Puerto Viejo, Part II

Whereas Friday and Saturday in PV were somewhat cloudy and overcast, Sunday was beautiful with clear blue skies. I was glad I'd chosen that day to rent a bike and make the 25km round-trip trek to Manzanillo to check out some of the area's beaches. I passed by Cocles, where I'd went the day before, and on to Playa Chiquita, Punta Uva, and Manzanillo. I chose Chiquita to be the place I actually hung out for awhile because it was the quietest (no good surf here) and (I thought) the prettiest. Plus, I was treated to howler monkeys in the treetops right above me. :-)

(My own little, well, big section of Chiquita)

Monday, today, also dawned clear and blue and I thought about renting a bike again to go to the Jaguar Rescue Center and then to a chocolate tour, but the hostel owner recommended against it for the chocolate tour portion because he said that people with machetes have robbed tourists on that particular portion of road. O-K. So, no bike. :-/ It didn't seem worth it to me to just rent the bike for a couple of hours and since the center was only a half-hour walk away, I decided to just walk. 

I should do as the guide at the JRC did and explain that the animals at the center at any given time are rescues, so they've been seized by people who were keeping them illegally as pets or they are injured/being rehabilitated in some way, so...I didn't actually see any jaguars. It's okay, though. I saw LOTS of super adorable baby sloths, cute owls, a baby caiman, a pretty eyelash viper, a deer that wouldn't stop licking my legs (uh, they were salty with sweat), and...we got to play with baby spider and howler monkeys. Squee! As always, below is just a sampling of pictures, more can be seen here.

After all that, I ended up not doing the chocolate tour. The "30 minute walk" was actually closer to 50 minutes (one way) and my shoes are from the devil so I ended up with the biggest blister known to man. Seriously. I'd show you a picture to prove it, but it's just that gross. Those shoes will be thrown away before I leave for Panama tomorrow. Instead, I realized chocolate wasn't going to be enough for the hunger I'd worked up anyway, so I hobbled to a place for a casado for lunch:

(Typical Tico meal consisting of meat - in this case, chicken - plantains, rice, salad, and beans, sometimes red but obviously black this time)

Tomorrow begins my last week before I head back to the States...

Puerto Viejo, Part I

A number of people got a random text from me the other day asking for their assistance in helping me decide what to do with my last remaining days in Costa Rica. There's quite a bit to do in the area, but it's not all cheap so I have to choose wisely. Yesterday, Saturday, I did a lot of walking and wandering, exploring the town and my options. I think I've officially decided what to do, but you'll have to check back in a day or two to see what that decision is. ;-) For now, I'll just fill you in on my wanderings from yesterday.

After popping into some tour places in town to check out their offerings and see how prices compare (hint: they're all in cahoots - prices are the same everywhere), I found myself walking along the road that hugs the beach. I had reached out to a couchsurfing host in PV and an offer had been extended to stay with him, but for various reasons I decided to just stay in a hostel instead. On my walk, however, I realized I was right near his house and I thought I'd see if he was in. He was and we chatted for about an hour before I left to let him get on with his day. Not before he told me about a trail through the woods that led to a pretty little beach and also lent me a book on Guatemala, however. (I'm racing through the book because I have to give it back before I leave on Tuesday, but that's not a problem because it's really interesting.)

It's kind of wild because the jungle-y forest goes right up to the beach here. I kept going back and forth between walking along the beach and walking through the woods, just to see how the scenery varied. Some sections of the beach have what I believe to be volcanic rock formations (seen in the middle right part of the photo above) that have tide pools in them. (Kathy, you would have loved it!) I saw things like this bright orange (empty) crab shell:

 And also this weird sea cucumber looking thing (you can't really tell from the picture, but it actually is in water:

Then, back on the trail, I saw big-ass spiders:

 

...and a dead baby sloth (linked instead of embedded in case you'd rather not have that image in your head). :-(

Once I got to the beach that had been my destination, I sat and alternately watched the surfers and read before grabbing a beer from a nearby bar. I got back to my hostel in time to beat the rain and cook dinner. Interestingly, I think that grocery shopping and cooking even a simple pasta dish may be a sign that I'm ready to go home. It's kind of hard to believe that two weeks from today I'll be back in San Diego... 

More Costa Rican Wildlife

Just in case you didn't actually click on that link I included the other day, I thought you might be interested in seeing some more of the colorful wildlife I caught shots of.

(Toucan. Duh.)

(Green macaw. I think.)

(Blue butterfly. Please don't ask me to get more specific than that!)

(How it's even possible that I got this shot, I'll never know)

(Big-ass boa constrictor)

(Cougars)

(Tiniest frog ever. Oh my god, SO cute.)

(Black and green poison dart frog)

So there ya go. If these caught your eye and now you really do want to go check out the others, here's the link again.

Greatest.Money.Ever.

Are you seeing this? Costa Rican money has monkeys on it. And sloths. And sharks.

If that's not the greatest thing ever, well then I just don't know what is. And yes, you're looking at 18 million colónes. Nope, I'm not rich - that's about $36.

Volcano, Coffee, Wildlife, and Waterfalls

I mentioned the other day that I had a lot of activity planned for today and boy did I ever. I don't think I've had as much packed into one day since Semuc Champey. Today's undertaking was completely different from that, but it was still crazy fun and interesting. Let's begin, shall we?

That's a picture of coffee cherries. They are ripe when they turn red, so these clearly aren't ready for the picking yet, but luckily harvest season doesn't begin until November. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. The day began at Doka Coffee Estate, where we got a full tour of the coffee growing, harvesting, and roasting process. Having been to both whisky distilleries and wineries in the past, it was interesting seeing the ways in which they are all similar.

Next up was Parque Nacional Volcán Poás. The main crater, seen below, has a lake of milky blue water with sulfurous fumes wafting all around (yum!). A second, now extinct crater is a lake filled with acid rain water where very few organisms can grow and thrive. The park had a couple of pretty easy, paved trails to get to these two craters with unobtrusive signage along the way, explaining things about the area's foliage or wildlife. One sign cracked me up. It was an "in case of volcanic activity" sign that suggested such things as going back to the visitor center if you feel bad or can't breath, and not staying for a long time if you have asthma or hypertension. Uh...yeah?! What about keeping calm and evacuating quickly, that type of thing? :-) (Don't worry; there were signs that had those warnings, too.) According to our guide, we were very lucky because the volcano was completely clear - sometimes clouds and fog roll in super quickly and when that happens you can't see anything.

Our last stop of the day was La Paz Waterfall Gardens and, to be honest, I thought this would be the least interesting part of the day. My guidebook described the gardens as a "series of self-guided riverside trails linking five waterfalls" which also had a "butterfly observatory, aviary, trout lake, frog exhibit, and serpentarium." My thought was, meh. I've seen waterfalls, butterflys are boring, and trout? Really? 

I'm actually happy to say that I couldn't have been more wrong. That toucan up there wasn't the first one I'd seen (although it was the first chestnut-billed one), but it was certainly the first I'd seen up close and personal. (Can you tell it's freaking me out just a little bit?) The butterflies were pretty (still boring, though. Ha!), I wanted to pet the snakes, and the frogs were AWESOME. There were even jungle cats - cougars and ocelots - that my guidebook hadn't mentioned. (None of the animals were removed from the wild, FYI. They were all rescues, as most had been kept as pets illegally, at least according to our guide.) Even the waterfall was pretty cool because our guide showed us this neat optical illusion. From a viewpoint opposite the waterfall, we stared at the middle of the falls for 10 seconds and then looked to the right of them and...it totally looked like the wall of rock was moving up as the water was flowing down. Neat-o. There are TONS more pictures, if you're interested.

It was also a really good food day, too. :-) Breakfast at Doka was a traditional gallo pinto, huevos rancheros, fruit, and coffee, but it was probably the tastiest gallo pinto I'd had in awhile. Lunch was buffet-style at La Paz and included things like potato and beef hash, frijoles molidos (mashed beans), roasted chicken, beet and potato salad, pasta, pizza, rice pudding, carrots and green beans, and a salad bar, plus other stuff I'm probably forgetting. For dinner this evening I was already back at my hostel, but I walked around the corner to a cevicheria and had a big-ass portion of ceviche that was quite good. It wasn't as good as what I had in Belize, but still pretty good.

Like I said, it was a long day. I had so much fun!

I hadn't really intended to spend any time in Costa Rica's capital, San José, and then I ended up spending two nights there. Well, not spending any time in any of the Central American capitals was the plan all along and then I realized I was going to spend one night in SJ anyway, just as a stopping point before moving on to my next location, Alajuela. But then it looked like literally all of the accommodations in Alajuela were booked for Monday night and I did not want to get there and not have a place to stay. So, two nights in SJ.

And the point of telling all of that? Oh, I don't know. Guess I just wanted to give a reason to explain how two days kind of disappeared with no real activity on my part. 

Moving on...I'm in Alajuela now! It was probably my easiest city-to-city travel thus far - I walked one block, turned right, walked 30 meters, and the exact bus I needed pulled up as I got to the bus stop. Nice! Finding my way to my hostel in (yet another) city with no street signage, in a place where directions are given as distances from landmarks? That's another story, but oh well. I did eventually find it and was anxious to toss my stuff down and go on a search for food. That's when I had a scare that my cash had been stolen out of my backpack. The scare lasted most of the day, actually, until I found it just before dinnertime. I still have no idea what happened as the money was in a pocket where I never would have put it, one which was essentially on the outside of my pack. Since everything seems to have turned out ok, keeping a better eye on my valuables is a good lesson to be reminded of.

After lunch, I had a couple of hours to wander/get lost and explore. I only had a couple of hours and not the whole afternoon because my weather report was predicting rain at 2pm. It was pretty dead-on. It was sprinkling as I reentered my hostel and the sidewalk was completely flooded because of the storms just a short while later. In any case, I got to see Central Park and the cathedral (pictured below), the National Theater, and a couple of other smaller parks, plus a stop at the post office.

(Everything was kind of dark and overcast, so I loved the pop of red back there)

Tomorrow I have a full day of activity to make up for all of the inactivity of the last couple of days, but more on that later...

"Adventures" To and In La Fortuna

(Most modern church I'd see in all of Central America)

My first stop in Costa Rica was Libería and it was really nothing more than that - a stop. My only full day there was spent contemplating whether a trip to the peninsula for some beach time was worth it (decision: nope) and whether I should have another cold beer (decision: of course). The only picture I took the entire time is featured above. Most of the churches and cathedrals I've seen in Central America up until this point had been very Spanish colonial in style, so this one really stood out.

The first adventure with La Fortuna came with getting there. It seemed like it should be fairly straightforward...and it would have been...had I been aware that there are other places in the area also called La Fortuna. Oops, went to the wrong one. Although it was definitely out of the way, it wasn't such a big deal. I had to take three buses to get back on track...only to find out that the last bus I needed had left a few hours earlier. Oops again. So I was stuck in Tilaran, but the first bus the next morning left at 7am so no sense in crying over spilled milk, right? Besides, I never would've gotten this awesome picture of a very blue bathroom, complete with shampoo in little to-go cups if I hadn't stayed the night in Tilaran:

(Shampoo matches the paint. And the water cup. And the toilet.)

On Saturday, the trip to La Fortuna was actually pretty easy (as easy as it should have been if I'd done it right the first time around, ha!) and I was here by just after 9am. I quickly got a lay of the land, got checked in and showered, had breakfast, and got signed up for a tour from 2-8pm.

The tour consisted of transportation to and from Arenal Volcano, time at the volcano's observatory lodge, a short nature hike to learn about the area's plants and animals, a longer hike to a waterfall including a couple of long, hanging bridges, a small museum of the volcano's history, and - what I think everyone was really looking forward to - a trip to natural hot springs in the area.

The volcano's most recent eruption was in 1968 and it spewed lava every day for more than 40 years after that. I guess I should've come to Costa Rica a couple of years ago! I didn't see any lava, but it was still pretty cool seeing the two faces of the volcano - the green face where everything is growing and pretty, and the black face that's been covered in ash and lava for the last few decades.

At the beginning of the day, things were looking like this:

(View from my accommodations. That's a fire station in the foreground.)

 But a few hours later, at about the time we were fully entrenched in our hike, it looked like this:

(Rain starting to come in)

Yep, right around the time we got to the waterfall portion of the tour, the rain started coming down. It was a regular downpour and there wasn't a whole lot we could do about it, so in pretty short order we were soaked to the bone. It hadn't been too hot when we started and it didn't take long for us to be cold and fairly miserable. Most of us were keeping our spirits up, though, because there's not really much you can do when it comes to the weather (and weather in rainforest jungles in the rainy season, specifically). 

And, of course, as soon as we were back to the observatory and the hike was over, the rain stopped. But the timing was perfect because it was about the time when a family of sloths decided to make their move. Oh my god, all I really wanted during that tour was to see a sloth and I saw not one, but three! Including a baby! It was awesome. I don't have pictures - didn't even try because I knew with the lighting and the angle of the shot it wouldn't come out right, and I was more interested in actually seeing the sloths. I also didn't get pictures of toucans, howler monkeys, and a red-eyed tree frog for the same reasons. The tree frog was right up close, actually, and was so freaking cute and awesome.

Finally, it was time for the hot springs that we'd all been waiting for, especially now that we were cold and wet from the rain. We stripped down to our bathing suits and walked down a rocky path, reaching a large, flat rock that had water gushing over it to form a small waterfall. We were instructed to sit down and kind of slide jump into the pool below. We'd been told that these waters used to be cold and then they were boiling (enough to cook a chicken!) after the 1968 eruption, but now they are a comfortable 100 degrees. If you sat or kneeled in the pool, the water was up to your neck. Once we were all situated, the guides started handing out beverages - the national liquor guaro, made from sugar cane, mixed with Fresca. Then they came around with this lava mud that they spread on our faces to make masks. Even the guys were lining up for their spa treatments! It really was like a spa, too, because then I positioned myself under the waterfall and the water beating onto my neck, shoulders, and back was a really great massage. Adult beverage, mud mask, and thermal waters massage - quite the spa day, one that I hadn't even anticipated! There was also a cool little cavern similar to the one I saw at Semuc Champey. When our guide and two British girls broke out into song in that enclosed, echo-y space, I had to laugh.

It was a long day, one that got a little rough in the middle, but it ended on a really great note.

Arrived in Costa Rica

Nothing really to report except that I have finally arrived in Costa Rica! It was a long time coming and there were many days when I said to myself, "Tomorrow is the day I head for the border." And...then...I just didn't. I talked to a couple of friends about the reasoning behind that, but I'm not sure if I ever officially mentioned it here. Basically, I was having difficulty figuring out the logistics of transportation between places I wanted to visit here and since Costa Rica is more expensive, I figured I could soak up some more of the cheapness in Nica while I figured it out. I don't know that I've actually figured it out yet (still), but with only three weeks left before I head back to the States, it was time to get a move on.

And now a cool picture of windmills that I took from a moving bus. Cloud covered volcanoes in the background - of course - because they're everywhere here. :-)