Blogs are Stupid

A conversation between Allen Iverson and Jim Mora
(if this is old....i've been in Costa Rica for 10 days - gimme a break)

Since inevitably everyone asks "how was your trip? what'd you do?" i figured I would make one personal post to my blog and detail what I did on my trip - a short condensed version.

We arrived in San Jose at around 9pm local time and headed straight towards Hostel Pangea, where we got a few drinks in their great open air restaurant/bar with views of San Jose, before heading to bed. We woke up around 5:45am to catch a 6:30am local bus to Santa Elana/Monteverde. The bus took ~ 5 hours.

After quick eating, we got picked up at 12:30 by Selvatura for our Canopy Tour. The Canopy tour was 15 cables and 18 platforms throughout the cloud forest and was awesome. In Monteverde we stayed at Arco Iris Lodge which I would highly recommend.

The next morning we took a Jeep-Boat-Taxi trip to La Fortuna/Arenal home of the Arenal Volcano. We checked in at the Arenal Backpackers Resort then immediately got picked up for our ATV tour of the Arenal area. Our 2:30 tour ended up being just me, Jo and our guide. We drove around for around 4 hours and got to see lots of La Fortuna, including its big waterfall (and of course the volcano). We stopped at a local swimming spot which had a big rope swing.

After our ATV tour we rested for a few hours at the Tabacon Hot Springs. Tabacon is the bigger, more touristy, incredibly expensive hot springs in the La Fortuna/Arenal area. It was incredibly nice.

On Friday the 15th we got picked up at 7:30am for our Canyoning trip - which is rappelling down waterfalls. We did 5 rappells down one rock wall and 4 waterfalls - it was amazing.


After Canyoning and dinner, we hit up Eco Termales hot springs - which is the least toursity and in our opinion, the nicest hot springs that we went to. Eco Termales is actually located across the street from Tabacon (edit: make that Baldi Hot Springs, the third hot springs in the area), but has no sign and you travel 5 minutes down a dark road to get there. We actually had to make a reservation for Eco Termales because they only allow 100 people in per four hour time slot - they try to keep it pretty private. Again, this place was amazing. It was quiet and cheap (beers $1.50 as opposed to $5 at Tabacon) - everything worked on the honor system there too....great place.

Saturday we took a private bus back to San Jose, then caught a small Nature Air plane to Palmar Sur, where we took a 3 hour boat ride to Drake Bay- a remote part of Costa Rica on the Osa Penninsula. The boat ride should have been around 1-1.5 hours, but there were 2 boats, and the 2nd one apparently had its gas stolen, so it ran out mid trip. It had to keep getting gas from random boats it came across on our trip. We arrived at Drake Bay a around 6:30pm, where we made a beach landing and they pointed at some lights and told us it was our Hotel - Jinetes De Osa.


We spent 4 nights in Drake Bay/Jinetes de Osa and it was our favorite part of the trip - from the people we met, the great meals and the beautiful scenery.

I'm getting lazy and don't wanna type more, so I'll explain more about Drake Bay later, but the few things we did:

• we took took a 1.5 hour boat ride, then hiked through the Corcovado National Park for around 4 hours - seeing monkeys, tucans, crocodiles, lizards etc etc.
• took a 45 min boat ride to Cano Island, where I did a 2 tank dive, and Jo took a Discovery Scuba/Resort course.
• took a night bug tour of Drake Bay
• and on our final day we just relaxed.

We spent one final day/night in San Jose at Hotel Presidente, a really nice hotel in downtown San Jose.

and the next morning we headed back to DC - and there's my trip.

Of course I took a lot of pictures, which at least 3 people said they expected to be up already, but there are so many pics that I need to go through them before I post them on Flickr. Expect them up by Tuesday though.

That is all.

I'm on vacation in Costa Rica til 12/21, doing

- this
- and this
- and this
- and this
- and this
- and this

See you all next next Friday.

v some stupid Couger. Vote for Testudo.

Black Man Bottle Opener !




from BuckyHoo:
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Vote for Testudo - in the semi finals.

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(from Thu)