Advertisement
Published: September 19th 2007
You've all heard Costa Rica is a little slice of heaven. We're here to tell you that it's all true.
When we first breezed across the border, we beach-hopped along the Nicoya Peninsula with stops at Playa Coco and Playa Sámara. In Sámara, we stayed just 10 steps from the beach with a yard full of palm trees and a cute and nosy little neighbor, a chihuaua named Sancho. We took our first surfing lesson and actually did catch a few sweet waves, dudes. We practiced for only two hours and it was us against the ocean... The ocean won - we were sore for three days. Luckily, we met a fun couple from Cincinnati who drove us in style with their pink rollerskate rental car to the edge of the peninsula so we could weasel out of more surfing and recover instead. We stopped at Trev's amigo's house in Malpais and since the caretaker was on vacation, we had to break in. We donned headlamps to perform the sneaky mission and then perused the crabs along the beach, palled around with the local perros, and had our first movie night in three months.
We finally had a break
Karin, Liz, y Bernardo
Our awesome amigos in San Jose at their new house! FYI, this picture was at 2am after a late fun dinner.from the hot and humid beach weather with higher elevation in Monteverde, just over the Continental Divide at 4,662 feet. We hiked 10 miles to and through the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve (still no sign of the three-toed sloth, Val) and even stopped at the Monteverde cheese factory for a pineapple-orange milkshake. We also did the "Extremo" canopy tour and were in dier need of Mountain Dew. Picture this: We zipped across 2,500-foot ziplines 200 feet above the ground and over the cloud forest canopy at full speed. The streams below look like tiny lines and the cows are mere dots beneath you. We also repelled 90 feet, swung on a tarzan swing from 50 feet up, and even tried ziplining up-side-down.
We continued on to the capital city of San Jose and were confused to see Channel 7 news on at our hotel - oddly enough, we have all Denver stations, all the time. We visited our amigos, Karin and Bernardo, who we met at NU in Evanston. They were wonderful enough to pick us up and invite us to a delicious dinner at their beautiful, new home. When my Dad and I were here three years ago,
their house was just being built. Today it's a gorgeous beach house without the beach, but with a volcano and big city view. Karin wowed us with her culinary skills and comida tipica, including picadillo platano, ceviche, guayaba chicken, delightful orange-cinnamon bananas with vanilla ice cream, the latest Cafe Britt products and much more. (For your own delightful taste of Costa Rica, check out CafeBritt.com). Gracias again, nuestros amigos, and see you in Colorado!
Trev and I were able to see the spectacular parades full of kids from across the country to celebrate Costa Rica's Dia de Independencia. While in the big city, we also found the latest Harry Potter books in English and Español (Trev read the new book in a matter of hours) and caught a glimpse of the Golden Buffaloes. We had to venture to three sports bars for the only CU game we'll see all season. Lucky #3 may or may not have been a brothel, but it was a small price to pay for a taste of fall football. Now if I could only find a pumpkin spice latte around here... Next on our itinerary is Tortuguero, where we will not rest or continue
Liz doing some zipping
The longest line was almost a kilometer long onto Panama until we see our favorite ocean friend up close and personal - the green seaturtle.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0202s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sweet Deke
non-member comment
Coincidence
I met a chihuahua this weekend! His name is Peanut and he goes straight to his pint-sized kennel when instructed. Does this mean you've acquired a replacement camera or have you hired a photographer? In any case, it's good to have a blog update on this autumn evening. MS