Costa Rica

monkeys in manuel antonio

today we went to manuel antonio, one of costa rica's smallest national parks, which combines beaches, cliffs and forests. its known for having lots of wildlife including monkeys, and basically monkeys were the reason we went.

we got up way early (7am!) to beat the crowds. even at that early hour it was hot and humid (as always here). at the park, the trail started out on beachy terrain, with lots of plants, but quickly the path climbed higher and the vegetation got thicker. after two hours of sweaty trekking, we had seen some scary lizards, some scarier still insects, and hundreds of bright orange little crabs... but no monkeys.

we past some tour groups with telescopes pointed at the treetops, so we figured that the monkeys must hang out up there... it didn't seem like we were going to see any monkeys at all. finally we made it to a beach area with a few picnic tables. we hadn't brought swimsuits or towels, but we were so hot we took a quick dip in our clothes, sort of as compensation for the lack of monkeys. then, as we were sitting, drying off, a pack of like seven capuchin monkeys came sauntering down a sloped branch towards the picnic area. i was so excited!

they were headed for the trash can, looking for food, but they were only a few feet away from us. we (along with everyone else in the area) gathered near them and started taking pictures like crazy. we had left our backpack with our lunch on the table, and one of the monkeys darted round and grabbed on to it - stephen had to dash and yank it away from him! a monkey tried to steal our lunch - very exciting indeed.

the monkeys lingered for a while, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, i guess they are used to daily photo shoots, then moved off down the beach. it wasn't as good as seeing them undisturbed in nature, but it was pretty exciting nevertheless.

Three nights in Matapalo

We spent one transitional night in Quepos (where we are again now, more on that later) and moved on to the secluded beach of Matapalo. We havent put up any new posts because Matapalo is, well, rather small. It mainly consists of a few restaurant/hotels own by german speaking expats from various countries. We had to pass up the nice looking but (relatively) expensive Coquito del Pacifico, because there was noone there, and ended up at the two-room "cabinas matapalo" run but the excentric Harry, who apparently had recently lost his right eyebrow to a bicycle accident.

The beach was beautiful. Totally deserted, really wide, tame waves, good "boggie boarding" as it is spelled locally. The only real problems were, well, lack of anything else (like food) and the mosquitos. Oh, and the mosquito net, which must have been sprayed with toxic chemicals and gave me a rash everywhere I touched it.

Actually food wasnt that much of a problem. The local convenience store seemed to be closed 24hrs, but there were a couple of nice restaurants, one Swiss and the other America/Costa Rican. I won´t go into the boring details of "we got up, went to the beach, napped, went to the beach, showered, napped," you can imagine that stuff.

We are back in Quepos because we decided to go to the Manuel Antonio nature park, even though the Lonely Planet dissed on it. A bone jarring, dust schoolbus ride got us back here by early afternoon, and we are splurging on a air-conditioned room.

playa hermosa

on saturday (our last day in jaco), we rented bikes to ride to playa hermosa, 5km away. the bikes were rusty cruisers that we got from a little old lady who stored them in her living room. she was a little senile, but this meant she spoke so slowly that even I could understand her!

saturday turned out to be the first sunny day we´d had in costa rica - this means it was hot hot hot. the ride was alot of up- and down-hill, along a highway that skirted the cliffs that separated the two beaches. after much sweat and mashing of pedals, we finally arrived at the beach.

the view was dramatic - unlike jaco´s rocky beach, playa hermosa was covered in dark, almost black sand. the beach sloped sharply, into waves that were huge and very powerful (there were lots of surfers there). even wading just waist deep was exhausting, because the waves were pulling at you so much.

after splashing around for a bit we realized it was noon - and still sunny (we had expected it to start raining again by then). we dashed across the very hot sand and frantically applied sunblock. most of our time at the beach involved frantically applying sunblock or else wrestling with the waves as we waded waist-deep.

all in all, the excursion was more exhausting than relaxing! we figured it would be perfectly capped off if it started to downpour as we biked home. instead, the sun stayed out, hot and strong, and stephen´s bike broke... fortunately he could still coast on the downhills and it didn´t take us too long to get back.

back in jaco, we scarfed down casados in record time then took a long, well-deserved nap.

The Coast

It took a little work, and a little luck, but we made it to the coast and swam in the ocean this morning. After two nights in Alajuela, we were more than ready to head out. We had hoped to stay out of San Jose for the time being, but decided that it would probably be easier to take one many busses there, and catch the bus we knew left for the costal city of our choosing, Jacó.

With San José traffic, it took us a little longer than expected, and we ended up having to wave the bus down as it started to drive away. Then, to add insult to injury, the bus went straight through Alajuela and picked up passengers.

Three hours later, we were here. We hadn´t booked a hotel in advance, and ended up going with a random guy who had a hotel back up the road. We were dubious at first, but it turned out the place was beautiful, clean, had a pool and cost $8 each a night.

We finally had the Costa Rican national meal last night, the "casado" which is rice, beans, salad, some kind of meat, maybe fried plantain, maybe some other extras. Tasty and cheap.

I imagine that during the high season, Jacó the kind of tourist hell that I would be happy to stay away from, but this time of year it isnt so bad. The rain has been really variable (but frequent,) but I still managed to get a bit pink at the beach this morning.

Tomorrow we will rent bicycles, and check out some of the surrounding area.

On a technical note, still no internet cafés with computers that I can upload my pictures with. Maybe later. Maybe not.

we're here! and its raining!

well, after 14 hours of travel across 2 timezones and through 4 cities, we're finally here in costa rica! we're staying in aljuela, the second largest city in costa rica, although its actually pretty small. our $20 a night hotel is funky and more-or-less clean - the walls of our room are electric yellow and the common space is full of crazy hanging mobiles.

ate some very tasty empenadas (buttery flaky pastry with a meat filing) at this pleasant cafe, walked through the local market with an impressive selection of meats, fish, spices plus all these fruits i've never even see before. we wandered around, saw the cathedral and some churches, the cemetary and the football stadium. it was drizzling and then just started to downpour so we dashed into this internet cafe (there seems to be one on almost every corner)...

my favorite thing here so far has been the parks. the central park has these huge, very tall mango trees, and as you walk on the sidewalk underneath a mango will occasionally fall off, but at a very high speed! - one almost hit me on the head, yikes that would have hurt! another park was full of these trees with giant systems of exposed roots, all mixing together, and the trees themselves had these weird secondary systems of branches that hung down like willows near the trunk... also saw hundreds of red leafcutter ants, all carrying pieces of leaves....

i'm still feeling a bit sick (basically i am a snot-machine) but i'm definitely on the mend. today is stephen's birthday and i think we're going to this bar called monkeyshot to celebrate... the rain has let up, so i'll end this -- tommorrow we are headed towards the coast.

-vis

Attic

Here is a picture of Vis in the attic with our stuff. Looks like pictures may just work from random other computers.

can't believe we're leaving...

... in less than 24 hours!

after marathon packing and cleaning sessions in Boston, its been nice to spend the last 2 days chilling out at my family's house in Connecticut. time has been spent walking Pal (he is hyperactive as ever but I love him), cooking pasta primavera (tonight, we 're making sesame-crusted-salmon), watching the matrix reloaded (sadly not for free, dammit Parvin!), and sleeping (lots and lots of sleeping).

unfortunately i'm still a little sick - sore throat and very congested sinuses - but i am hoping that it will clear up in no time.

i just weighed my bag on the bathroom scale (not super accurate or anything) and it clocks in at just under 30lbs, nice.

---Vis

done moving

Well, we did it. It took a while, and there were some hurdles, but we, and all of our remaining stuff are in Conneticut. The main issue was the car battery dying twice on the way down, the second time at an intersection in the dark. But we made it in at around 11pm, and all of our stuff is in the voluminous Taraz attic.

I'd post pictures, but all I have is my hiptop right now. Maybe tomorrow. We leave tuesday. So soon! Can't wait!

Here are some pictures from our going away party last friday. The last is Vis with a morning after gatoraide cocktail (non-alcoholic).

Last day

Well, I'm finishing up my last day of work here. It's been a pretty good year or so. Hard to believe. Things have been stressful selling stuff, etc, but I think we have enough time left that we won't be running around with our heads cut off too much over the next week.

We're having a going away thing tonight....