Somehow we have managed to get to a ton of National Parks and bus all over this country in every Pacific nook and stay, for the most part, at or under budget. One thing different about Costa Freaka is the lack of Latin American culture busting at the seams and street corners. You get hit with a splash here and there but we have changed exploration gears also and are sticking to the hills.
Before we left Alajuela we took a trip up to Volcan Poas. One unique thing about Poas is that the bus takes you pretty much to the crater. Another is that we visited it on the first day of rain that the country has seen in over 3 months! We were SOAKed. It was super windy and cloudy. We hiked to the 2 lookouts but didnt get to see much further than 30 feet in front of us. We DID really scare some guy while we were hiding, under some braches, from the rain. That was pretty awesome. The visitor center was pretty cool and offered several comical English translations. It also put a stamp on the fact the the Japanese are really putting there fingers in the Central American cookie jar. There was a wall dedicated to natural disaster prevention and other related articles with photos and examples provided from Japan. Random(I mean...unexpected :)). We see Japanese companies often. Those fellas are just popping up all over the place! OH and I am pretty sure that I was fairly close to or was experiencing hypothermia. I have NEVER in my life been so wet and cold and unable to warm myself. My lips were purple and it kind of made us nervous. Tyler doesnt know I keep purple lipstick in my purse for occasions where coffee is expensive and we end up sharing it...oh gawsh he is too sweet. *insert maniac laugh image of fingertips tapping those of opposite hand*After Poas we collected our tent and things from our hostel and booked it to Puntarenas. I need everyone to understand our sleeping situation in Alajuela. The hostel was ran by a Dustin Hoffman look-a-like from Spain whom I am certain was, at one point in his life, a professional body builder and lives life as if he is being filmed for some sort of an Eat Right/Live Right/Move Right type of video. He was always in short gym cloths and had really pump you up kind of music playing all the time. We were his first ever campers and this made him laugh everytime he looked at us or our tent in his perfect garden space. He was obsessed with the garden and watered it as often as he ate...which was all day. We stayed mostly dry. Just having him available to observe was worth the sprinklers.
We got into Puntarenas late and used it as a launching point to Montezuma. Puntarenas is referred to as the Pearl of the Pacific as its a port city at the tip of a 800km long by 100-600m wide peninsula. Cozy a nice for not much more than a morning walk through to the port. We caught the hour long ferry in the morning and bused a few hours to get to the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. We found an awesome quiet place to camp out of town right on the beach. The camping was actually the best part of the town. We had a wood burning stove, 2 chairs and a table for the beer. No rain fly. Fell asleep and woke up to waves crashing on the rocks. We walked the beach and found these nooks where maby 100 crabs or more were scurrying away from us. We also hiked out to this waterfall that had a swimming hole. Tyler would relay this as a [hippy dip].
We missed our bus out to the Reserva Natural Absoluta Cabo Blanco so we walked the 3 miles and hiked around the reserve for the rest of the day. It is the oldest protected wilderness area in Costa Rica and was hot and sticky. We saw a ton of monkeys and read alot about the regrowth of the area and different plant species that are abundant. We hiked down to the beach and found a ton of floundered lobster and some fish..maybe a result of the red tide this coast is enduring. A man from the area said its an annual algae bloom that causes the water to turn brown and pollutes the water affecting many sea creatures. It also keeps surfers out of the water and kept us out as well. This was a really cool bat house in the reserve.
We bussed back up to the ferry..sliced through the red sea back to Punta and caught a bus as it was literally pulling out over to Quepos. Not much for cheap sleeping and smelled like doody. We bused up to Manuel Antonio(named after the National Park we went to visit) We were pointed all over the coast for seriously a few miles to find a camping. Ya wont let us pay to camp? Fine! We slept for free on the beach and made a fire to cook dinner over. While Tyler built our fire for coffee I discovered my skill in cracking open coconuts. We drank a toooon of milk!! We also camped right by a lagoon where Tyler saw a crocodile and was sprawling with monkeys!! We found out in the morning we were pretty much sleeping in the Park. We walked into the park via the rocky beach and Tyler got whistled at by the guard!! We decided we saw enough and ate some beans and tortilla and left. we got to look at the beach park from our breakfast spot anyway. PRETTY!
Waiting for the bus to San Isidro we got emails from Denali National Park!!! Both of us!! It seems like job offers are just rolling in now and giving us alot of hope for the future!! Ive been contacted since by Yellowstone and before, both of us, by a few parks in South Dakota. After the rush and excitement of the offers we slowed down and decided to stick with Black Canyon. We get everything we want and all the time in the world to play in the mountains. We win!From San Isidro we bused up to San Gerardo de El General and camped there as a base to hike Cerro Chirripo. It sits at 3820m as the highest peak in the country. We camped 2 nights in town so we could reserve a spot at the lodge up on the mountain. This gave us a whole day to sink wash cloths and lounge by the river..its nice to have a sec to slow down since we are hitting Costa Rica so fast and hard!
We left the second morning and realized we had mixed up hike info and the hike was actually about twice the distance we had thought it was!!! It was about 7000 foot elevation gain. Alooot of up hill, hah. We got to the lodge in the afternoon which was super chilly!! It was too late in the day to summit so we were stranded at the lodge to drink boxed wine and eat beans...what a sad life. The next morning we summited and hiked back into town. Our hike was about 17 miles that day but the view from the top was worth the push. The summit was beautiful and private and we ate about half of the grocery store when we got back in town!!! After a super long day of bussing yesterday we are back to the HOT coast on the Osa Penisula.
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