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Central America

A 42-day adventure by annalovestraveling Read more
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  • annalovestravelingCentral Americaannalovestraveling

    European Standard

    March 29, 2016 in Costa Rica ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C

    Arriving to Costa Rica after the other Central American countries was a little cultural shock: you can easily see that the economic development is much further along. The houses are nicer, the buses have a button to ask for a stop and actually serve real bid stops. At some of them there even is a schedule! There is a clear downside though: the price level is around double of what you would pay in Nicaragua.
    My first impressions of the country were negatively influenced by some bad experiences at the border. Firstly, the migration process is even more strict and complicated than in the USA. Secondly, the bus company (or at least two girls working for it) tried to rip me off. They sold me a ticket for a bus that was supposed to take me directly to my first stop Monteverde. Already then I thought that 7000 colones (=$14) were quite a lot. Then, however, when I told the driver to drop me off there, he told me that the bus was not even going there and that in fact there were no direct busses to Monteverde at all, so I asked them to give me my money back. They told me to talk to the official because they wanted to leave, but I insisted that one of them would stay to make sure I wouldn't be left without a bus AND without my moneymoney. They didn't want to but I got so angry that in the and the driver just paid me the money back himself.
    Although that wasn't the best start, from then on every one has been super friendly and helpful.    Read more

  • annalovestravelingCentral Americaannalovestraveling

    Kinkajou Night Hike

    March 30, 2016 in Costa Rica ⋅ 🌬 0 °C

    In order to see the night-active animals as well, we went on a night hike in the kinkajou reserve. Thanks to our awesome guide we didn't only see some sleeping hummingbirds and tucans, but also a sloth (Faultier) with her baby, two different kinds of vipers, scorpions, a beautiful owl, tarantulas and even the rare kinkajou (Wickelbär). Unfortunately, the amardillo (Gürteltier) our guide had spotted was too fast for is, so we didn't get a look on it.Read more

  • annalovestravelingCentral Americaannalovestraveling

    Hiking & Climbing Day

    March 31, 2016 in Costa Rica ⋅ ⛅ 7 °C

    This day-time walk through reserva Curi-Cancha was mostly about birds. I can't remember all of the names, but there were some pretty cool ones among them. We also got short views on some mammals, but they moved too fast to get any pictures.
    After the tour I walked back to town, making a “Umweg“ to climb some ficus trees near the Santa Elena reserve. Those trees don't grow as normal ones do, but settle at the top of another tree and then grow all the way down until they reach the ground. This way surrounding the original tree, this dies off after some time, leaving the ficus with a kind of tunnel inside. But not only the trees in this publicly accessible forest were nice: I saw loads of tucans, some of them green, others colorful as the “Haribo original“, as well as some woodpeckers (Spechte).    Read more

  • annalovestravelingCentral Americaannalovestraveling

    Monkey town

    April 2, 2016 in Costa Rica ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio is famous for its bountiful wildlife. We spent an amazing day among sloths, iguanas, bats, coatis, raccoons and many many monkeys (that tried to steel the bags of some tourists).
    But the animals don't stay exclusively in the park: only yesterday we went to the pool of another hotel, where you could see loads of Capuchina monkeys and some sloths hanging around.    Read more

  • annalovestravelingCentral Americaannalovestraveling

    Back in the waves

    April 3, 2016 in Costa Rica ⋅ ⛅ 34 °C

    Today I spent a tranquil day on the beach of Dominicalito, a little less than two hours south of Manuel Antonio. I rented a board and did a bit of surf practice - though hurting myself more than actually surfing, thanks to the loads of rocks on the ground. When around 1pm the waves became too weak, I enjoyed a delicious coconut, chatting with a family from Philadelphia. A surf school let me join their shuttle back to Manuel Antonio, where I went to the beach as well. I could observe the sunset from a high rock :)
    In the evening, I went to a bar INSIDE an old plane with some danish girls. However, the drinks were so expensive that none of us drank more than a local beer.    Read more

  • annalovestravelingCentral Americaannalovestraveling

    Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

    April 5, 2016 in Costa Rica ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    After a long travel day yesterday, today was rather relaxed. In the morning a walked around the nice little Caribbean town looking for another hostel. It was not because I didn't like the one I stayed at last night - a brand new hostel right next to the jungle and run by a lovely couple from Barcelona - but you did notice that it had only opened three weeks ago. It was just not that well established yet, there was no travel information and the trekk leading there was, especially after the rain all night, pretty muddy. Beside this I preferred to stay a bit closer to town, so I found a really nice place in the city center.
    I spent a good while checking what I could do over here and if it was possible for me to still go to Tortuguero (in the northern Caribbean). In the afternoon, I went with another German girl (Natalia) to the closest beach, which is only 5 minutes walking from the hostel. I was quite impressed by Natalia: she really seems to enjoy every moment of life more than everyone else.    Read more

  • annalovestravelingCentral Americaannalovestraveling

    Bike tour along the coast

    April 6, 2016 in Costa Rica ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    All around Puerto Viejo, there are absolutely stunning beaches with beautifully clear water. To explore some of them, Natalia and me rented some bikes and did a little tour to the 12km from town located village Manzanillo, stopping at the beaches in between. When we got back in the late afternoon, an American took us to a view point on a cliff, from where we watched the sunset.
    Later on, I joined another group going out for dinner and some drinks. It took us a while to find the right place to eat since most of the places are speciallized in sea food and not everyone wanted that. In addition, Victoria, an American girl, was desperate for eating cheese, so we ended up first checking if a place offered meals with cheese before sitting down.    Read more

  • annalovestravelingCentral Americaannalovestraveling

    Parque Nacional Cahuita

    April 8, 2016 in Costa Rica ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    The end of my trip is coming closer and closer very fast. Today was my last "real" day (tomorrow I will only be driving to San Jose in order to being closer to the airport for my 7 am flight on Sunday). I went to the National Park in Cahuita, not really knowing what to expect, since I had heard both good and bad things about it. But to make it short: it was the most beautiful place I've been to in Costa Rica. The water on the white-sand beaches is as blue as you would expect it in the Caribbean and the jungle that almost reaches all the way to it is full of all sorts of interesting animals. Unfortunately the blog only allows me to upload 6 pictures, but besides the weird crabs and spiders, the sloths and the (VERY poisonous) yellow snake you can see there, we also saw loads of capuchina, howler and spider monkeys and birds. In addition, we saw a brown viper and another really large snake that hastily left the trail when it saw us. It was around two meters long, but hid so well between the leaves that it was impossible to take a nice picture. Not to mention a coati and the countless iguanas and basilics.Read more

  • annalovestravelingCentral Americaannalovestraveling

    Time to say goodbye

    April 10, 2016 in Costa Rica ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    It's getting serious: already yesterday I had to start my 3-day trip back home, taking a bus from the southern Caribbean to Costa Rica's capital San José. It was really hard to leave Puerto Viejo, after I had spent a lot more time there than planned and been with the best group I met on the whole trip.
    After a rather short night in a “boutique“ hostel (the only thing that was boutique was the incredibly high price; for the rest, many other hostels had been by far better) in Alajuela, I took the shuttle to the nearby airport. After this flight, which brings me to Dallas, I will have to take two more before taking my train to Tübingen tomorrow afternoon.... Zzzzzz...    Read more

    Trip end
    April 10, 2016
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