… the phrase you hear all over Costa Rica dozens of times per day signifying “pure life”. It is used as a greeting, a good bye, to say Thank You, to say that you are doing well or just to say something. Its ubiquitous use almost feels a bit strange, like it was indoctrinated by some higher authority and we never got rid of this strange taste that thus comes along with it. But let’s start at the beginning.
Entering Costa Rica proved to be harder than we thought. Partially this was our fault as we lacked some export papers for our dogs from Nicaragua - documents that only Costa Rica requires in all of Central America - but also because the bureaucracy behind which the border officials were hiding seemed quite excessive. No sign of the friendliness and easy going attitude we had experienced all across the rest of Central America. In order to get the required papers we headed back to Nicaragua which welcomed us back with open arms and on our second attempt we finally made it into Costa Rica.
Our first destination was Salinas Bay, a famous kite spot on the Pacific border with Nicaragua. We were really hungry to go kiting again and were surprised to find a pretty deserted bay with a beautiful landscape and strong winds to indulge in our hobby. Rouletout was parked a few meters from the beach and the few (mostly foreign) kiters on site gave us enough - but not all - beta to get going.
One morning Berna came back from her session all exited - she had just seen a pair of eyes in the water looking at her. Not taking it too seriously she went back into the water and saw them again - this time she saw that it was a crocodile and actually had to jump over it to avoid it. I still had a hard time believing it but didn’t bother. Next morning, while walking our dogs along the beach, we saw dozens of small snakes. Curious about the nature of these snakes we talked to a local farmer and he explained that these are extremely poisonous “Yellow bellied sea snakes” - luckily their mouth is rather small so it is relatively hard for them to bite humans. A good thing that our doggies don’t really bother with snakes. We also raised the topic of the “crocodile” in the ocean with the farmer and he confirmed that crocodiles swim from one river to my the next through the ocean in Salinas Bay. The good thing is, that they do not hunt while doing so as they don’t like the salty water, wow, what an interesting place.
Kiting itself in Salinas is quite challenging. The winds are really strong and can be quite gusty as they blow over land and down from the nearby volcanoes. The waves are not too high but the gusts make you fly (or wish for more wind in the next moment). It took a few days to get used to it and we also had to add one more smaller kite (6m2) to our collection to make best use of our time and the conditions. Kiting with giant turtles, the yellow-bellied snakes and in such a beautiful landscape was really enjoyable and time was flying by while we indulged in the peacefulness of this border region - we were not yet aware of the fact that many other places in Costa Rica were definitely not to our liking.
Once we were tired of the wind we decided to move on. We explored Nicoya Peninsula, avoiding the touristy places like Tamarindo and found beautiful beaches and wild life along the coast but also saw lots of developments and towns that essentially became amusement parks for the many tourists flocking to Costa Rica. One of the magic places we found was Mango Beach - a small and lost beach on the south-eastern tip of the peninsula. We were alone with monkeys that enjoyed the dozens of Mango trees. One day a local hiked over from a neighbouring beach at low tide and offered us fish - he explained that he was schizophrenic but felt ok when using his medicine. Maybe this also explains the wooden sculpture of a woman in front of his house ;-).
While kiting in Salinas Bay we had heard of Lake Arenal - an artificial lake that for decades was a center of wind surfing and now is also a kite destination just below volcano Arenal. We kited there for a few days - our first time on fresh water - but didn’t really like the vibe of the area. A zip line on almost every tree, tourist attraction after tourist attraction and overpriced restaurants, we moved on.
We passed in the capital San Jose, really not worth visiting but we had to get a few things for our truck fixed, and then moved on to one of the still less developed areas of Costa Rica, the Osa Peninsula of which the biggest part is protected by the Corcovado national park. As guided tours seemed overly complicated (and also way too expensive) we decided to explore the area by ourselves and were impressed by the wilderness, the wildlife and the beautiful beaches. We had rarely seen beaches with so many small animals. Once you stop walking, it seems like the whole beach is moving, small crabs of all sorts move shells, dig holes and run left and right, truly an impressive spectacle. Some of the beaches are in process of becoming popular surf spots and - as in most other beautiful places in Costa Rica - you can observe the first steps of touristic development all along the coast.
For us it was time to move on, we headed back to San Jose. We climbed for a few days in Cachi which again was great but extremely commercialised and then headed to the Caribbean coast where we enjoyed a few days on the beach before heading into Panama, but as always, more on that in our next blog entry.
Comments