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 air, Costa Rica looks like the greenest place in the world.
On my first day, to get a bit of Spanish practice, I arranged a homestay with a Costa Rican family. This was actually surprisingly easy - a hot tip from the Rough Guide led me to a language school in the University district and it was all sorted within a few hours. In the evening I headed into downtown with some young americans guys from the hostel. For a couple of them, it was their first time out of the States, and it was interesting to contrast their first impressions of Costa Rica (dirty, chaotic) with mine (cleaner than I expected, less chaotic).
Next day I took a touristy-tour. I’m sure they’re the same the world over - you get whisked around in a minibus, stopping at various attractions. I am not big on this kind of thing, but I wanted to get out of the city and see something before my homestay started a couple of days later.
First stop was a visit to a Coffee plantation and processing plant. I don’t like coffee, so this was a smart choice on my part, but it was interesting nonetheless. Besides, it was a gorgeous morning and I ate plenty of chocolate covered coffee beans at the end of the tour. (You’re supposed to just try before you buy, but they cost more than they do back home). Second stop was Volcan Poas, an active volcano in the midst of a national park full of cloud forest. You can drive almost to the summit, but sadly the clouds had closed in and you couldn’t see the crater, so instead I followed a short (3K) hike though the forest, which was pretty nice.
Last item on the tour was La Paz Waterfall Gardens, a “tourist complex”, which is in fact a luxurious ludicrously priced hotel (the “peace lodge”) with a little zoo, and nice trail that leads to some pretty waterfalls in the forest. The all-you-can-eat buffet was great. The hummingbirds were great too, because they fly free (seeing a Scarlet Macaw in a cage is actually not that great, IMHO).
The last day before the homestay I went white water rafting on the Rio Pacuare. It’s in the top five rivers in the world for rafting, according to some guy on the tour who might have made that up. I thought the rapids (class III and IV) were more good solid fun than white-knuckle-thrilling, but essentially it’s four hours of floating on a boat, down a river, interspersed with occasional moments of pretending to be Indiana Jones. What’s not to like? (Answer - the sunburn).
