Costa Rica | Where the sun had been

I lost my anus in Puntarenas (Costa Rica)
March 18, 2009 by rbosinger
On our way back to San Jose from Montezuma we decided to stay in Puntarenas (Poont-ah-ray-nuss) for a night, just for the hell of it. Puntarenas in a post town, and most people would only come here to catch a ferry or boat to the Nicoya Peninsula and go to a place like Montezuma.

It was a nice place, and felt a lot more authenticate than everywhere else we had been in Costa Rica. The coastal towns in Costa Rica feel a little bit like a tourist amusement park. We thought this might be a good experience before we moved on the countries in South America where there would be far less tourists and English speakers than in Costa Rica.

Not much else to say about that.

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Montezuma, the pacific coast party town in Costa Rica…
March 16, 2009 by rbosinger
We had read about all kinds of places on the pacific coast of Costa Rica. This is where the sun really shines, and because of that the information we gathered was that a lot of the coast was getting more busy, more expensive and more touristy every year. With that in the back of our minds we picked Montezuma as our choice of town, and set off.

We took a bus from La Fortuna to San Ramon and it climbed up and up and up. A couple times we were so close to the edge of the road overlooking a cliff that even when I looked directly out the window it looked like the bus was flying. I watched as the altimeter on my watch climbed from 100ft to 3600ft. We took some pictures out of the bus window that don’t quite capture this, but I thought I’d post a couple anyway.

So here’s how we traveled: La Fortuna to San Ramon (4 hours), San Ramon to Puntarenas (3 or 4 hours), a ferry to Paquera (an hour or so and about $2US per person) and then another 1.5 hour bus ride to Montezuma.

Here’s some pictures from the ferry:

We met some people from Toronto and the States. It was nice to have someone to travel with and to be with while we dealt with a crappy situation to come…

Word of warning: don’t arrive in Montezuma at 9pm on a Saturday during Spring Break (we didn’t realize) and expect to get a room.

This place was hoppin’. People everywhere drinking in the streets having a good time. It seemed to only options we had for a place to stay were expensive room that had jacuzzi’s and all kinds of things we didn’t want to pay for. We spent hours looking for a place to stay – and of course, for the first time since the start of the trip, it’s actually sweltering hot.

Twelve hours of buses and boats, hungry and hot, running around with all our gear trying to find a room in the midst of a Spring Break mega party.

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La Fortuna to the moon!
March 15, 2009 by rbosinger
We spent a couple nights in La Fortuna which is suppose to be quite a touristy place. They have all kinds of Canopy tours and such, and it is the town situated by Volcano Arenal. However, it rained heavily the entire time we were there. I never got to see the Volcano, and this was Brianna’s second attempt (she did a tour of Arenal a couple years ago but it was clouded over). This is a very common occurence. We didn’t care though, we stayed in a really cool and cheap hostel called Gringo Pete’s. It’s very intimate because the main hang out area is the size of an apartment with the kitchen attached. There is free coffee, and because of the rain we got to talk to a lot of cool people while sitting around drinking coffee. Here’s some odd pictures I took of that Gringo Pete’s:

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Cahuita is oh-so-sweet-a…
March 10, 2009 by rbosinger
And then suddenly – as if something sudden had happened – we were on a bus to Cahuita (about 30 mins north of Puerto Viejo). It cost about $1.

I, of course, am looking like I’m going to kill someone because nobody ever taught me how to smile.

Cahuita is neat. It’s like Puerto Viejo but there’s less tourists and definetely no Spring Break type party crowd. Apparently, Playa Negra which is a long beach running along the shore here is suppose to be fantastico. The sand is suppose to be black and surreal. We rented bikes and checked it out, but it was all (for kilometers) covered in dirty driftwood and ocean debris. Apparently they’ve have some mighty storms over the last little while.

No big deal. We hiked a few KMs through Cahuita Nacionale Parque. We saw some monkeys and a few slothes. A park ranger even pointed out a yellow baby viper to us and kindly let us know that if bitten we would die in 15 minutes. The snake really didn’t look like much though. It looked like a yellow ball wrapped around a stick. I think he may have bullshat us. (more…)

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Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica…
March 3, 2009 by rbosinger
Puerto Viejo is on the east coast of Costa Rica. It’s a serious surfing town. Unfortunately I didn’t go surfing. I couldn’t quite figure out when the waves were at there best, and there was only one spot where beginner’s were safe to try. Everytime we swam in this spot the waves would roll me around and I’d consider going to get a board, and then they’d die down and not come back. Oh well, they’ll be more opporunities, especially on Costa Rica’s west coast.

We stayed in hammocks for the first 3 nights, at a place called Rockin J’s. It was a bit of a “Spring Break” type party zone though. It was however only $5 a night for a hammock and a locker, and it was a really cool place. We had bonfires on the beach and got loaded. You could check out a guitar and bongo drums.

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Where the streets have no names…
by rbosinger
They have no street names in San jose, Costa Rica. Well, they do, but they don’t label anything and nobody actually knows what the street names are.

We took a death cab from the airport to our hostel downtown. Everybody drives like maniacs, but I expected that. Anyway, it was almost a 30 minutes ride, and cost us about $20, but it was defeintely the only logical way for us to get to the hostel. Within minutes I was chillin’ in a hamaca:

This is downtown San Jose? No way. This the courtyard of our hostel surrounded by a bustling extremely noisy city (but interesting). To keep the crazies out, they use razor wire.

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