Our Last Week in Costa Rica!

Kati, Myself, and Manda on our last day in Monteverde

Kati had finally arrived to join us in our Costa Rican adventures, and with school done and over with we were ready to go explore more of this amazing Country. Our first planned trip was to go to Tortuguero National Park, where we could go on a night tour to see sea turtles laying eggs! 

Early Saturday we took a cab to the bus station, and met up with Alyssa and Annie there. A 4 hour bus ride and a 1 hour ferri right later, we arrived, exhausted, at Tortuguero. 

We saw this guy sunning himself on our way there

When we got there, someone representing a hostel lead us to their hostel. However, this place felt sketchy and made us feel uncomfortable, especially because we were all separated into different rooms. We insisted we would rather find another place, and were lead to Cabinas Icaco, which we felt a lot better about. 

This hostel had a circle of hammocks outside

Relieved we were all in one room! We were warned the Caribbean side of Costa Rica can be dangerous, so it's always better to play it safe!

Brightly painted outside

While Kati and Manda hung out in the hammocks, Alyssa, Annie and I explored the beach. There was absolutely no swimming because of strong undertows.

I found an insect!

Annie caught her own coconut

And this friendly Tico chopped it open for us!

 When it was time for the tour, we changed into dark clothing, and Manda stayed behind because she was feeling sick. It was a little rainy, and we met our tour guide outside a shop. We were not allowed to use flashlights near the turtles, but we could use them on the trail to get there.

Ready to go see sea turtles!!!!

After a long walk into the woods along the beach where we waited for the turtles to be spotted, we were able to go to the beach and observe a turtle laying its eggs. The turtle has to be already laying eggs before you can approach, because up until that point they will run away if they see you. However, once they start laying their eggs, they stop for nothing, and won't leave until they have buried the eggs in the sand. This meant that we got to stand right next to her, so close we could touch her. It was amazing to listen to her breath. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures.

We returned late that night (sometime after midnight) and slept in the next day. All that traveling was kicking our butts! That is a definite downside to traveling in Costa Rica; there is a TON of things to see, but travel time between them is long and can be tiring. Costa Rica has a mountain range running down the center of it, which makes travel time longer as buses have to take winding and twisted roads through or around the mountains just to get anywhere. I think if you plan to visit Costa Rica for less than two weeks, pick a few places to go to and keep traveling to a minimum, because it WILL tire you out.

After sleeping in the next day, we souvenir shopped around town, and caught the ferri to begin our 5 hour trip back to San Jose. At San Jose we would start splitting up a little, as Annie wanted to go back to Corcovado to hang out with her tico friend, while Alyssa needed to be in town to grab a plane ride home.

Saw more American crocodiles on the way home

Our lunch and snacks before the 4 hour bus ride. Manda was still feeling sick so I bought her HALLS, while Kati and I downed some motion-sickness pills to help us survive the bus ride. 

We spent the night in Casa Colon again, and Alyssa left us bright and early the next morning. She had been a great travel buddy! Annie had gone right on to the next bus for Corcovado, so she did not stay with us in San Jose.

My original plan was to spend a night in Monteverde, and then head down to Corcovado to finish up our trip. However, Kati was already worn out from traveling and Manda was still feeling sick. So we changed plans to stay a few nights in Monteverde, a few nights in Fortuna (because it's only three hours away from Monteverde (Corcovado is a 6 hour bus ride from San Jose, while Monteverde is a 5 hour bus ride North of San Jose...if we went to Corcovado we would be traveling all day just to get there).

Our room in Casa Colon

Checking out!

Monday morning we took the 5 hour bus ride to Monteverde, and found an excellent hostel to stay at. Hostel owners tend to hang around the bus stops, so when tourists get out you're swarmed!

At some bus stops, people come around and sell snacks. I bought Mango slices! 

Kati bought plantain chips!



The view on the way up!




Our Hostel, Cabinas Vista Al Golfo. This place had wonderfully friendly service, and got us hooked us up with some great tours!

Our room, very bright!

The view from the hostel

Monteverde might be a tourist trap, but it's full of excellent souvenir shops, fantastic food (both Costa Rican food and other kinds of food, we went to an AMAZING sushi restaurant) and probably the best zip lining you could ever hope for. I've seen zip lining places back home, and they may seem fun, but in Monteverde you zip-line over the jungle canopy, while scarlet macaws fly underneath you, and howler monkeys howl as you go by. 

Even if you're not into zip-lining (I personally, am not) I would still recommend visiting this amazing place! 

We had an excellent meal at a Japanese Sushi Restaurant, and tried Sake for the first time!

We also found a place called the Tree House, which had great food and an interesting atmosphere. 

Here we are chilling in the tree house

This was another great place we stopped at for lunch. There is an orchid garden in the back you have to pay to go see, but the food was great and it was a nice stop.

What a great looking dish! 

We went to the Bat Jungle tour, which is a small and informative live bat exhibit underneath an exceptional Chocolate shop and Restaurant. Because of the amount of insects an insect eating bat can eat, there is no place in the world where insect eating bats are kept. It's simply impossible to keep up with their food needs. We saw both fruit eating and nectar eating bats in an inside exhibit. 

Afterward, we went upstairs to buy some chocolate, which didn't last long! 

We got a lift from a three-wheeled car back to town, which was strangely exciting. 

That night we went on a night walk tour recommended by our Hostel, where we saw lots and lots of insects, a Mottled owl, a sloth, dink frogs, salamanders and a tarantula in her den! Night shots were difficult to get with the camera, so we didn't get pictures of everything we saw. 

Here is the tarantula in her den. 

A scorpion!

dink frog

Another dink frog!

Centipede!

A gecko

Can you see the stick bug?

Some of the stick bugs were HUGE! You can see one here in the tour guides hand!

Manda and Kati wanted to go zip-lining, so as part of the Monteverde experience, they went out early in the morning while I chose to laze about the Hostel. They went with the zip-lining tour company EXTREMO, and even got to do this crazy thing called the Tarzan swing, and the Superman. They are very brave! 

YIKES!

A scarlet macaw watched them zip-line. 

Before we could head out, we stopped by the post office so Kati could send out some postcards.


Thursday morning we woke up at 7 to take the 8am jeep-boat-jeep ride to get to Fortuna. The trip was through gorgeous winding mountain roads, and we were extremely lucky to have a clear day, so we were able to see the volcano Arenal.

Pit stop. 

The ferri coming to take us across the water!

Arenal. One year dormant at the time of our visit.

Once in town, we found the sister hostel to the one we had stayed at in Monteverde, called Dorothy's. It wasn't as pretty as the last one, but still nice. We arranged to take the Arenal tour that I had taken just a week before with Annie, Alyssa, Natalie and Julia, and went out to get food and explore the town before the bus was scheduled to pick us up.

Where we had lunch, it was a nice place!

We dressed up, and came across this guy...right in front of the fire station! 

Unlike the last time I was here, we could actually see Arenal from the starting point of the tour. While we were there I purchased a few snacks, and decided, after remembering how rainy it got last time, to purchase us all ponchos....just in case.

As I had predicted, not long into the tour we were met with a torrential downpour. It was bad enough that the decided to cancel the last part of the tour (catching red-eyed tree frogs and going to the hotspring) which displeased us. However, we couldn't help but notice the roads coming down the volcano were swiftly turning into waterfalls....

We requested to be dropped off at a pizza place near our hostel (the lone man working was very friendly and amiable). Kati mentioned wanting a refund to the tour guide, and ten minutes later a guy showed up on his bike to talk to us (it was still POURING rain) and 5 minutes after the owner of the company showed up too. They managed to get us a 9pm trip to the hot springs, provided that the rain slowed down, because otherwise the hot springs would be severely flooded and we could get washed away in the current. 

Because of the obvious concern over how we felt about our trip to Arenal, I think the company HOT LAVA should be recommended. They can't control the weather and really didn't owe us anything, but they went out of their way to make us happy and that means a lot. 

Enjoying the hotspring!

We woke up early Friday, and took a bus to San Ramon, to collect the things Manda and I had left at Manda's home stay. Annie met up with us, but then went to see her host mom one last time and missed the bus we went on to go back to San Jose. So we ended up meeting her when she finally got there on the next bus, and Kati treated us to a night in a Hampton Inn. We felt very spoiled!

Manda says goodbye to her host family!

We caught our plane ride back home, from San Jose, to Miami to Boston. Manda and I spent another night (curtesy of Kati) at a Hampton inn, while Kati went home to her house in New Hampshire, and Annie went home to her place outside of Boston. 

This had been an amazing year starting with my February trip to Tanzania, and ending with an amazing Study Abroad experience in Costa Rica. I have my family to thank for supporting me, USAC, and the Study Abroad Program at my school. I could not have had this exceptional experience without them.

Now all I have to worry about is my senior year of college!