The bus trip to Costa Rica was interesting to say the least. Our bus was great, lots of films, a very attentive attendant feeding us at every opportunity including 2 pretty good hot meals. The fun started at the border. Everyone had to get off the bus with all their bags and we were piled into a room where the baggage was put into a line on the floor. Eventually a sniffer dog appears looking for drugs and then the bags were searched by hand. Ours were given a cursory prod – we are British after all! Next step was the exit stamp, big bags back on the bus and then a 300 metre walk across no-mans land for an entry stamp into Costa Rica. Then we had to get everything off the bus again and waited 45 minutes for the Costa Rican customs people to appear. When she did you wouldn´t have known she was fairly important – high heels, spray on jeans and a black diamante studded boob tube with no ID. Again, everything was hand searched, except ours – being British and all that does have some advantages!
Our hostel in San Jose was great, although we can’t say the same for the city itself. The main street resembled a drab British 1980´s high street a la Gateshead or Newport. A sharp exit had us on our way to the Caribbean Coast to see wildlife in Tortuguero National Park. Another eventful journey ensued, two local buses and a boat ride later we arrived in Tortuguero (only accessible by boat and air), after seeing a crocodile taking a nap on the way there. The final bus dropped us at a banana plantation called GEEST which some people may have seen labeled onto their bananas. There are 1000s of acres of banana fields, although the ripening bananas are covered in blue bags which makes it all look a bit surreal.
We found a place to stay next to the local footy pitch and enjoyed a cool beer on the balcony watching 2 local girls teams have a match. We had an early dinner (restaurants are all closed by 9ish) before heading out at 10pm to watch huge greenback turtles laying their eggs on the nearby beach. Whilst this was amazing to see it was spoilt for us by the two groups of over excited young kids who with their noisy behavior frightened off one of the turtles and we witnessed the sad sight of her as she abandoned her nest and headed back to the sea, still laying eggs as she went.
We returned to the beach the next day to see various tracks and nests and the wonderful sight of teeny weeny flipper prints as baby turtles had made their way to the sea for the first time.
Another early dinner and bedtime prepared us for a 5am start for a canoe trip though the local river network in search of wildlife. This was an amazing trip and the early start and lack of noise meant we saw loads of animals including howler monkeys, spider monkeys, caymans, river turtles, various birds and the aptly named Jesus Christ lizard which can actually run on water.
Our next stop was La Fortuna for a bit of volcano action. The weather was against us yet again, but we did manage a trip to the active Arenal volcano, albeit in bucketing rain. You could see the steam coming out of the top of the cones , but more fascinating was the sight of red hot lava rocks rolling down the hillside after being spat out of the volcano. No pictures unfortunately because of the weather. We were soaked through despite our wet weather gear.
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