Costa Rica, San Jose-Playa Hermosa-Jaco-Malpais/playa Carmen-Samara

(Okay, we are back online. (That is sort of.. -if we bring the computer downstairs into the beach bar, then we get online) Now we are at our third destination in Costa Rica, not counting San Jose.

First we landed in San Jose and took a taxi towards a hotel we read about in our bible. But our taxi man managed to change our minds to go to that hotel, apparently it was in the “red” zone and therefore dangerous. Don’t really know if that was the truth, but didn’t feel like taking any chances the first hour in the country. Its funny tough, “isn’t it strange” that our taxi man knew the owner to that other place he took us. When he came in there and we were checked in, he sat down with the woman that owned the place for a cup of coffee and a talk. It seemed like they were in family. Well well…. This was a house with lots of rooms and apartments in real 70’s style. I was nice and clean, but old fashion.. and we payed 40 dollars for it.... ok I guess..

Still in San Jose we were wondering where to go. It was a tough decision, caribian or pasific side? On the next morning, we just took a taxi and made him take us to the bus station to see if there were any buses leaving for the pacific coast. We had read a bit about a place called Playa Hermosa. Sounded nice, so why not. We took the bus there, with no air con… very hot! Mr V was sweating.. Poor thing..

Here he is resting, while we are on our way...

He is really taking our traveling very well now, even though it’s really hot and humid. I’m very impressed of him.

The ride from San Jose to Jaco, which is the last stop close to Playa Hermosa, took about 2 hours. Then we had to take a taxi to Playa Hermosa which took 10 minutes or so. That place didn’t look all that Hermosa.. There were only a few hotels along the road there. That’s it.. We checked in to a random hotel. It wasn’t all that. 60 dollars for that didn’t feel so good, but we heard it was a good price compared to others around. It was just at the beach, and had two small swimming pools. Mr V enjoyed them, so that was nice. This was really just a place just for surfing, nothing here but hotels and big waves. The waves on the beach were roaring. They were quite big and looked perfect for surfing and many was out and doing just that. So it was my time to try too, I rented a board for a couple hours the next day. This was my first time ever, and went like it had to go; to H…! I got so beaten of trying in these waves, and I never got up on the board. It didn’t feel any good to not do it, and have to give up. Because after trying a short while we had to move out of our hotel before check out time at noon. We had decided to move down to Jaco instead, it was a bit more things happening there. The night before we went there to eat dinner and afterwards we walked around a bit to look for a decent hotel. We found a place called Tropical garden. It was living up to its name that’s for sure.

Iguanas in the three's and lot's of other insect's and animales like i showed in the last post, Critters in Costa Rica

 It was really nice there, basic but nice! We were just going to stay there one night and the move on, but we were thinking of Mr V and decided to stay a few more days. We stayed in Tropical Garden three nights, first night in cabaña number 3, then number 4 and last night number 5… we had to change cabin each night because we didn’t book ahead.
Jaco was really busy small “town”, with lots of tourists and Americans that have moved there. It was a real surf town though; everything was all about the surf, the people and all the shops. I thought it was a bit cool there but Gry didn’t like it that much. The beach wasn’t for swimming, the waves were too big.  

In the streets of Jaco:

Me with my surf instructor..going out to catch some waves:

Me coming up with my "caddie" named Zesar.. hehe -Surf's up.

Pacific sunset..:

Our last night in Jaco was ended like this, with some great norwegian chocolate and the last episode of a funny norwegian comedy series called, Småbyliv:

After Jaco we decided to go to a place called Malpais. To get there we had to take the bus, that nobody could answer us when was coming exactly. While waiting for the bus a taxi driver asked us if he could take us for 60 dollars, which we accepted. So we got there relatively quick, it was supposed to take around 2 hours but now with him took only 1 hour and 20 minutes. He drove us to the bus station in Punta Arenas like we asked him to. When we got there we asked them there when transport was going to Malpais, then we found out that we had to take a ferry there. They said it was a 1,5 kilometer to go there, and we had 30 minutes until the ferry was leaving, so we got plenty of time to walk there. But did we… of course not! It was way longer then they said. Just when we got to the ferry dock, our ferry was leaving. Next ferry in 3 hours.. This seems to be so typical in this country; nobody seems to know anything about their own towns or environments. I have asked so many of different questions about their cities and so, but ether they don’t know or they have told us very wrong. We should soon begin to remember this ourselves, that they don’t know.

On our way with the ferry, meeting probarly that one we should have taken 3 hours earlier..:

After some running around after Mr V and some eating we were on the next ferry that took off at 5 o’clock pm. It took about 1 hour to where the busses would take us to our “final” destination. This bus ride was bumpy and loooong. We checked in to our hotel in Malpais around 9 pm. It takes time to travel down here, especially when the roads aren’t paved. We checked in to a hotel called Playa Carmen. It was quite nice and had two nice pools too. It was so warm there, and dusty. No roads paved and no rain for a while= lots of dust. That place, Malpais looked like an old dusty western town. We did that same thing here, checked in for one day but stayed 3 nights, before we decided to leave. During the time we had there we had mostly been "complaining" about how hot and humid it was. It was just above our comfort zone. The day before we left we rented a ATV, a four wheeler motorcycle. If we did this in Norway we would for sure get reported to the police, our neighbors would come out and stop us with force and so on. But here it is a mean of transportation for everyone as long as they can all get seated on; everyone uses them for these purposes so did we. The whole family riding this four-wheeler was great.

We took a ride to a nearby town called Montezuma. It was a great ride thru hills, mountains and farms and places with great views of the green and lush Costa Rican landscape. On the way, almost there, Mr V fell asleep; it is so amazing that anyone can fall asleep on this kind of vehicle. It was a dirt road, a bit bumpy at times, and the ATV itself makes some noise but still he managed to fall asleep(he was strapped on to me while driving with a "security strap").  We stopped down at the beach in Montezuma and carried Mr V over to a beach restaurant so he could sleep a while longer.

Had to stop at abeach and eat ice cream.. but it's hard to eat fast enugh when it's so hot..:

Montezuma was a really nice and cozy place; it kind of reminded us of San Pedro at the Lake in Guatemala (for those of you that have been there). We both were sorry we didn’t go there instead of Malpais. 

Next day we had decided to move on. But it was a bit uncertain where to. We were talking about going inwards to the country now because of the heat and humidity. But after reading our bible we found out that we had to make one maybe two more stops at the Pacific coast. These places are supposed to be some of the highlights of Costa Rica.

Snapshot thru the window of the shuttle on our way to Samara..:

So our next destination got to be Samara, about 80 kilometers up north. But driving there with a shuttle was some experience. It was going quite fast, that would be ok if the roads were flat and without rocks and holes in them. It was a rough ride that took between 3-4 hours. Well there we found an apartment hotel pretty quickly. I was a quite nice Italian run Hotel with a beach front and a good restaurant. We had to pay a bit more than we had planned, 80 dollars a night 70 dollars if we stayed a week, so we’ll see.

Mr V cruz'n the (low tide) beach of Samara..:

out walking:

Our balcony in Samara:

I took some time before i got to post this so now we have moved on. We ended up staying only three days..

A funny happening the day we were leaving: I had captured some cocroaches (kakkerlakk) in our bathroom. Gry is terrified of them. Early this morning our son Viktor came in to our still dark bedroom and gave "something" to Gry's hand... hehe... Guess what that was.. She should be so happy that it was dark and she didn't understand what it was and just threv it away. Just a moment after she got up I turned on the lights and there it was on the floor next to her side of the bed, on it's back trying to get around. Nice fat cocroach

Leaving our apartmenthotel in Samara:

 At this moment we are in a small palce called Cañas. We are on our way to Fortuna and Arenal.

Pizza place in Cañas, catchy name? I don't know....:

-to be Continued: