Today, I have caught a cold [Alice], so we didn’t go to the long forest hikes including 400 steps to a waterfall…
Seems that my nose figured out that it’s November already. Maybe there’s a psychic connection between my sinuses and french weather, or maybe my body’s clock is stronger (and dumber) that I thought. Anyway, I have a nice big winter cold, with 27°C outside, which is weird. So we ended up sleeping late and making pancakes (in our great kitchen with decent pans that don’t stick), than watching shows in bed and when I was feeling a bit better in the afternoon, we went to a pool where Ben swam and I read stupid things online. A normal boring November afternoon (give or take the swimming pool).
As you can see, there are still clouds on the horizon. The volcano (in the picture, between the antenna and the church) is still invisible, although its slopes clear at certain moments. We still get blue skies and a warm but nice weather. And since I’m reaching this boring subject, I probably have told everything that had to be told for today !
Hugs (from afar) and see you tomorrow (which should be much more interesting !)
La Fortuna is one of the touristy spots of Costa Rica, so even if our hostel is pretty cheap (at least for now, while it’s low season), most activities here are way over are usual budget. But as we’re just at the base of a volcano, we did want to try one of the local thermal pools. There is just one problem : they are mostly inside luxury hotels, so pretty expensive.
But we discovered a neat trick. Some of those hotels also organize zip-line tours in the canopy near the volcano, which at the end include a free day pass to all their installation. So you can get the canopy tour and thermal baths for just a little more than the thermal baths only entrance fee.
Don’t we look great! :p
So we started the day (by having a big breakfast) by an hour and a half zip lining through the jungle next to the Arenal volcano. It was really cool, some of the zip lines reach 500m long and on some you can get as fast as 60km/h !
Much speed so respect wow !
As we were a small group we even got to do the Tarzan swing. And no, you don’t have to have been raised by monkeys to do it! You won’t get an explanation, but as we’re super nice, we (Alice) edited a short video for you guys 😉 .
At the end of the tour, we did get our bracelet granting us access to the hotel amenities. And it was quite a shock for us, we’re not used to such luxury, but we definitely made the most of it! So first we tested all the 15 thermal pools and 2 swimming pools, ranging from 25 to 38°C, along with the water-slides (up to 65m long!) and hydro-massages. It was really nice and exactly what we needed to relax after the canopy tour.
And this is just part of it!
It was easy to spot the poor tourists that did the canopy tours partly to get free access to the thermal pools and the rich tourists that actually sleep here. Try to guess which ones have the big cool fluffy towels and which ones have the stinking travel towel? 😉
Sorry, we’re not allowed to feed you, and we got to feed ourselves!
Well anyway, we were totally made as cheap tourists at lunch. As the luxury hotels with thermal pools are next to the volcano, they’re a bit far from town, so we couldn’t get back there to eat a casado (literally married man’s lunch, the standard rice-beans-chicken-juice). And the restaurants at the hotels were slightly (but just slightly 😉 ) over our budget. So we ate our bread, ham and liquid yogurt on a bench, near a couple turtles.
Lazier than Ben!
Because yes, not only has the hotel several thermal pools (and a spa, stables for the horses, etc.), it also has a lush garden full a tropical plants, like a jungle, but a very well organized one and some local animals. So we saw turtles, crocodiles (well, sadly they didn’t seem very happy to be in a cage…), butterflies (doesn’t beat Mindo, but still nice), and leaf-cutter ants (no surprise there, we saw them all over since the beginning of our trip!).
Now it’s general knowledge time! There are a lot of leaf cutter ants in Costa Rica, so much that it is estimated they cut between 12 to 17% of the leaf growth in the country annually. But they actually don’t eat the leaf, they use it for their own form of gardening. They bring it underground and use it as fertilizer to grow a special fungus they love to eat!
After this after-lunch stroll in the hotel’s gardens, we tried the thermals again before getting back into town in the late afternoon. In town we managed to book one of our next adventure : a horse ride to our next destination (but I won’t tell you where now 😉 ). We also found gnocchi and thyme, so tonight’s student-style cooking night!
Water-slide to 38°C 🙂
That’s all for today. We hope the sky will clear up tomorrow morning, so we can post a few nice pictures of the volcano. It is the main attraction over here after all!
P.S : another small game for today (an easy one this time) : Can you spot the crocodile?
Today, we walked a bit in San Jose and went to La Fortuna.
San Jose is the capital, half the population lives here and there isn’t much to see for us. It is told to be dangerous, but we didn’t get into any trouble and since we had some time on our hands this morning, we walked in the streets (of the neighborhoods we knew were safe). We searched for an ATM and it was quite the quest but we finally got what we needed. Here, the currency is the colones but there are so many tourists that most ATM also distribute dollars, so we can pay almost everywhere in dollars (not for very small amounts, but for accommodations and tours for example) with an acceptable rate. Thank you American tourists.
The streets are broad, with reasonably wide and incredibly high sidewalks (you can feel that rain doesn’t fool around here). The center feels European enough, with a few old buildings, a few recent ones and chain stores in one or two pedestrian streets. The taxis are red and the people very helpful and nice. After trying out 6 ATMs in total, among which only 2 gave us money (one had colones, the other dollars) it was time to get to our bus. We traveled for 5 hours again, and arrived in La Fortuna.
Less than 10 years ago, the main attraction was the active volcano where people could take pictures of red glowing lava. During this activity period, the whole region got into tourism, and when the volcano went back to sleep… the region carried on ! Since there is everywhere nice jungle with animals, hiking trails on volcano sides and thermal baths that remained active, the tourists keep on coming (us included). Furthermore, we are nicely surprised by the quality of services we have encountered and the prices (we expected to be bankrupted very fast according to other travelers but since it’s low-season we’re really okay !) so now we have a nice room with volcano-view (during the day) and the best kitchen we’ve encountered !
Today we finally moved from our chilled little island of Bastimentos.
And it is again a day with a lot of transportation (so for photos, you’re gonna have to wait a bit more). We took a boat to Bocas, followed by another boat to Almirante, on the coast, than a minivan to the border and finally a bus to San Jose.
As if it wasn’t long enough, the minivan to the border actually went the other way at first to drop off some of the passengers at a military camp in the mountains above Almirante. At first we did wonder why we were going the wrong way, but at least we gone some nice view on the sea and Bocas from the heights.
The border crossing was easier than expected. We though we might have some trouble entering Costa Rica as we don’t have a bus or plane ticket out of the country, but our (very worn out) plane tickets from the States to France where apparently enough to prove we weren’t planing on living too long here.
Once at the bus station in Sixaola, Costa Rica, we were told the next bus to San Jose was at noon and would last 5h. The watch showed 11:30pm, so we thought half an hour of waiting wasn’t so bad. After a couple minutes of reading we suddenly remembered here it’s GMT – 6hrs, so it was actually an hour and a half of waiting ! For those of you wondering, no, there is no daylight saving time here, so we are still at a 7hrs offset from the french time.
Otherwise, the bus to San Jose lasted a little over 6 hours (no surprise there, we’re kind of getting use to the discrepancy between theoretical travel time and real travel time 😉 ). At first we followed the shoreline closely, next to Puerto Viejo and its strange but nice black sand beaches. We won’t stop there because we’ve already spent a week in the Carribean, on the Panamanian side, so we prefer to get some fresher air more to the center of the country. After the port town of Limon, the road goes full west towards San Jose, and once the many container stocks passed, we went through very dense looking forests with once again impressively huge bamboos looking as if they were gonna fall on the road like a tsunami.
So tonight we’re in San Jose, a bit higher up and fresher than the coast (well, it’s still pretty warm, you only need a light jacket at night). We have 67 dollar cents left in our pocket (yes, we might have been a bit tight on budget to leave Panama 😉 ) and haven’t gotten an ATM to work yet, so we still don’t have any Colons. right now we’re chilling at the hostel bar, pretty neat (and we just had a flaming juggling demonstration!). So we get the blog up to date (who said we were late ?! :p ).
That’s all for today. We probably won’t stay in San Jose for too long, but we’ll tell you that tomorrow !
Today, we still wanted to go to the beach. But we had to take our time and do things the right way.
We started with a huge breakfast with pancakes, eggs and bacon, partly because here, a good english breakfast is easier to make than finding real bread. Since we didn’t go out of bed very early, we only started to move at the (very) end of the morning, towards Red Frog Beach, a bit further than the one we wanted to go to yesterday, but supposedly prettier. We didn’t make the same mistake as yesterday and took a boat, which left us on the closest pier from the beach, belonging to a hostel there, and the only one accessible to the public : all the other Red Frog piers are dedicated to the inhabitants and owners of the sailing ships and other boats docked here. We looked at the ships for a few minutes, they were so pretty, all painted and polished, swinging with the waves (you didn’t think they were poor-people yachts, did you ?)
Then we figured out something. Our Bastimentos island has the main village, Old Bank, where we sleep. Everything there seems a little makeshift but it’s all very nice. And then there is the marina area, with bourgeois and yachts, and the huge resort with a golf, villas and private beaches. It wasn’t obvious, but the wooden arch, piers in the mangrove and behind them, white gravel floor and perfectly tended grass made it very clear. We crossed the welcome desk and followed the “public beach” signs. There were a lot of other signs, telling us how and why care about the ecosystem, but we thought that it was a bit hypocritical, coming from a business that was building wide roads in the middle of the forest. Well yeah, we were passed several times by speeding golf carts on the (short) way to the beach. They were probably only going 15 kmph, but in the forest it’s so much cooler to make a big dust cloud in the curves… People on them were wearing towels with embroidered logos of the Red Frog Beach Club and guess what… we didn’t meet them on the public beach ! (Note : there aren’t any roads in Old Bank, just a paved way for pedestrians and cycles. The trucks and carts of the resort are the only motored vehicles on the island…)
The beach was beautiful, with finer sand than we had met until there, slightly retreated from the surrounding cliffs and forests, with turquoise water. The waves were reasonable but there was a red flag and a sign on how to get back to the beach if you got sucked in by rip waves, so we decided to just splash around and not go too far. It was perfect since the sand make a very soft slope, the water was warm and when it rained a few drops, it was even warmer than the air, and so salty that we could float around for ever without even moving. We were probably in there more than an hour an a half and it was like paradise. however, once out, we didn’t drag on too long, because the beach was infested with sandflies (see previous articles), flying in swarms like midges in Scotland (I don’t wish you to meet them either). So we plastered ourselves with sunscreen to prevent them from landing, but still packed our stuff and walked back to the boats.
Once back at the cabin, it was still early enough to skype some friends and families, and we took some time to rest before going to eat. Since we had something to celebrate, we had asked in advance to all-around-beloved-and-advised restaurant about lobster. Turns out they couldn’t fish one, but they asked around everywhere, being incredibly nice with us. Still, it’s better than to think about the disgusting fishing methods where you can fish anything and everything by scraping the bottom of the sea… So we ate other delicious things and the house cocktails were really interesting. We probably will remake some of them, including the one we had for dessert (choco banana with coffee liquor and rum… as much to eat as to drink !) Besides, the people around were really nice and we had a great time ! It was probably the nicest restaurant we have been to since we started traveling…
To conclude, it was the first time I could swim in the sea for my birthday, and it was nice… I don’t regret for a minute spending it here : you have to admit that Bocas Del Toro is an amazing region, and Bastimentos such a cool relaxing place, we could easily spend a few months here. We are now starting to be used to this feeling of excitement when leaving to discover new places mixed with disappointment of having to leave the wonderful places we were at… anyway, tomorrow morning, we will be on the road to Costa Rica and it will kick ass !
Kisses to y’all !
Note : these days, we don’t post many pictures. The sky is often cloudy and the light gray, or we tell you stuff that happens at night. In the day, we are sometimes too busy to take pictures, or we are scared to repeat ourselves. I promise, we will try to post more of them !
So we went with flip-flops and a small bag for the so-called small walk to Wizard Beach, which is the nearest not-too-touristic beach. We were told it was around 20 minutes to get there, just on the other side of the hill, and that is was sometimes muddy on the way down.
This is the easy path, we took it on the way down (read further)
From the village, at first, it was all well signaled. Then it started to be less clear, but with last houses we could still ask for directions. Then it became a narrow path buried in the jungle, where, if you’re wearing flip-flops, you’re just a walking free-meal for every bug in the forest !
At the pass (well we have this notion of a pass with a view, but here in the forest, we couldn’t see much more than anywhere else…) we noticed that it was rapidly becoming very muddy. So we decided to redirect ourselves to a coffee shop higher up on the crest (again, this is not the Pyrénées, more like vegetation-covered hills) to ask them if we could go across.
Beer crates stairs
Since the coffee shop is one of the tourist attractions of the village, it is quite well signaled, with flower-shaped beacons made out of plastic bottles hanging from the trees. We also noted a good use for the plastic beer crates to make stairs in the muddy slopes.
At the coffee shop, up in the hill, we talked with a german expat (it’s quite interesting to hear the point of view of a stranger living here) and with another french couple (for some more linguistic gymnastics 😉 ). And of course, we drank a nice fresh fruit juice to cool ourselves.
We also discovered that, in order to go down to the beach, we should have better equipment (not flip-flops and beach towels…) and that walking sticks were apparently useful to lean on in deep mud. So we decided to go to the beach another day and to go back with a shorter trail from the coffee shop to the village, much better than the one we had seen on the way up (all the pictures are from this one, we were too busy hunting mosquitoes and other bugs to take pictures on the way up !)
In the end, even if we didn’t get to the beach, we discovered the jungle at the center of Bastimentos island, and saw the simple but very efficient construction of a rain-water collector (at the top of a hill, so you get pressure in the pipes). We also got a nice sea-view on the way down to the village before cooking and eating.
After that, we decided to do like the local people and rested. It was way too hot to do anything away from a fan anyway 😉 We also were visited again by these famous tiny local red frogs, probably really interested in the next episode of Fringe.
Late in the afternoon, we took a boat to Bocas Town, the main city of the archipelago (on the biggest island, Isla Colon). We were warned that it was very different from the small village of Old Bank on Bastimentos, and it was : the island is bigger, so is the city, but mainly, it is more organized and built up. There is a ferry, which also means roads and vehicles (Bastimentos only has a pedestrian cement-way along the sea-side village). There are many more big hotels (sometimes with 4 floors, amazing !) and even more tour operates. And they have real supermarkets instead of grocery stores (even if they are also owned by Chinese people here).
Bocas Town
Tonight is Halloween, so the party was slowly starting. We were impressed by the courage of tourists, going to great lengths to disguise themselves even when traveling.
We went to have some drinks by the sea, before caving in to the french restaurant next door (first french dining in 50 days of travels, second time eating bread that actually tastes like bread !). It was original and nice, with some tapas boards loaded with french-feeling stuff (and homemade bread !)
Yes, the pitcher of sangria was cheap !
We didn’t stay too late at the Halloween party, but still went to have a beer long enough to listen to an eclectic music band (clearly, it was organized late with the people found around) with a very diverse repertoire (Eurythmics, James Brown, Bob Marley and Amy Winehouse in a few minutes !). It was nice, though.
Here we are for today (well, for yesterday, because I was too lazy to write this when we got back late in the evening !). More news in the next post !
