Playa Del Coco, Costa Rica

Quick trip over to Playa del Coco on the Pacific coast, called that because the brown sand of the beach makes it look like chocolate. Awesome.

Dinner in town was raucous and overpriced on account of it being a tourist town for Ticos (Costa Ricans) as well as moneyed gringos. We found a hole in the wall burger joint that was popular with the locals for a plate of fried plantains and grilled succulent pork topped with salad. Headed to the least obnoxious bar to try a local beer and a guaro sour, made with cane-derived liquor. The writers of our Lonely Planet were raving about it. Pretty good.

Mmm. Chocolatey--At Playa Del Coco

The next morning we rented some snorkel gear and headed towards the tide pools at the north end of the beach (pictured). Not pictured is the incredible spread of wildlife we saw, including entire schools of fish, pufferfish, conchs, sea urchins, cowfish, little purple fish, a crab that looked like a rock, and a couple enormous stingrays. I got out relatively quickly after seeing those.

Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja, Costa Rica

After getting in to Liberia, a smaller town close to both the northern border with Nicaragua and the beaches, we took an early private bus the next morning for a lot of hiking, wildlife, waterfalls, and volcanic activity in this amazing national park.

The entire thing was well-kept and the paths well marked. Our first stop was the most amazing waterfall, just a 3 mile hike through monkey-patrolled forests.

Perfect for a swim!

Fuzzy ant

With that portion of the park done, we headed over to the side with more monkeys and volcanic activity, including mud pots, fumaroles, and boiling lakes.

One of the particularly smelly fumaroles, complete with boiling pool

The monkeys, not nearly as cheeky as the ones in India.

Almost ran into this guy guarding the fumaroles, 2.5 feet long!

San Jose, Costa Rica

The city is extremely well laid out: around the central avenues (N-S) and streets (W-E) are surrounded by odd and even streets/avenues that help one navigate and know addresses extremely quickly.

Walking up from the bus station, Aaron and I found a museum under the Plaza de la Cultura dedicated to currency, precolombian gold (very extensive!!), and Lola Fernandez, a Central American artist with an incredibly broad range of painting and sculpture styles. One particularly interesting exhibit investigated the Costa Rican cultural values and architecture as expressed through the countries bank notes. Very cool!

Jaguar ceremonial corn grinder, precolombian, out of volcanic rock

Huge collection of  precolombian gold

Found an "executive lunch buffet" on the second floor of a hotel and proceeded to stuff our plates with rice and a bunch of dishes that I could neither name nor recognize. All was quite delicious, and we enjoyed our lunch surrounded by a bunch of business-men and -women in suits.

Plan tonight is to take a bus to Liberia, from which we will investigate a national park teeming with wildlife and volcanoes, and then Playa del Coco for snorkeling. Then off to Managua and Granada in Nicaragua.

3 days, 3 cities, and 2 countries in. We´re on schedule, and it`s all going quite well.

All caught up to today now. Pictures to follow.

Costa Rican Border Adventures

Tried crossing the border later the same day (12/11) as our Boquete adventures. Aaron and I had worked out a great plan to save on hotels by sleeping on buses, and it was about to bite us back.

We had no problems with the border folks in either Panama or Costa Rica --no immunization checks or exit fees--but then realized that the buses on the Costa Rican side to the capital of San Jose were not so ubiquitous as we had been hoping. Turns out there would be no more buses for the evening (it was only 7PM) and the next buses would be in at 4 the following day.

We stayed at the only hotel in town, a slightly pricy but extremely comfortable place with all the amenities and an indoor pool. Also it was run by a man who looked, spoke, and carried himself like Matt Damon in the Bourne trilogy. Aaron and I were joking about dropping off international radar by singning out of Panama but not into Costa Rica...which would totally have been doable.

4 AM rolled around and we hopped on the bus, taking the scenic coastal route to San Jose

Boquete, Panama

Made it overnight on a bus to the quiet hill town of Boquete. It´s dominated by coffee plantations everywhere, and rests below Volcan Baru, the only volcano in Panama, at 11,000ft. Aaron and I ran into an expat that comes down here every winter, and he gave us a lift in his Honda Odyssey halfway up the hill to a zipline and coffee farm, Kotowa Estates. Went on a coffee tour and found out how little I knew about the different varieties and flavors in coffee. We tasted some $50/lb coffee called Geisha, had a lot of fruity notes that I never expected from coffee. Well worth it!

Casco Viejo, Panama

Writing from our hippy hostel in Casco Viejo, Panama. The old city is awesome to walk around especially around all of the old colonial era buildings and churches, though its better not to be out too late. Still, everything is being renovated and repaved and its starting to feel very upper class.

 Casco Viejo at Night

 Pint Night , a SLO tradition, now at La Rana Dorada in Panama

The harbor and Panama City behind

Tortuga! At the Smithsonian tropical research institute.

Tiberon! At the Smithsonian tropical research institute.

Sloth, Smithsonian tropical research institute. We walked right underneath it before a staff pointed it out.

San Jose (?) Church in Casco Viejo

The flights in went off without a problem. We eventually found the bus stop at Tocumen International frequented by airport employees. A trio of them were nice enough to help us get on the bus even without the necessary tarjeta, which we will have to purchase tomorrow. Bus dropped us off at the Mercado de Mariscos, and a ceviche stop was necessary. It is like an incredible, spicy, seafood coleslaw. Super good.

Found our backpacker-hostel hotel, and if anyone has seen Leonardo´s Thai hostel digs in the move The Beach, it is almost exactly the same. Chock full of people our age glued to iThings and trapped in the movie theater. I dont want to get stuck here; too many creature comforts.

We finished our whirlwind tour of Panama city with an awesome trip to the Miraflores Locks, the first ones between the canal and the Pacific ocean. Incredibly large, and really awesome that they are still using the original concrete and steel doors (from Pennsylvania) as they were in 1914.

Check out the electric tug cars that keep the ship centered...only 2 feet of clearance on each side.

I forgot to mention that we also did a visit of a number of Panama Canal history museums, including one that had a great temporary exhibit of Degas' work. He spent some time in Panama, apparently, but my Spanish wasn't good enough to figure out what was being said.

Going south...

Welcome back! It's been a while. The deal is Aaron and I will be traveling around Central America for winter break. I just graduated, so it's a great time to relax and check out another few countries. Lots planned as far as events, friends, work, couchsurfing, hiking, snorkeling, monkey sanctuaries, and food go.

I'll share a little taste of what I'll be doing for the next couple weeks:

Location    Approx. Date             Details
Panama    12/10-12/13    Panama City (2 nights), Boquete & the Chiriqui Highlands?
Costa Rica    12/13-12/15    Day trip to Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo/climb volcano
Nicaragua    12/15-12/18    Awesome town: granada 15-17 & Camilo Ortega 12/18 for Nica team
El Salvador    12/18-12/20    Visit Aaron's friend in El Salvador, beach huts
Honduras    12/20-12/22    Copan Ruinas for end of world
Guatemala    12/22-12/23?    Volcano studded highlands, Chichicastenango market, guatemala city
Belize    12/23-12/28    snorkeling?
Mexico    "12/28-1/4 Chichen itza

Finally completed hectic graduation/getting gear/packing. Train/bus ride down to LA fine, restful. Met with Auntie/Uncle in LA for quick tour of original downtown tour, including LA Phil, Library, Walt Disney Music Hall. Insanely awesome dinner at Umami Burger: triple pork burger. Oh yeah I'm officially putting vegetarianism on hold for this trip; I don't want to miss too much of the culinary culture.