Costa Rica 2023

My first daylight drive through Costa Rica! 🤗❤️

I always find it very exciting to write 📝 down my first impressions when I travel through a country for the first time.

So the first thing I noticed here in Costa Rica were the police officers 👮 on their fancy bikes 🚲🚲. Some also have brand new motocross machines 🏍️. Very modern...

In general, it's tidy here, there's hardly any trash on the side of the road and the shuttle buses have internet. That's right - I'm on a "shuttle bus" 🚌.

These are a kind of collective taxis like Moia in Hamburg. They connect interesting places 🌋 and hotels 🏨 and can be booked online; there are several providers. So that's a bit more expensive 💰 than public busses but way cheaper than a rental car 🚗. Up to 9 people fit in, we were 5.

There is quite a lot of traffic in San José, but outside of it, it gets better. The city is full of flat, colorful houses 🏩🏩🏩.
The condition of the roads is quite good and in the city you drive up and down hills like in San Francisco.

In the countryside for sure it is even more hilly ⛰️, there are beautiful mountain peaks everywhere and of course everything is lush green, tropical.
That's why, like so often in the tropics, the city has extremely high curbs - that's shit for loading cars... and there are huge sewage ditches along the streets outside the city.

Yeah well, and as usual in Central America everything is air-conditioned...

One thing really struck me: I saw a lot of birds of prey on my way - in real packs 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅, how unusual. Later on I found out these are vultures and it’s totally normal for them to look for food in packs - they even have different roles in the pack…

So these are my first impressions, I'm excited to see what else will happen in the next three weeks.Read more

Today I met Mauro at 8 o'clock ⏰ in the morning at the entrance of Parque Manuel Antonio for a tour 🥾.

Mauro is a guide I found through Airbnb 🏩. He lives for his job and has been giving tours in the national park for 8 years.

Since I was the only guest, I was able to ask him all questions coming to my mind, which he was able to answer. His knowledge is very comprehensive.

Since I was traveling alone with him, his telescope 🔭 was "mine" 🤪, so to speak. We hiked through the jungle 🌴 for just over 2 hours, stopping again and again to observe and photograph 📷 all kinds of animals through the telescope.

What a great experience and what an enthusiastic nature watcher Mauro is. If you're here, get in touch with him, it's worth it: https://air.tl/Dz8vGdlz

I though it would be crowded but since it's the rainy season, there wasn't much going on. So tomorrow I'll go through the park alone again because I really enjoyed it 🕊️🦥🐒🦋🕸️🕷️🦗🐜🌸🌺🪴🌴Read more

I hung out in my hammock on the beach 🏝️, peering 👀 into the sky again and watching the tons of vultures 🦅 circling above me at a considerable height.

I wondered where they would find carrion here on the beach for so many hungry beaks.

The jackdaws distracted me, I definitely think they are some kind of jackdaws, they are smart and steal things from tourists 🤣.

So there were six of the jackdaws and they were eyeing my hammock - they had never seen a world traveling hammock - when something flew over me with a long beak.

A toucan!

I went after him and thought the jackdaws would take care of the hammock.

Soon some other people on the beach saw me staring at trees and joined in.

How lucky that I love staring at the sky in my hammock! That's proof we need to hang more in hammocks!Read more