Nicaragua and Costa Rica

Pura Vida!


We have been in Costa Rica for almost a week now and it has blown me away with how beautiful it is here! After our last stop in Nicaragua, a volcano island called Ometepe, we took a van, ferry, taxi, and bus to cross the border into Costa Rica. Our first destination was Monte Verde, a small town in the jungle filled mountains. It was originally settled in the 1950s by Quakers that escaped the Korean draft in the US. The Quakers started a cheese factory, and the mountains are now filed not only with amazingly rich natural flora and fauna, but also huge black and white dairy cows! Getting up the mountain, you drive along a rough dirt road for about 2 hours, and Toriann said multiple times, I don't know why they don't just pave this road...apparently its a controversial issue and the Quakers oppose it because of the influx of people and pollution it will bring to their area. So, it will probably be a bumpy ride for a while!
The morning after recovering from the trip, we decided to take a ´hike´-its a road, but a very steep one, to the cheese factory. We made it about half way up until it started POURING rain. We were very unprepared and left stranded at a bus stop. Luckily, one of two tuktuks drove by and drove us up the wet, dirt road the rest of the way to the factory. I definitely thought we were going to tip over a few times, but he made it there safely. We had a small tour and an ice cream treat before we realized it was still raining and we had no way down. Amazingly enough, the same tuk tuk showed up to pick up ice cream to deliver to the town, and was nice enough to take us back down the mountain.
After our adventure to the cheese factory, we zip lined in the jungle canopy's. This is a very popular thing to do in Costa Rica, and it was really fun! We zip lined down 14 different lines, the longest one was 70 meters. We also repelled down a tree and swung on the Tarzan swing. Overall, zip lining was really fun and it was a great way to see the mountains from above! It has definitely been one of our favorite activities!
Our next stop after Monte Verde was La Fortuna, a city at the base of Volcano Arenal. (If you haven't noticed, this was the volcano portion of our trip!) We did a tour of the volcano and the guide was SO informative! He told us the history of the volcano, pointed out native plants and wildlife, and was actually able to communicate to the howler monkeys. He sang the song...Who let the monkeys out?, and then we all were supposed the make our best monkey sounds...which was fairly retarded sounding but the monkeys yelled back! It was SO cool!!! Compared to other guides, hmm, the one in Guatemala that got us lost, the guide was a gem! Even though there was more water from the rain than in most of our showers, the tour through the jungle was amazing, soaking wet and all! The people of this area did not know Arenal was an active volcano until it erupted in the 1940s. It is now the most active in Costa Rica. It erupted again in the 1968, destroying the town of Arenal and killed the entire population. The volcano continues to erupt everyday since, and has created a total of 3 craters. Supposedly the volcano erupts every 5-10 minutes and we were able to see it erupt with a fair amount of lava! We went when it was dark and it was incredible to see red lava streaming down the mountain! We were glad to sit in a van and not be too close!
Other than that we had a great time in La Fortuna, we rented bikes and went to a local swimming hole, had amazing local food (Chicken and rice...one of Torianns favorites!), went to a hot spring resort with a crazy water slide and generally took in the sights of Costa Rica! From La Fortuna we ventured to Costa Rica's capital San Jose to say good bye to our third group and welcome our fourth and final group. We have a new tour leader named Micheal and a couple from England. Since being here in San Jose, my old stomping ground, I took Heather on a little adventure around the city. We rode the local buses to my old school where we had lunch with some of my teachers who still work there and chated with the some of the students. After my little reunion we headed into San Jose's main square which has two major pedestrian streets filled with shops. We had chocobananas from a little ice cream shop called POPS and then just roamed the streets. San Jose is very much a busy city, crowded with people and one could easily get lost but luckily i remembered a lot of the city and we were able to walk around without getting lost. Sadly our time here in San Jose is too short and we leave today to visit the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, a town called Puerto Viejo. It should be fun and we have been told that there are some great beaches. So until next time bye, take care and Pura Vida!!!

The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes
Marcel Proust