Blogs from Alajuela, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean

Before getting in to what we´ve been up to in Costa Rica, allow me to just say something quickly about airline food. Maybe it´s just non South American airlines that are creating the terrible reputation that it has, because so far it´s just been awesome. This is excluding the food we got in business class on the way out here of course as that´s obviously not a fair representation, but on the other flights we´ve had the food has been great. Travelling from Lima to San Jose we had chicken with herby mashed potatoes and a tomato sauce, with a potato/lettuce/tuna salad, bread rolls and biscuits. I´ve been led to believe I should be expecting some flimsy cardboard box filled with rotting meat and compost, but what I´ve actually found is pretty decent standard food, although ... read more

Our second stop in Costa Rica, was La Fortuna, a very nice town that´s located right next to the Arenal Volcano. This volcano was up until about a year ago, incredibly active and one of the main tourist attractions of the town. It is now unfortunately very unactive (still technically active, but doesn´t spurt out any lava or anything). Nevertheless there is still a huge amount of activities to do here, notably hiking the extinct Cerro Chato volcano and visiting one of the many natural hot spring resorts. We did the first but not the second, as most of the resorts are pretty luxurious and expensive. We did go to some hot springs however but I´ll talk about them in a bit. We basically decided to do a day tour that took us up to the ... read more

Well, for this year’s vacation we decided on the complete opposite adventure from Egypt. Lush rainforests, stunning waterfalls and vast active volcanoes – we’re in Costa Rica! We boarded our flight to Liberia, Costa Rica via Atlanta, at 5:45am today. It’s a complete coincidence that we’ll be exploring the jungle on Earth Day – a pretty cool coincidence. When we boarded our flight in Philadelphia the stewardess for Delta Airlines immediately moved Michael and me to the exit row for the journey because of his height. I ended up sleeping most of the time in wondrous relaxation. Then after our very short layover in Atlanta we boarded the 4 hour flight from Atlanta to Liberia and, once again, Michael and I were moved into the emergency exit row so that we could have a more ... read more

Da wir das Auto bis 14.30Uhr gebucht hatten, wollten wir den Vormittag nutzen, um uns den Vulcano Poas anzuschauen. Die Fahrt allein dorthin war schon wunderschön. Wir fuhren ins Hochland mit Plantagen und Viehzucht. Zwischendurch erinnerte die Landschaft etwas an das Alpenvorland, die Kühe waren die gleichen;-) Da wir leider etwas zu spät losgefahren waren, kamen wir gegen 12Uhr am Eingang des Poas Nationalparks an. Eine Stunde war dann zu kurz und auch zu teuer, um in den Nationalpark zu fahren und so machten wir uns mit einigen Zwischenstopps wieder auf den Rückweg. Die Zwischenstopps waren aber die Fahrt wert! 1. Stopp befand sich ca. 1-2km vom Parkeingang entfernt. Wir parkten das Auto auf einem Schotterweg, der in den Wald führte. Da wir kein Spanish können beschlossen wir das "Bitte nicht betreten"-Schild zu ignorieren und uns ... read more

We arrived in Fortuna in the pouring rain, so the volcano was not visible. It rained all night, but cleared up the next day to allow us to enjoy another river cruise. We drove north toward the border of Nicaragua to the town of Los Chiles. Then we borded a water taxi with another naturalist guide who took us up the Rio Frio to the Cano Negro wildlife refuge. We saw lots of blue heron, cormorants, anhingas, white herons, lizards, iguanas and caimans (like crocodiles). We also saw more howler monkeys and white faced capuchin monkeys. We got a great video of an anhinga (like a great blue heron) who had caught a fish. First, they spear it with their beak. Then, while it is on their beak, they beat it on a rock or log ... read more

Today we went to see the Poas Volcano (almost 9 thousand feet elevation). We were warned that it was cloudy on the mountain today, and we might get wet. But we got lucky and the weather turned out to be beautiful. Because of the sulpher fumes, the clouds, the humidity and the elevation, you often cannot see the crater at the top of the mountain. At first, we saw only clouds, so we hiked up another trail to see a mountain lake. The trail is in the Escalonia Cloud Forest, and is a steep ½ hour hike. The air is a little thin up here, plus we are not in the best shape, so we had to stop to catch our breath a few times. The mist rising off the trail was interesting to see. All ... read more