Blogs from Arenal, Alajuela, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 7

Hola! Greetings and an early Happy New Year!! Although there were some major bumps in the travel adventures of Wendy Wanderer and her Companion Chris (thanks mom!), including a canceled flight, we were able to arrive in Costa Rica as scheduled. Miraculously!! We spent the first two days in San Jose, which is nothing special, although the warm, sunny weather was welcomed after the horrid weather we experienced last week. Yesterday we arrived in Arenal, where we are staying at a fabulous hotel with a breathtaking view of the volcano. And we were so fortunate to see the volcano, which is quite the rare occurrence at this time of the year. We were able to go on a volcano hike, see some native birds, and the volcano as it errupted. All incredible sights! Today we experienced ... read more

Costa Rica...lush, green and very humid! It´s a country very used to tourists and knows how to charge them. In most countries, you pay to enter a national park and then enjoy it, but in some national parks here they seem to charge for each walk, waterfall and toucan sighting (ok, an exaggeration, but only slightly!). Nevertheless, we are really enjoying spending time in this beautiful country. The people are friendly and travel is easy as the tourist infrastructure is very good and most people speak English. We´ve been to three areas so far; La Fortuna and Arenal, Monteverde/Santa Elena and Rincon de la Viajar. Some of our highlights so far: *Despite the very, very wet weather in La Fortuna, which meant we were unable to see the Volcan Arenal until the day we were leaving ... read more

Alright, so it seems like the short blurbs are a hit, so let's keep it going! Given the topic of driving in the last post, I had to save one post specifically for a great tale from our trip. As I had mentioned, our buddy Steve was kind enough to drive for a portion of our trip. When we finally got to the Arenal area after about a 4 hour drive, we were greeted by a steep 8 minute drive up a windy narrow road to our hotel in the region. Now, when I say this thing was steep, it was steep. Every corner was sharp, and every turn was a hairpin one. One wrong slip of the wheel and we would have rolled over. Thankfully, Steve's cautiousness came in handy and we made it safely ... read more

Hola We´ve made it into Costa Rica, via a few days in Nicaragua (and an overnight stay in supposedly scarey San Salvador, which thankfully wasn´t so scarey) and are chilling for a little while in the cloud forests at Monte Verde All´s well here (despite Adam´s ice trauma!). We´ll be heading down to the Costa Rican Caribbean coast tomorrow, from where we´ll pop down to Panama. It´s one month down already - time is flying! Anyway , enough chat .... here´s some photos for your viewing pleasure :) xx ... read more

I'm now in La Fortuna, a beautiful little town about 3.5 hours outside of San Jose. 3 nights ago I met two Americans, Jimmy and Brian, at the restaurant at our hostel in San Jose. We went out to a bar that had THREE bands playing simultaneously, and it was a little crazy. Later we met another guy from England who was a little different, followed us around for a bit, and tried to sell us cocaine...so we ended up leaving. If you get caught associating with someone who does drugs in Central America, even if you don't use or buy, you get a huge fine and are often sent to jail. The laws are pretty harsh, considering we're in the channel for drug running that connects Columbia and Venezuela to the U.S. and Canada. Jimmy ... read more