Blogs from Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 97

We decided Samara was not for us when we woke up with a room full of mosquitos and the next best hotel in town was over $50/night. We had had enough beaches for awhile anyway and were anxious to get on to the rainforest. So, we hopped onto a few more buses (including one section that took 2.5hrs to cover 30kms) and made our way to the mountain town of Santa Elena. We found a great hotel here for only $10 which looked brand new, very clean, secure, and no mosquitos. It is also a very touristy town but is only a few minutes drive to two of the country's most accessible cloud forest reserves. The cloud forest gets its name because it is so high in the hills that it is almost always shrouded ... read more

So, this weekend I went to Montevrede. I think it's supposed to be a rainforest but I think cloud forest is more appropriate. The trip there was the most beautiful yet, so beautiful that the bus actually pulled over at one point so we could all talk pictures and just soak it all in. I was in awe...I saw a sunset I have only dreamed of. I just sat on the bus listening to my music and staring out the window. It is hard to convey how amazing it felt...it was almost like a moment of clarity. It's unreal to be so close to perfection. That night we stayed at a hotel on a mountain and it was FREEZING! There was a bonfire, which was great, though, and we had a perfect view of the stars. ... read more

The first weekend we stayed at El Mirador de Pacifico. We got lucky (I think) and the owner upgraded our room to the “Jungle Villa” because he had a big group that booked all the basic rooms after we made our reservation. If you look around on their website (perhaps in the ‘for sale’ section) I think you can find a floor plan for this room. It’s pretty cool, but not literally. The one little window unit you can see in one of the pictures barely managed to make any noticeable effect on the heat and humidity in the room. So we didn’t get to slowly acclimate ourselves. The first night our travel clock said 88F by the time we went to sleep and it might have gotten down to the upper 70’s by morning. (Nikki ... read more

This was our travel day. We didn’t finish packing our bags till nearly 1 AM, so getting up at 3 AM to leave the house by 4 basically made it feel like we’d pulled an all nighter. And the shuttle that was supposed to pick us up by 4 was about 20 minutes late, and had a headlight out. We were starting to think these were omens! But really after that there wasn’t anything interesting till we got to San Jose. The last leg of our journey was from San Jose to Quepos / Manuel Antonio by plane. This was the leg that had us worried when packing our bags because their website said the max weight for luggage was 25 lbs + 2 carry on. My bag weighed 35 lbs and Nikki’s weighed 41 lbs. ... read more

Een van onze laatste updates waarschijnlijk. In Puerto Viejo eten we 's avonds bij een Italiaan, een trendy restaurantje. De lasagne bolognese bevat geen vlees en als we er wat van zeggen hebben we een zeer beledigde Italiaan (het blijkt nog een Bolognees te zijn ook... hebben wij weer) die vraagt hoe we het in ons hoofd halen om iets over zijn keuken te zeggen. Beetje jammer maar die heb je er ook tussen zitten. We slapen in een leuke cabina bij Costa de Papito en de volgende ochtend regent het pijpestelen als we op weg gaan naar Panama, maar dat mag de pret niet drukken. De auto laten we bij het resort staan en we pakken de taxi naar de grens. De grens over bij de welbekende gammele ijzeren brug (die Suus al eerder overstak). ... read more