Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

On the 21st we left our van parked at our apartment in Alajuela, and walked off into the neighborhood to catch a bus to town.  We left with 1 backpack, 1 diaper bag and each of the kids had a small backpack of their own with the toys and books we are bringing with us.  The rest is in the van and we wont see it again for another 3 or 4 weeks as we are going to backpack through Panama.

We first got a bus into Alajuela where we caught a bus to San Jose.  We spent the first night in San Jose and the next morning we took a 5 hour bus ride to Puerto Viejo, which is on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, just north of the Panamanian border.  Puerto Viejo is a laid back town with a huge rastafarian influence.  It was much more humid than we were used to in Alajuela and a bit overcast.  We found a nice hostel with a swimming pool and went swimming quite a bit.  We sampled a bit of the local Caribbean cuisine, rented some bikes and went swimming in the ocean.

When we were in Puerto Viejo we meet two Germans traveling together.  Bernie and Trixi were also planning on going to Bocas in Panama so we decided to travel together.  We all got on the bus together and headed towards the Panamanian border.  The border crossing went really smoothly.  We got a ride to the city of Almirante which where we caught a boat out to Bocas.  Bocas are a group of serveral islands off the northern tip of Panama.  We were able to find a nice hotel with the hottest showers since we left the US and some comfortable hammocks.

The first day Matthias, William, Julian and I took a short boat ride over to another island and walked along the beach.  The weather was a bit overcast and we had some wicked rain storms, which the Caribbean is famous for.  The beaches here are really picture perfect: white sand, lined with palm trees and crystal clear blue/green water.  The beers are cold, cheap and tasty.  The only problem on this small island was that the sand flies were absolutely unbearable.

The next day Matthias offered to stay with William and Julian.  Bernie, Trixi and I went on an all day boat/snorkeling tour around Bocas.  The first stop was to a place where the dolphins swim.  Next we anchored over a coral reef and spent an hour and a half snorkeling.  We pulled up to palm thatched roof cabins where we had lunch.  The coconut smell was so tempting and we all shared a plate of fresh lobster pulled right from the water.  After lunch we went to a beach where we spent about an hour and a half.  This beach had the softest, finest sand I´ve ever seen and the temperature of the water was perfect.  And no sand flies here!  After we left the beach we anchored one more time for a final hour of snorkeling.  The time away from the kids was very relaxing and I was happy to have some good friends to go with.

Our next stop was Boquete.  Bernie and Trixi aren´t flying out until Thursday so they decided to continue on with us and we all got a boat back to the mainland, a bus to David and then another old American school bus up to Boquete.  The bus ride to David was spectacular.  First we drove along the coast up into the jungle.  Every now and again you would villiages of thatched roof huts on stilts.  The drive up into the mountains was through lush green forests and the drive back down to the Pacific was drier and mountainous.  At times it reminded me of Switzerland, and at times of Arizona.

Boquete is a small town up in the mountains surrounded by cloud forests.  The air is dry and fresh and there is a strong cool wind.  There is a volcano nearby and lots of hiking trails.  I´ve found the sun, combined with the dry air and cool wind very peaceful and relaxing.  Later today we are going to go for a small hike and then meet up with Bernie and Trixi for dinner.

Panama has been great so far.  Not everyone speaks English here and it feels way less touristy to me than Costa Rica did.  In an earlier post I think I described Costa Rica as “a well oiled tourist machine”.  Panama seems much more laid back without the frantic shuttling of tourists to every last little corner of the country.  It also has an indigenous population.  The women still wear their traditional clothing (as they did in Guatemala and Mexico) and I find that much more interesting than skin-tight tank tops all the women (regardless of size) seem to be wearing in Costa Rica.  The traditional clothing that I´ve seen here so far has been a solid color, bright mumu-like dress with a large ruffle and rick-rack like trim in several places on the ruffle, sleeve, waistband etc.  It´s neat.

We may leave Boquete tomorrow, and head toward the Pacific coast.  After that our next stops will be Santa Fe, El Valle and then Panama City.

We don’t have anything major to report, just a few small updates on various subjects.

We went to the doctor with Julian and his foot is much better. They took another x-ray and the doctor says things look good. He’s not in pain and they let us take all the bandages off his foot.

My parents got a message from the Seattle Public School District. They received William’s application in its entirety. I was really happy they called since I was a little worried about it.

Tomorrow we are moving out of our apartment and headed to San Jose. Then on Monday morning we are taking a bus to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. We plan on staying at the beach for a couple of days and then heading into Panama. Major stops we know we want to make in Panama are Bocas, Panama City and the San Blas Islands. We are leaving the Yoda Van at the apartment we have been staying at and will pick it up on the way home. Keep your fingers crossed that we don’t run into any trouble for leaving our car in Costa Rica for a few weeks.

Matthias’ birthday was on Thursday. He was a little upset that not more of you sent him happy birthday e-mails. Even his own mother forgot his birthday. Poor Matthias! He is actually kind of a pain on his birthday because he makes us suffer. “You have to do whatever I say today because it’s my birthday.” “Can’t you please be nice to me today? After all it is my birthday.” Thank God he only has a birthday once a year.

Julian is almost fully potty trained. He goes all day without a diaper and rarely has an accident. We leave the house without a diaper and he does great. We still put a diaper on him at nights, but most mornings it is still dry. For those of you without children this is probably more information than you wanted to read in our blog. For those of you with children you know what a big deal this is to get both of your kids finally out of diapers.

All the weight we have lost over the past 5 months has been swiftly returned to our midsections. Our time in Alajuela has been mostly 3 delicious not-low-fat meals a day, lots of alcohol and a mainly sedentary life. It has also been hard to maintain our great tans sitting in a dark living room in front of the TV. Our plan for Panama is to slim back down and work on our tans again.

The Yoda Van is still running great even after the 10,000+ miles we’ve driven on this trip so far. Here in Alajuela we finally got our leaky gas tank fixed. We’ve also been having a few problems with the passenger’s side window. If the window was rolled down most or all the way and you shut the door the window comes out of its track and you can’t roll it up. You have to take the panel off the door and fiddle around with it to get it back up. Our mechanic here in Alajuela put some sort of reinforcement on the window, but after he did that it was impossible to close the window all the way. That surely wasn’t going to work for us. Matthias and my Dad worked on for quite a while together but couldn’t come up with anything. Matthias finally shoved a bunch of sponges and plastic bags into the bottom of the door, which stabilizes it enough so it doesn’t pop out anymore. If a customs official were to look down there he would certainly think we smuggling something in there.

We’ve been in Alajuela for one month now. Yesterday and today we’ve been cleaning out the apartment and putting stuff back into the Yoda Van. What was crazy is how much (useless) stuff we have accumulated in one month. Again we have had to pare down and get rid of so many things. What is also crazy is how much extremer you have to pare things down when backpacking. We’ll be traveling by backpack for probably 3 weeks, 4 at the most. If you have to schlep on your back everything you will need for the next month you start to think differently about what is really necessary. Honestly we don’t really miss most of the things we leave behind. The two most important things for us recently have been having time to spend together as a family and having a lot of sun. Luckily we’ve had a lot of both lately.

Who knew that Costa Ricans are facsimile challenged?  It all started with William’s application for Kindergarten.  William will be starting school in September and we needed to send in his enrollment application.  We had all the forms prepared and set off into Alajuela to find someone who could fax it for us. 

I am actually kind of excited about enrolling William in school.  There is an international school in the Seattle Public School district that offers a bi-lingual program.  Half of the school day is conducted in English and the other half is conducted in Spanish or Japanese.  Now that he has already picked up some Spanish I was really hoping that he could get into the Spanish program.  He’s already growing up bilingual with us since he learns German and English.  Imagine if he could continue with Spanish and grow up tri-lingual.  How cool would that be?

I had seen a store in town that I thought would be able to fax something to the US for me, but when we went yesterday it was closed.  Luckily there was an English language used book store across the street that is run by a drunk US ex-pat.  I figured I could at least ask over there where I could fax.  It turns out he had his own fax machine and offers to fax internationally for a cool $1.80/page.  We had 9 pages so this was going to be an expensive fax.  The hassle it would take to find someone else wasn’t worth it to me so I agreed.  He started faxing, and I waited.  He continued to fax and fax and fax, and I waited and waited and waited some more.  Once it was done he collects the papers, shows me confirmation sheet and gives me the grand total “8 pages are 7200 colones.”  Uh oh.  There were 9 pages.  We had no idea which page didn’t go through so he starts over, this time feeding each paper individually through the machine.  I wait some more, and eventually he wasn’t fast enough with one of the pages and the connection is lost.  He dials again and continues faxing each page individually.  At the end he looks at the confirmation sheet, again only 8 pages.  Jesus Christ!  Is it really that hard?  This all took about 40 minutes and he finally said he doesn’t want to try it again and I should try at the post office.  Luckily he didn’t charge me anything.The next day we went to the post office.  I hand the man at the counter my 9 pages, show him the number and off he goes to the fax machine.  He dials the number, records the time and starts feeding the pages into the machine one page at a time.  I think that maybe the fax machines in Costa Rica are just old and need this kind of babysitting.  I hope he has learned from experience and that this is the best way to send a fax successfully.  After a few pages I notice he didn’t start with the cover page, rather he starts with the last page.  Luckily I put William’s name on all the pages and I hope the people at the Seattle Public School district office ought to be able to put them all in the right order.  There is an older man at the counter next to me who is obviously upset about something and the guy at the fax machine becomes increasingly engrossed and involved in his conversation with his colleague.  He almost missed the last page, but luckily he returned to the machine in the nick of time and all 9 pages went through as 1 transmission.  He gives me a total of 4770 colones (about 9 dollars).  I give him 10,000 colones and somehow he gave me back 8100 colones.  Even if he can’t make change it appears he can at least (sort-of) fax successfully.

So now they have 3 copies of William’s application: 2 incomplete, 1 hopefully complete in the wrong order.  What will happen if they try and process his application 3 times?  What if they block his application because the first 2 sets were incomplete?  Maybe they’ll place him in special-ed because they think his parents are too dumb to fax an application correctly.  Keep your fingers crossed that William actually gets enrolled and he gets a place in the school we are hoping for.

The following is a guest blog entry by Dan Lotz (Allison’s Father): 

PICTURE THIS

(Allison and Matthias have heard this first part over and over)

     Picture this:  your kids are finally off your overhead.  They are grown up, through college, married, have good jobs, a nice income, a nice home in a highly desirable part of Seattle, have excellent transportation, live nearby, have two beautiful boys happy with their friends and the refuge of their home and familiar beds, attending an enviable daycare situation along with good friends and neighbors.

     One day they walk in and announce that they are quitting their jobs, renting their house out, selling their new VW Eurovan and buying a 25 year old VW Vanagan, packing up the kids and going on a year long “Walk about” to Panama and back.

  I am a worrier and an engineer and as such tend to analyze things more than I should, but my first thoughts were that this is something you do either before or after you have kids.  If it weren’t for the boys I would have said go ahead and have a ball.  It sounds like an exciting and educational adventure.  If you run into problems you are both smart and resourceful enough to figure a way through them.  It’s all voluntary on your part, your adults and prepared for the good and bad experiences of such an adventure.

     With the boys it’s a different story. They have no choice other to endure whatever exciting adventures or hardships that may occur and to be away from the security of their home and friends.  The above is to try to explain my misgivings about the wisdom of such an adventure.

     Unfortunately unexpected, dangerous situations occur with bewildering speed and sometimes with severe consequences.  Being stranded in a hot broken down 25 year old van is a distinct possibility, among other unpleasant situations.Now for the good part.

     The trip to Costa Rica was a blast. (Maybe a bit too long but what the heck-we had fun)

We stayed in excellent accommodations, especially in Playa Hermosa where we swam at the beach nearly every day and in general had a relaxing week just chilling out, eating well, swimming in the pool and just having fun visiting Playa Cocoa, buying fresh fish etc. The only exception was Joyce coming down with a rather unpleasant stomach disorder.  Probably not as brief as she wanted.  We then went to Alajuela where we spent most of the rest of our time except for a several day trip to Monte Verde where we went on jungle tours, serpent displays, ate a lot, and had a lot of fun.  The bus ride to and from Monte Verde had spectacular scenery.

     Back in Alajuela we celebrated Christmas and New Years, went swimming, went to several markets, did some repairs on the Yoda Van and in general had a laid back time catching up on reading and consumed generous amounts of the local beer.  There were two things I had a hard time adjusting to.  One being the fact that every building in the city has bars on the windows so you felt as if you were in jail.  It’s hard to believe that such good natured people as the Costa Rican’s find this necessary.  I am missing something.  The other problem I had is with the odd way their toilet routine is carried out.  Something to do with poor plumbing but never the less somewhat unpleasant.

     There adventure is ½ over and there is nothing I would rather have happen than for them to return, find rewarding jobs get the kids settled in and say over and over we told you so. 

     Thanks again Allison and Matthias for all of your efforts to accommodate and entertain us.

Thanks again.
Love, Padre

When we started writing our blog we wanted to have 2 to 3 entries every week. In the past the problem wasn’t lack of ideas and stories, but lack of internet access. Now it’s different. We have wireless internet in the apartment in Alajuela, but no stories to tell.

Life here is even quieter since Allison’s parents left. Now we can’t even complain about them anymore. However they still get all the blame for the kids being spoiled and watching too much TV, even after they have left.

One of the nicest things about being in one place for one month is the cooking opportunities. We have a big kitchen and it’s so much fun to spread out and take time to cook great dishes. The cooking gets even more fun when all of the fruits and vegetables are bought the same day super fresh from one of the local markets.

Going to the markets is the biggest excitement these days. Markets in Central America never get boring. They are very chaotic (not so much in Costa Rica) and they have an incredible array of things to buy. We also get great fish and shrimp that were caught the night before and I mostly enjoy buying meat at one of the butchers.  If you get there early in the morning you see men carrying half a cow on their backs into the stalls in the market.  Or you see people peddling cows bones out of the back of a run down pick up truck.  You can also buy a pig’s head if you are hungry for it.  It sure is different from the meat counter at Safeway where the workers are dressed in what almost looks like a Haz-mat suit and all the meat is served on white Styrofoam trays wrapped in shiny plastic wrap.

But after a while the markets get less exciting.  The amazement of the strange green dimpled fruits I’ve never seen before just becomes “Oh, there’s that weird fruit we have no idea about.”  The most exciting thing is that you notice how the beets and radishes get larger and the lettuce gets tougher each week.  The drudgery of cooking every day has begun to set in, and now I just want to go out to eat.  I can tell you exactly how to get through town which means we don’t get lost anymore.  Getting lost is almost always fodder for great blog entries.  Our life is getting a bit boring and therefore our blog is, too.  Yesterday we noticed that an open bottle of motor oil spilled out into our cupboards in the Yoda Van.  Trying to get motor oil out of our REI camping towels has been the major excitement of the week and is hardly blog worthy.

It really has been nice to have a break from being constantly on the road, but now we are ready to hit it again. Our nomadic tendencies of the last 5 months are making us stir crazy.  On Wednesday Julian gets one more x-ray and I hope we will be on the road again by Friday and then we should have more interesting stories.  We’re considering parking the Yoda Van in Alajuela, packing our backpack and doing Panama by bus.  We’ve met a lot of backpackers on our travels and are intrigued by that way of traveling.  If we end up doing that I’m sure the stories will get much more interesting fast, so stay tuned.

After 26 days and 13 hours the in-laws went home again. And let me tell you something: They were ready! When we got up at 6 in the morning they were both fully dressed waiting with their luggage less than 20 feet away from the Yodavan and honestly, Allison and I were ready, too, even though right now 10 hours after we dropped them of at the airport the apartment is strangely quiet and empty and we do miss them.

Overall I must say we had an awesome time. Yes, we did have a few blowouts, but personally I think that if you live together with your in-laws (or parents) for almost one entire month and there are no arguments, something is wrong. It has also been an incredible time for the kids. Dan and Joyce brought a suitcase full of present for them. It was like an early Christmas. They also got more candies in the last 4 weeks than on our entire trip, they watched more TV and DVD’s than I would ever have allowed, but I agree that it is the grandparents duty to just the spoil the kids. So during the last 26 days (and 13 hours) I constantly had to be the bad guy who had to say “no more candies” “that’s enough TV” etc. On the other hand, it was nice to see how patient Joyce is with both of the kids. She kept reading books with them, made oatmeal in the morning, taught them counting and just spent an incredible amount of time with them which was great for us, because we had time to do things like visiting local karaoke bars.I am also sure that they had a good time, but the next time they will visit us on our trip (we don’t know where yet) they probably will not stay for almost one month. I also think that they have been happy with the accommodations we found.  Before they came we had discussions about whether they should book something over the internet, or let us try to find an equally nice place for (hopefully) a fraction of the cost by just asking around once we got to Costa Rica.  We also convinced them not to rent a car for their visit, but instead have faith in the Yodavan which turned out to be the correct decision. They didn’t admit it, but I am sure they also fell in love with the Yodavan. I am happy that things worked out the way they did, because there were times when I was a bit nervous if we would find places to stay that they would enjoy which were still within our budget.I think that in previous blogs we must have mentioned that Allison’s parents were all but happy about our trip.  Even after they saw us here being happy and healthy they said that they still don’t feel any different about it, but after a few too many discussions about this subject I am positive that they are happy for us and that they even started to like our adventure. They just have a strange way of showing it. And if I am wrong about this Dan will have a chance to say other ways on the blolg entry he said he was going to write for us.  We hope he’ll be the author of our next guest entry.I want to thank them again for visiting us and I am already looking forward to their next (shorter) visit (maybe on Yucatan).

If you are following our blog regularly, you might have read already that I had another awesome Central American experience.

During our travel in Central America we have always made a point to not drive or go out late at night. We can’t really go out late, because we are traveling with kids who need to go to bed way before there is potential danger in the streets. The apartment we rent in Alajuela is all fenced in with no contact to the outside world and that’s too bad, because there is a lot of life on the streets outside of our fence, especially at nights. There are a lot of people of all ages (many kids as well) hanging out and having a good time. 2 days ago when Allison’s parents (the in-laws) were asleep already and Allison was busy reading, I decided to check out the nightlife on the other side of the fence.

Almost every day we heard loud music from somewhere nearby, so I figured I’d just follow the noise and see where I end up. Once on the other side of the fence, there was no more music, but many people in the street seeming to have a good time. I walked a couple of blocks and saw a beer sign, indicating either a bar, tavern or restaurant. It really looked more like someone’s garage, but I went inside anyways. It was a tiny tavern with a small bar and 2 tables. Inside were about 10 to 12 people singing karaoke. I didn’t recognize any of the songs (all in Spanish) and some of the singers were pretty awful, but everyone seemed very friendly and I enjoyed being there. It didn’t take long until the bartender asked me where I was from, how I liked Costa Rica and of course she also asked me to sing a song. I agreed, but only if she had a German song. I felt pretty confident that they wouldn’t have any and if so that it would be some German beer drinking song or maybe something like Nena (99 red balloons). Never in my life would I have expected what was coming next. They played “Rammstein” for me!!! If you know Rammstein I’d be willing to bet that they aren’t the group you would choose in a Latin American karaoke bar. If you haven’t heard of them, Rammstein in the most hard core heavy metal band in Germany I know. They are actually pretty popular in the states and in South America as well. If you are into heavy metal, odds are you have heard of Rammstein, but if not, here are some samples for you on Amazon.com where you can also buy the album for $12.99. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/music/wma-pop-up/B00000I7L4001001/ref=mu_sam_wma_001_001/104-8424277-2032720) Normally at Karaoke you can read the lyrics on a TV screen, but not when they play Rammstein in Latin America. I had no idea what the lyrics were and I figured should start out with some head banging and soon thereafter half of the people in the bar (all of them were in there 40s and 50s) were banging there heads, too.  The bartender insisted that I sing as well, so I just started screaming German words (no sentences) in the microphone to the sound of crazy guitars and drums. The song never seemed to end, but while I was screaming I remembered that the day before Allison cut my hair to 2mm length making me look like a real skin head or a big bad German.  The longer the song lasted the closer I felt to being a part of Rammstein. After the song was over everyone at my end of the bar was talking to me and buying me drinks and now I am wondering if this could be the beginning of a new career.

I’ve added a few new pages to our blog.  A long time ago we had some maps on our blog, but they were deleted when BootsNall lost a bunch of postings.  We’ve heard from some of our readers that they enjoyed looking at those maps.  We’ve finally had some time to re-create those maps and two of the new pages are maps of the route.  I’ll continue to update them as we move from place to place.  There is also a current location page and I’ll be filling in the details of where we have been over the last 5 months.

Both Matthias and I write our blog entries. We’ve heard from several readers that it is not always apparent when you begin to read who is writing. We’ve figured out a few clues to help out with this problem.

Matthias is famous for using the word ‘awesome’. If you read that word in the entry you can be sure that it is Matthias writing.

I, Allison (the author of this particular entry), is known to use the words ‘amazing’ and ‘honestly’ in excess. ‘Amazing’ honestly seems like a very descriptive and deep word that isn’t diminished by over use. Maybe that is the reason I use it so often.

Wait a minute, Matthias just came home. He went out for a walk and is mumbling something about Karaoke and Rammstein. I have to hear what he says, and as drunk as he is I’m sure there will be a good blog entry to follow.

After doing nothing for nearly a week and a half we decided to get out of the house and take the parental units on a trip to Monteverde, a cloud forest in Costa Rica.  The road from the Pan-American Highway up to Monteverde is rumored to be the worst road in Costa Rica, so we decided to leave the Yoda Van at home and take a bus.  The buses in Costa Rica are super luxurious and the ride to Monteverde only cost $4.00 per person.  It would have cost us at least as much in gas to get up there and back, and possibly more wear and tear on the car, so the bus seemed like a good option.  The only drawback was the creepy Unabomber guy on the bus.  During the first half of the bus ride I observed his swollen facial features hidden behind his dark sunglasses and tucked under the brim of his John Deere hat.  During the second half of the journey he pushed his way to our section of the bus and I got a first row glance of his pimply cheeks and creepy stares.

The road from the Pan-American Highway up to Monteverde is spectacular and easily one of the top 5 drives we’ve been on since we left Seattle.  The drive was rolling green hills, mountains, rainbows, and beautiful vegetation.  My parents were troopers and we all stayed in a hostel in Santa Elena.  Although the elevation in Santa Elena was not that much different than Alajuela the weather had completely changed.  It was much cooler and windier and it was obvious that we were in a much different climate. 

The first night we went on a twilight walk.  We met in the forest at dusk, around 5:30 PM.  They armed us with flashlights and we were off to see wildlife and learn a bit about the forest.  For William and Julian it was spectacular.  For them there is almost nothing better than looking for animals and getting to hold a flashlight and shine into the forest.  We could have been anywhere in the world, but getting to hold and play with flashlights for 2 hours was super exciting.  Our guide was a nice, jolly fellow.  He had wide open eyes, a friendly smile, and a dark brown Richard Simmons ‘fro poking up and over his baseball cap.  He had a lot to tell and seemed genuinely happy creeping around in the forest. 

The only person more excited than William with his flashlight was my Dad.  He’s a rather quiet fellow, but he couldn’t stop talking during the entire time.  We saw spiders, tarantulas, a sloth, a viper and some birds.  The other couple in our group was a doctor and an architect and there was no shortage of conversation between us all.  By the end we were all talking amongst ourselves, not listening to our guide and blocking out the images of all the nasty wildlife we really didn’t want to know about in the first place.  I’ll be honest, Tarantulas are really creepy!

The next day Matthias and I went for a walk in one of the privately owner canopy tour facilities.  We didn’t do a zip line tour, but just opted for a walk along the bridges through the canopy.  It was a nice walk, beautiful forest, but it cost $20/person.  I still can’t believe we paid that much, but we figured we were there and had to make the most of our time.  That evening we went to a frog museum (really cool, but also overpriced) and were able to see all sorts of different species of frogs.  The real highlight was our last day when we went into the cloud forest reserve.  We took a guided tour and saw howler monkeys, more tarantulas and even the resplendent quetzal (which is THE bird to see in Central America). 

One way in which Monteverde differentiates itself (other than the weather) is in its prices.  It is crazy expensive!  I hate it when all people talk about is money, but for us it is absolutely a problem in Costa Rica.  We spent so much money during the 3 days we spent in Monteverde and the unfortunate thing is that I feel we got relatively little value out of the experiences compared to the prices.  I don’t mind paying to visit worthwhile attractions (especially if the money is going for preservation), but the amount you have to pay for anything in these parks way outweighed the coolness of the experience.  A lot of people fly down here for a week or two, have a bigger budget and can afford to “do it right” and spend a bit of money walking through the cloud forest.  We paid $56.00 US dollars for a damn walk in the woods and I find that insanely expensive, ridiculous and absolutely not worth it. 

I can’t really blame people here for charging prices tourists are willing to pay.  But this place is such a well-oiled tourist machine that even the coolest places are loosing their appeal for me.  We’ve been asked so many times how we like Costa Rica.  My honest answer is that this country is absolutely beautiful.  There is so much wildlife, beautiful land and it has so much to offer.  Costa Rica is also a very peaceful nation and it has done a great job preserving this land as well – roughly 25% of the country is protected.  It is really great to see such a responsible attitude toward preservation.  I just wish the swishing of the Visa cards, the “cha-changing” of the cash registers wasn’t disturbing the silence.