right so continuing on from two entries back...
so pauls place was really nice, his grandfather bought it like 40 years ago for like 1500colones, which is like $3. now they´re getting offers of $1.5m us. but they aren´t going to sell it. they have a big family and this time there were about 15-20 of them there. we slept everywhere, there were mattresses everywhere. i slept out on the balcony, it was so warm a sheet was too hot.
today ive spent the day walking to try and find a path up a mountain for this lookout but after walking for ages i found that i was at the wrong end of the beach. but walked out onto the rocks at the end of the beach which gave me this really nice view of the whole bay. i spent another good hour in the water before lunch, they´ve been giving us such amazing food and so much. its 9:15pm now and im still full from lunch.
i took a bus in the avot o quepos down the coast a bit and im wanting to check out manual antonio national park. but i just found out that the park is closed on mondays which is tomorrow, so that kind of sucks. so im need to spend another night here.
on my second day in quepos i moved over to another hostel, which was really nice and met some interesting people there. i spent the day relaxing as the park wasn´t open.
when i finaly got to go in the next day there was this massive line and had to wait like half an hour to get into the park itself. too many people in too small a park. it was nice and really beautiful but having so many people there really spoilt it for me. we did see alot of animals; sloths, howler and spider monkeys, birds, iguanas, lizards. it was beautiful but there were other places i liked better. there were really nice beaches and sittingon the sand watching the sunset was really amazing but i really didn´t need any more time there.
our bus trip to monteverde was pretty hectic, we only just got our connection in puntarenas. like our bus stopped just as we got to the outskirts of town and the driver pointed to another bus that was just about to pull ouut and said that was the bus we needed. it had already left the station and if we´d taken the bus to the station another 5 minutes away we would have missed it. but the road upt o monteverde was pretty fun, all 3 roads that lead up are unpaved and a few years ago when the govt tried to pave it, the locals decided they didn´t want it as if it was paved it would mean the big tour busses could come up so its still this gravel road that the regular buses struggle up.
i met these two canadians and an american guy at the hostel in quepos and have stayed in the same place in monteverde. im supposed to meet them later for another walk up to this viewpoint. at the moment im sitting on a bench in one of the national parks in monteverde. its called the childrens eternal rain forest. it was founded by the proceeds of hundreds of thousands of children all round the world. all those save the rainforest funds from when we were kids. i had to walk from the hostel for about an hour to get here but once i got into the park i havent seen a single other person. its has been so nice with only the sounds of the forest around. i can hear water running over rocks down in the valley below, and these insects that sounds like cicadas on speed, little crickets and the wind through the leaves. its so peaceful and tranquil that it reminds me why i travel alone. it gives me time to myself where i can just get lost. at times its lonely but thats just part of it. there are times when i really wish i had someone to travel with but then days like this just make it all worthwhile.
so finaly i didn´t meet up with the guys, their zipline tour went longer than they expected. so after waiting for them for a while i gave up and went up on the free walk by myself. it was really a little road rather than a track. but i found this little path that i took off to the side that turned into more of an animal track. but it was so beautiful, and agin nobody around. i turned around finaly after walking through the bush for about half an hour as i didn´t want to make it into tha papers for something as stupid as getting stuck in the bush. i took another couple of wrong turns on the road as it wasn´t signposted and i just had to guess. so i wound up walking for ages up this really steep hill. really steep it was crazy. but i finaly got up into the clouds. it was really beautiful. but i couldn´t get to the very top as i had to come back down for my night walk. we saw tarantulas, porcupines, sleeping birds, these raccoon things, these giant rats, and a uhge leaf cutter ants nest. its must have been at least 10m across with all these underground passges.
when i got back to the hostel josh, the american was waiting and said they´d found a cheap rental car place in liberia and were going to drive to tamarindo. they wanted to know if i wanted to go with them in the morning. i thought about it and it sounded appealing as taht way id get to meet up with nora too.
so the next morning we caught a buss to the highway then another bus to liberia. we wound up mucking around for ages trying to get a car as it wasn´t as cheap as we´d originally thought. but we finaly found one for $45 a day. but it was a manual car and josh who was supposed to drive said he couldn´t drive manuals. so i wound up driver. which as it turned out he could he just hadn´t in ages. but it turned out so nice, havign the car for those few days gave us so much freedom. admittedly we got really lazy, driving everywhere.
th first place we stopped the hostel no longer existed so we decided to stay in tamarindo itself. we stayed at this placed called pura vida and just as we were walking in, nora walked out. such a small world. so we spent a few days there partying quite a bit. it was alot of fun. tamarindo was not quite as touristy as i was expecting. apparently its the high season, but way less numbers than the same time last year because of the recession. we visited alot of the beaches aroudn tamarindo; playa conchal, playa flamingo where i was body surfing and swam right into a bluebottle jellyfish which wrapped itself around my arm and stung the shit out of me. damn it was sore and the marks lasted for weeks.
i was going to go back with josh on sunday to drop off the car and then head to the border but we´d been aout the night before and i could not face the border then. so josh wound up taking the car by himself. but i forgot my boots in the boot of the car and when i emailed josh about them, he said that he´d taken them back to chicago with him as id said that i would be passing through the states... yea but not till july. it would have been so much easier if he´d left them at the rental place as the bus had to go right past.
so i stayed an extra couple of days while the otehrs headed down to samara further down the coast. i tried to convince them to hire another car between 5 of us and we could all drive down to montezuma. i would have been very keen for that but the others weren´t convinced.
on one of the days i was supposed to make a run for the border i got up too late so i hired a skimboard for 4 hours and had so much fun. but man i was sore afterwards, pain all over my body. but well worth it.
the next day i finaly made it to the border, it only took me 9 hours, with 3 at the border. apparently they do all the tourist buses first, then all of us other shmucks. i was in line with this older canadian couple who i wound up helping and catching a taxi with to san juan del sur on the coast of nicaragua. on thew bus to the border i had been umming and arring about whether to go to ometepe or where i am now, but i needed to get some boots before i went there as i wanted to go up the volcanoes. but i got a little mp3 player at the border in duty free, which i have spent most of today trying to load music on. biggest mission ever. i must have spent like 3 hours in the internet cafe trying to sort it out. but finaly persiverance overcame and i succeded.
and so i have finished with costa rica. next entry nicaragua. nice
peace and love
