Chloe and I Embark on a NW Costa Rican Adventure
Trip Start
Aug 26, 2005
1
12
15
Trip End
Dec 08, 2005
Canas, Liberia, and Tamarindo, Costa Rica
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Thursday-Had breakfast a bakery and took a taxi to the Las Pumas Rescue Cat Shelter. You can read more about it here: http://www.moon.com/planner/costa_rica/mustsee/las_pumas.html
They have jaguars, jagarundis, pumas, raccoons, capuchin monkeys, macaws, toucans, ocelots. It was really cool to see all these animals, albeit in a zoo. We hooked the bus from there to Liberia and found a hotel mentioned in Chloe's book as good for backpackers with a 'charasmatic and informative owner named Beto'. Well, Beto was not nice, he was actually outright rude to us and we saw him be rude to other females as well, but was just as nice as pie to all the men. Interesting. Anyways, the lodgings were sufficient and within our budget, so we stayed in a dorm there that night for $6pp.
We bummed around Liberia, and I searched for a turkey dinner since it was Thanksgiving. No dice. No turkey anywhere. I settled for garlic chicken and poor mashed potatoes. What are you gonna do? We napped that afternoon for a little while then went for pizza with one of our bunkmates and a guy from Holland, the country, not the city, haha. The girl we shared a bunk with was from Grand Rapids!!!! She graduated from West Catholic in 1998. I was flipping out, how odd is that? We meet in some obscure town in Costa Rica. The pizza was delicious and they told us that there is a movie theature in Liberia. Of course I had to go. Chloe and I took a taxi to the mall and saw "Red Eye" for $3 that night. Glorious. The movie got out around 10:30 and Chloe and I are the ONLY people in the mall other than the guards. We go outside, no taxis. We are stranded. The guards had to call a taxi for us stupid gringas. It was humorous.
Friday-7am we left for Rincon de la Vieja National Park. We hiked around to Las Pailas de Borro (Boiling pits of mud), a boiling lake, and steam vents all natural from the volcano. We made it back to the ranger station and had lunch. At 11:15 we went for the large 70m waterfall. It was 5km (3.1 miles) each way. Awful hike. It took us two hours to get there, we swam for 20 minutes then completed the hike back in about an hour. Chloe and I figured we were exhausted and determined, which can make you do amazing things. We were soooo exhausted, our hiking had totaled 15kms in 6 hours. We stopped and saw the ancient Indian inscribings and then went back to our hotel. We packed up our belongings and went to the bus stop for Tamarindo. They told us the ride was 1.5 hours, turns out it was 4 hours long, but only about 60kms. It was the most awful bus ride ever, packed to the gills with hard plastic seats while we are holding on to our huge packs. We made it to Tamarindo at 10pm and went to La Botella de Leche, an awesome hostel. This is the website: http://www.labotelladeleche.com/ It is called the Milk Bottle in English and is all cow themed. So cute!! It was 8pp/per night with air conditioning. The bad news: we have been hiking all day and took a 4 hour bus ride sweaty and disgusting. All I want is a shower, but much to my dismay ALL of Tamarindo has no water. None, no where. Apparently this happens a lot. I was NOT a happy camper. We changed clothes and headed to Subway (cheap, good, basically the only open restaurant at that time). We went back to the hostel and met some cool people there and walked to the Monkey Bar. I thought I was at a frat party. Obnoxious drunk American college students EVERYWHERE. Beer was $2.50 in Tamarindo and I pay $.80 in Puntarenas. Chloe and I are mad. Tamarindo is so expensive because its all gringos there. Run and owned by Americans. We thought we were in the Florida Keys or something.
Saturday-Chloe and I found some fins and we had brought our snorkels and masks so we heard there was good snorkeling and headed out. They were right, while the coral wasn't that pretty, we saw tons of awesome animals. I saw a 6 ft ray of some kind...enormous! We also saw two hot yellow boxfish and I saw a red and white speckled eel. It wasn't in a hole, which is unusual, and I was freaked out. It was 2 feet long and kept opening and closing its mouth at me, needless to say I swam the fastest in my life into shore. We both got suburned on our backs, regardless of the sunscreen. Chloe was worse than me, but then again she's from Australia and covered in freckles! We relaxed that afternoon, snorkeling + sun takes it out of you. We hung out at the hostel with some really cool people then went to the opening of a new bar on the beach with free beer until 9pm. Really, free beer. We went from bar to bar that night and Chloe and I called it quits around 1am, very tired.
Sunday-Our books are wrong on bus times and man does that stink. We went to the bus stop at 10 to wait two hours until the bus came. It then took 1.5 hours to go 30kms to Santa Cruz. Good news--we realized there is a direct bus from Santa Cruz to Puntarenas that left at 3:40. We thought we would have to do another transfer. Well an hour into that bus ride the bus broke down. We had to wait an hour for a new bus. We made it back to Puntarenas at 8:30. Our waiting/travel time totalled 10.5 hours. I won't miss the slow travel here. It was worth it though, I had a blast.
My photos are on this website: http://community.webshots.com/user/ticanjenna4
Thats a summary of my time over the last month, I didn't realize it had been so long since I updated, so sorry I bombarded you all! Things are getting wrapped up here in Costa Rica, I only have 8 whole days left. Unbelievable. This time has flown by, and again, I need to thank my parents for this wonderful opportunity.
Thank you to everyone for sending me emails! I love getting them, I have been really busy and will definitely get back to everyone, I promise! I am sorry its taking so long, but please know I love receiving emails and comments!
See you all oh so soon!
Jenna
