I'm writing this on a bus again - clearly I find the elbows to the head (because there is no such thing as too many people on a bus here), small children being deposited on my lap, the sounds of the bad spanish love ballads and reggaeton, and extreme bouncing (the suspension probably died in the mid 70s) inspiring. That or it's the forced inaction...
So, setting aside comments on chicken buses (which I actually do enjoy), what can I say about Costa Rica? Well, it's probably the number one Latin American destination for people in the US. I've heard it's there number 5 destination globally, but I can't google that while on a bus, so no quoting ok :).
With green tropical forests, blue oceans, mountains, volcanoes and an abundance of wild life results in a stunning country. That influx of tourists from the US means you don't have to go far to find English speakers, menus are in Spanish and English and there is a huge, well oiled tourism machine running in the country.
Unfortunately it was raining pretty much constantly for the seven days we were there*. And when a country is geared up for outdoor activities, this kind of sucks. Costa is THE place to go zip lining across forest canopies, hit the rainforest trails, cling to canopy rope bridges, hike to volcano tops, sit on a beach, surf and go animal watching. Not really something you can enjoy in torrential downpour. And I'm not even slightly exaggerating with the torrential bit. Since my foot was still 'wobbly' I wasn't so keen on slipping, landing on my butt and damaging my foot even more.
The other problem with Costa was all of the tourist activities were WAY out of our budget. Want to hike in the national park - that'll be US$25 thank-you. Hit the hot springs - US$40 please. Without a government run tourist office information on the very few free activities wasn't easy to come by. Considering it was raining anyway, we really didn't do much.
Now you may have never been around Mark when he's bored and unable to do the ten or so activities he's decided to do that day. I have, and it's not pretty. Honestly we couldn't leave fast enough.
With sunshine and many many $$$ Costa would have been amazing. We had neither which sadly killed it a bit for us.
We did manage to find one free hot stream (hot springs are so passé) which, accompanied by the others) we enjoyed in the evening, complete with candles and some cheap vodka and ginger ale. In the spirit of true Rican entrepreneurship tour companies where running US$19 trips to the hot springs - without the vodka.
We also had a day or two without rain so hit a beautiful pacific beach up near the board of Nicaragua. It had black sand, which was kind of cool.
Photo's for Costa can be found here, here and here.
* by all accounts it was doing this everywhere in Central and resulted almost universally negative opinions for pretty much whichever country you happened to be in.
So, setting aside comments on chicken buses (which I actually do enjoy), what can I say about Costa Rica? Well, it's probably the number one Latin American destination for people in the US. I've heard it's there number 5 destination globally, but I can't google that while on a bus, so no quoting ok :).
With green tropical forests, blue oceans, mountains, volcanoes and an abundance of wild life results in a stunning country. That influx of tourists from the US means you don't have to go far to find English speakers, menus are in Spanish and English and there is a huge, well oiled tourism machine running in the country.
Unfortunately it was raining pretty much constantly for the seven days we were there*. And when a country is geared up for outdoor activities, this kind of sucks. Costa is THE place to go zip lining across forest canopies, hit the rainforest trails, cling to canopy rope bridges, hike to volcano tops, sit on a beach, surf and go animal watching. Not really something you can enjoy in torrential downpour. And I'm not even slightly exaggerating with the torrential bit. Since my foot was still 'wobbly' I wasn't so keen on slipping, landing on my butt and damaging my foot even more.
The other problem with Costa was all of the tourist activities were WAY out of our budget. Want to hike in the national park - that'll be US$25 thank-you. Hit the hot springs - US$40 please. Without a government run tourist office information on the very few free activities wasn't easy to come by. Considering it was raining anyway, we really didn't do much.
Now you may have never been around Mark when he's bored and unable to do the ten or so activities he's decided to do that day. I have, and it's not pretty. Honestly we couldn't leave fast enough.
With sunshine and many many $$$ Costa would have been amazing. We had neither which sadly killed it a bit for us.
We did manage to find one free hot stream (hot springs are so passé) which, accompanied by the others) we enjoyed in the evening, complete with candles and some cheap vodka and ginger ale. In the spirit of true Rican entrepreneurship tour companies where running US$19 trips to the hot springs - without the vodka.
We also had a day or two without rain so hit a beautiful pacific beach up near the board of Nicaragua. It had black sand, which was kind of cool.Photo's for Costa can be found here, here and here.
* by all accounts it was doing this everywhere in Central and resulted almost universally negative opinions for pretty much whichever country you happened to be in.
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