Blogs from Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 7

Last week we went from San José to Corcovado National Park. It is quite difficult to find good and recent information online about how to get there, but it’s quite easy. You have two choices : either you go to Drake Bay and take a ferry from there to Corcovado National Park or you go to Puerto Jimenez and take a shuttle to the park. What we did was the following : at Atlántico Norte bus station in San José, we took the 6AM Bus to Puerto Jimenez. It costs only 8000 Colones (= 14$US or 12€) and takes about 8 to 9 hours to get there. The bus is very comfortable and stops about every 1 1/2 or 2 hours either for a short pee-stop or for a lunch stop. It’s quite fast and cheap, ... read more

Freitag den 27. April wurden Rebecka und ich um 8h20 von unserem Shuttle nach Monteverde abgeholt. Zuerst fuhren wir 1 Stunde mit dem Shuttle von La Fortuna zum See, dann 45 Minuten mit dem Boot über den See, gefolgt von 5 Minuten mit unserem Gepäck zum nächsten Shuttle wandern, und dann nochmal 90 MInuten mit dem nächsten Shuttle nach Monteverde. Das Shuttle war ziemlich voll, aber die Fahrt war ganz ok und die Landschaft super schön. Der Busfahrer stoppte sogar einmal an einem besonders schönen Ort damit wir Photos machen konnten. :-) Die Straße vom See nach Monteverde erinnerte uns sehr stark an Guatemala, sehr schlecht, viele Löcher und unglaublich holprig. ^_^ Der Busfahrer ließ uns bei 100% Aventura raus, wo wir eine Ziplining Tour gebucht hatten. Wir kamen genau pünktlich zum Start der Tour an ... read more

The alarm goes off at 6:30am and Karen's not happy. She says she wants to relax. She should know that traveling with me is not always relaxing. I had asked her before we left if there were any excursions that interested her. She offered no opinion and so, out of desperation and so as not to just sit in the port doing nothing, I chose several activities for a few of the ports. Now the day of reckoning is upon us and she's balking at the thought of leaving our stateroom to venture out into the unknown. But I've already spent $90pp for this tour so we need to see it through. Following a quick breakfast, we meet our group on Deck 2 at 8am. There appears to be some delay in boarding our buses. It's ... read more

We had a leisurely start to our morning before being picked up at our casa for a boat tour through the Damas estuary. The estuary runs parallel to the Pacific Ocean and is filled with mangroves. We had excellent wildlife viewing here as well and saw many birds including the world’s smallest kingfisher. White faced capuchin monkeys scrambled through the mangroves looking for food, we saw tree crabs, bats sleeping under a leaning tree trunk, iguanas in the trees, a four eyed opossum who was NOT happy we peeked in on him and a silky anteater that took forever to spot because our instructions were to look for a brown “clump” in the trees where our guide was pointing. We eventually spotted him (he was sleeping and balled up tribble style). We have so many beautiful ... read more

Today we drove a measly 192 km....and it took us a whopping 4 hours. Back home, because of our long, flat multi-lane highways, that distance might take two hours max (and that’s assuming you respect the speed limit). Here, you can expect to go between 30 and 60km/hr on the majority of roads. Add to that roads that are mostly single lane, often hilly and sometimes unpaved. Although we’ve read comments about bad drivers, in truth we haven’t seen many (and certainly not more on average than back home). It’s just slow going - steep hills, sharp turns, towns popping up, people and dogs walking on the road, sluggish trucks and motos that you can’t always pass (because of all the reasons just noted). The key, really, is just to accept it. It’s slow because it ... read more