Costa Rica - May 2011

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We took off from San Diego at 10:30PM May 5, 2011 on a 4 hour flight to Atlanta. Atlanta was our layover to our final destination, Costa Rica. We took a direct flight from Atlanta, GA to Liberia, Costa Rica, the flight was just over 3 hours in length. Our final destination was Condovac La Costa in Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica. From Liberia, it was just a quick 25 minute drive to our resort. We did not want to have to fly into San Jose and make the 4-5 hourd drive. We rented a car from Dollar rental car. We rented a 4x4 Nissan Xterra, because we plan on doing some exploring all around and did not want to take any chances on not having an adequate vehicle.

As always, when you travel abroad, you have to abide by local customs and laws. We found out that the government of Costa Rica will not allow for $0 deductible insurance policy. The maximum coverage you can get is $15/day with a $1,000 deductible, regardless of fault. Because we really plan on exploring Costa Rica, this policy came as a dissappoinment. But it is the local law, so we just have to deal the possibility that we may owe $1,000 to Dollar rental car when we return the vehicle. The other oddity we learned when renting a car in Costa Rica, at least from our location, they don't care about scratches, missing paint, dents, cracks in windows, etc. They only cared about major damage that equals over $1,000. Basically they know the car will come back damaged in some fashion and over time they learned that is just what happens and they would spend too much time going after the small damages and most would never pay, so they just let them go.

I must admit that Costa Rica, so far, is not what I expected. I expected jungle every where. But so far from Liberia to the west coast and in and around, Playa Coco and Playa Hermosa, it has been all dry and brown, quite dissapointing because I was thinking I could have gone to visit friends in Phoenix, AZ if I wanted dry, brown and hot. But we have not headed east of Liberia yet, which we will definitely be doing during this week. Hopefully the grass IS greener on the other side...

Things I was expecting and was pleasently surprised to see; wild monkeys in trees, iguanas running across the parking lot and black sand beaches. The resort sits in a crescent shaped bay that provides perfect surf. The ocean is luke warm, which is much better than freezing in San Diego.

It is exciting knowing that we have so many activities that we have on our to-do list and we are hoping that each of them lives up to our expectations.

Pura Vida!

May 7
After sleeping in due to the extremely long previous day, we decided to take it easy and hung out on the beach. We took our lunch down to the beach and ate on a picnic table under palm trees. After lunch we grabbed our snorkel gear that we brought with us and headed up the northern portion of the cove. it was all lava rock with a little bit of sand so it was a good thing we brought our water shoes with us. We snorkeld for about an hour, the visibility was not that great, but we finally made it to an area that we could see quite a bit of fish. We probably saw about a dozen different fish. We even had a school of fish (about 10) follow us around the whole time, which was really cool.

We ended the night at Papagayo Steakhouse which served local and imported steak. We decided to eat local steak and it was as expected, not great, but not bad.

May 8
Today we drove from Playa Hermosa to Arenal. It was about a 4 hour drive with a few stopss. We took the long route, along the lake, and it was pretty amazing. We got to our hotel "Royal Corin". Very nice hotel. We unpacked our stuff and called the zip line company "Ecoglide" and they came and picked us up. We ended up doing the tour on our own with 3 guides. It was quite enjoyable as we didn't feel rushed. The tour was awesome, it had a 12 lines and platforms with a tarzan swing that was about 50-60 feet up. Absolutely crazy! The longest line was 435 Meters and was very fast. Would do it all agian if we could.

Then we hung out at the hotels hot springs that had two waterfalls and a lot of little private pools that were very sensual.

May 9
Went rafting today with "Wave Expeditions"out of La Fortuna and it was amazing! We rafted with 8 total people, so we were 4 to a raft. We shared with a couple from Chicago. The other "international" raft contained couples from Canada and Ireland. We went down the Rio Sarapiqui. It was mostly class 3-4 and lasted 2.5 hours. We didn't want it to end. It was Roah's first time rafting and my first time at class 4. The river filled was excitement and enjoyed it very much. The scenery was amazing. Tucan's were flying overhead. We had lunch on the bank and ate fresh cut pineapple and watermelon. We jumped off high rocks on the bank of the river.

May 10
Woke up to go horseback riding to La Fortuna Waterfall. The ranch was about 2 miles from our hotel. It was just Roah and I on the tour. Roah had a white horse (Macrarena) and mine was brown (Old Boy). We rode out the back side of the ranch and saw lots of cattle, some chickens, two monkeys and quite a few Tucan's. We had to cross a few streams and go up anddown some of the creek beds which were pretty steep. It was an hour ride to La Fortuna waterfall and then "parked the horses" and walkeddown to the waterfall. It was cement block for steps the whole way down (guide said 435 steps). It took us 8 minutes to walk down. When we got to the waterfall it was pretty spectacular. It was very big and very powerful. We swam in the water about 10 minutes, but couldn't even get close as the water was falling with so much power. Then we rode back on the horses to the ranch.

We got back to the hotel, sat in the hot springs, showered, changed and then set off on our drive back to our resort in Playa Hermosa.

We stopped in a little town in the middle of the cuves around the lake. There was a Garman bakery there which I desperately had to try and it was very good. The bread was so fresh and soft with some crunch on the outside. Definitely a good stop.

Finally made it back to the resort and we slept early because we were so tired.

May 11
Woke up early this AM to catch a boat out of Playa Hermosa to go scuba diving with Diving Safari. The dive trip had 8 people and two master divers. We dove in the cove de Papagaya. The first dive was 30-65 feet. At 65 feet was saw a wreck and swam around it. It was about a 60 foot boat. Inside we saw two big lobster, tons of fish and a hole in the bottom of the boat. Very good dive.

The second dive was closer to the resort and we saw very large schools of fish, octopus, huge stingrays, eels and plenty of other fish.

Overall the dives were very good. The dive master was friendly and stayed with us on both dives as we had not dove in these waters before. We retuned to shore at 1:00PM.

May 12
Slept in a bit today, as we were so exhausted from all the activities and driving we had done over the previous 5 days. We left the resort at about 1030AM after eating breakfast in the unit. We decided to check out a nother popular beach area, Playa Flamingo. On the map it looked to be about 35-40 minute drive, but didn't realize about 1/3 of the road to get there was dirt. It was pretty cool to try and navigate to a destination you have never been to before, in a country you have been in before with very little help from the signs along the way. Most of the time the signs didn't exist or were very confusing. If we were lost, or felt like we were lost, we ask the locals, which was difficult because I think this is the only country we have been to where most of the people DO NOT speak English. So with my broken Spanish I was able to get someone to point in the direction I should be going and that was the best it got as far as getting assistance from locals.

We made it to Playa Flamingo in about an hour and 20 minutes. The beach and the surrounding area is very similar to many of the beaches along the Pacific side. It was in a crescent shaped bay with rocky cliffs on the north and south side and a pretty big beach in the middle. The water was very warm. the sand was more white then black, but is not the white sans of Florida or the Carribean.

The best part about the visit to this beach was the playful sting rays that were swimming with us. We knew they could sting us and it would be a bit painful, but they were about 18"-24" across and were swimming right where we were. One of the sting rays was actually body surfing with me. That was scary, yet really cool at the same time.

We tried to do some snorkeling in the middle of the beach and saw nothing. We didn't really care to try the rocky areas as we had already done scuba diving and snorkeling in very similar waters.

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Photos

Ecoglide Zip Lines
This was located right at the base of Arenal.

White water rafting in Rio Sarapiqui
Cass 3 & 4 rapids