Costa Rica

Playa Brasilito and Playa Conchal

Playa Conchal

Our first spot in Costa Rica was supposed to be Brasilito on the Pacific Coast. After arriving and checkin in our Hostel, we went to the beach and smelled the sea very strongly... you may all know the fresh smell of the sea with a light note of fish and salt, but this was more than that! It was kind of disgusting and we could not really lay down and relax.. so we just had a nice 2, 3 km walk along the beach from Brasilito to Playa Conchal, which is supposed to be the most beautiful one in Costa Rica due to the fact that it is full of mini and broken shells. And yes, it is really nice, but with the smell we could not really enjoy - not talking about having a swim in the sea!
After talking to a Tico woman, we knew that the sea is kind of ill, marea roja, which means something like that the alga is ill and swimming to the beach...
Well, that was the reason to move on already the next day at 5:30am (after arriving in Brasilito at 4 pm) to...




Quepos / Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio

We arrived around 5pm in Quepos, due to heavy traffic on the road... all the Ticos are travelling, as we are now in Semana Santa, Easter Holidays. But the bustrips here in Costa Rica are much more comfortable and nicer than in Nicaragua, as there is kind of a organisation, meaning you have to buy tickets, have a fix seat in the bus, there is a timetable and a busstation with certain stops for each bus ( sounds ridiculous, I know...)

Iguana on the beach

In Quepos we stayed in a really cool and nice hostel, Widemouthfrog. with kitchen, livingroom, pool etc.. was really nice! All three evenings we cooked there ( saving money, costa rica is soo expensive! ). One day we chilled around, at the pool and in the village of Quepos and the other day we went to the main attraction, the Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio. As it was the saturday of Semana Santa, it was quite crowded at the beginning, but as they do only allow 800 people the entrance, it is never really full inside.

We had nice walks around the forest and saw sooo many animals, free animals! Like 3 different kind of monkeys, 2 sloths (Faultier), various iguanas (Leguane) and the tipical birds.
After hiking a bit we relaxed on 2 different beaches to maintain our taint!! haha.
All in all, Manuel Antonio is really a great Nationalpark which you can absolutely do by your own - meaning you do not need a guide for around 50 Dollars, because either you see the animals by your own, or you just stop and join a group with a guide which is waiting and stairing all in one tree...

San Jose

The capital of Costa Rica. All people told me before that San Jose is nothing special, and that is true. Although the city has some nice places, "plazas", churches and a pedestrian area ( which is not standard in Centralamerica ), there is nothing special to do here. So we stay only one night in our nice hostel Tranquilo Backpackers, relax, write emails and update the blog...
Nevertheless we had a 2h walk around the most important places here in San Jose to get an impression. The strangest impression we just had a few hours ago: we wanted to have dinner, and the city is full of fastfoodrestaurants, incredible! We just saw 2 restaurants, but those we not in our pricerange...


Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica

Now we know why the slogan of Costa Rica is "Pura Vida", meaning Pure Life... the Caribbean Coast is really really beautiful and as relaxed as we experienced it in Nicaragua, in the caribbean islands, called Corn Islands. We went to the 2 most popular spots, Cahuita and after 2 nights to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. Both are close to a National Park with amazing beaches - the ones you expect when you think of a caribbean beach. We really enjoyed our time there - relaxing, hiking, biking, eating very good seafood and enjoying the sun. We were really lucky with the weather, as the days before our arrival they told us having had only rain... so with us came the sun! Haha!

Look at the following pix to have an impression of how we loved and enjoyed it.

For those who have already been here and would like to remember or for future travelers: we really loved it to go by bike to the following beaches: Playa Cocles, Punta Uva till Manzanillo. But the best was Punta Uva! Both Cahuita and Puerto Viejo have a Playa Negra, with dark sand, which we did not like much. They are big and have nothing special...