Advertisement
Published: March 7th 2007
Buenos Dias Amigos,
From Monteverde we took the crazy bus trip outta there along narrow, rough mountain roads to Punta Arenas and the ferry across to the Nicoya Peninsula and down to the little beach town of Montezuma. Stayed at nice little hotel on the beach where you can see the incredible sunrise each morning from the veranda.
Have heard quite a few stories of theft in Costa Rica from travellers and I am now victim as some twit nicked my shorts that were hanging to dry on the railing of the hotel balcony (let´s hope that is the worst for the trip). We booked a snorkelling tour, with a group we met on the ferry, to Isla Tortuga. On the hour boat ride to the island we paused for a while in the middle of a small pod of humpback whales. The baby in the group was putting on quite a show with near non-stop waving and jumping, then momma would pop up right next to the boat. Wow she is big. We were a little concerned as the red tide was pretty bad when we were in Montezuma and looked even worse on the ride but ended
up being not too bad at the snorkelling spots. The snorkelling was pretty good with many fishes and some eels. Being Ang´s first time it took her a little frustration before getting the hang of it but then quite enjoyed it. We stopped between snorkels for an excellent fish BBQ at the gorgeous white sand beach on Isla Tortuga. A little volley ball in the scorching sun which made it almost unbearable to stand on the sand and burning the numerous newbies to a bright red. Another snorkel before heading back to Montezuma.
Great little (though quite gringo-fied) town with excellent seafood meals at the open air restaurants. Met up with a couple other friends we met in La Fortuna and went to the waterfalls just outside the town. What a nice spot with 3 sets of beautiful falls each with swimming holes and some good cliff jumping. Spent a few days just chilling on the beach, reading and trying to get a little colour on these pasty white Canadian bodies. Lots of big iguanas running around and monkeys in the trees nearby.
A long travel day as we loaded up and bussed back to the ferry and
across the Gulf of Nicoya where we then took a series of local buses to San Carlos for the night then bussed to Los Chiles the next day.
Los Chiles is a small town near the Nicaraguan border. We arranged a crack of dawn river boat tour on the Rio Frio with our own personal guide. What a great tour with an incredible amount of wildlife, even the guide and boat operator were impressed. We saw so much birdlife including Muscovy ducks, roseate Spoonbills, snakebirds, great blue herons, tiger herons, many types of kingfisher, great egrets, hawks, Baltimore orioles, red-winged blackbirds, pelicans, black vulture, white ibis, colourful woodrails, purple gullinule, doves, parakeets, mangrove swallows (which we saw one trying to drown a rival, our guide broke up the fight and sent them to their respective corners) and hummingbirds and those are just the ones I can remember. We also saw 3 types of monkeys white faced capuchins, a lone spider monkey and numerous groups of howlers. In one of the howler groups there is a young golden female (possibly the only one in existence). There were dozens of slider turtles, caymens, these tiny little bats, a giant morpho butterfly,
iguanas and the very cool basilisk lizard nicknamed the Jesus Christ lizard because of it´s ability to run across water.
Today is our last day of the Costa Rica portion of our trip as we planning to head across to Nicaragua tommorow by heading up to a quiet border crossing by riverboat. Talk to you next from Nica.
Pure Vida,
Rod and Angela
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 52; dbt: 0.054s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Devyn
non-member comment
Where's Cpt. Jack?
You seriously went to Isla Tortuga? Did you see any pirates? ;P How about Johnny Depp? That's totally cool. Sounds like you guys are having an amazing time. Not like me. I'm bored and tired of being pregnant. ;)