Bikes, beaches, bananas and boats

We have completed our time in Costa Rica, our last stop in Puerto Viejo...an old port town, now a Caribbean beach town surrounded by banana plantations. We are on the fourth and final portion of the trip, and we got to spend 3 nights in Puerto Viejo, which was amazing. We spent the first night having dinner at a soda restaurant (a small hole in the wall restaurant, Costa Rican style) having traditional, famous rice and beans. Rice and beans here are made with coconut milk and served with your choice of meat, our favorite was fish with Caribbean sauce...soooo goood! After dinner, we found a place called Bread and Chocolate. Bread and Chocolate was a dangerous place...haha, they served mint brownie sundaes to fried egg sandwiches to homemade bagels..soooo good too!
The next day we rented bikes and rode to a couple nearby beaches-Cocles and Punta Uva, both were beautiful with turquoise water and white sand. We decided to have a survivor challenge and see who could get down a coconut to drink. After some unsuccessful attempts to climb the trees, throw stones and old coconuts, a kind lifeguard lent us a ladder and a knife. We then managed to open it up with just a stone and shared in drinking coconut juice fresh from a coconut. It definitely made me have respect for those people on Survivor!
The following day, our tour leader took us to Cahuita National Park. Cahuita National Park was established in the 1970s to protect the large coral reef just off shore. Unfortantly, the reef is still dying due partially to a large earthquake in 1992, but also from pesticide run off from the large banana plantations. The pesticide causes plankton blooms that block the sunlight and poison the water. These same banana plantation use bags to protect the bananas from bugs. The bags are not properly disposed of and almost always end up in the sea. This is rapidly killing off the turtle population, as the turtles can choke on the bags. To say the least, banana plantations are having a harmful effect on the environment. Chiquita and Dole are two major companies who are taking part in the careless treatment of the environment, and it makes you think twice when buying produce at home. The park itself was beautiful, including rain forests filled with Howler and white-faced Capuchin monkeys, sloths, hawks, and leaf-cutting ants. After exploring the jungle, we visited the beaches that lined Cahuita National Park, which were similar to the beaches from the day before. After spending the day at the park, we headed back to Bread and Chocolate for a late afternoon snack before we had our last plate of rice and beans, so good but sad to have to say goodbye to Costa Rica!
In the morning we crossed our last border in Central America with GAP. We finally arrived in Panama!! Our first stop in Panama is in the district of Bocas del Toro, on Isla Colon, the most developed of the 6 islands in the area. It is an Afro Caribbean island with a small town feel. It was discovered by Columbus, who named it after himself, then left because there was no gold. A few hundred years later, immigrants from Jamiaca and England came to the island, leaving a mixed population of Afro Caribbeans, indigenous tribes, and white people from the mainland. The islands were also commercialized by the United Fruit Company (banana farms now owned by Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte) in the 1900s. Bananas remain one of the major exports of Panama, as well as most countries in Central America.
Our first and only excursion we did on the island was the Catamaran tour. We spent the day relaxing on the boat watching the dolphins swim by and snorkeled in a privately contracted part of the reef. Our first stop was amazing, the water was so clear and the reef was filled with brilliant colors of the rainbow. As for the coral reef its the best we have seen so far. After our relaxing snorkel swim I (Toriann) thought it would be fun to swim to a nearby island to get some exercise. Well in the midst of swimming I felt my body starting the sting and then realized i had swam through a spool of jelly fish. I was not just stung once but about four times. Thus, I decided to swim back. Never being stung by a jelly fish before I was shocked by how bad it hurts. My advice is if you see jelly fish don't then go for a leisurely swim because there inevitably will be more. After the jelly fish encounter, we boarded the boat had amazing sub sandwiches and boated to the second snorkeling spot. Heather and i ventured out to snorkel but still freaked out about the jelly fish I freaked out midway and swam back. Heather, on the other hand was much braver and snorkeled around the beautiful coral reef and enjoyed the colors of the reef and fish. Before we realized the day had past and we were back on the island were we spent the rest of the evening relaxing around town. The Caribbean chill feel has really grown on us and it is sad to have to say good bye.

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