A backroad to Costa Rica's Volcan Arenal provided great views and a great ride!
Lori and sunset on Playa Tamarindo, one very busy tourist beach along Costa Rica's pacific coast
One tree contains an entire ecosystem in the Monteverde cloud forest reserve!
Lori and the Hondogs on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica...great fun for sure!
Caribbean Coast...this says it all!!!
New wiring..new sprockets (for you Felix!)=New Hondog!!!
Blue Jean Rana (frog), one of the poisonous dart frogs in Costa Rica
I hate spiders, but don't consider tarantulas spiders! But I have to admit I picked up this 5 inch orange-kneed tarantula only after Peter (who has owned tarantulas) picked it up!
After our nice relaxing stay at Boca del Toro it time to hit the road norte to Costa Rica. Today (Oct 19th) we are crossing at the remote village of Chanquinola..but first we have to traverse a series of single lane, rotten wood bridges over several rivers that cause Lori more than a little stress (and for good reason as a slip means a 20 m plus drop into a raging river. One has to be a magician to figure out how to get to this border crossing and when we do we are in for a surprise! A single lane ramp leads to yet another ancient single lane bridge. First we need to park in the doorway of the immigration office (literally) so that the semi’s from the Costa Rica side can pass into Panama. After getting stamped out we face the challenge of crossing this bridge. A line up of Costa Rican semis stretches on forever and they will not give me even a minute to cross (only one vehicle on the bridge at a time)...finally I ask Lori to run across to the Costa Rican side to block truck traffic by standing in the middle of the bridge approach. When she tried this the semi drivers hit their horns and the Costa Rican police came out and forced Lori off the road. When she explained the situation (we only needed a couple of minutes to pass) they said “This is Panama’s problem..not Costa Rica’s”. However her blockage gave me enough time to get my bike on the bridge and by blocking pedestrian traffic and various other methods we are across and into Costa Rica in just over 2 hrs.
Our first stop is Puerto Viejo..a tranquille village on the Caribbean Coast...a nice hostal with a pool and some nice beach scenery and a very laid back lifestyle sure felt great. We spent some time exploring various beaches up and down the coast and then headed inland to Fortuna.
We had already visited Fortuna (and Volcan Arenal) in March but this time we were rewarded with some nice clear views of the Volcano (which is strange considering that we are in the middle of rainy season!) Rainy season or not we have lots of tourists and the usual high prices for food (lodging isn’t to bad). Just to clarify..when we say high prices we are comparing prices to other Central and South American countries...in terms of cost Costa Rica is still as cheap or cheaper than Canada.
Leaving Fortuna we took a series of dirt roads around the shore of Lago Arenal..some beautiful views of the volcano and we also saw our first white-lipped Peccary. It is a beautiful ride with little traffic (actually most of the roads in Costa Rica are in good shape and very nice to ride as traffic is generally light with very nice scenery) as we make our way to the mountain village of Taliran where we holed up while a rain storm raged for most of the evening.
The next day we completed the ride to the pretty mountain village of Santa Ellena (Monteverde). There is lots to do here as Monteverde is supposed to be the most popular protected are in Costa Rica. What is strange about most of these villages is that the 20 or 30 km directly before the villages are still dirt road and in the case of Santa Elena (Monteverde) the road is pretty rocky but we can run it a lot faster than the trucks and bus. In Santa Elena we spent a day hiking in the cloud forest reserve (our hi-light was finding a orange kneed tarantula) that contains some spectacular cloud forest ecosystems...a single tree contains a entire living ecosystem! We also checked out the orchid gardens, the frog (rana) pond and literally walked the entire town.
As we drop out of the mountains we kiss the nice cool air goodbye and trade it for the humidly of the Pacific Coast as we spent several days at both Playa Tamarindo and Hermosa. This area of Costa Rica has been devastated by floods and judging by the absolute torrential rains that hit us the flooding is not yet finished!
Playa Tamarindo is one of the more expensive places to live and stay in Costa Rica and the amount of construction is progress is impressive. Here you find 200 dollar per night hotels but main streets full of mud and holes, no sidewalks, polluted beaches. While we were there we had a huge rainstorm and water was over 2 feet deep on mainstreet and flooding into fancy stores! This is supposed to be a surfers paradise but its definitely “yuppie” surfers compared to the dredlocked laid back surf scene in Puerto Viejo! (Because it is rainy season there are virtually no waves!) The road into Tamarindo is a mess..all that rain and semi-trucks running over a mud road makes for a big mess!
Playa Hermosa is more our style...laid back and we stayed at the Hostal Iguana which is owned by a Canadian that bought the place when he was 20 and smoked way to much dope to ever leave! Just kidding (well actually not!)...Ken is a really nice guy with the usual wife that is at least 20 years his Junior!
Its getting to late October and time to head north! So what did we think of Costa Rica? The people are really friendly! We think that the tourist industry tends to lean to the high-end tourist..not the cheap backpacker type. One needs to pay fees (fairly steep fees) to do just about everything. Costa Ricans take good care of their country...little garbage and their parks are well run. Lots, lots lots of tourists...numbers of tourists have risen 12% in the last year alone!!!
Our first stop is Puerto Viejo..a tranquille village on the Caribbean Coast...a nice hostal with a pool and some nice beach scenery and a very laid back lifestyle sure felt great. We spent some time exploring various beaches up and down the coast and then headed inland to Fortuna.
We had already visited Fortuna (and Volcan Arenal) in March but this time we were rewarded with some nice clear views of the Volcano (which is strange considering that we are in the middle of rainy season!) Rainy season or not we have lots of tourists and the usual high prices for food (lodging isn’t to bad). Just to clarify..when we say high prices we are comparing prices to other Central and South American countries...in terms of cost Costa Rica is still as cheap or cheaper than Canada.
Leaving Fortuna we took a series of dirt roads around the shore of Lago Arenal..some beautiful views of the volcano and we also saw our first white-lipped Peccary. It is a beautiful ride with little traffic (actually most of the roads in Costa Rica are in good shape and very nice to ride as traffic is generally light with very nice scenery) as we make our way to the mountain village of Taliran where we holed up while a rain storm raged for most of the evening.
The next day we completed the ride to the pretty mountain village of Santa Ellena (Monteverde). There is lots to do here as Monteverde is supposed to be the most popular protected are in Costa Rica. What is strange about most of these villages is that the 20 or 30 km directly before the villages are still dirt road and in the case of Santa Elena (Monteverde) the road is pretty rocky but we can run it a lot faster than the trucks and bus. In Santa Elena we spent a day hiking in the cloud forest reserve (our hi-light was finding a orange kneed tarantula) that contains some spectacular cloud forest ecosystems...a single tree contains a entire living ecosystem! We also checked out the orchid gardens, the frog (rana) pond and literally walked the entire town.
As we drop out of the mountains we kiss the nice cool air goodbye and trade it for the humidly of the Pacific Coast as we spent several days at both Playa Tamarindo and Hermosa. This area of Costa Rica has been devastated by floods and judging by the absolute torrential rains that hit us the flooding is not yet finished!
Playa Tamarindo is one of the more expensive places to live and stay in Costa Rica and the amount of construction is progress is impressive. Here you find 200 dollar per night hotels but main streets full of mud and holes, no sidewalks, polluted beaches. While we were there we had a huge rainstorm and water was over 2 feet deep on mainstreet and flooding into fancy stores! This is supposed to be a surfers paradise but its definitely “yuppie” surfers compared to the dredlocked laid back surf scene in Puerto Viejo! (Because it is rainy season there are virtually no waves!) The road into Tamarindo is a mess..all that rain and semi-trucks running over a mud road makes for a big mess!
Playa Hermosa is more our style...laid back and we stayed at the Hostal Iguana which is owned by a Canadian that bought the place when he was 20 and smoked way to much dope to ever leave! Just kidding (well actually not!)...Ken is a really nice guy with the usual wife that is at least 20 years his Junior!
Its getting to late October and time to head north! So what did we think of Costa Rica? The people are really friendly! We think that the tourist industry tends to lean to the high-end tourist..not the cheap backpacker type. One needs to pay fees (fairly steep fees) to do just about everything. Costa Ricans take good care of their country...little garbage and their parks are well run. Lots, lots lots of tourists...numbers of tourists have risen 12% in the last year alone!!!
