Lovely La Fortuna - August 2008

So I see I have fallen behind in my blogging! Agh! Must mean I´m much to busy doing things that are more fun!

So the final day in Monteverde was wicked. After exploring the forest all Am, we toured a coffee plantation in the afternoon! Some of you may know that I enjoy the "odd" cup of joe, so I was super psyched to see this place! The tour was called "Don Juan´s" coffee tour as the plantation belonged to this 73 year old Costa Rican man - Don Juan himself! He made the tour to show travellers what a Costa Rican farm looked like 100 years ago so there were other crops as well like beans and corn. The property was gorgeous, and set in the middle was a beautiful cafe to enjoy, what else, but a steaming cup of Don Juan´s cafe. I learned about how coffee is grown, collected and roasted etc. which was pretty cool. I think I knew more then the average tour-ee as I spent many a summer at the academy of CCT. :) At the end of the tour I grabbed a steaming cup of light roast which I thought was terrific. I brought a couple mini bags for the real coffee drinkers out there!

The next morning we were whisked off to La Fortuna, home of the famous Arenal Volcano. We patted ourselves on the back about 150 times for choosing the 3 hour, scenic taxi-boat-taxi route of travel rather than the 8 hour public bus around the lake! We were also lucky to meet Lorna, Chris and Jim there, 3 coolcats from the UK, who became our bestest friends for the next 48 hours or so!
So the first afternoon, we traveled up to Arenal for a 3-4km hike around the jungly base of the volcano. Not too strenuous, but very beautiful. I have to warn you, I have about a trillion pictures of this volcano from every angle you can imagine! We then travled to the SW side to await the lava flow at dark. So we waited. And Waited. And then it rained. A lot. So... long story short, we spent the next 3 hours at the wet bar at the mineral springs instead of waiting for lava. I think everyone agreed it was a good call! My pina colada tasted extra delicious as I sipped it 1/2 submerged in soothing vocanic warmed water! This place also had killer waterslides which we all agreed, would not pass Cadanian safty standards - really fun though. Exit speed had to be about 70km/hr. All that bathing makes you really hungry so we capped off the night with a couple pizza pie´s from "Luiggi´s."

The next morning Taylor and I went on an all day safari to the wildlife refugee know as Cano Negro. It is located about 2 hours N of La Fortuna, right next to the Nicaraguan border. We spent a leisurely 4 hours floating on muddy rivers watching crocodiles, birds and tonnes of monkeys!! We ever saw a "blond" monkey which is appearantly really rare, and due to a recessive gene. Ate a delicious meal with our crew and enjoyed a couple bottles of wine, all this to watching a football match of Costa Rica vs. El Salvador. Couldn´t imagine a better night!

This Am, we said good bye to our new friends and checked out a brilliant 70 meter waterfall just out of town. It was incredible. We went for a swim right below it and could really feel the incredible amout of power! The pics are awesome.

This evening, we made out way out to Liberia where we fly out from tomorrow. Sad to be done our adventure but happy to have some cleaner clothes in the near future. And today is Taylor´s 26th birthday! Hurrah! Not too much partying to be had here, but we had a good celebration last night.

Annie out.

So the big news of today is that my camera was fixed by Greg the camera genius who happened to be on a tour of the Santa Elena Reserve with me this morning! Hurrah! I have definitely lost some earlier pictures, but I am so happy that I will have a camera for the rest of the trip. That coupled with the fact that I am feeling great again is making today look a lot brighter than yesterday. We knew it was going to be a good day when we started off with a breakfast of pineapple strudel and a cup of black Costa Rican coffee.

The night tour was well, wet. Imaging yourself trudging through thick, muddy jungle for 2 hours in the pouring rain with flickering flashlights.... it was totally fun but I was freezing by the end. We scoured trees with our flashlights looking for the many nocturnal critters, but it was difficult to look up for too long without getting and enormous rain forest sized raindrop in your eyes! We did see an agoudi (sp?), an owl, some tarantulas (yikes!) and a bunch of totally crazy insects (walking sticks etc.). I was a little nervous when our guide kept poking the tarantula, trying to get it to come out... "no seriously, I'm fine looking at it from here!"

This morning we toured the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve in Monteverde which was AMAZING! A brilliant combination of primary and secondary forest. The sun was shining full force this AM, and subsequently filtered through curtains of green biomass. The biologist in me was going crazy especially when we saw a howler monkey! I also enjoys hiking on a "Youth Challenge" created trail, which let me reminisce on fun times in Guyana.

Anyways, more to do today!

Monteverde Madness - August 2008

Ola Amigos!

So we finally made it to Monteverde after a 3.5 hour bus ride with ~85 of our closest Costa Rican friends. The bus was so jam packed, I was balancing on one foot on the back of the drivers platform, holding onto the back of his seat and the overhead luggage rack. Oh yeah, and the floorboard immediately in front of me kept falling out. Needless to say we were really happy to get here and vowed not to use public transport for the rest of the trip.

We have been looking forward to getting into Monteverde as it has much more going on then the other places we've seen so far. Monteverde is also known as the "cloud forest" as the humidity is so high. The morning was really nice but both days and nights have had consistent rain. It's actually not bad at all - the rain is a nice soundtrack to being nestled between several rainforests! And you really don't notice the rain once you are in the forests. My hair is enormous at almost 100% humidity, FYI. :)

It is really touristy, but there is good reason for it as there is so much to do here! We've also ran into way more travelers which has been nice. This morning we visited a rain forest and toured it 1st by a series of hanging bridges and then by zip line! The bridges were nice as you could cruise through the 3km route and take as many pics as you wanted of the vast expanses of canopy. The zip line was unbelievable! We flew through the sky on a series of cables going from platform to platform - such a rush! We also did the "Tarzan Swing" which is exactly what it sounds like. I screamed the entire time but loved it.

The only downside of our jungle adventure this morning was that I somehow deleted all the pictures of the trip so far on my new and "improved" camera. I just can't believe it...perhaps when I get back I can find a way to restore them. The other crappy part of today was getting some sort of bug! We've been trying to pinpoint what it was but can't pick just one thing. Haven't really ate much today, but am feeling much better after taking some of Taylor's patented Tyelenol + Caffeine + Gravol + Immodium combination. I know you are not supposed to use immodium too often, but I was on ziplines all day! Had to be done. Christie, I thought of you when we had all these little traveling mistakes and reading your blog about things going wrong... it always works out in the end but is enough to make you scream at the time. Gotta love it. Nothing chocolate and wine won't fix right? No nutella though. :)

Anyways, we have much more of our trip planned out now (which I am happy to report is public bus free) and have booked a bunch of really cool sounding trips including a night tour of a rain forest tonight! Hopefully we will see a bunch of little nocturnal critters. Tomorrow we are going for a guided tour of one of the forest reserves followed by a tour of coffee production in the region. Can't wait.

Hope all is well! XOXOAnnie

Adventures in Costa Rica - August 2008

Ola!

Annie´s blog is back with avengance as I take on my next adventure! I will be in Costa Rica for the next 9 days travelling mostly in the Northwestern part of the country. I am travelling with my good friend from Med School, Taylor, who turns out to be quite handy as he speaks WAY more Spanish than me! I picked Costa Rica as the place to travel as
1. Spending all that time in PG makes you crave warm places
2. I wanted to explore the varied landscapes - jungles, volcanos, beaches oh my!
3. Seemed like fun!

Anyways, we flew into Liberia via Houston without a hitch. The airport was really tiny and reminded my of flying into Guyana. Not quite feeling bold enough for public transpot, we grabbed a cab and made our way to Playa Hermosa, a small town on the Nicolya penninsula. Our place was fantastic and located in an enormous tropical garden approx. a 1 minute walk to the beach! The beach was perfect, only a handful of people sprinkled along the 2km coastline and amazingly warm, blue water. For dinner we ate at the ¨Pescado Loco¨(crazy fish!) which turned out to be an excellent choice. Tried our first ¨ceveche¨ which is raw seafood marninated in lime juice and cilantro. Quite delicious! The best way to describe it is tasting like Aunt Cathie´s salsa over lime flavoured shrimp - and you KNOW I love AC´s salsa!

Anyways, yesterday we started making our way East towards Monteverde, the ¨Cloud Forrest.¨ We are currently in Tileran which is a really lively little place with a huge garden in the centre of town. Lots of music pumping from every direction and many ¨Soda´s¨ which are like little diners which serve common fare. Now we are just waiting for our bus to whisk us away to the cloud forrest!

More soon!