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Published: January 2nd 2010
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Panama - Costa Rica Border CrossingHola again Amigos and Amigas,
Walk, boat, walk, cab, walk, bus, walk and we had made it to Costa Rica...the “rich coast”. This is an apt name. Yes it is rich with flora and fauna but is also the most expensive country in Latin America, so we thought it was more like that you have to be rich to travel here.
We stopped at Cahuita on the Caribbean coast for 3 nights. It is a quaint little “one road” beach town with one bar and quite a few good little restaurants. Coconut prawns for $8.00 was a highlight in Cahuita. Parque Nacional Cahuita runs along the coastline which is typically strewn with palm tree lined beaches and an abundance of wildlife. We saw 3 different types of monkeys, a sloth, racoons, lizards, birdlife-a-plenty and some weird large rat looking thing. The monkeys were easily our favourites. The white-faced monkeys gave us the best story.
We were walking the Park’s trail when we came across a small group of monkey’s playing, eating as they do. They were seemingly quite tame which allowed us to get close for photos. Whilst happily observing, Carrie put her bag down to get her
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Howler Monkey, Parque Nacional Cahuita camera out. I think you can guess what came next. A monkey with a baby on board ran towards her bag and grabbed it. Carrie fought bravely but the monkey won. Fortunately the bag was too big but the monkey did manage to steal an apple from her bag. It was seriously funny stuff. See the video attached.
Another small incident occurred in the town. One night we were leaving a store when a man approached me and plead poor explaining he had a wife and kid to feed etc etc. I had some coins so I gave them to him. He then said something like “I can’t buy dinner with that”. My reaction was not planned. I snatched the coins back out of his hand and said well you sure won’t now. What an a**hole!!
We left Cahuita pleased with Costa Rica, but concerned that it was going to cost a lot more than everywhere else we had been. We were also concerned that the Caribbean rainy season was kicking into gear so we chose our next location to be on the Pacific side. Although it meant another 9 hours of travel, we toughed it out. Manuel
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White Faced Monkey with Child and Red Faced Tourist, Parque Nacional Cahuita Antonio was our next destination. It is home to Costa Rica’s second smallest national park but it was also home to some of the most abundant wildlife we have ever seen. In the first 100m of the park trail we saw 10 or so sloths and later saw a huge number of monkeys. One of the best sights was a red headed wood pecker hammering away at a tree which was only metres from us. I have never seen one previously and am still amazed that they actually do peck wood!
Manuel Antonio has some of the best beaches we have seen on our trip so far and our hostel had some of the best food too (and cheap food at that). We were impressed with the place and ended up staying for 3 nights before heading north a few hours to Jaco (pronounced ‘Harko’).
We had left Carrie behind as she had already been to Jaco and thought very little of it. Our main reason for going there was to visit the nearby Carara National Park. Carrie was 100% on the money. Jaco was a terrible town. Amazingly it is one of the most popular weekend destinations
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Playa Blanca, Cahuita for ‘ticos’ (locals) from San Jose. The main beach was soooooo uninviting, the town yet another Americanised little Central American disaster. It is quite popular too as a sex holiday destination for old Yanks with bold heads and pony tails (at the same time). This leads me to another small tale. We chose a hostel from the Lonely Planet guide as we had no firm recommendations to help us otherwise. We knock on the door and it is answered by an old guy with a bolding head (but yep... also with a pony tail) and he says the place is closed. The young girl behind him wearing something very skimpy confirmed the closure for our type of tourism. Welcome to Jaco! Fortunately the park we visited was very beautiful but unfortunately it didn’t have much wildlife which was disappointing. It was worth the trip though as Jaco is a town which provides direct access across the Golfo de Nicoya to the Nicoya Peninsula to some wonderful little beach towns.
A one hour speed boat took us to Montezuma - a delightful beach haven lapped quietly by the Pacific. Carrie caught up to us and we stayed for 3 nights.
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Confrontation - White Faced Monkeys in Parque Nacional Cahuita We didn’t do a lot here other than sun baking and swimming. Perfect. We did manage to throw in yet another national park walk which again was pretty without too much excitement to report.
Prices were killing us so we made the plan to head north to Nicaragua as fast as possible without sacrificing the fun of our holiday of course. We stopped for 2 nights in Tamarindo (or ‘Scam a Gringo’ as we also heard it called). It too had an amazing stretch of white sandy beaches but again it too was very Americanised! If I wanted to go to the States why would I come to Costa Rica? Get some national culture back quickly Costa Rica! You’re fading!
Tamarindo did have a great falafel cafe though which was a lunchtime saviour!
A short cab ride away got us to our next destination - Playas del Coco. This beachy town is noted as being the best place for SCUBA diving in Costa Rica so it was time to put my newly achieved diving skills into action. We had a great day weatherwise but the diving could have been better. We did see spotted eagle rays, an
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Monkey Lovers with Sore Necks octopus, puffer fish, sting rays, a turtle plus much more but it wasn’t ‘pretty’ scenery. The dives were quite short too. We did have the intimate company of some curious dolphins though swimming with our boat on our travels out to the dive site which was kind of special. I suppose that alone can make for a good day out.
With our time in Costa Rica over quicker than we had planned, Nicaragua beckoned with new plans to spend our last 5 days in a place recommended to us by Carrie. She described the place as paradise. Who were we to argue? Off we headed but first there was a border crossing to contend with...we had no idea of what was to follow! We get there and the line is over 100m long... I will provide more dialog when I describe our return passing. At the time we didn’t think a border crossing could be so ineptly organised but as it turns out, our first crossing was a walk in the park.
So. To Nicaragua. We took a cab straight to Playa Majahaul. Carrie was right. Paradise personified. The last 5 days of our amazing journey were fittingly
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Playa Manuel Antonio spent doing very little. We needed some rest to recharge our batteries for the western world that awaited us in Europe. We also wanted to return with a tan to ensure jealousy from friends and a family was as high as possible. It worked. Our program went to plan every day. Breakfast, lie on beach near hostel, swim, lunch at Maria’s ‘restaurant’ (thatched roof, no walls, firewood fuelled kitchen), more swimming and sunbaking at nearby beach (generally alone with the beach to ourselves), return to Maria’s for dinner. The water was just sensational. The body surfing was outrageously good. The relaxing...well perfect! We each read 2 books and the tans...well....brown as berries.
Nicaragua uses the same polymer bank notes as we do in Australia and that excited me but moreover, the fact that you can buy a lot with them was most exciting. We were back! Lobster $10, prawns $9, chicken $4, beer $0.80.... we ate like kings and queens and with the exception of the crabs and mosquitoes in our room, we lived like them too. Our time was up, we farewelled Carrie and jumped a Tica bus to return to Cost Rica. The long journey home had
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Sloth in Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio begun.
And so to the Nicaragua - Cost Rica border. Leaving Nicaragua was a 30 minute or so wait. The bus company simply took our passports and got our exit stamps. To gain entry into Costa Rica though was a whole different story. The queue was 3 maybe 4 hundred metres long and was growing quickly! It was not signposted nor barrier controlled and it basically just wound its way haphazardly away from the customs counters through traffic, mud, puddles, some pathways, mostly not undercover either. The customs counters had a grand total of 2 officers working...yep just the 2 seemed sufficient to them. So with 3 hours behind us we finally got through but were then told that we had to have our bags searched....all of them. So we unload our bags from the bus along with the other 50 passengers and line them up to be searched. Again there was no signage indicating where this was to happen or even that it had to happen at all. We only knew it had to happen because a fellow passenger, who had done the trip a few times before, had told us. The ‘search’ was totally and utterly pathetic.
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Wood Pecker Working Furiously in Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio Of the 5 bags we had, only one was unzipped and even then nothing was ruffled. The hour long exercise of unloading the entire bus saw no bags unpacked. It was laughable. In end it took us 4 hours just to cross the border. It wasn’t a good start to our journey home. At least this time they didn’t try to sell us the immigration entry form like they did on our way into Nincaragua.
In a nut shell we spent the last 3 days just travelling to get home. We managed 7 countries in 3 days - Nicaragua, Cost Rica (1 night), Panama (2 hour stopover), Ecuador (one night/day), Colombia (2 hour stopover), Spain (3 hour stopover) and finally Germany! Our short stay in Quito, Ecuador was really fun. We returned to the hostel we had stayed at some 2 months earlier which in a funny way felt like a bit home especially when we were checked into the same room!!). We even managed to slip in some souvenir shopping.
So the journey is far from over. Next on the agenda is 2 weeks of R&R in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Copenhagen, before reality hits and we must
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White Faced Monkey in Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio return to the working world in München.
I will leave you with my final listing of peculiar travel observations:
• If Costa Rica is the most developed country in Central America, Central America has a lot of issues.
• Tides on the Pacific coast are like 100m different from high to low. Crazy.
• Howler monkeys sound like really mean horror movie roars, but they are fun to watch.
• Butterflies are massive over here.
• Park Guides are expensive.
• Bus trips are slow.
• Costa Ricans hate signage.
• Rice and beans are yum until you have them for 10 meals in a row.
• Costa Ricans quote everything in US Dollars even though they have their own currency (which has the unfortunate name of Colones). This is just another annoying Americanism of Cost Rica.
• You can swim with Nicaraguan dollars in your pocket..just like home. Love it.
• Sloths are slow.
Ciao,
Ryan
P.S. Here’s some vital final travel statistics of our 5 month journey:
• No. of countries visited since leaving Aus: 12
• Cheapest beer to
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Drinks at Cocos Bar, Montezuma date (calculated on 100mL conversion): $0.80
• No. of hours spent on public transport (inc. taxis): 174
• Cheapest room (double room shared bathroom, breakfast included): $8.33 each per night
• Total distance travelled: 11,778kms - glad we didn’t walk!
• No. modes on transport used: 24 (foot, jet plane, bicycle, boat, motorcycle taxi, taxi, taxi-bus, coach, ute back, car, 4wd, mini-bus, crawling, ferry, truck, motorised rickshaw, dune buggy, sand board, propeller plane, speed boat, swimming, raft, zip line, SCUBA)
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Carrie
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View from your pillow
Haha, love the view from your pillow in Matilda's. That chubby child was seriously freaky. Can't believe it's over, can you continue to write blogs from Munchen. Pleaaaase? x