Costa Rica was a pretty nice place. We were told that they didn’t cut the rain forrest and that’s why the desert didn’t spread, as it did in some neighbour country. Lots of rain came from the forest and with no forest there is no rain. Pretty smart. The environmental thinking was good. But there were also companies as large banana producers, where you can be sceptical. Costa Rica produces lots of bananas, sugar canes, pineapple and coffee. Pura Vida!
A wagon on a coffe plantation decorated as local tradition says
Coffee
Sugar canes
After La Fortuna and Arenal we went up to Monteverde. It was pretty nice place with hills and nire hills. We stayed at a place called Los Establos, where it took about one hour to walk up a very steep hill from restaurant to our part. We stayed at level 8 and the bus ride from there to the reception took about 10 minutes. My walk up the hill without sunscreen, hat nor water bottle almost killed me. I might also have been food poisoned, so I just lied on the bed and tried to exist for the rest of the day. The following day was just coffee for breakfest and some bread for dinner. Day 3 was better. 🙂 But we’ll get to that part.
The first thing we did in monte verde was to visit caffee and sugar cane plantation. They showed us how to pick coffee and asked if we wanted to try. Neh, drinking coffe was good enough. We also walked through sigar cane plants and were told about the dangerous snakes living there. Nice.
Crazy humming bird
Blue humming bird
Los Establos
After tasting some coffe we also visited a place where they had humming birds. We took plenty of photos, only few were nice. At that place we encountered a nose bear. He just walked out in front of us an was as surprised as we were. Some people also saw a tucan, a birds with a huge bill. I saw one, but no pictures. Too bad.
This is also the place where we celebrated New Years. Well, we watched some fireworks and went to bed. The fireworks were nice from the top of the hill!
The next day we had a night walk in the jungle. I was sick, but the people wjo went didn’t see much, except a huge spider at the end. I’m quite ok to havemissed it.
Looking for shells
Racoon
Bats
Tambor was our next and final stop. It was an all-inclusive resort on the Paciffic side. The beach was nice, but the food and drinks were lousy. People here eat rice and beans sometimes with meat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and it was the same here.
In the evenings there were racoon stealing food and we saw some bats living in the bar om a Turkish flag. The place was happy, easy and relaxed. We swam in the pool, sat on the beach or wandered in the local jungle. We found a coconut on the beach one day. It took about one hour to open it, but it was worth it. It was tasty and warm. On the beach we had company from some squirrels.
Agooti
Sunset
Howler monkey
The local jungle was a little jungle built up by the hotel. There were monkeys there, crabs and many birds. We saw parrots too, the racoons and an agooti. Not much happened here, which was relaxing.
Parrot
Squirrel
Iguana
Pura Vida is a saying in Costa Rica.It’s used often and with a smile. Pura Vida literally means Pura = pure and vida = life, but “Pure life” in Spanish would be “Vida pura” instead, so the real meaning is closer to “plenty of life”, “full of life”, “this is living!”, “going great”, “real living”, “Awesome!” or “cool!”.[5] It can be used both as a greeting or a farewell, universally known in Costa Rica and it has been used by many Costa Ricans (and expatriates) since 1956. (wikipedia)
The trip to Costa Rica was great, relaxing and I learned a lot and saw planty of cool animals and other stuff.
//Monika
World's heritage travel 