We woke up fairly early today so that we could spend a little more time in Manuel Antonio before we had to leave to Alajuela. As we were getting ready to go upstairs to have another wonderful breakfast, the obnoxious girl next door comes back and is screaming “Buenos Dias!!!” into our room with probably the worst accent I have ever heard. You can imagine we got out of there really quickly. We enjoyed another breakfast with Elena and then she snuck us upstairs to the see the view of the entire place from Anita’s balcony. It was so gorgeous. The [View Full Entry]

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We woke up a couple times during the night because there was an insane rainforest thunder storm beating down on us. Extremely loud thunder, pouring rain, really close lightening, and all that jazz. It continued on trough the early morning, so we decided to sleep in a bit more because the park would have been muddy and difficult to trek through if we had arrived there at the initial time we were going to. Once we finally got up, we went to Anita’s house just a few steps away to have breakfast. It was honestly the best breakfast we’ve had in [View Full Entry]

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After a “crazy” night on the town, we woke up to the beating rain of an insane thunder storm, so much for our hike. We decided to sleep in instead of trekking through the rain to see crocodiles and turtles. I was pretty sad about the turtles because we haven’t seen one yet. We finally got a full nights rest thanks to that lovely storm. When we eventually got out of bed, it was sunny and absolutely beautiful. We put our suits on and sat out for the last time on the black sand beach. A bunch of surfers were out [View Full Entry]

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Today we woke up at 6am to meet the Dutch couple and our shuttle driver outside of our hotel at 7am. we were sad to leave the friendly and energetic people we met in Pension Santa Elena, but we were so happy to be heading towards the beach. The ride was definitely bumpy. Costa Rica doesn’t have the money to repave their roads, so if they’re in ok condition, they leave it as is. Other than that, the ride was pretty nice. We chatted with the Dutch couple, who were extremely nice and very sweet. They told us we weren’t stereotypical [View Full Entry]

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Today we woke up at 7 am so we could leave our hostel by 8 and head out towards the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reverse. The night before we booked a tour that consisted of a canopy tour, canopy bridges, and a hike through the cloud forests of Santa Elena. It took a lot to convince Karin to zipline through the forest, but I promised her that I would find a place for us to get a massage for cheap in Chile. When we finally got up to the platforms to start ziplining, her fear of heights really began to sink [View Full Entry]

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After waking up at 6am, in a 100 degree, 100% humidity room, with a mosquito net over us suffocating our lives, we had breakfast, said goodbye to Pete, and headed outside to meet our tour guides for our jeep, boat, horse, jeep trip to Monteverde. We got into the jeep and met our guide, or so we thought. He then dropped us off at the Arenal Lake, where he said adios and sent us to our boat where we met our guide, or so we thought. We then enjoyed a beautiful boat ride on the calm Arenal Lake with the Volcano [View Full Entry]

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It was absolutely refreshing to get out of San Jose. It was just such a run down, culture lacking dangerous city. We woke up in the morning after sleeping with glasses on, flashlights in hand, and bags blocking our doors, basically ready to fight til the death if the need was to arise. We checked out of our hostel and made our way to the bus station, where a fight broke out between two crazy women, luckily it was broken up by bus station police (guys in wifebeaters with batons). We ended up waiting for our bus for quite a while, [View Full Entry]

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So, you can't expect any pictures from San Jose because this place is basically a shit town. It's pretty sad to start our travels here, but hey, you gotta start somewhere. We spent the day walking through their filthy streets trying to buy essentials we left behind because we didn't have room. The plus side to today was the really tastey food we had for lunch at a super cute place. They served their meals on banana leaves and we had a great waiter who showed us on our way to shop. Another plus, we haven't gotten sick yet!!!! I hope [View Full Entry]

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So I have subscribed to this site because I feel this will be the easiest way for me to communicate with everyone back home. Of course, email is still an option, but i can upload pictures on this and update my trip day to day! My sister and I leave on August 15th at 1:50am and we arrive in San Jose, Costa Rica at 10:55am. We're both terribly excited and ready to head out on our Costa Rican adventure. We're still working on our Chile Itinerary, which is absolutely terrifying since we leave tomorrow. We have 8 days in Costa Rica [View Full Entry]

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