My last stop in Central America was always going to be San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, as this was where my flight to Bolivia was departing. To give myself more time in Guatemala and Costa Rica, I decided to fly between those two countries. This unfortunately meant that I missed out on El Salvador and Nicaragua, but I thought this option better than doing a whistle-stop tour while travelling through on buses.
Costa Rica has a very different feel to the rest of Central America and its tourism is certainly more developed. Here it is all about nature and the multiple ways that you can experience the amazing bio-diversity of the country.
First stop for me was Monteverde with its incredible nature reserve. I spent a day walking around the huge park and I did a guided night hike where the guide pointed out tarantulas, snakes, sloths (everyone is obsessed with seeing sloths in this country!) among many other animals. Then it was onto the more extreme way to see the reserve - from above flying along ziplines! It was great fun, especially the "Superman" zipline at the end. The picture below does not do it justice - that zipline was over 1 km long and in the middle I was about 200 metres above the valley floor.
From the mountains of Monteverde, I next went to the beaches of Manuel Antonio. Again, there was plenty of wildlife to be seen (especially monkeys jumping from tree to tree) and this time the nature reserve was surrounding by pristine, paradise beaches.
After chilling on the beach, I needed a bit more activity. So I teamed up with a guy from Quebec and we did the two-day climb up the highest mountain in Costa Rica, Cerro Chirripo (3820m).
On a clear day you can see both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans from the top. 
Unfortunately we didn't get that view, but it was still worth the hike.Then back to San Jose (which isn't all that great) where I did a day trip white water rafting on a river ranked by National Geographic to be in the top five rivers in the world for rafting.
What a way to spend my last day in Central America!Costa Ricans are constantly saying "pura vida" - literally it means pure life, but I think it sort of translates as "happy days". During my 9 days in Costa Rica, I certainly enjoyed the pura vida.
No comments:
Post a Comment