Humans

In my travels i have met a few people that still give me hope for humanity, but some of the crap that people spit out on social media (or in Politics, or in any other way, shape and form).. Nationalist, ignorant and just plain stupid is mindblowing. Hope someday people will realise that countries, nationality, and boarders are only an arbitrary figment of our imagination.

The same goes for race/skin colour. Peel back the skin, and it's all the same colour: MEAT. All of us share the same coloured blood.

So get over it, we are all humans living on the same fucking planet. Period.

Either we learn to live and evolve together or we will perish.

Costa Rica - Puerto Viejo & Manzanillo

Following a few days in Jaco, I decided it was time for a change in scenery and hopefully a slightly less touristy destination, which as it turned out is the south of the Costa Rican Caribbean Coast. I drove straight to Puerto Viejo, and had a nice little dinner and a quiet first night there. In the morning I decided to drive down to the Manzanillo Wild Life Reserve, which is by now my favourite reserve, at least of the ones I have seen to date. There is no admission fee which is a bonus, and there is no map nor are there any signs pointing out the trails, so you are actually in nature… You can get a little lost, but considering that the sea is close by for orientation, you are never truly lost. Besides the 1 main trail I found, there are a ton of small trails, which sometimes are barely visible going left and right, a lot of them end up at very secluded and quiet beaches, I spent a few afternoons there, and often did not see another soul for a few hours.

Originally I had planned to stay a total of 3 nights, 2 of which in the Casa Merlin, a nice little B&B right in the middle between Puerto Viejo where I went for most dinners, and Manzanillo, where I spent most of my day time. I ended up adding 2 more nights at the Casa Merlin, as it was cheap, and quite well equipped, besides having been recently renovated the location is unbeatable, a little way from the main street in the jungle, but with easy access to everything in the area.

The second day I started off by going to the Jaguar Rescue Centre, where they take in injured and/or orphaned animals, and do what they can to set them free in the wild again. Quite a nice station, and entirely living from the tours they give, and donations they receive, so while you are here, worth checking out, and at the same time supporting a good cause! They have a lot of monkeys, snakes, some sloths, and birds. Their private reserve La Ceiba may well be worth checking out as well, but I did not go as the tours start at 7 in the morning and I have always been more of a night time guy.

One morning as I was driving to Puerto Viejo I ran into 2 girls I knew from language school so we had decided to hang out on a Thursday, and since they had no car, I took them down to Manzanillo, where we walked a bit along the beaches, discovered a nice cave that I had not seen before, and ended up hanging out at my favourite beach for a couple of hours. On the trail back to the car is where it got really interesting as we saw what was most likely a black Jaguarundi one of the wildcats still at home in Costa Rica. We saw it from about 20 to 30 meters away, and it was quite an impressive sight! Right there is when I knew why I had kept on adding nights to my stay here, it was to see this beautiful cat before heading out of Costa Rica and into Peru.

A few concluding thoughts on Costa Rica will come in the next couple of days, and by then I should also have arrived in Iquitos, Peru.

Costa Rica - Monte Verde

So following a couple of rain filled days at Arenal, which were quite fun, it was time to move on.From Arenal over to Monte Verde was about a 4 hour drive, more or less, as usual in Costa Rica, there is no telling when you’ll actually arrive at your destination, sometimes it’s faster than your GPS tells you and sometimes, well it takes a lot longer.

I arrived in Monte Verde in the late afternoon, as I had opted to throw in a few stops along the road to take in the panorama sights!

After a relatively early dinner I was in bed early, in order to make the most of my time the next day. Early in the morning I went to one of the few free attractions, a tree located in small stretch of forest in Monte Verde where there is a hollow tree (still alive) that you can climb all the way to the top, the peculiar aspect is that you are climbing through the tree trunk so to speak! I hung out at the top of the tree for a little while until more people arrived, and as the space is limited I went back down, an amazing experience nonetheless!

Following the tree climbing I wanted to go the Monte Verde National Reserve, but arriving there saw a lot of cars, and a few buses.. And as I was not in the mood for a lot of people decided to instead go to the Santa Elena Cloud forest, a privately owned reserve that is nice and wild. On the way there I could not resist the temptation and went for another round of canopy, this time in dry weather, which I must admit is somewhat more comfortable! The lines were pretty fast, and some had to be done in pairs, in order to gain enough speed going against the relatively strong winds.

I arrived at Santa Elena a little before 3, and the guard at the entrance suggested I should take the short hike of about 3 km. As I was going through on my own, just enjoying the forest, and letting its calm take a hold of me, it took me only a short while to finish that particular track, so I added the 2^nd longest of about 5 km. This trail, as it turned out actually led to a little opening in the forest, offering a perfect view of Arenal Volcano, which for once was not hidden in a veil of clouds!

The Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve is actually quite a nice reserve, offering a little bit of cemented trails in the beginning, but if you go for the longer walks, you are actually getting into a bit of wild nature, although the paths are still very clearly visible, it gets a bit muddy, and that is half the fun!

As I had caught a bit of a cold in the rainy climate around Arenal, I decided that after spending an additional night in Monte Verde I would head back to the Pacific coast where I knew the weather was nice and warm!

More on that in a later post!

Costa Rica – Arenal Volcano

So following an extended period of time in Tamarindo, I was quite glad to get on the road. I left Tamarindo on a Saturday morning, and the beginning of the journey was fun, a warm breeze coming in and the traffic flowing quite well.. Unfortunately I was not supposed to go to Orosi Volcano, as somewhere along a dirt road in the middle of the jungle the GPS battery died, as the charging cable turned out to be broken. Without a clue where to turn to when the next crossroads came up as street signs are relatively rare as well, and very limited water and food supplies, I decided it would be more reasonable to backtrack to the next large town, Liberia to get a new cable, and spend the night.. The frustration did however not stop there, as it turned out, Liberia was fully booked, and as I was making my way from hotel to hostel and on could not find a room or a bed for the night. Finally I decided to just drive back to Tamarindo for the night, and then start again on Sunday.

This time around I actually planned a little bit ahead, and booked a room at the Linda Vista Hotel next to the Arenal Volcano. I got back on the road, picked up a new cable at the car rental, and as the maps on the GPS dated back to 2011, asked if they had something more recent, which it turns out does not exist, so in addition to your GPS, if you plan driving around a little consider buying a paper map as well, and in any case be sure to rent a 4x4!!!! The drive to Arenal was beautiful, and the views of the country side and Lake Arenal were simply stunning! When you are driving around Costa Rica, and have a place you want to go to, be sure to look up the exact coordinates, as even though some roads have names, the GPS might not know these etc.. So the better you prepare your trip the easier you’ll get there. I am not one for loads of planning so usually end up taking a bit longer to get from A to B, having to occasionally throw in a U-Turn, but that is the way I like to go about as I enjoy occasionally getting lost a little.  (Since the first day I now always have a large stock of water, and at least some food in the car, just in case.) The closer I got to Arenal, the more it looked like rain, and as I checked in to the Linda Vista the clouds started to fully cover Arenal, but for a short moment I saw a bit of it, and I very much enjoyed going to the hot whirlpool with a cool shower from above, looking out at the lake.

As it started to really poor, and the dirt road to and from the hotel was quite long, I had dinner there, and went to sleep early in hopes that all the rain would have come down by morning.

Well as the saying goes, there is no bad weather, only poor clothing, I set out to go on a Skywalk and Canopy tour at Arenal in the morning! The hike turned out relatively short, but thanks to the guide quite informative! The sky bridges make for stunning views, and should you visit Costa Rica, be sure to take at least one of these hikes as seeing the rain or cloud forests from above makes for a stunning change of scenery! And standing in front of a 500 year old tree is fascinating, and to feel its serenity is mind-blowing! The hike took about 2.5 hours, and around 1 the canopy tour started with about a 10 minute gondola ride up the mountain to about 1000m height.  From there it took about an hour and a half to get back down the mountain zip-lining down back and forth over the canyon with the highest line being about 200m above ground. Quite a fun experience! Unfortunately I only have a poncho against the rain, which was not suitable for the canopy tour, so I ended up quite wet, and a bit cold, but I had prepared a fresh change of clothes for as soon as I got back down.

From here on it was on to Monte Verde, which will be addressed in a later post.