Playa Tamarindo

After my adventures in Playa Brasilito I hopped on a bus to Playa Tamarindo. Tamarindo is blowing up with tourism, but the season hasn´t started yet so there was a fairly mellow vibe. Lots of surfers hit Tamarindo because it it consistent and is close to a few really famous breaks, Witches Rock, Ollies Point and Playa Grande. I rented a board and surfed around for a few days. On my birthday, I spent the whole day laying on the beach and surfing, not a bad way to go.

I met some people (Portia and Alexis) at the hostel and we went out for my birthday. Portia tried to teach me to dance Salsa and it ended up being a great birthday. My first birthday away from friends and family. A landmark of sorts.



A day later Portia and I decided to go on a turtle (maybe) viewing tour. Of course, my history of seeing these kinds of wild animals is pretty sad (remebering not getting to swim with the dolphins in Kaikoura, NZ; the first time the dolphins hadn´t shown in MONTHS!). We got picked up at the hostel around 9:30, and made it to the beach around 10pm. Then began the great search for the turtles... except for not. We didn´t really figure it out until it was too late, but our tour guides got to go out and search for the turtles, while we waited. When (=if) they find one, they´ll get us and take us to see it. Needless to say, they didn´t find any and although the beach was nice, sitting on it for 4 hours getting eaten alive by mosquitoes really put me in a foul mood. Maybe next time.

On the bus back to San Jose, I sat next to Roy, a Tamarindo local who makes necklaces and pendants to sell on the beach. We talked in Spanish for FIVE HOURS! It was awesome. Every conversation is an opportunity to learn more, and I´ve been taking full advantage of that. I think back on my years of doing language in High School and Middle School and I realize two things, a) I was doing it wrong, and b) I would do it again, even though I despised it. The reason I was doing it wrong was that I never had the right attitude on it. I did not see the potential to travel and use it, but rather viewed it as another compulsory piece of the academic puzzle. I am enjoying Spanish thoroughly, and will be spending the upcoming week in Spanish School in San Jose.

SER y ESTAR

I began Spanish School at Centro Panamericano de Idomas in San Joaquin de Flores on Monday, near San Jose. The school seems very good, and I am really enjoying my professora, Judy. Becuase the season is still low here, I am getting private instruction for the price of group instruction. This is a double edged sword, as I am unable to escape the endless bombardment of questions, answers and prompts. This might kill me, but if it doesn't I might actually learn how to speak Spanish. Only time will tell.

I lose in Playa Brasilito

After Emily left on the 16th, I took a bus to the Nicoya Peninsula, the northern pacific part of Costa Rica. The LP Book said that the cheapest accomodation in the area was at Playa Brasilito, off the beaten path, not touristy like Tamarindo, a good place to start the Pacific adventure. The actual adventure begins as soon as you get on the bus. The busses in Costa Rica are a) always late, b) too small for tall guys like me, c) sporatic and run rough, d) never go quite where you expect them to, and unless you know where you´re going and where to stop, don´t stop for you. Riding the bus is its own adventure.

I got to Brasilito around 4pm, but the driver didn´t stop and I didn´t realize it until it was too late. I thought ¨I know the road ends in 5km in Playa Flamingo, how bad could this be... maybe I´ll stay there.¨ So I rode to Flamingo. It turns out that Flamingo is a resort village, the cheapest room starting at $250 a night. That seemed a bit out of my budget, so I started to walk back to Brasilito.

The bus driver saw me walking, must have felt bad for me, and offered me a ride back to Brasilito becuase that´s where he was headed. He dropped me in the middle of town (*read=a few shops, a few places to stay, and a soccer field) just as it started to rain. It was only 4:30 and it gets dark at 5:10, so I figured I´d go to the hostel and check in. The LP said this place would be $5, not too bad. When I arrived, the Swiss owner, told me the cheapest room was $20. I hadn´t spent more than $8 anywhere in Costa Rica, so I told him he was crazy and went off pleased that I was going to show him and find a cheaper place to stay. It was pouring rain and getting dark, but I triumphantly walked out into the melle.

I tried the next place down the road, which looked decent, only to find that it was closed for the season. No one could possibly want to be in Costa Rica in November, right? The next place down on the beach looked nicer, but worth an ask. They told me $30 and I asked if I could sleep on the beach in front of the Hotel for $10. They weren´t impressed.

It was getting wetter and darker as I trudged off to find other places to stay. There was a sign pointing me down a dark, puddlefilled alley, but I was getting desperate. I showed up and asked about getting a room, only to find that they were full. They must have been housing all the people that couldn´t go to the other place that was closed. Buggered. I asked a construction worker on the street about getting a place to sleep and he litterally told me to knock on the door of the 4th house down the ally and ask about the bed. This seemed a bit crazy, but hey, if this guy wanted me to sleep at his house, I was all for it. I walked up, knocked on the door and told them, ´I´m looking for a bed, can you help me?´ They said they could help me, but the bed was occupied, and thus were no help. It was totally dark and I was starting to get discouraged.

I tried one last place that was totally dingey, found it was $20, and told the woman that I was okay. I went back to the Swiss, head down in shame, and gave him $20. I lose.

San Carlos and Volcan Arenal

Emily and I headed to Ciudad Quesado (known as the capital of the San Carlos area) to stay with Esteban, a friend and business partner of Tucker. He has a ranch in Platanar that has 40 or more horses, beautiful landscapes, fields, pastures, and more. The region is known as the wild west of Costa Rica, and many people have farms, ranches, ride horses to town, and work in agriculture.

The ride to San Carlos was beautiful, going through endless green hills and valleys. La Fortuna and Arenal are in the same region, so you can see the volcano from a few places on the drive in. We had some archaic directions from Tucker to get off at the bus stop just past the sugar mill, walk into the bar, tell them "Soy el hijo de la gringa. Estoy buscando por Esteban (I am the son of the gringa (Tucker), I am looking for Esteban)" and it would all work out. So I walk into the bar, tell them that, and they look very confusedly at me. Then a kind fellow at the bar, overhearing the conversation pulls out his cell phone and calls Esteban. There are always guardian angels watching us.

Esteban picked us up, and took us to the Centaura Stables. They were amazing. The hospitality was amazing, "mi casa es su casa" was the truth, and we loved it. We went horseback riding, biking, and almost hot air ballooning.

We spent a day at Arenal, hiking around the active volcano. We rented an awesome scooter and headed for the mountains. The scootering was awesome as we zipped around the countryside, honking at the locals and slowly climbing the hills.

In the evening we went to the Eco-Termales Hotpools which were amazing. As we were leaveing the pools, some guy told us that the clouds around the volcano had cleared and that we could see it. It was awe-inspiring. We could litterally see the molten rocks and stuff spewing out of the volcano, a firey glow in the night sky. Amazing.



We are now back in San Jose and Emily is leaving for Colorado tomorrow morning. Travels are good. My birthday is in two days....

Puerto Viejo

Puerto Viejo came to us after a few days of resting in Turrialba after climbing Chirripo. PJ or Old Town, as the locals call it, is that ultimate rasta surf caribe town in Costa Rica. Complete with a local bum named, ¨The Ganja Master¨ and enough US expats to fill a small town, Puerto Viejo was an interesting stop for us along the way.

We took a few busses from Turrialba to Siquerres, Siquerres to Limon, Limon to PJ to get there. The bus out of Limon was oversold by at least 10 seats so we had the pleasure of standing in the back, 40 km down a gravel road. The ocean views along the way tempted us, but by the time we reached PJ, it was dark.


The thing to do in PJ is rent bikes and ride around to the beaches. Manzanillo is about 10km down the road, so we did just that. The greatest thing about the bikes they rent is that they are all old cruiser style bikes.. the kind your mom rode when she was in college. Pretty rad. We hooked up with some other americans on the ride over, so they went on the bike crusade with us. We stopped at some beaches along the way and went for prolonged swims, surfs, and body surfing (i.e. getting pounded into the sand, ride after ride). The beaches were picturesque... the kind that you might get on a free windows screensaver. They had perfect rows of palms, clear waters, and were pretty empty. The beaches were amazing.



After two days there, we decided it was time for the next great adventure... Panama!

Cerro Chirripo

This morning, at 5:10am, Emily and I summitted Cerro Chirripo, the tallest mountain in Costa Rica.  It was quite a push, but a beautiful summit and sunrise at the top.  The top is at 3820m (12,606ft), and we had climbed from a base camp at 1500ft.  It was an epic few days of climbing and time spent in the jungle and cloudforrest.  We based out of San Isidro de el General, and spent a miserable night at the cheapest hostel ever ($6US).  Getting to Chirripo was an exciting 2 hour ride on a sketchy road toward the mountain town of San Gerardo de Rivas.  We stayed at El Descanso, which totally rocked!  We had a beautiful room, amazing meals and shuttle to the trailhead from the owner.  We were his only guests for the week, so he was pretty good to us.

 

The climb into the Chirrpo base camp is 15km uphill.  You gain more than 2km vert and it burns.  From the base, the best way to climb is beginning at 3am to make it by sunrise.  Because of the irradic and odd weather patterns in the area, it starts raining every afternoon at 10-11, and even earlier up high.  Getting to the top after 7am might leave the whole thing clouded in.

 

On summit day (today) we hiked to the Summit (5km), back to the base (5km), back to the trailhead (14.5km) and then back to town (1km), so it was quite a day.  Estoy consado (tired).  Pictures to come.

San Isidro de el General

San Isidro has been a good experience thus far. Emily and I headed here to get towards Chiripo, the highest mountain in Costa Rica. We stayed in a really fabulous place for $6US which was highlighted by the trucks going by every 5 minutes and the car alarm that went off each time a truck drove by. On top of that, they decided it would be a good idea to fumigate the hotel for mosquitos (which there were none), without telling anyone what they were doing. We thought the place was burning down.

Theres a large church in the centro where we went to a evening mass and tried to understand what was going on. I understood everything that they said, as long as it was ´Santa Maria´ or ´Jesus Cristo´. Otherwise it was kind of a lost cause.

The morning brought sunshine and hot weather. We decided to go to the beach, only to find out that there is only one bus a day to the beach, and that´s at 7am (it was 8 when we found out). We went to a local market where getting a bit to eat was interesting. This guy showed us his drivers licence, and proceeded to wait for us to eat breakfast. I think he wanted to drive us somewhere, but we weren't really having it.

Off to hike Chirripo, the highest peak in Costa Rica. Be back in a few. Happy Halloween (yesterday).