costa rica

Start of another trip

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So its time for another trip and from planning a ski trip me and Martin did a complete turnover and booked a trip with a warming sun, a lovely ocean, jungle and hopefully some nice waves. We are talking about Costa Rica and everything seems to get in order for the trip, our luggage are packed and we are ready. Plenty of time until our flight are leaving and then we have three lovely weeks to do some surfing, I hope my boss wont be mad though cause I think I told him that I will be away for two weeks only.Well, I got my passport and visa card, a rental car is waiting for us and a hostel is booked, three weeks in central america, what could possible to wrong?

 

9 hours countdown

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Countdown has started and the flight takes off in exactly 9 hours, I already found some stuff I forgot to bring which is slightly better than Martin who just started to pack his stuff. Our travel plan is to go from Stockholm to New York, switch plane and then go to San José. The travel time will be around 20 hours so I guess we will be kind a tired when we arrive and hopefully our booking is ok so we have somewhere to stay the first night, it would suck to have to try to find somewhere to stay when you just arrived.

According to the latest reports from the Tamarindo hostel we booked an anteater has been seen, playing ninja. Hopefully he is still there and I catch him with my camera.

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Anyway, Martin has started to pack now and I will go and pack my newly bought shorts, use some of my new toothpaste on my new toothbrush and wash my face with my new soap before its time for takeoff.

 

We are in new New York

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Part one of the trip is finished and incredible enough we did get through homeland security without any hassle. I thought we did a smart deal booking tickets at an american airline, I mean everybody knows the size of Americans so we should get plenty of space but well, that backfired and the plane is crap. It has bad air, its crowded and it feels really low budget overall but at least the food descent, especially for being airplane food. While passing Greenland we got a really good view from it and while Greenland is not really green, more filled with snow and ice the urge to go snowboarding arrived an we were a bit insecure if we made the right choice to get on a sun vacation instead of skiing.

Martin got “random selected” at the custom and my computer got scanned for explosives but that was not an issue and we found a boring diner to grab a cup of coffee while we waited on the next place, the airport in New York was not a funny one.

Arrived in Tamarindo

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After an kind a awful drive from San José we are now finally in Tamarindo. The drive which we according to the naps 20 miles, which 15 of these were on Costa Ricas biggest road shouldnt be any problem we thought, 4 hours later we had to rethink and after 6 hours we finally arrived. It went up, down, left right like a snake and even if it was totally beautiful to see the nature or boiling brakes did not like it.

At the hostel we got our room which is really nice (with AC) and we could borrow surf boards from them, perfect and it was just to unload the car and then go to the beach! Once we got back from the beach we found a pal who wanted to come back to Sweden with us, we didnt like him though so we kicked him out into the jungle. Im to tired to take a picture so you have to imaging how a scorpion looks like.

The second day was also spent on the beach together small and big waves. the tidal gives an good break around 8-9 in the morning and arund 4 at the afternoon, perfect since it gives you plenty of time to chill while it anyway are to warm do anything

Red like a lobster

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Yesterday evening we went to Brunos, a little bit more fancy place with awesome food and this evening, a comedy night. The comedian was supposed to be in “imported” from Canada for the night and well, except that he was not funny it was a great idea. The food however was really nice, giant shrimps in coconut sauce  as a starter and a huge steak as main course made my evening. I ordered some sort of garlic sauce to my steak and we are not talking one or two cloves here, we are talking about whole garlics. Even if it was yesterday we ate I’m pretty sure that Costa Rica now is a vampire free zone!Today we spent the whole day at the beach, trying to catching waves. We also decided to change to smaller boards, that means I swallowed a lot of sea water and tumbling around at the bottom of the sea. Anyway we starts to get it how to catch the waves but the weather has been kind a to good and after 6-7 ours in the sun we are no longer white folks, we are red…red like lobsters.

Chill out

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Since my little sunburn i decided to chill today while Martin went down to the sea to catch some waves. Myself took a trip down to the supermarket instead, bought some beers and placed my as in the hammock. I just relaxed, listening to music and chilled while I spared my poor body from the sun. Towards the afternoon everything felt much better and if my body only could change back to white or brows instead of this red lobster color I would be so happy.
On the evening we drove to “Eat at Joes”, sushi for the whole crew and I do not exaggerating when I say its the best sushi I ever tasked. Since we quit a big gang from the hostel we ordered a lot of different from the table. Look up gluttony on wikipedia and you will find a picture of us.

Today I went back to the sea, this time to Playa Grande. The surfing went terrible so I will not even talk about it but on the way back home it was a police checkpoint and the only one who had his driving license with him was me, and I was in the back seat with Jacob and Sofia. We turned around to warn Martin and Karle but we couldnt find them and now we have no idea where they are.

 

Update:

They are back and they did succeed to drive through the checkpoint without being stopped, someone was lucky!

Photo shoot at Playa Avallena

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Another day has passed with alot of sun, sand and water. We started the day to get up early and go to Playa Avallena. Only a handful of surfers in the water, kilometer long beach and a nice break with perfect sets rolling in a calm pace, in other words a perfect day! Today was the first day we brought the camera to the beach and with some luck we might be able to upload some pictures so I can show you.Our hostels wifi is far from the best and my computer normally refuse to connect at all while Martins does connect, but uploading pictures takes forever so in worst case I have to upload them once I get back to Sweden

BBQ

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A very unusual day for us, we spent in the beach. After a small discussion if we should swim or pay the 7 kronor (1 Euro) for a taxi over crocodile-land we choose the taxi-boat. With a little bit of luck we got our taxi boat driver to drive an extra lap just to see if we could spot the crocodiles but they weren’t home, guess we took the right decision not to swim.

After spending a whole day on the beach there is really only one thing to do, build a nice bonfire and barbeque. Markus fixed a barbeque and me, Martin and Anna went to the store and shopped a lot of food. 1.5Kg chicken, as much sallad, baguettes and a lot of beers and after some dealing we got Anna to make the food if we paid for it, Ive been doing worse deals than that!

A little bit drunk and convinced that we wont be hungry for a couple of days we decided to go and checkout Tamarindos nightlife and yea, I will never complain on having a hangover in Sweden because having it here, in 35 degrees is worse, much much worse

Tamarindo sailing

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After spending a lot of days surfing and hanging on the beach we decided that today we will do something different, lets go sailing. Well, to be honest we didn’t sail, we just were on a sailing boat, sunbathing, drinking beer and after some hours we stopped in a bay where we  snorkel in the water and had a minor lunch. Its really fun to scare puffer fish. When the sun started to set we started to sail back towards Playa Flamingo and home again.

Back at our hostel Thy just had our dinner ready, Rice and beans in some sort of mixture which were really good but that probably the reason i cant live here, rice and beans are good but not to every meal, all week long!

 

Worst road ever

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Today we left Tamarindo, almost a week after our schedule but we have vacation so who cares. Our hostel in Tamarindo was awesome, we met a ton of nice and fun people and the surf was really good so we extended our stay a bit. Right now were are stuck in a small small village called Nosara, just arrived and its to late to go out surfing but we went down to the beach and it looks really nice, a long nice break! The town however looks like crap, all really run downed.

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The drive to get here was really fun though, I’m not sure how to be able to describe it think of the smallest road you can imaging through the forest, add some gravel, a concrete block or some bricks from a house and it starts to look like something. If you get to an river you don’t build a bridge, you drive through the water and why build a straight road? No everybody knows that its much more fun if the road go up and down, left to right like a roller coaster. The distant we drove today was somewhere between 50-100km and it took over 3 hours to drive and we drove through 7 rivers/water ponds. Even if this sounds like shit its amazing how wide the roads are and its really never a problem to meet a truck or another car. A wrong turn made us climb on heck of a mountain and I was unsure if we would be able to climb it but pedal to the metal and up we came, to realize that we had to turn around and drive down this steep, steep road. if mum had been in the car you would hear her scream all around the globe.

Towards Santa Teresa

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Our road trip continue south and if we thought that the road to Nosara was i bad shape that was nothing compared against the road along the coast side between Nosara and Santa Teresa. But enable the 4wd, pray and pedal against the metal through mud and water and we successfully arrived. At this part the road even was on the beach which means that during high tide the road is closed, lucky for us we passed during low tide since we had no idea about this when we started to drive. Before we left we started with breakfast at Rancho Kongo and suddenly we had company, by a south american coati.Santa Teresa is a interesting place, the whole village is built around one and one street only. That street is long and only the beach which counts as Santa Teresa is 7km and the village is longer than that. Here lives hippies and surfers, side by side with one or another soul searcher like Frank, an hitchhiker we met in the middle of the jungle and we made a deal with. If he show us the way to Santa Teresa, we give him ride to town. A good deal for both of us. The waves here are kind a big and I have more or less ended my surfing for this vacation, instead i lay on the beach with a good drink.

Soon time to get back to the reality

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Last night in Santa Teresa and the day then we will go to San José and onward to Sweden is closing in. Santa Teresa is different, very different but really cool place to be at. The village is filled with hippies, surfers and a lot of suspicious people which are really fun to talk to. Our plan for tomorrow is to take a surf session on the morning and then get into the car and drive to Montezuma and some waterfall jumping. Then back to the car again and drive to the ferry which will bring us to Punta Arenas and from there we can drive to San José. Regarding the road conditions in this country we are not sure if we will make it but its at least an plan.

Yesterday we went to the liquor store so we could make some Cuba Libres, what a surprise when they had a bouncer with a shotgun walking around in store. A little bit weird and strange but he was nice and I’m not sure if it was because we are good customers or any other reasons but he open the door for us and our evening was spent drinking Cuba Libres while listening to the howling monkeys and other sounds from the jungle.

Going home via Montezuma and San José

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We left Santa Teresa really early to follow our plan and stop in Montezuma and believe it or not, but we actually got here without any wrong turns at all. The town is really nice town, maybe most famous over that some celebrities has got themselves a safe harbor here with the pacific ocean on one side and jungle on the other. Another famous thing and the one who woke our curiosity was the waterfallsThere are several waterfall in the area and since we had limited time here we aimed for Montezuma which is the most famous one, the waterfall is actually three different falls where you can dive the first two. The first one was maybe around 5m which was a good start, the second one was 12m which was really nice to dive from and the third, well its huge and you cant jump from it but you can swim and sit at the edge of the waterfall and look down, what a view!Once we felt we were finished with the waterfall we jumped in our car and rushed towards the ferry. Instead of driving around the whole peninsula we took a ferry and saved many hours driving. We were not alone on this ferry and who knew that Costa ricans love to sing karaoke, it didn’t sound good,Once we got to San José we find out that our hotel we booked has closed and we cant in touch with the manager, well new plan and instead we spent the night at holiday inn, a lot more expensive than we thought but quite much higher standard too. Now a tiny nap before we head to the airport and leave for Stockholm