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San Jose Landing in the San Jose airport, we are ready to kiss the ground, we are so happy to be here…let us revert to few hours back to let you understand why.
Arriving to the Caracas airport, we are immediately faced with a dilemma of paying airport tax - $75 each!! And that has to be paid in local currency, of which we have none left. After trying every single cash point at the airport, we are starting to stress a little as none of our cards work…exchanging the last of what we have in euros and pounds, and counting all the coins we have accumulated in the country, we finally get to just the right amount…Getting to the check in desk after searching for it for half an hour, we are told that our flight date has not been changed in the system and we are not due to fly out for another 4 days! Changing our tickets at the airport costs us yet more money (thankfully paid by credit card), and by the time we get through security and join a mile long passport control queue, our flight is calling last boarding announcements. In our broken
Spanish, we beg a couple of people in front of the queue to let us through, and make a run for the plane…finally sitting down, we breath out and say good bye to South America - we ve spent over 3 months here and its time to move on.
We only spent one night in San Jose and feel like we have arrived in the US of A - almost everyone speaks English, there are chains of American fastfood, hotels, casinos etc on every corner. To be honest, we are not that impressed with San Jose, but then we are not planning to spend any time here, so happily pick up our car (yay!) the next day and head off to the Caribbean coast. We have been warned about road conditions in Costa Rica (even the rental agency gives us a piece of paper with government apologizing for the state of the road infrastructure!), so are surprised to be driving on a decent (one lane) highway for the first couple of hours. Road signs are scarce and we are very grateful for our new hired friend Gloria Precious Smith (in short GPS) who directs us through the turns and
twists in the road. 2 hours later we hit the real Costa Rica and within a few minutes are driving like true locals, ie swaying around the road like maniacs trying to avoid the potholes! It gets worse as the last 20 or so km of our journey are actually spent on a dirt road. This is more than mitigated by the fact that we are driving along the coast and can see white sand, turquoise waters and palm trees on one side and the rainforest on the other!
Puerto Viejo We spend a couple of relaxing days in a small coastal village of Puerto Viejo, about 30 miles away from the Panama border. The village consists of a few pousadas, restaurants, bars and surf shops, spread around 4 or 5 unpaved roads along the beach…everyone speaks English and we find it weird to switch back to our own language!!
This is considered to be one of the top spots for surfing, so we get all our courage and drag our bodies into a surf shop, asking for a newbie surf lesson. Before we know it, we are walking long the beach carrying surf boards (damn, these
things get heavy after first 100 meters), sweating and losing any feeling in our arms - and this is before we even get to try the surfing. Our guide Devon doesn’t let us procrastinate much on the sand and within 5 minutes we are in the water, waiting for our first wave (ok, a baby wave, not a real wave!). We spend 2 hours in the water, paddling out and “surfing” in, attempting to stand up (some attempts are brilliant, some end up with pretty spectacular 360 degree over the head twists in the waves and probably some public “flashing” - next time we are wearing t-shirts!). By the end of the lesson, we carry half the beach in our bikinis, hair, mouth and nose, we literally cant walk and collapse on the beach and our arms feel like we have a ton of weight in each one. But we are exhilarated at being able to stand up on the board! Now all that remains is learning how to spot waves and paddle yourself into one - piece of cake…hmmm…..we may need a few days to recover before we try this again!
There doesn’t remain much to be said
about Puerto Viejo apart from yet another “toughen up!” experience for the 2 City girls. As we crawl into bed after our surf lesson and happily read our books, both of us spot something flying overhead (not an unusual experience by now, but normally this is limited to bugs)….well, this time its not a bug…it’s a BAT! IN OUR BEDROOM! Shrieking, we hide under the covers and laugh at each other hysterically. The best solution we can think of is to continue hiding, occasionally checking if the bat may have flown into the other room …eventually we cant spot it any more and shut the door to the bedroom, hoping the bat has been left outside. Needless to say, sleep that night is not very deep and we keep checking the ceiling with our torches through the night….oh, how we crave our beds at home right now!
Arenal Volcano After leaving the Caribbean coast, we embark on a drive to the Arenal Volcano - the most active volcano in Costa Rica, which has small eruptions almost daily! The rainy season catches up with us again and we struggle through a massive thunderstorm on our way - as we
arrive into our hotel, we cant even see the shape of the volcano, let alone steam or lava!;-( Instead, as we go for dinner, Heenz points at something by the entrance door which looks like a massive toad. Innz is in denial and is sure its just a wooden door stop…until suddenly it jumps! A real toad it is then - well, we are in the rainforest! That night, we thankfully wake up around 1am and look out of the window to see that the weather has cleared and the volcano is clearly visible. Not only that, but it has a bright red colouring on top of it, and slowly, through our sleep drowsiness, we come to realize this is actually red hot lava! Woo hoo - mission accomplished! We are officially one of 1 person in every 10 million to have seen this phenomenon!
On the following day the volcano is again partially covered by clouds but we still manage to see some steam eruptions from the top (even though they do look a bit like clouds). We go on a trek in the jungle on our own and even manage to spot some wildlife without having a
guide with us - Heenz notices a whole family of howler monkeys high up in the trees and we watch in awe as the young ones jump from tree to tree, whilst the daddy (we guess from the size!) watches over them.
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