Sep. 30- October 9
Our next stop is Costa Rica. We could not find direct flights from Mexico to Costa Rica, so it took us couple days to reach San Juan: first from Chihuahua to Mexico City, then from Mexico City to Guatemala City, where we stayed overnight, and then the next day we got into San Juan. Taxi drive from the airport was pricey - $30, and the overnight in the capital city was not cheap. Actually from now on we could not find good cheap deals anywhere except of the public buses, which are often overcrowded and the roads are very bad. San Juan is a large relatively clean city with a lot of shoes stores, expensive restaurants and cafes. We saw a lot of expats and gringos on the streets, and for the whole stay in Costa Rico we did not see any native Indians. We could find much things to do in San Juan, and the next day we took a bus to La Fortuna, the little touristic town near volcano Arenal park. We really loved our stay for couple days in the Backpackers Hostel Resort - probably the most luxurious hostel we have ever been. The view from our room was amazing - right on the volcano. We also liked the bar in the courtyard and the pool, and shared kitchen with a fridge and coffee maker which helped us to save money on breakfasts.
Next day we took fun and adventurous water rafting trip (class ll - lV) with other couple from US and a guy from Germany. The best part of the trip was when our guide Carlos flipped our boat over and we all had to float in this angry and fast mountain river, but everybody was save and we had fun time. At night we found a very cheap deal to get to the public hot springs - $10 per person for transportation and the guide who served us drinks, put on the candles at night and showed us a poisonous neon green and orange frog.
Next day we fought the bus to Santa Elena town - the base for the Monteverde national park. We spent two nights in Mar Inn B&B place, for $50 a night. The place was very nice, with the door on the balcony and hot showers. We spent the whole day in the jungle taking 13 zip lines and the last zip line was 1 km long and we had to ride it with Kevin together, that was fun! Then we walked 8 hanging bridges, saw a hauling monkey in the tree and, finally, a quetzal! It's a very beautiful bird!
It was a very beautiful place to stay, but it took us eight hours of driving in four local public buses.
From Santa Elena to Tilaran we caught a bus near our hotel, the drive was an adventure itself because the roads in the mountains between pueblitos are just dirt roads. Next we took a taxi to the next stop, Canas, for $2, and then took another bus to a bigger city, Liberia, and finally, the last bus took us to the Playa Coco on the pacific shore. For the two days we stayed in this little, lazy and expensive beach town we met a lot of gringos and locals.
There we attended promotional tour for the extra luxury time share Breeze, and got from them a free laundry (ready in 3 hours!!!), a coupon for the one week stay at their resort in any place of the world and rented a car from them just for $25 a day. And, of course, we did not buy anything from them!
We drove the car to the Playa Tamarindo, and on the way there, while almost lost, we discovered the Monkey Farm, a sustainable living farm with a bunch of young international volunteers working on construction monkeys retreat.
Playa Tamarindo town, trying to be a little Miami beach, has everything: nice beach resorts, expensive luxury condos (we stayed in one of those overnight - Tamarindo Blue), cheap hostels-surf schools, amazing restaurants and cafes with international food, surf and dive shops and a beautiful and very long beach with strong undertow and high waves. And, we saw the whole monkey family moving from one tree to another right over our condo.
Oct. 9 - 15 Nicaragua
Next day we drove back to Playa Coco, returned the car, caught a bus back to Liberia, where we got onto an international TicoBus to Granada. It was very long and tiring day! But we met fellow travelers on this bus and hang out with them later in Granada. Crossing through the Costa Rico - Nicaraguan border was not much existing and nobody experienced any problems. Granada city is a very beautiful colonial city, and also it's the most cleanest of Central American colonial cities. It is situated on the lake Nicaragua, where Chinese decided to build a new canal between Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but we did not notice any construction started. There are a lot of interesting and nice restaurants and cafes serving international food and great Nicaraguan coffee and fresh juices. Restaurants have sittings available outside on right on streets or in their courtyards, and the most fun is at night when a lot of mariachis singing and young hip-hop dancers performing acrobatic stanzas.
After one night in Granada we took a bus to Mariposa Farm, a Spanish school near La Concepcion town. There we had a reservation for one week of classes and volunteering. But, we stayed there only one night because Marina is allergic to the mold, which was everywhere and even mattresses in the rooms. But we had a wonderful horse trip to the "mirador" on the volcano.
Back in Granada we found a nice clean hotel Posada San Juan and stayed there for two nights. We explored this beautiful city in the horse carriage, went on the night trip to see an active volcano Managua and volcanic caves (this is the first time we saw lava in the crater!) and had a fun time in the Mexican traveling circus at the night performance.
It's very hot and humid every day, in about 5 min on the street start sweating profusely and all clothes stink badly, especially after riding in the buses. We left Rio Dulce and went traveling in Central America for the reason to avoid unbearable heat in the boat, but seems the heat just follows us. We are so grateful for the air conditioned rooms in the hotels we pick, even though it cost us twice and we are way over our budget of $100 a day (the most expensive room we had $50/night).
We made it to Leon, our last stop in Nicaragua. Everything we saw here is very unexpected, like, the huge amount of trash in the mercado area (I definitely would not want to walk there because of the danger of getting some strange bacterial disease), the ricksha boys waiting at the bus terminal to take you anywhere on their bizarre bikes, and then, as contradiction to that you very beautiful colonial buildings and churches just newly painted and clean. After civilized, clean and well kept Granada, this town, the place of historical political fights, is a city of sharp contrasts, which is very bizarre, but attractive.
To stay within our budget we extensively use public bus system. It's very cheap (from $0.50 to $1.50 for couple hours of drive), but most of the time is not comfortable. Couple times we got even air conditioning buses, which is not common. Usually you squished in the sit with other passengers who requires double or even triple sitting place (majority of the Latino women are short and very over sized in the middle), and because of the heat and sun become sweaty and stinky, interesting fact is that the locals don't sweat in this condition even wearing jeans.
In Leon we stayed in hotel Lebon (I guess it's short for Lebanon), just across the street from Best Westin. We made good friends with the owner of restaurant Il Capriccio, the Italian food there was very delicious, especially ricotta and spinach ravioli (it's impossible to buy spinach and ricotta in any store in Leon!). Next day in the morning we took an adventure tour to the volcano Cerro Negro. This adventure was exceptional! First we hiked to the top of the volcano for about an hour while carrying our slides with us, then we took cool pictures at the rim of the active volcano, and finally slid the volcano on our special sleds. There are no words to describe this sliding adventure because so far it's one of the kind! We had to wear total body overalls, goggles, gloves and bandanna covering our faces. That was a very interesting experience, to slide down a volcano.
Oct. 16- 24 Honduras
Using public bus system we successfully crosses border of Honduras and made it to Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. Bus trip was long and eventful, couple kids on the bus through up and Kevin helped to clean up a girl because her mom (mother of 4) would not help her daughter at all (alternative parenting method?). After arrival in capital city we took a taxi to the public bus terminal to catch a bus to La Esperanza. We stayed in this sleepy Lencas Indian town just for one night and the next day took a bus to Gracias. Our hotel was very nice and we loved to eat on the street stands at night, near the central square. Food was great! In the center of the central park there is a nice coffee house with bearable internet.
Next we made it to Copan Ruins City where we took Spanish classes for a week. I felt like I finally start progressing in Spanish, especially with a lot of opportunities to use language on the streets.
Afternoons after the classes we visited ruins and got disappointed. The price for visiting all the ruins is about $55 per person! And the sites are not worth it, unless you are a specialist in the Mayan culture in the late classic period.
At Copan Ruins City we visited almost all touristic places suggested in the travel guide: Macau birds refugee and Tee and Chocolate Place (the owner, Carolina, is trying to grow forest again on her land and harvesting cocoa, caucuses, noni and other plants from which they make different tees. We had a chance to see how they roast and then ground cocoa beans manually).
To get back to our boat in Rio Dulce we had to take first a truck through the border to El Florido, then a little Litegua bus to Chicimula, then another one to Rio Dulce. It was a long trip and we almost had to return back to El Florido to get a check in to Guatemala, because we did not check the passports and thought we did not get a stamps while crossing a border.
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