So, we left USA for good. I was for some reason surprised that there was no passport control while exiting US. We just went through the security check, boarded the plane and here we are in Costa rica. Don't know why, but I expected some kind of "exit control" to leave the US:)
My first and most important impression about being in Costa Rica now is "Thanks God it's not that hot". We are in the very middle of the rainy season and are in mountains now though. Things might change, we have plans to travel around the country. But for the moment I feel very comfortable (for I hate when it's hot, I don't feel good when it is). It is not raining all the time, but the significant part of the time the air is full of these micro-rain-drops and the sky is cloudy. In the morning it rained though approximately until 11. Exactly during the time we were in the cloud forest. Since we don't have a real rain gear (we wanted to keep our lagguge to as small size as possible) we were totally wet.... but we enjoyed it a lot!!! We missed rain a lot while in California. After the cloud forest we underwent different plans. Johannes went to do the zip-line trip, which I refused to do as I consider myself to have had enough adrenaline in my life already. And I shopped a little bit and went for an 1-hour=$50 massage, which was gorgeous, just wonderful. Shopping was not that successful, we are staying in a tiny town, maybe even a village in a Pension Santa Elena. The place itself is really very small. We came here yesterday by a 5-hour drive with a shuttle bus from Liberia airport. During this ride the football game Costa Rica vs. Greece took place. And the driver was listening and even watching the match during the drive, which made me a little bit nervous. At some point we were passing some small village and he saw people on the street watching the game at some bar and asked for our permission to make a stop and watch, it was the climax of the game. We were only 3 passengers in the bus, we and one more girl from New Hempshire, and we didn't mind. So we actually witnessed how Costa Rica won and how Costaricans reacted on this:
It was touching.
There is one more video of people celebrating, it is made already in Santa Elena:
So, we are lucky to be here during the time when all the people are extremely happy and joyfull:)
People are generally quite nice here. Most of them doesn't speak a decent English. I got lucky and the girl that made a massage for me, spoke English. Apart from that Johannes is using his Spanish skills and I also try to memorize some words and phrases and use them.
Wi-fi is everywhere. Still we bought a sim-card today just in case to be able to make calls. Buying a sim-card was not so easy, because even guys in the electronic shop didn't speak any English, just no English at all.
Before coming here one of our biggest concerns was either to rent a car or not. We are now glad that we didn't rent one. First of all the roads are really bad. Not all of them. Some of them are ok. But there is a big enough portion of those that I wouldn't dare to drive myself. In our current plan we do some distances with the shuttle buses, some with the public buses and we also have 2 very cool transportations. One of them is tomorrow. We are going to the Arenal Vocano area by horseback-boat-jeep. Another is river rafting. We don't just raft, we use rafting to reach our destination.
There are many homeless dogs and cats on the streets. They are allowed (or better to say not restricted from entering all the shops and even restaurants). They are not annoying though.
It is only 20:00 (oh, how happy I am to finally switch back to 24-hour time measure system, km and kg!), but we are already at the hotel, because there is nothing really to do here in the evening. The sunset is around 18 and the sunrise is around 6. Although I'm not quite right. There is a night walk tour here, where you are being guided in the forest and even promised to see a lot of wild life. But we decided no to do that. Apart from that on can sit in one of the restaurants, that is pretty much it.
My first and most important impression about being in Costa Rica now is "Thanks God it's not that hot". We are in the very middle of the rainy season and are in mountains now though. Things might change, we have plans to travel around the country. But for the moment I feel very comfortable (for I hate when it's hot, I don't feel good when it is). It is not raining all the time, but the significant part of the time the air is full of these micro-rain-drops and the sky is cloudy. In the morning it rained though approximately until 11. Exactly during the time we were in the cloud forest. Since we don't have a real rain gear (we wanted to keep our lagguge to as small size as possible) we were totally wet.... but we enjoyed it a lot!!! We missed rain a lot while in California. After the cloud forest we underwent different plans. Johannes went to do the zip-line trip, which I refused to do as I consider myself to have had enough adrenaline in my life already. And I shopped a little bit and went for an 1-hour=$50 massage, which was gorgeous, just wonderful. Shopping was not that successful, we are staying in a tiny town, maybe even a village in a Pension Santa Elena. The place itself is really very small. We came here yesterday by a 5-hour drive with a shuttle bus from Liberia airport. During this ride the football game Costa Rica vs. Greece took place. And the driver was listening and even watching the match during the drive, which made me a little bit nervous. At some point we were passing some small village and he saw people on the street watching the game at some bar and asked for our permission to make a stop and watch, it was the climax of the game. We were only 3 passengers in the bus, we and one more girl from New Hempshire, and we didn't mind. So we actually witnessed how Costa Rica won and how Costaricans reacted on this:
It was touching.
There is one more video of people celebrating, it is made already in Santa Elena:
So, we are lucky to be here during the time when all the people are extremely happy and joyfull:)
People are generally quite nice here. Most of them doesn't speak a decent English. I got lucky and the girl that made a massage for me, spoke English. Apart from that Johannes is using his Spanish skills and I also try to memorize some words and phrases and use them.
Wi-fi is everywhere. Still we bought a sim-card today just in case to be able to make calls. Buying a sim-card was not so easy, because even guys in the electronic shop didn't speak any English, just no English at all.
Before coming here one of our biggest concerns was either to rent a car or not. We are now glad that we didn't rent one. First of all the roads are really bad. Not all of them. Some of them are ok. But there is a big enough portion of those that I wouldn't dare to drive myself. In our current plan we do some distances with the shuttle buses, some with the public buses and we also have 2 very cool transportations. One of them is tomorrow. We are going to the Arenal Vocano area by horseback-boat-jeep. Another is river rafting. We don't just raft, we use rafting to reach our destination.
There are many homeless dogs and cats on the streets. They are allowed (or better to say not restricted from entering all the shops and even restaurants). They are not annoying though.
It is only 20:00 (oh, how happy I am to finally switch back to 24-hour time measure system, km and kg!), but we are already at the hotel, because there is nothing really to do here in the evening. The sunset is around 18 and the sunrise is around 6. Although I'm not quite right. There is a night walk tour here, where you are being guided in the forest and even promised to see a lot of wild life. But we decided no to do that. Apart from that on can sit in one of the restaurants, that is pretty much it.
No comments:
Post a Comment