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Published: March 1st 2010
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Bye Bye Nicaragua, we will certainly miss the people and of course the cheap prices (and beers). So hello Costa Rica after a fairly easy boarding crossing using the Tica bus to cross to get to Liberia which we used to connect to Tamarindo, the first thing we noticed after getting off the bus was the fact that Burger King, McDonalds and every other yankee fast food place were here, considering there were none of these in Nicaragua we were a bit disappointed. After one night in Liberia we caught the bus to Tamarindo, or at least we thought we caught the bus to Tamirindo. Luckily after we noticed the bus turning away from Tamarindo and we managed to jump off at a junction and catch the right bus so eventually we made it after a quick walk in the middle of no where, I knew I should have taken a Spanish course before we left...
Tamarindo is a very busy gringo beach resort filled with lots of tourists and backpackers a like with accommodation ranging from pricey hotels to backpackers. Unfortunately the local government haven´t been able keep up with the tourist boom and while there are posh hotels
there are no paved roads and it can get quite gritty. The beach itself is quite nice and stretched pretty far and although the town has surf schools and boards for rent every 5 yards, the surf didn´t look that great to me. Overall not a bad place to hang around for a few days but far too many rich tourists jacking up the price for the rest of us . So after a few days and a few beers we head off to the next place - Arenel and Monteverde
Arenel is famous for it's active volcano and Monteverde has it's zip lining through the tree's and a wonderful national park. First stop for us - Arenel (which sounds too much like Arsenal for me...). We arrived here after taking a 5 hour shuttle from Tamarindo climbing through the beautiful scenery and when we stepped off the shuttle we saw rain for the first time on this trip. Unfortunately the rain was here to stay for as long as we were and not only that but the cloud base was so low we couldn't even see the Volcano, I thought it was just a ploy to get tourists
to visit at first. However while the rain was still about we did manage to hike and enjoy a stunning waterfall about 4km out of town which was fun. Fortunately on our last day the clouds parted and finally saw what the fuss was about and I was pleased to see that it wasn´t just a ploy and there really was a volcano here.
After a quick jeep-boat-jeep trip across some rally bad roads, a small lake, and some even worse roads we made it to Monteverde to zip through the tree's like tarzan. Luckily we were all in a really small group with other backpackers rather than high maintenance tourists and we all had a blast zipping through the tree's tied to a harness and latched onto a cable 40 meters above the ground. One of the final rides was the superman which has the harness on your back and you fly face first through the trees which was an absolute blast.
Next stop is Montezuma which for some reason is a place I have waned to go for a while after reading the full Montezuma a few years ago...
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