Blogs from La Fortuna, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 2

On Wednesday, April 25th, Rebecka and I left our hostel at 8:45AM to catch the 9AM bus to Cañas. There, we had to wait half an hour for the next bus to Tilaran where we had to wait for 1h to get the bus to La Fortuna. In total, the way took to La Fortuna took us a bit more than 5 hours, but it was quite ok and only cost 5$US p.P. where a shuttle would have taken almost the same time but cost us 35$US! We arrived to La Fortuna at around 2PM and, after checking into our hostel, we directly we went for lunch because we were starving. Our hostel, the Arenal Container Hostel, was very nice even if it was a container. The furniture in the common areas was made of recycled ... read more

Today we opted for another suspended bridge trek, this time at Mistico hanging bridges. We enjoyed the Monteverde one a lot, and since this was a different eco-system (tropical rainforest instead of cloud forest) we jumped right in. Our guide, Indira, was remarkably knowledgeable and brought with her a scope we could use when she spotted something. As an added bonus, she was able to take pictures through the scope with a small lense camera...which anyone with a smart phone has! Wheeee. We saw the most critters so far here. Here are the ones I can remember: sloths, howler monkeys, two kinds of bats, lots of birds (motmot, white hawk and others), leaf cutter ants and some totes adorbs hummingbirds. We also had a short detour off the main trail to see some waterfalls up close. ... read more

One of the joys of being in Costa Rica is the lack of internet, television, and other so-called necessities in many of the places we are staying. The internet has been spotty at best, so I have fallen behind on this blog. I will catch up the last few days with a couple of posts this morning. The second full day in La Fortuna (last Thursday) was taken up with hiking through the Arenas Volcano National Park. There were no swinging bridges, but we thought we would include a photo of one anyway since we forgot in the last posting. The park covers most of the volcano which last erupted in 2010. However, the last lava flow was in 1998 and that was what we were hiking out to see. On the way to the flow ... read more

19.6. In strömendem Regen verladen wir unser Gepäck in den nagelneuen Pickup – wir sind die einzigen Fahrgäste - und fahren los, zur costaricanischen Grenze. Unser Fahrer, ein älterer Herr, kennt sich offenbar mit dem Fahrzeug noch nicht aus: als es lebensgefährlich wird, da er offenbar nicht weiss wie man den Scheibenwischer schneller einstellen kann und deshalb blind fährt, schreiten wir ein. So sind wir nervlich bereits etwas gereizt, als wir das Übertrittsprozedere beginnen – schlechte Voraussetzungen. Wir legen uns mit den nicaraguanischen Grenzbeamten an, da diese noch diverse undurchsichtige Gebühren verlangen für die Ausreise (bezahlen schliesslich alles, erhalten aber immerhin für jede Gebühr eine Quittung), beklagen uns lauthals über die Stunde Wartezeit in der Hitze (mittlerweile scheint wieder die Sonne) auf den Bus (den wir immerhin zum Voraus teuer bezahlt haben) und sch... read more

I could really have done with more sleep as I rose nice and early for the 6.30am bus in Puerto Viejo. At least I would get plenty of opportunities to sleep on my two buses to Monteverde... ...well, make that one bus ride to San Jose. A late departure ("Tico time"), two long stops for "breaks" and heavy traffic meant that I didn't get into San Jose until 1420 - which if my WhatsApp conversations with Kurt and my Lonely Planet were anything to go by, meant that I had ten minutes to catch what would probably be the last bus to Monteverde that day. Arriving at one of San Jose's many bus terminals, I had no idea where I was nor which terminal I had to go to to catch the bus to Monteverde. I ... read more