Writing to you today from the dock in Paquera, Costa Rica…we
missed the car ferry to Puntarenas by about 10minutes, so now waiting for 2
1/2hrs for the next one…no wifi here, but hopefully I’ll get this posted before
the end of the day (Tuesday). We’ve been
in Costa Rica now for 5 days and it’s been raining non-stop…not sure how much
of it is because of the tropical storm Matthew and how much is just because of
rainy season…radar shows us being south of Matthew, but who knows? All I know
is that we probably should have spent the extra $7/day for the 4WD vehicle
instead of the little Nissan tiida (the central American version of the Altima),
we’ve been fording tiny rivers and huge potholes in this little thing…let’s
just hope that I don’t have to try out the rental car insurance coverage! So
far so good. I know what you’re thinking, rental car? We have been busing it
through 5 countries and decided to splurge on the rental car, it’s really not
much of a splurge, we’re just using our activity budget money for the week on
the car…and considering the cost of transportation in this country; we might be
saving money in some cases. Main reason
for getting the car was so we could see more of the country…Costa Rica is
beautiful and amazing in so many ways, but because we ended up spending over 3
weeks in Nicaragua, we set a time limit on Costa to 8 days. Primarily because
we are behind schedule and because everything is so expensive here! Costa
definitely has most developed tourism infrastructure of all the places we have
been. This infrastructure is great in a
lot of ways, there are tons of activities, atv’s, canopy tours, rafting,
volunteering, museums, little zoos of frogs & butterflies (we learned a lot
about frogs!, pictures to come) , tons of beautiful places to stay, the list
goes on and on. Of course, with this
infrastructure comes the high prices…but, it’s all good, you just adapt a little,
just like in belize, we find hostels to stay in that have kitchens so we can
cook our own food, that helps a lot! As Sophia mentioned in her last blog, the
capital city San Jose is awesome, it’s developed like a legitimate big city and
buildings seem to be to code with escalators and modern conveniences. We
arrived on a Friday and with so many people out and about it almost felt like a
little NYC. Also as Sophia mentioned, the next day we went to Montverde,
another very well developed tourist area, felt a lot like Estes Park, a
mountain town with tons of little shops, restaurants and cute hotels. But I gotta say, this place was a bit of a
shocker for me, I don’t know that we’ve seen so many Americans in one place
yet! Maybe I haven’t done a good enough job of explaining some of the more isolated
places we have visited…as I may have mentioned, in El Salvador we went almost
an entire week without seeing one other tourist, we gone through countless
cities were horses are an extremely viable means of transportation. Many towns
we’ve visited have 75% or more the men carry machete’s everywhere they go
because it’s required for work and getting around! I remember a spot in
Guatemala where all the woman carry baskets of dirty clothes on their head down
to a 10x10 pool where they all washed their clothes together. Hopefully that
gives you a bit of an idea as to why this place in Monteverde with $5 rum and
cokes and a dance floor packed with 19yr old America kids appeared a bit odd to
me. Not bad, just odd and not what I was
expecting.
So, moving on, we stayed last night in Montezuma, a cool
little beach town known for good nearby surfing and great night life (in dry
season). In rainy season, the town is pretty dead, handful of surfers, hippies
selling bracelets and other handmade crafts and a few travelers trying to wait
out the never ending rain. The rain really does kill most activities, except
drinking and gambling, those activities seem to be just fine…lol. And now,
sitting at the boat dock, this boat will save us from driving through about
15miles of washed out, muddy, hole ridden dirt road and will drop us off real
close to the interamericana hwy, from there we head south the Jaco and Playa
Hermosa (Hermosa beach, baby!) hopefully we arrive around sundown. With a
little luck of the weather tomorrow, we will rent a couple long boards and see
about catching some decent surf…this town is supposed to have good waves year
around. Wish us luck.
Lastly, to close the book on Nicaragua and the corn
islands…major highlight of the trip was the cave dive, we were crawling on our
elbows through the some really tight holes in the rock (we both came out with
blood and cuts to prove it). Once inside
these caverns, holes in the top of the rock would let light in and create some
really cool effects…at one point it was as dark as diving at night. There was
also a strong surge in the water that day (similar to a current, swaying back
and forth) and when swimming through holes it would create an effect like a
torpedo launching you through the holes once the surge was going the same way
you were. Very cool.
Unfortunately , Sophia got the flu about the time we were
wanting to leave, so we went to Big Corn island, where we could get a more
comfortable room (a/c, tv, etc) so she could rest for a few days (part of why
we were in nica so long). When we finally left Thursday afternoon, it turned
into a 13hr boat ride straight across the Caribbean and up the river to El
Rama. From there we literally ran across the port to catch the express bus (at
3:30am) for the 5hr ride to Managua(no bathroom breaks)…we rolled into the
hostel in Managua at 9:00am ready for breakfast and a siesta! I could go on
about the boat ride but I’ll leave it at that.
The ride into Costa Rica was smooth except one piece of info
that no one bothered to tell us…Costa requires you to show a ticket to exit the
country (bus or plane) before they will let you in. Of course the specifics of
your ticket cannot be enforced at the border so simply printing out a potential
itinerary from expedia, etc would suffice. Or if you’re stuck there with no
other option, you purchase the $37/per person bus ticket from the Tica bus
kiosk conveniently located next to immigration. Pretty lame. We’ve done a
really good job of avoided these tourist trap expenses, but they got us that
time…oh well, travel and learn, won’t happen again, I promise.
That’s all for now and as they say in Costa Rica, Pura Vida!c
Brett
