Costa Rica - March 12 to 21
la Fortuna to Monteverde to Mal Pais/Santa Teresa
24.03.2011
30 °C
Hola!
We've been on the road the last while, seeing parts of Costa Rica. What a beautiful country! The distances are small, but the conditions of the roads can make even short distances seem quite long. Like the 100 km or so that took 2 1/2 hours in an ancient bus that badly needed transmission work. Some of the buses are not air conditioned either. I want you all to know that we do suffer some pain and inconvenience in our travels. For example, today we had to move our belongings into another room at the small hotel where we stay. We found the other room too noisy, as it was beneath another room which had wood floors. But we'll be ok.
Like I said, Costa Rica is small but very pretty and green. I guess it's also quite a rainy place, if you come in the wrong season, but we've had mostly good weather. Monteverde, in the cloudforest, was cool and damp, but then it IS a cloudforest! People don't have heating in their homes either. You have to huddle under blankets, if the warmest items of clothing in your pack don't do the trick. Gary discovered a coffee shop there, with locally grown coffee that they roasted and ground right in the shop. You can imagine the amazing aroma! I think Gary liked it even more than Starbucks! Also, there was a cheese factory way up there in the mountains, run by Quakers, who had moved into the area with their cattle about 150 years ago, "fleeing" the United States. And the hummingbirds...... wow!
We dreamed of warmth while in the cloudforest, and we got it - as soon as we reached the plains below. What a shock. On the Nicoya Peninsula there are dozens of beaches and beach towns. Luckily, we didn't have to go through the agony of choosing which beach to visit, since James' daughter Sarah was surfing at Santa Teresa/Mal Pais. We enjoyed a relaxed visit with her, and helped her to celebrate her 24th birthday. We then resisted the temptation to become senior surfers-on-a-pension, bought bus tickets to San Jose and then on to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast.
Posted by the Greens 14:39 Archived in Costa Rica
