Costa Rica

Thursday 23 - Monday 27 June 2011


We left David at 6am on Thursday morning in order to connect with an 8:30 bus to San Jose, Costa Rica. We weren't planning on spending much time in Costa Rica, the main reason for the visit was so that Kitty could see Ayleen, her host sister from there who lived with her family for a year in 1999. It would be the first time they'd seen each other in nearly 12 years.

Our travel day was long but uneventful, except for a messy border crossing from Panama to Costa Rica. No directions, no signs or anything but luckily we found someone who had done the crossing before and pointed us in the right direction. We arrived in San Jose around 4:30 and sat in a cafe until 6, when Ayleen got home from work. It was a bit of a mission to find her apartment because most of the roads in Costa Rica don't have names and addresses are given in directions. For example, Ayleen's address is; From the National Bank in Curridabat, go 100m east and 75m south, beige apartments on the left hand side. Too bad if you don't know where the bank is, or which direction east is. Luckily we figured those things out and arrived just as Ayleen was getting there. It's funny how 12 years can pass but everything stays the same. Ayleen seemed exactly the same to Kitty and Ayleen thought the same of her.

We had Friday to amuse ourselves as Ayleen was working so we had a late start and spent the afternoon roaming around the centre of San Jose.

On Saturday we went to the beach at Manuel Antonio National Park, which, despite the weather, was beautiful and we got to see lots of wildlife including monkeys (including one that tried to steal our wallet), a sloth, a raccoon and lots of birds.

Ayleen, Kitty and Lawrie looking over the bay to Jacó

Sloth at Manuel Antonio National Park

Beach at Manuel Antonio

Raccoon

Raccoon poking faces at the crowd watching him

Monkey

Ayleen, Kitty and Lawrie at Manuel Antonio

One of the beautiful headlands at Manuel Antonio

Lizard

On Sunday we swapped the beach for the mountains and headed up to the top of one of Costa Rica's many volcanos, Irazú. The top crater has filled up with rain water and it has a most amazing blue colour and some huge, beautiful plants surrounding it.

Messed up geology at the top of the crater

Looking down into the crater

Lawrie, Kitty and Ayleen at the top of the crater

Coati trying (and succeeding) to steal the tourists' food

View from right at the top. Main crater at the bottom right

From Irazú we went to a cheese festival that turned out to be a bit disappointing, had a traditional Costa Rican lunch in Turrialba and headed back to San Jose.

We said our goodbyes to Ayleen early the next morning and caught a bus northwards to Nicaragua and Isla de Ometepe.