Thursday, January 30, 2014

Costa Rica-Gringolandia

Costa Rica has really beautiful scenery and animals. It is lush and green and full of life and it has been well preserved. Costa Rica also has been touristic for a long time, lots of ex-patriots live there, it is easy to get around, and there is a wide range of accommodations. I would say that Costa Rica is a good starter country for anyone wanting to visit Latin America, much like Thailand is a good starter country for anyone wanting to visit Asia.
The first time I visited Costa Rica in 2002 I had certain expectations and was disappointed. It was too westernized already. I didn't like that a lot of people spoke English, that the signs and menus were in English and that tourism was rampant. There were even American companies like Grayline offering transportation. I had expected Costa Rica to be more like Guatemala, more third world, traditional, cultural. I don't know why I thought that but it makes all the difference in the world when I expect something and get something else.
This time I had no expectations. I knew what it would be like and I had accepted that. I did enjoy the ease of visiting here but it was exactly as I had remembered it-Gringolandia!


Show me the money! Costa Rica has some of the prettiest money I have ever seen! All the pretty bills were new since I had last been here. These were two of my favorite because of the sloth and the monkey. The currency is colones and was about 500 colones to the dollar. The top bill is worth about $10 USD and the bottom $20 USD.


Costa Rica had some beautiful rivers. This river and the others shown below were only a few of the many that the road crossed over.


And another river...




The natural areas were pretty well taken care of in Costa Rica. There wasn't as much litter on the roads but the roads were often in disrepair. 

These were sugar cane plants but of a different color than the normal green. I had never seen any this color before.

Rice field that reminded me of being in Asia.

Banana tree-if you look closely you can see the flower hanging down under one of the leaves. It is also in a close up below.


The flowery looking part of the banana flower shown here eventually becomes the bananas!
I borrowed this photo from the internet (http://www.promusa.org/tiki-index.php?page=Morphology+of+banana+plant) to show how the flowers become the bananas on a banana plant. Below is a full description of each phase including the phase shown above.

At emergence the inflorescence is erect but soon starts pointing down, with the exception of Fei bananas.
The bracts lift, or curl up at the tip, exposing the female flowers that will develop into fruit. The flowers are arranged in clusters, the future hands.
The developing fruits start pointing upwards soon after emergence.
Some cultivars possess hermaphrodite flowers, also called neutral flowers.
The male flowers subtended by bracts are the last type of flowers to appear.



The heat was just killing me throughout Panama and Costa Rica. I eventually kind of acclimated to it and started waking up before sunrise to get on the road as soon as it was light to beat the heat. I took a really long nap at this roadside stop in spite of it being overtaken by a lady selling ceviche shortly after I arrived. I just moved over and made room for her to set up her stuff on the table and went back to snoozing! When I woke up I had some ceviche for lunch!

Americans pay a lot of money for decorative house plants just like these which grow wild here.

I liked this sign.

Although these monkeys were on the property of a guesthouse I stayed in, I did see monkeys in the trees right on the side of the road but missed the photo-too dark.

Howler monkeys like this were pretty common. They were loud around sunset.

This is the Pacific Ocean side of Costa Rica (as opposed to the Caribbean side). I had wished there was a hidden place somewhere that I could have camped on this beach but everywhere accessible by my bike was too exposed to being seen. I was not finding many places where I could wild camp in Central America and it was bumming me out!!

Lots of pretty views of some nice beaches but they were all private property.
There were many properties that had been built and then not finished. It is hard to tell in this photo but most of the top floor was not completed on this building nor were the neighboring condos. The sign was so old it was faded but the project still isn't finished AND the "Welcome" is only in English. There seems to be some reverse discrimination at places like this. 

In Jaco, a surfer town (notice the surfboard under the guy's arm) there were so many shops that were American chains.
Yummy, I found a vegetarian health food restaurant here. I guess there are definite up-sides to the Gringo invasion.

Yes those are wild crocodiles on the side of the river.  I took this photo from a bridge over the river. There was a sign ahead of the bridge giving notice that crocodiles could be seen and there were a lot of people walking on the bridge that were passengers of the tourist buses parked at either end.

And here is a lot smaller member of the reptile family that I caught hiding in a drain tube. Does he think that if he can't see me then I can't see him? 

This room was the least expensive room I stayed in while in Costa Rica. Rooms were pretty expensive in CR in comparison to other neighboring countries. This room cost me $8 per night-that's more like it. The bathroom was down the hall.

The cell block looking hallway outside of the room shown in the previous photo.

I guess it would take too long to actually build a full sized Burger King here so they erected this outdoor version of one. Or maybe it was a trial to see if the burger giant would survive in this town.

This town of Punta Arenas (not to be confused with Punta Arenas, Chile), although kind of seedy in other parts, had a nice boardwalk with lots of open air restaurants along the ocean front.

Tankita resting up on the ferry ride from Punta Arenas to Playa Naranjo.

It was a very comfortable ferry with an outside bar on the back deck.

The short crossing from Punta Arenas to Playa Naranjo.
The crossing only took about 1 1/2 hours.

This room was kind of expensive at 10,000 colones ($20 after the owner discounted it down $10) but there weren't many accommodations in this village and it was too late in the day to ride to the next town after I got off of the ferry. I woke up the next day with absolutely no energy. I think I was suffering from heat exhaustion so I rested another day in the air conditioned room.The owner was so sweet, she came to check on me twice to make sure I was okay. I slept the whole day and got up only to eat.

The skin on my legs was bumpy and red with signs of heat rash that day.
It was a nice place for the price but I had no energy to enjoy it!

Lots of times when I would encounter other cyclists they would be going the other direction so we wouldn't have much opportunity to hang out and talk except on the side of the road before going our own way. In this case there was a town nearby so Dominic (English) and I rode to a restaurant and had lunch together and talked for about four hours sharing our information. Dominic's bike was definitely light compared to mine! His blog can be found at onebikeoneworld.com. He has been on the bike since 2011 and as of 2014 is in Brazil.
One of the few snakes I crossed paths with and most were dead like this one. I am okay with not having a live snake chasing me in the jungle again like the one in Bolivia!

Another example of one of the cheaper rooms ($10 USD) I was able to find. This one was in Liberia-the last town in Costa Rica before Nicaragua. I found a good bike shop here and had Tankita checked out before venturing out to the poorer Central American countries where cycling for pleasure was less known and therefore where fewer bike shops that had quality parts and labor would exist .

This is a map of my route through Costa Rica corresponding with the last photo for this posting in Liberia, Costa Rica. As usual the orange line indicates where I rode my bike and the black line indicates where I used other means of transport (in this case boats).


This blog brings you up to date on my travels until June 14th, 2013.


Photos and blog posts to come:

Nicaragua-Backing Down A Volcano

Honduras

El Salvador

Guatemala and Statistics from Central America

Mexico