Jess and Stacey’s Travels

Costa Rica Pix-click on photo for more pix

Our first official tourst stop in Costa Rica was Rincon de la Vieja park, outside Liberia in the north.  On our hike, it was really windy with some rain but we had a good time hiking to a waterfall and to some hot, sulforous mud pits.  Jess swam in the blue waters below the waterfall with a German fellow we met on the hike.  The womenfolk stayed on the rocks watching the guys swim in the chilly water.  While on the trail we saw the things you’re suposed to see in Costa Rica, white faced capuchin monkeys, giant lizards, butterflies, etc. 

Costa Rica Pix-click on photo for more pix

We left Liberia the next day on a six hour bus ride to St. Elena/Monteverde, a stop on virtually every tourist’s itinerary.  We visited the Monteverde Reserve with a  3 hour guided tour of the cloud forest in the morning and some hiking on our own afterwards.  We would recommend taking the tour.  Without the guide, we don’t think we would have noticed most of the stuff he pointed out. An interesting thing about cloud forests is the amount of plant growth found on the trees, top and sides.  Some trees can be covered with dozens of different things.  Some plants living high in the trees send roots all the way to the ground for nourishment.  It takes a couple of years for these roots to reach the ground and many, many years for these roots to encircle and strangle the original tree.  The original tree rots away and these roots become the outer shell of a hollow tree.

In the park, we saw some more things that people come to Costa Rica to see-Quetzals (colorful bird), tarantulas, a sloth, some monkeys and a couple of other furry creatures.  We also saw an interesting spider that springloads its web.  When something hits the web, the web springs out toward the victim about an inch or two.  If you watch closely you can see the web being pulled back by the spider in preparation for the next victim.  Pretty cool. 

Costa Rica Pix-click on photo for more pix

In Santa Elena, we stayed at the Pensione Santa Elena, which gets high marks from us.  While the room was basic, the owners (Ran and his siter Shannon from the US) were great hosts as was their staff, all great sources of information.  We loved listening to the young backpackers sitting around in the morning drinking coffee and asking Shannon and Ran what they should do for the day.  They made excellent substitute parents for many of the guests.  Highly recommend the hostel but sugguest you make a reservation, even though we didn’t practice what we preach.  We got a room because there was a no-show.  And this was just at the beginning of peak season. 

From Monteverde we took a shuttle-boat-shuttle to La Fortuna.  Have to note here that the first leg shuttle ride was the most scenic hour ride that Jess has seen in Central America.  Soft rolling hills, mountains and clear streams for almost the entire ride.  (Jess is writing this in Panama and Stacey thinks it is prettier here.  While Jess agrese that we have seen more beauty in Panama, Jess would still vote for that one area in Costa Rica)  The hour boat ride was sunny and scenic although Volcano Arenal was in clouds.  Then it was another half hour shuttle into La Fortuna.  La Fortuna was a necessary stop due to transport timing.  This is a real tourist town.  Wow!  Not our favorite place but seemed to be another very popular tourist destination.  Lots of resorts, canopy tours,and souvenir shops.  We spent only one night here and mostly watched American football on TV – it was Sunday afterall. 

Next stop was the remote area of Tortuguero.  Getting there was fun.  First leg was a 4 hour mini bus … the last hour on bad roads.  When we arrived at the river, a boat pulled up and unloaded its passengers.  Great timing!  Not to be.  We had to wait “about 15 minutes” for some more travelers coming on public bus.  An hour later we were on our way.  Unfortunately,  it was now raining and would rain quite hard at times during our hour boat ride.  We arrived in Tortuguero wet and cold with a reservation at Miss Junies.  We were glad they had hot showers and immediately they let us know that they could dry our clothes.  We spent 2 nights here.  First morning, we had a guided canoe trip through the park…in the rain.  Saw another sloth, a couple of cayman about 4 feet long, some howler monkeys, different herons and an iguana.  The next day we rented a canoe and did some exploring on our own and got some exercise.  This area does not really have a dry season so it never really dries out. They rent out high rubber boots.  While this is a tourist destination as a  turtle nesting area, our timing was bad.  Only turtles we would see would be a couple we saw while on the boat trip leaving the area.  We took a 3 hour boat trip to Puerto Limon, south along the Caribbean cost.  That trip was was much nicer as we were in a small speed boat and the captain enjoyed speeding thru the twists and turns of the various rivers through the jungle.  We did hit some rain for about half an hour but it did not dampen the enjoyment of the trip.  Again we had to wait about an hour for others folks to show up.  Then we had another 2 hours in a shuttle to get to Puerto Viejo our destination.  It doesn’t normally take that long but the driver was kind enough to drive around Cahuita to help the other couples in the shuttle find lodging.  Cahuita is a beach town and becoming more and more popular with tourists. 

Puerto Viejo was our last stop before entering Panama.  It has several nice beaches and a nearby park.  We stayed at Hotel El Tesoro but would not recommend it.  We spent a couple of days resting up (not travelling) and met some interesting people.  We did a lot of walking, watched surfers, and rented bikes for a couple of afternoons.  We had decent weather, not a bad place to spend a few days.   

On Saturday, we took an hour bus ride to the Panamanian border at Sixoala.  We had read and heard lots of stories of long waits and customs officials completely unpacking bags.  Fortunately, we had short waits, no inspection and no problems.  Did not even need to show that we had a ticket for exiting Panama, which they say is needed.  Maybe it was because we crossed on a Saturday or it was just our lucky day.  Then it was a $5-bargained down to $3 ride to Changuinola where we caught a 4-5 hour bus ride to the bus terminal in David where we caught a 1 hour bus north to Boquete, where we are right now.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 10:20 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.