Monteverde

I made it to Monteverde a couple of days ago. The weather finally turned great in Tamarindo and some of my favorite people from Utila showed up to hang out for a few days- Alon and Eitan who I had been traveling on and off with, Jen who just finished her divemaster, and Sarah doing a visa run. We all spent a couple of great days on the beach and Jen and I got surf boards and rocked the waves!! By that I mean we surfed baby whitewash, but we were able to get up a bunch of times and had a lot of fun.

I set off with Pablo, a guy I met in San Juan del Sur and ran into again in Tamarindo. We took a 7:30am bus from Tamarindo and after 2 changes and a lot of bumpy roads, arrived in Monteverde at 5:30pm! On a map it looks like it shouldn{t be too far away, but the roads here and windy and the bus will stop for anyone along the way. Our final leg of the trip was the most scenic as well as adventurous, up a steep and windy dirt road in an ancient vehicle. Every time we stopped and had to start again (which was painfully often) there was a great grinding of gears and we all held our breath, hoping we would actually go UP instead of just rolling back down. Luckily I think the driver has been handling that particular bus for the last couple of decades at

least, and we made it slowly but without incident.

Yesterday we went on a canopy tour with Extremo, which consists of wearing a harness and flying around over or through the tree tops on zip lines. Needless to say, it was fantastic! It was almost 3 hours and at least a dozen different lines. We also did a rappel, where you are attached to a rope and drop straight down, and a tarzan swing which is exactly what it sounds like- jumping off a platform on a long rope and when you reach the end with a lurch you just swing back and forth through the jungle. The final zip line, 1km long and 180m high (more than 590ft!!) and we did the Superman, where you are hooked up by your back and feet, flying stretched out and face down over all the trees and valleys. I imagine it is about as close as you can get to feeling like an actual bird, and it was incredible!

Last night I also opted to do a Night Hike through the jungle at Finca Santamaria. Most mammals here are nocturnal, so your best chance of seeing them is to go out at night, in the dark. Even in 2 hours it was amazing how much we could see! Costa Rica is one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world- there are more species per capita than almost anywhere else, and it was great to see a tiny fraction of this. Within the first 5 minutes we spotted a 2 toed sloth and her baby, and they were eating in a tree maybe 8 feet off the ground and right in front of us! Later we spotted another sloth and in the same tree an opossum and a porcupine! There were a bunch of blue morphos butterflies, an owl and a sleeping brown jay, a couple of walking stick bugs, and an ENORMOUS orange kneed tarantula! We got up close to another opossum and saw an armadillo burrow (sans animal, unfortunately) and I saw some sort of housecat sized feline when the guide wasn{t around. We weren{t too far from the start of the hike, so I asked if there actually were housecats in the jungle. He said he had never seen any and didn{t think so, so it is quite possible I saw a wild jungle cat!! The guide showed us bioluminiscent mushrooms- microscopic fungi that use a chemical reaction when it is dark to create light and attract moths, which land on them and then spread their spores which is how they reproduce. We all turned our flashlights off and hiked for about 5 minutes in the pitch black looking for them, which was quite an experience. The guide was great and very knowledgable about all the flora and fauna of the jungle, and has been working there for the past 8 years so was amazing at spotting interesting animals when the rest of us were just worried about tripping over roots! Such an incredible day, I{m so glad I finally made it here!

Costa Rica in the Rainy Season

I've made it all the way down now to Tamarindo, Costa Rica, a beach town on the Pacific. After sleepy San Juan, I feel like I'm in Waikiki. There is a clear disparity of wealth between the two neighboring countries, which was maybe more obvious doing the border crossing with local buses and on foot as opposed to an international bus that shuffles you across. On the ride down to the Nicaraguan border we took the beat up old school buses, and as soon as we crossed into Costa there were more luxury buses, car dealerships everywhere, and prices of pretty much everything had doubled if not tripled.

I'm actually taking a little break from hostel life and staying with a friend I met in San Juan who is from Argentina but lives here in Tamarindo. It actually feels like a mini Argentina here- she has a big group of Argentinian friends who are very sweet and remind me that my Spanish still has a long way to go when I'm in a group of 5 girls gossiping and joking and speaking extremely quickly!

The only downside to Tamarindo is that it is undoubtedly rainy season here. On my first full day it rained heavily and constantly and that night was practically a monsoon! Roads were waist deep with water, the hostel my friend worked at flooded, and all the clubs and bars were shut for fear of electricity in all that water. Somewhat ironically yesterday, when it wasn't raining during the day, all the city water was turned off for about 10 hours. It foiled our plans of showering, cooking, and doing laundry. Once it started raining again in the evening and the water started trickling I took a gamble and went for a shower. Unfortunately it all stopped running in the shower once my hair was full of shampoo and I had to rinse it in the trickle of the kitchen sink. Thank goodness that was still even semi-working! Everyday has been an adventure, and in a few days I will set off again for the jungle and hopefully the Caribbean coast where I will get to see sea turtles laying their eggs on the beach!

Grenada

For me Grenada was just as a city should be. Busy but not hectic, clean but not sterile, old but not decrepit. It is a colonial city, built in a Spanish style with stucco and red tiled roofs. From the street, blocks of buildings look unbroken by greenery, every wall pushed tight up against the next. What makes them so lovely though is that they are all built around a large central courtyard that is open to the sky and fresh air. As you walk down a street you can often see in through the iron clad "screen" doors to a mini oasis inside.


The day Chris and I spent wandering the city was lovely. It had rained hard the night before but the morning was sunny and clear. We set out for breakfast and found a woman selling bags of cut up fresh fruit- pineapple, papaya, watermelon and banana, for 20 cordobas, or about 50 cents each. We wandered by lovely churches, sat in a shady park, came across an old military garrison which was closed to visitors but when the guard noticed us peering in unlocked the chain for us and told us to go up one of the towers for a view over the city. The grounds were beautiful and tranquil, and it was hard to imagine the torture and executions that took place there during the Somoza regime.


From another bell tower we saw the skyline stretch to Lake Nicaragua and volcanoes in the distance. We took a wander through a very local market- the kind where everyone is so pushed together you literally scrape past people to move, where there are vendor stalls inside the building (in this case it looked like an ancient church) but the market has grown out and around from it's center in a mass covered in tarps and plastic sheeting, where flies swarm and are lazily flicked away with a palm frond from raw chickens and blocks of cheese that are rarely even covered by plastic.


We didn't go that local but we had lunch in one of the many kioscos set up in the central park under the shade of palm trees and the view of the cathedral. The staple food of the country is "gallo pinto", a mix of rice and beans, and here we got some chicken, a piece of white cheese and a corn tortilla. Very simple food but my general impression is that Nicas can really cook because almost every plate I had was really tasty.


That evening I went with a group from Leo Tours to the Volcano Masaya. Six of us went with our driver/guide who took us to lava fields, 5 different craters, and a couple of short hikes where we got spectacular dusky views. Once the sun started going down we went into one of the bat caves in the area which is exactly that, full of bats. They are cute little tiny insect eating bats, and we were there just as they were waking and heading out for the night. At the entrance to a couple of the caves it was practically a swarm of bats rushing past your head! We took a final peek into the crater of the active volcano in hopes of seeing lava, but there was too much steam and gasses coming up to see anything. Once back in town I had a really nice evening with one of the girls from the group, sitting in the sidewalk cafes on the busy pedestrian street in the city center, sharing pizzas and beers.

Grenada seems a very livable city. It is actually full of expats now, and some locals "joke" it is the second American invasion of the city, after William Walker in the 1850's was hired to invade Grenada by the warring other major city of Leon, but then somehow had himself elected president of Nicaragua. These days it is foreign money buying most of the property in Grenada which brings lovely cafes, bookstores, and hotels, but also drives prices up and out of the range of locals. It is certainly a bit of a catch 22, but at the moment it has made for a lovely combination and a charming city.

The Tiger

I may have found my true home away from home at the Naked Tiger hostel in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. Maybe not so much a home but more of a luxury vacation. We are on a hill overlooking the town and the beach in a converted mansion. I spend my days swimming in the pool, hopping in the back of a pick up and heading down a bumpy road to the beach, lazing in a cafe by the water, drinking a lifetime worth of rum drinks. Is this adventurous traveling? No. Is this paradise? Absolutely.

Strangers and Friends

One of the reasons I love traveling is that I love the people I meet along the way. It is a mish mash of adventurous spirits, soul searchers, wanderers from so many different places with hugely different backgrounds but we all have so many things in common. We are HERE. Everyone loves to share where they have been, where they might be going, collect ideas for the Next Trip. I bumped into a girl I met in Peru last year. She hiked the Colca Canyon at the same time and partook in the great pizza debacle of 2010. I kept looking at her when I arrived at the hostel until I could finally place her, and once I said- were you in Peru last year? she immediately remembered me as well. What a small world.

In a totally unrelated story- the day before I left Utila I borrowed 80 lempiras from Lacey to get our giffidy shirts (but that's another story). I forgot to give it to her, and felt really guilty when I realized on the bus to San Pedro. While it is less than $5, it was still a substantial sum of money. That night I met a guy at the hostel who was traveling to Utila the following morning. We hung out that evening and shared a cab to the bus terminal at 5 the next morning. Before he left I asked him if he would take the money and deliver it to Lacey at the dive shop. He seemed trustworthy enough, but really, I didn´t know his last name, hadn´t exchanged emails, there was nothing to ever find him and make him feel guilty in the slightest if he didn´t. But he promised he would, and I believed him. A couple of days later I got a message from Lacey that a random guy had stopped by straight off the ferry looking for her with money from me. It is a small story, but it actually made me quite happy. It is nice to remember there really are a lot of honest people out there who will do the right, kind thing. So thanks, Ori, for the good deed.

Rain drops are falling on my head

I left the sunny island of Utila a few days ago to come explore more of Central America. On the mainland here it is rainy season, and they are not kidding when they say RAINY. After a few hours on a bus through Honduras (ok, 3 hours plus 13 hours), I arrived in Managua, Nicaragua. I met up with some friends I had met in Utila in the colonial city of Grenada and stayed in an interesting hostel where I learned some Israeli card games and apparently the unoccupied rooms have an invasion of bedbugs never seen before by mankind. Eviatar, one of the guys I met up with, got a little confused after a late night and a lot of rum, and fell asleep in the wrong dorm room. Unfortunately when he woke up in the morning, he was covered in thousands of bites. When he added the inevitable mosquito bites the following day, his foot and leg swelled to about twice their normal size and he is now an invalid, limping around in the jungle. I thought I had escaped relatively unscathed, but somewhere in my first 24 hours in this country I picked up my own set of unnusual bites, which seemed innocent enough until they formed giant, puss filled blisters on the back of my leg. I popped them today, and am hoping rubbing alcohol and neosporin will do the trick. The joys of cheap accommodations and/or tropical climates.


After a brief morning in Grenada 5 of us took a shuttle to the Tree House, Poste Rojo, about 20 min down the road. It was a real life, full scale tree house up in the middle of the jungle. It is a 15 min walk from the main road, another 20 min hike up to the dorms and then main area. Everything is wood decked and up high, with viewing platforms over the valley, a suspension bridge, and a group of howler monkeys who hang out in the trees overhead. It is a relatively new hostel and really very cool, a nice chill alternative to cities- or even villages!


From the tree house we visited some natural springs, an exciting tuk-tuk ride down a bumpy dirt road and then a hike into yet more jungle. The water was clear and fresh and cold, a great reprieve from the hot day. Our tuk-tuk driver took us to a little roadside restaurant where the woman cooked us a delicious meal. It seems the typical Nican food is gallo pinto, or rice and beans, and most dishes come with this as a side. Rice and beans or some of my favorite foods, so I am a happy camper. We also managed to rustle up some groceries from the little stand. They didn't really sell anything, but one of the women would go running down the road- to a neighbor, a market, a field, we really had no idea- and would come back bearing the requested items. 10 eggs? Check. 3 avocados? Check. Only 2 were ripe so she threw in 2 extra for free. Tomatoes, onions, limes, bread? Check, check, check. A different trip for practically each one, but happily procured and still all less than $4 a person, including our cooked meal. This morning we made a feast, and the boys made the last of their precious tahini, which has a similar use as hummus but an intense flavor. Three of them are from Israel and can make some darn tasty food.


This afternoon Chris and I decided to explore the area a little more, even (gasp) get some exercise and go for a hike! We took a tuk-tuk to the tiny town of Diria, maybe 10 minutes away, and went up to the mirador (lookout) over Laguna de Apoyo, a beautiful, clean lake. We hiked down into the crater, a hot and slippery 30 min. Just as we were getting into the water the sky opened up and a downpour began. Being in a lake is not the worst place to be in a rainstorm. It was actually quite beautiful, and we swam until the rain stopped. Unfortunately it made for a very soggy hike up, and it kept raining off and on the rest of the day. There were claps of thunder so loud you could FEEL the electricity splitting the air. The weather here is impressive in its intensity.

We visited another of the Pueblos Blancos, the town of Caterina. Our tuk tuk driver for this leg was Pablo, his friend Carlito sitting in back with us. Apparently they are locals who lived in Miami as kids, and were pretty curious about tourists who were not with a church group. There were a lot of "yeah, dawg" and "homie" thrown around, and Carlito offered to show us the "local side" of things tonight and gave us his 2 phone numbers. But as Chris later summed it up, we might have gotten a little too local, left in a bar with no wallet and a broken face. We thanked him for the offer, and promptly lost the paper.

Caterina had an amazing view of the lake and you could also see Lake Nicaragua and Granada in the distance. The artisanal work we saw was on the tacky side- neon plaster piggy banks and such- but we found a shop with nice things and the woman explained some of the masks that represent a popular Nicaraguan play of the colonization by the Spanish. We also found a small spot for another tasty, cheap lunch. Half way though it began pouring again, and has hardly stopped since.

Chris and I decided to come back to Grenada and explore a little more while the others hang out in the tree house. We caught a "chicken bus" on the main road. These are old Blue Bird school buses from the US- the long yellow ones with vinyl bench seats. They are the cheap local option and are usually packed with people and their goods, often times live chickens. They will stop and pick you up or drop you off anywhere along the road. When we got on the driver was blasting a radio station straight out of the 1950s in America. When we jumped on it was playing "raindrops are falling on my head". How appropriate, given the monsoon outside.