May 2010
15 posts
Jurassic Park
Most of the ocean cargo has shifted from Puntarenas to the nearby port town of Caldera, but there is still plenty of life in the town, and there are still plenty of boats. The fish market, on the northern shore of Puntarenas’ thin spit of land, full of fisherman and their haggling buyers, seemed as good a place as any to start my search.
My Spanish is decent, so I didn’t have any...
1 tag
Rain
This is the story of a tropical storm. For most people, that isn’t maybe as dramatic or exciting as it sounds.
I woke at 5am to the sound of heavy rain clattering the thin, plastic roof. As I set out from the hotel it was raining hard, fast streams gushing along the storm gutters. When I climbed aboard the 6am bus from Monteverde to the coastal town of Puntarenas, it had eased, but it was...
1 tag
1 tag
Jeep-boat-jeep
Monteverde, like Volcano Arenal, is one of Costa Rica’s top tourist attractions. Though only 15km away as the crow flies, it takes a disappointing six hours to reach by road. Well, there’s a big lake in the way, after all. Strictly speaking, I guess Lake Arenal is actually a reservoir - a dam was added in 1979 to expand the existing lake to three times its original size.
We tourists...
1 tag
Heat And Paying For Waterfalls
The locals in Costa Rica often talk about their tiempo loco, or crazy weather. It could be a baking thirty five degrees, it could be torrential rain, it could be both on the same day. Their are microclimates everywhere, and different parts of the country have their own weather and their own rules, but, to someone accustomed to the changeable British weather, it all seems quite predictable.
...
1 tag
Zona Norte
After more than a week in the largely-derided-by-tourists-and-guide-books-but-actually-not-all-that-bad capital city of San José, I’d exhausted all the day trip options. I struck out for the rest of the country.
Heading north to La Fortuna I passed though the town of Naranjo. It won’t feature in many guide books, but it’s worth mentioning because it looks like the town planners...
1 tag
Photos from Costa Rica →
1 tag
1 tag
Some anecdotes
Backpackers sometimes do things that might seem a little crazy. Back home, it would seem pretty ridiculous to get three forty-five minute buses just to reach a little village because a guidebook said it was pretty. When abroad that it totally normal behaviour. Orosí, south of San José, sits in a little valley and it kind of pretty, though I’d rate it’s prettiness as worthy of only two...
1 tag
More tedious travel writing
OK, two hours in an internet cafe and I‘ve just remembed another thing about travel journals. Writing a journal eats time like a hungry catepillar eats a bad metaphor. Let’s rattle though the last few days like a simile rattles through a, well, you know.
I moved to Guadalupe, in the suburbs of San Jose, for a week staying with some Costa Ricans -essentially for a bit of Spanish...
1 tag
Costa Rica - First Days
As I said in my previous entry, I am not a huge fan of travel journals. So here is my travel journal.
My flight from London, via Madrid, survived the ash cloud that was dancing around northern Spain, and I picked up my first new Spanish phrase - nube de ceniza. Long flight, about 12 hours, mostly boring, except for spotting a few Caribbean islands, and the final descent into San Jose. From the...
1 tag
Costa Rica - Intro
I‘m in Costa Rica.
I am not huge on travel journals, as they can be self indulgent - look at me, I’m having a great time, I discovered the new world! - but I’ve noticed that when you’re travelling, you tend to keep busy. You fill up your brain with new memories every day - older ones, even from a few days hence, simply don’t have time to bed in. I’m going to...