Witnessing theft on the beach

30 June 2009

Although we felt secure in Costa Rica, theft in bright daylight does occur. It happened on the beach of Manuel Antonio nature reserve. The small beach looked like paradise: a small bay with yellow sand, fringed by the trees of the national park.
While I and other visitors enjoyed the crystal clear water and the fine sand on the beach, a suspicious looking character wearing a black mask around his eyes for camouflage sneaked out of the dense forest and surveyed the beach. He then approached an unattended backpack. Other people yelled at him to get away from the bag, but unimpressed, he opened the bag and ran of with his bounty . . . a pack of potato chips. We later spotted the thief eating the chips under a bush.

Walking through the tree tops

28/29 June 2009

We leave Monteverde Sunday morning on the 6.45 am bus to Tilaran. The buses in Costa Rica also provide a delivery service: Someone stops the bus, hands a package to the driver. Half an hour later, someone else stops the bus on the roadside, and picks up the package.

We made a date with Gaudi's uncle Beda, who currently lives in Costa Rica, at 12.00am in front of the church in Tilaran – that landmark is easy to find. Tilaran is a quiet town on most days, and very quiet on a Sunday. The reason for this is that the whole town seems to attend the mass in church, which ends at 12.00h. At that time, the street fills with people streaming out of the church. Looks like we've decided to meet at the only busy corner in town!







Beda and his girlfriend Mimi take us to Arenal, the most famous Volcano of Costa Rica. We stay in a Swiss style chalet and eat Buendnerfleisch, Cordon Bleu and Roesti. Outside, Simmental cows graze. Feels like home.







Volcan Arenal is a giant. It's still active: there is hot lava running down one side, and steam coming out of its cone.







We visit the national park of hanging bridges. In this region, most of the vegetation and plant life takes place not on the ground, but high up in the trees. Dozens of plants and flowers grow in a tree's branches and along its stem. These plants gather the water they need directly from the clouds. The hanging bridges, sometimes at frightening heights, make it possible to observe all these different plants. Besides all the plants, we spot many monkeys, and a chameleon (hard to spot!).





Photo-Album:

El Arenal

Monteverde

21 - 28 June 2008

After our adventures in Nicaragua and the border, we decided to spend a week in Monteverde. Natasha's sister Munira works at the CPI language school there as a chaperon for the students.

That means that she's often on the road with the kids. Luckily, she managed to be in town on an important occasion: Natasha's birthday. We celebrated at the local restaurant La Chimera.

Munira organised a great apartment for our stay in Monteverde. After several weeks of eating out three times a day, an own kitchen was pure luxury, and we looked forward to a week of homecooked food.

We got so excited about cooking that we signed up for the one-hour cooking class at school. Believe it or not: it tasted great.

We also took advantage of Spanish classes, to expand (Gaudi) and brush up (Natasha) our skills. We had two great teachers: Alexandra and Carlos.

Mornings in Monteverde were always clear, with good views over the mountains. On very clear days, we could see the pacific coast. But towards the afternoon, clouds usually creeped up the mountains, and by 2pm it was raining. Knowing this, Munira arranged for our classes to be in the afternoon. :-)

During the mornings, we did outings to the nature reserve (or worked on our homework!). Monteverde and Santa Elena are untouched areas of beautiful cloud forest. We were able to spot Tucans, Colibries, and other interesting birds.

See all Monteverde and Santa Elena pictures here:

Monteverde

Rio Frio

19 June 2009




We cross the border today, upstream rio Frio into Costa Rica. First, we need the exit stamps from the Nicaraguan Immigration in San Carlos. In the wooden building (shack), we make sure we get all the necessary stamps. We pay two dollars, and a lady types up a receipt on an old typewriter. She's a very fast typer though. The immigration officer is thrilled to learn that Natasha is from Suriname (he enquired about the Surinamese Visa in her passport). Our boat (a large wooden canoe really) leaves directly from the dock of the immigration office.


All passengers on board of this barge are locals, except for one other tourist couple: John and Kate who camped on the deck on the ferry yesterday. The cruise on the river is very scenic. Again, lots of water birds. We can often spot monkeys in the trees that line the shore. Most of them are just relaxing on a branch and hardly take note of us passing by on the river.


At some point, the engine of the boat fails, and we drift downstream i.e. the wrong direction. We enjoy the silence - the locals are less thrilled. However, after a little while, the boatmen manage to fix the engine and we continue our journey.


We pass a Nicaraguan military post. The soldiers enter the boat and check handbags - not suitcases. The passing of the boat must be their only activity for the day. I'd like to take a picture of this isolated post, but, as a rule, we don't take pictures of men with big guns.


Towards the end of the journey, we pass some fancy tourist boats from Costa Rican tour operators which have started to make use of the river. In fact, Costa Rica is nowadays pushing for more river access into Nicaragua for their rapidly growing tourism industry, not only on Rio Frio but also in Rio San Juan. However, more boats mean less monkeys.

The Costa Rican border town Los Chilles surprises us in its lack of infrastructure. Upon arrival at the shore, the passengers of our barge line up in a parking lot where what looks like plain clothes officials check the luggage. They seem to focus on the Nicas and wave us through.


We follow the only road and soon a young man behind a desk on the roadside yells: he asks if we come from Nicaragua. We pay two dollars and get a receipt. He tells us to drop in the immigration office further up the road. Sure enough, after a few minutes we come by a hut - if we would not have looked out for it, we would not have noticed that this wooden hut is the Costa Rican immigration. No uniforms here either: two girls in tank tops stamp our passports.


There's nothing happening in this town. Best thing to leave as fast as possible. I change my last Nicaraguan Cordobas (worth about 3 USD) into CR Colones. A man leads me to a group of very dodgy men playing poker under a tree behind the bus station - one of them changes my cash. As opposed to Nicaragua, the money changers here definitely don't wear badges.


We board the bus to Tilaran where we'll spend the night.

San Carlos and Rio San Juan

18 June 2009

We arrive at 5 am in this pleasant harbour town. The security guard of a bank is pretty much the only person awake. He gives us directions to a hotel.

Today, we do a daytrip to El Castillo. El Castillo is downstream of the San Juan river, which links Lago Nicaragua to the Caribbean/ Atlantic ocean. During the 19th century, this river was a popular passageway from the Atlantic to the Pacific - especially during the gold rush. There even were efforts to build a channel to link the Lago Nicaragua to the Pacific - a project which was ultimately achieved though the Panama canal. Since then, Rio San Juan has become very, very quiet. The river is lined with lush, green vegetation. We spot a lot of birds, and once we even see turtles sitting on a branch in the river.

The Spanish built El Castillo to defend the river from pirates of the caribbean who used to sail up the river to attack and plunder Granada. Today the ruins still provide for good views over the river and the surrounding land.





More pictures here.