Costa Rica update

Costa Rica is a beautiful country full of lush green rainforests, dramatic waterfalls and an incredible variety of birds and animals. Unfortunately it is also super expensive and overrun with American tourists. You can see why CR is the perfect place for US tourists:

• It is a beautiful country full of lush green rainforests, etc. etc. (as previously mentioned)
• The culture is almost exactly the same as that of the US - so not too scary but slightly exotic feeling
  
• There's no need to change currency or speak another language (for the most part anyway)
• Most restaurants have a good selection of burgers, steaks and pasta
  
• Each hotel has a(n identical?) menu of tours ad excursions - rain forest walk, zip line, coffee tour and butterfly farm visit etc. The tours are relatively expensive ($80 per person typically) but you can sign up for a few of them and fill up a short vacation with fun things to do.
  

Unfortunately, all of this leaves Costa Rica feeling like a very large, tropical version of Disneyland (staffed only with Hispanic staff). Tourism was so slick and controlled that there wasn't much left that could be done independently, e.g. a non-descript walk to a waterfall would often have a ticket kiosk at the start of the trail or would be marked as closed unless followed as part of a guided tour. So, beautiful, yes, but also soulless, commericalised and disastrous value for money.

So, what did we do in our week in CR:

Corcovado National Park
Our first stop was Corcovado National Park in the south of the country. This is the most remote rainforest in Costa Rica and according to National Geographic, one of the most biologically intense places in the world. As I mentioned in the previous post, it was something of an arduous journey to get there and so we were a little surprised to find that the main town (Bahia Drake) had a number of luxury resorts dotted around the bay. A little more research revealed the presence of a (newly built?) airstrip 5kms away that allowed 20 minute flights to the capital San Jose. Oh well, at least we would have an easier journey on the way back!

The area around the bay was stunning with primary rainforest, jade green seas and dark grey beaches. The resorts were for the most part hidden as the trees of the rainforest grew right down to the water's edge and so the impression was that of a remote bay with a few huts on the shore. We took a couple of tours here - one further into the national park to see some wild animals and a snorkelling trip. The snorkeling was pretty good - we saw stingrays, sharks and puffer fish for example, but it was the guided national park trip that was the real highlight.

Walking through a remote part of the forest we saw three types of monkeys (howler, squirrel, spider) , a herd of very smelly wild boars, a toucan, a couple of small crocodiles lying in the mud and, after much hunting around, a 300lb baby tapir. It was very cool to be so close to the animals.



Volcano
The other cool thing we saw was the Volcano Arenal in the centre of the country. We stayed in the swoofy hotel nearest the volcano and had a room with floor to ceiling uninterrupted views of the peak. We heard and saw a small eruption in the afternoon. At night it was pretty cloudy so although we could hear eruptions and bubbling lava from our balcony the most we saw was a few lava rocks rolling down the mountain. It was an awesome experience made even better with the abundant wildlife off the balcony including fireflies, hummingbirds and toucans.

Plans for the next few weeks
As you may have noticed (dear reader) we are not keen on sticking to any one plan for very long and so we are now in Dallas (visiting friends and the Ewings) and are planning to spend the next month in the US. We'll fly from Dallas to LA, head to the Coachella music festival to see the Orb, the Cure, the Killers... and drive generally north visiting friends, taking some tennis lessons, and spending a few days in a yoga retreat. Once we get to Vancouver we'll stop and then either head directly back to London or fly back to Guatemala for more rainforest-based entertainment. Stay tuned - you never know we may be in China next time we write...