Turrialba, Province of Cartago, Costa Rica
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Escaped from San Jose to Turrialba for my whitewater rafting day on the Rio Pacuare - actually I was starting to quite like San Jose - it was definitely growing on me , no matter what anyone else says :) The scenery on the bus from San Jose was wonderful again - this heartland of Costa Rica the Meseta Central really is picture postcard stuff. Until Thursday I´d been really lucky so far in Costa Rica with the weather as May is supposed to be the rainy season but it had been sunny with only a couple of light rain drops on one day. On Thursday , however , the inevitable change happened and it bucketed it down in the afternoon in Turrialba. I holed up in the internet cafe to stay dry & took the opportunity to upload a ton of old Mexico photos I´d been meaning to get posted up on here. When the rain cleared I had the chance to take a wander around Turrialba - it´s a pleasant & seemingly quite thriving small town in scenic surroundings without many tourists. Friday was my whitewater rafting day and it was all very good fun , allbeit not particularly adrenaline-charged as the rapids weren´t that big and we all stayed in the boat (until it was time to swim) ..
. certainly nothing like as hardcore when I went rafting a few years ago on the Zambezi when we kept tipping over & people were being thrown in all over the place. The scenery down the Rio Pacuare national park area is really fantastic and we had a nice group of people in our "crew" - three friendly American guys , a sweet Spanish couple and me. We rafted for a few hours , had a couple of swims along the way and then stopped at a cabin on the riverside for lunch - all very pleasant. Another two hours rafting in the afternoon was coupled with another swim and an exciting leap from a high rock into the water. It turned out that the Spanish couple , Juan & Cristina , were heading on to Cahuita in their hire car, thus passing straight through my next destination , Puerto Limon . They kindly offered me a lift which was great of them & certainly saved the time and hassle of getting the bus.
