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Published: June 13th 2011
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Costa Rican tourism is dominated by Americans, old Americans retire here, middle aged Americans bring their kids on holiday here and young Americans backpack or volunteer here. As such the country is heavily geared toward catering to demanding tourists, the restaurants serve fast food, the tours run seamlessly with English speaking guides and everything costs many times that of the neighbouring countries, I may be being harsh but I feel like Costa Rica has lost much of its authenticity and is now more like a tropical Disney Land.
My first stop over the border was the town of La Fortuna, famous for its proximity to Volcán Arenal the town is geared toward adventure tourism; having gotten used to personal guided tours for $10 many of the available activities were well out of my price range, amusingly one could not even climb the active volcano as it is apparently much to dangerous... one evening I visited some geothermal springs which where a series of scorching lounging pool running down the slope of a well developed hillside. Probably my first hot bath for several months.
From La Fortuna I headed south west to the remote mountain town of Santa Elena, at
Monteverde
There were some very odd plants in the reserve. 1400m the cool climate was a welcome relief from the heat of Nicaragua. Just outside Santa Elena is Monteverde, one of Costa Rica's show-piece attractions, literally translated as ´green mountain´, never has a place been more aptly named. Monteverde's cloud forest covers over 4000Ha of which only 3% is open to visitation, but this small area is still exceptionally beautiful. The trees within the reserve are covered in epiphytic plant life, such plants live non-parasitically on a host & include nearly 900 species of fern, moss, bromeliad and litchen (epiphyte means air plant). Such epiphytes cover every available surface in the forest, branches hang thick with litchen and tree trunks are blanketed in a thick layer of moss, the combined effect is a forest incredibly thick with diverse vegetation; tropical cloud forests account for 20% of the worlds plant diversity & it certainly shows.
Being Costa Rica upon arrival there was a pleasant visitor centre & a helpful guide to advise which route to take on the free trail map & once in the reserve the wide well surfaced paths wove between the trees with frequent signage and warnings for sections of ´natural trail´. It was such an amusing
contrast to Rach & I´s cloud forest experience in Honduras where we had a horrendous map and only intermittent plastic loops hanging from trees to find our way on trails scratched into the dirt. Despite being a bit sanitised the reserve was very beautiful with many birds and beasties to spot on the way round. One trail followed a narrow ridge line which marks the continental divide, a geographic division running from Canada to Argentina that denotes the watershed between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, I needed a pee at this point in my hike & made sure to divide the spoils equally...
As well as the natural reserve Santa Elena is also the base for some zip lining tours through the forest canopy. I went with a company called 100% Adventure & the lines whizzing through the forest were good fun although I struggled to match the enthusiasm of the Americans for whom everything was "like, awesome", I did enjoy the last zip line which went far above the forest canopy with views into the valley below, for this ride we were attached onto the zip-line lying face down & hands free in what they called the
MONKEY!
Costa Rican Coffee with 'cappuccino art' 'Superman' position, good fun. The final activity was a massive Tarzan Swing which involved jumping off the end of a bridge and dropping 50m before being caught by ropes and swinging in a huge arc, much more my kind of thing. (As an aside all Americans should be permanently banned from the use of the words 'like', 'whatever' and 'awesome', there current use as verbal punctuation is infuriating!)
A new joy has been added to Central American travel, being a wealthier country a greater proportion of people own smart phones through which the majority play annoyingly loud tinny music for the duration of bus trips. Almost every journey now passes with multiple phones blasting out the latest in Latin American rap creating a multi-directional disharmony, obviously being English I say nothing & sit in sullen acquiescence hoping that a meaningful stare with convey my disapproval... this approach has not been particularly successful iliciting only one response from a guy who asked if I was "likin' the music man?", he received an especially hard stare.
Heading toward the coastal lowlands I travelled to the southern end of the Nicoya Peninsula to the small surf town of Santa Teresa. I
Bed Bugs
The buggers got me good was suffering from a severe bout of man-flu at the time and not feeling up for a surf opted to have a hammock day in a bid to recuperate. Unfortunately a large colony of bed bugs had similar plans & after forty winks I woke up covered in several hundred angry bites resembling a human pin cushion.
Feeling rather sorry for myself I crossed back to Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica to the Tortuguero National Park in the far north east of the country. Tortuguero is only accessed by boating down a fast flowing jungle river, the captains who navigate the narrow, meandering stream with its numerous sand banks and tree stumps in a 40' boat demonstrated an impressive skill.
The town of Tortuguero spans a narrow spit of land separating the river of the same name from the Caribbean. Every year over 40,000 sea turtles come to nest here including Green, Hawksbill and the 3m long Leatherback turtle & it was these I was hoping to see, unfortunately the Whale Sharks had clearly had a word and traipsing up and down the beach for three hours in the middle of the night I saw only tracks. Rather frustratingly
Red Devil
Saw this lady perched above a doorway in San Jose several turtles were seen the day before & after my visit. C'est la vie.
Leaving Tortuguero I had a long days travel down to Puerto Viejo near the Panamanian border, reaching the first bus terminal I jumped on the waiting bus for Puerto Viejo thankful for the good timing, however unbeknown to me there are in fact two towns in Costa Rica called Puerto Viejo, one a pleasant beach side resort the other a nondescript little town where very few tourists venture, you can imagine where I ended up, 1 boat, 5 buses and 12 hours later I arrived at my intended destination.
I've rather given up on Costa Rica, we don't seem to agree, next stop Panama.
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Mazza
non-member comment
Oh Dear!
Well you have to laugh but it does sound awful! Especially getting to the wrong Puerto Viejo! Glad you escaped eventually! Wishing you an Awesome end to your travels! ! ! Mazza