, whales and turtles.

Since the days of dinosaurs sea turtles have swum the Seven Seas of the world.

The mighty Tyrannosaurus fed on them more than 200 million years ago as they paddled ashore to lay their eggs on ancient beaches.

These ancient beings roam all the planet’s seas except the frozen Antarctic and Arctic.

Sadly , no more. Today, our indiscriminate development of beaches and plundering of their nests have put them at risk. Millions have been in South America to make expensive shoes for Europeans.

Jacque Yves Cousteau presciently remarked that: “If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.” A being visiting from another galaxy might conclude that such a result would be just.

But, conservation organizations have not given up and are working to restore at least some turtle populations. Scientists are now tagging pelagic turtles like the green sea turtle in far-away places like Cocos Island. Some turtles are fitted with flipper tags while others bear satellite transmitters to help track their movements and it has been discovered that some species roam across thousands and thousands of miles of oceans, from tropical waters to the deep waters off Canada.

We cannot undo the past but the men and women who tag sea turtles know that we do not have to be doomed to repeat it.

The writer, Victor Krumm, lives in tropical Costa Rica. Follow his fun site Costa Rica Vacations and for info about great beaches check out Costa Rica Beaches

There are many different types of people who find themselves craving a bit of adventure, yet don’t have the funds to just go off into the wild blue yonder. Some go backpacking - working along the way picking fruit or doing bar jobs. Others choose to set sail on the many different cruise ship operators around the world. The major difference I guess would be that you are being paid to travel around the globe instead of going from place to place earning enough money to move on to the next destination.

Working on a cruise ship often invokes images of adventure, fun, alcohol and lots of sex. Speaking as one who has done it all this and more is all true.

When you work on a cruise ship you eat, sleep and breathe life on the seas. A major bonus of being part of a cruise ship crew is that you are being paid to have fun and adventure. Alcohol is cheap as chips (as little as a dollar a drink), and you’ll find yourself amongst likeminded people who all want the same things. Not to mention that there is a lot of room swapping and sleepovers.

One of the best things about travelling this way is that everything is paid for including your room, food and board and the pay can sometimes be quite substantial. People who have been at it for a few years or more often own their own houses outright and those that have chosen to do it as a career are often quite wealthy.

It must be mentioned that cruise ship life is not always for everyone and there have been people who have signed on only to catch the next plane home again. Yet those that are more willing to give things a go and get along with people, find that they have the time of their lives. As part of working on the ships, you end up making friends with people from all over the world. One thing to keep in mind that cruise ship life can be intense. Allot of cruise ships operate 24/7 and therefore you could find yourself having time off rather than whole days. However the people I have come across do not find this to be an issue as the work they do is totally an enjoyable experience.

One important thing to consider is that different cruise companies have different levels of freedom or privileges whilst on the ship. Cruise companies such as Disney, which is a Christian Family Values type of Company, can be quite restrictive on their crewmembers. In example I believe that you have to be a non-smoker and alcohol is heavily frowned upon when working for Disney. From what I can tell, the best Cruise company to work for in terms of freedom and rates of pay is Princess Cruises.

If the money or the thrill adventure is enticing you to think about applying, make sure to think about it carefully before signing up. Things that must be taken into account is the fact that you will have initial expenses that include a full medical check up, sea safety training as well as travelling expenses to meet up with the cruise ship, after which this initial expense the company generally pays. You are signing up for a contract period of about 6 - 8 months that will mean you will be away from your family and friends. (Although most cruise ship companies offer very cheap deals for family members to visit). If it still sounds enticing and you decide to take on the experience then you will surely have an experience of a lifetime.