Costa Rica

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Border crossings

I was dreading the border crossing between Panama and Costa Rica as the Costa Ricans sometimes request a onward ticket which proves that you leave the country within the visa validity period. As we don't have a schedule and plan to go overland to Mexico we do not have such a ticket. Being the paranoid and organised me I purchased some plane tickets from Costa Rica to Mexico on the day just to rock up to the border and no one wanted to see them.
Luckily I could cancel the tickets on the spot for a full refund. Guess better prepared than sorry.

surfer dude - Puerto Viejo

Our first stop in Costa Rica was Puerto Viejo a surfer town not far away from the border. We found a nice accommodation with loads of cats and settled in.
The towns main attraction apart from beaches and surf is the jaguar rescue centre. Not that the centre has rescued jaguars recently but it started off with "rescuing" one. The whole thing was rather unsuccessful as the jaguar died shortly after it was brought there. The idea of rescuing animals stuck though and it is now a well run refuge for all native animals. The place is run by backpackers (what could ever go wrong) who volunteer their time to look after the animals.
Animals are brought here if they are injured or if they are discovered during police raids as it's illegal to have native animals as pets in CR. The main aim is to release them as quickly as possible or if that's not possible to give them a nice life in the refuge.
We saw some native cats, loads of monkey babies, baby sloths (very cute), birds and a brain damaged ant eater. The ant eater had the habit of walking in circles at which stage the volunteer that follows him intervenes. Quite a job.

We also hired a four wheel bike/car contraption to explore the nearest beaches but our excursion was cut short by wet weather. We settled into a chocolate café where Kellie and Dillon joined the 3 hour chocolate tour of the cacao farm that stretched back from the coast high into the hills.. They learned everything from how to grow cocoa, harvest it, process it, make chocolate and (most importantly) how to eat it. They had superb tasting session involving mixing pieces of chocolate on their spoon with morsels of ginger, honey, lemongrass, chili, garlic, rosemary, basil, curry, peppermint...and drinking chocolate shots. All of this on a balcony protruding from the forest looking up and down the coast. I concentrated on the chocolate tasting room in the café and studied the guidebook.

We had a quick stint at the beach which is in some places half black and half white sand which are pounded by waves. After some time in the water it was time to hit the 2 for 1 specials in the local bar. Traveling is hard sometimes...

Volcano!

Onwards to our first of many volcanoes in Central America. Given that most of Central America sits between two tectonic plates, it is unsurprising that there are many active and inactive volcanoes. Our first one was quite active from 1960 to 2010 when it suddenly stopped spewing lava. It must have been quite a sight to see the lava exploding out of the crater and we saw pictures of the eruptions. The local tourist industry must have been gutted when it stopped as being inactive is just not as exciting.
These days the main attractions are a rather impressive waterfall, some hot springs which feed a river that we had a bath in and several walks along the old lava flow which is getting more and more overgrown.
A highlight for Dillon was our backpacker "resort" which featured many hammocks and a mini pool with swim up bar.

Cloud forest in the clouds - Monteverde

I bet Monteverde is a beautiful place and we got a glimpse of it when we arrived. We saw the pacific ocean and the rain cloud forest it is famous for. Unfortunately for us it rained the two days we were there. Our bad run with sickness started also here. Kellie was the first to have a cold and then I got sick as well. We missed all the nice walks and the adventure activities the place is famous for.

Costa Rica didn't impress us at this stage most likely due to it being rainy season and given that it's also fairy expensive we decided to leave and head to our next destination Nicaragua of which we hear great things.

Video

Check out the video of our Costa Rica trip..

Costa Rica in 10 seconds Click here for the video. Password is warta

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Photos

Arenal volcanoe
Extinct since 2010

Ant eater
One volunteers job was it to follow the any eater and prevent it from doing something stupid

Bread and chocolate!
A winning combination

The famous frog
It's basically the national animal of Costa Rica

I think you have a monkey on your head
One of the many volunteers helping out at the jaguar rescue centre

Dinner
Simple but good

Find the sloth
A sloth we saw in the middle of the town