I finally left my home and went in a vacation to Costa Rica. The first European to Costa Rica was Chris Columbus in 1502 and while he was there he saw that the native people wore lots of gold. For that reason he named the area Costa Rica, meaning Rich Coast, as he thought there was going to be lots of gold about.
Colonisation of the area by the Spanish began in 1563 and the native people put up little resistance. In fact Costa Rica is actually one of the most peaceful nations in Central America as there has been little fighting here – they don’t even have an army!!
Independence from Spain was in 1821 and coffee exports became a major industry. The main exports these days are still coffee and bananas as well as pineapples and melons. However the biggest industry is actually electronics – Intel began making computer chips in the 1990′s. Ecotourism is also pretty big over here and 27% of the country is protected which is a good thing. There is a population of 4 mill, most of which are are white and are of Spanish descent. There are however some black people in the Caribbean region who originate from Jamaica.
The currency here is the colon (not to be confused with the part of the anatomy).
There is a chain of volcanic mountains that splits Costa Rica. In the centre of the country is a plain which contains 4 of the 5 largest cities here, including the capital San Jose. This is a pretty cosmopolitan city with dept. stores and shopping malls. I found San Jose to be quite a boring place although our hostel had great free breakfasts and we found a great restaurant to eat in at night (which I soon realised was a gay meeting place!). The national theatre is the most impressive building (built in 1890′s). I stayed for a couple of nights before catching the bus to Cahuita on the Caribbean coast.
Cahuita’s main inhabitants are black creole people. The village has dirt roads and reminded me of Caye Caulker in Belize as the rastas all looked like they had smoked to much grass and there was Bob Marley blearing out of every shop (all 5 of them!). Very relaxed type of place however and we both really enjoyed it here. I walked down to the main beach which has palm trees overhanging it before the rain forced us back to our cabins – and I mean rain!! It was a pretty heavy downpour all afternoon.
The next day the sun was shining so after a few pieces of bimbo (this is a brand of cake you get over here which is really nice despite the name!), I walked through the national park. This is a path that follows the coast through the jungle (8km from one end to the other). The beaches along it are lovely as there is a small reef just off the shore. The jungle here is pretty dense as well as quite hot and hunid. This unfortunately meant there were millions of mosquitos. They were a pain in the butt as they followed you and everytime you stopped, despite having entire cans of deet over you, they tried to take your blood. They were worse on the first part of the track as there was no breeze – needless to say we walked quite fast through this section although still managed to come out with a few bites!! The next part of the track we were more at ease and could start looking round properly. I got to see a sloth hanging from the tree (they move slowly because they spend most of their energy eating leaves which take ages to process), and two different types of monkeys, one of which walked right up beside us. The spider monkeys apparently recognise the shopping bags from the village and if you have one they will steal them to get your food! Also got to see lots of leafcutter ants whose tracks go for miles and a racoon eating a crab (whose mane we found out afterwards was a crab-eating racoon!). The water was lovely and warm so we stopped and had swims along the way and back. A great walk all up although we had to hurry coming back as the skies turned black.
Next day I headed off to Tortuguero national park (tortuguero means turtle). This involved an hour long bus ride over the most potholed, gravelled road you could imagine. The bus driver called it a local massage! Most of this road was through endless banana plantations (Chiquita bananas like we get at home in NZ, as well as Dole and Del Monte). It is pretty good to work in these plantations if you are a local as they provide free housing, schools for the kids, free health care etc and the pay is also good. We got to stop at one of the processing units where they wash all the bananas and seperate them into ones that stay in the country and ones that get exported. They then get all those little stickers you see on them. I was thinking of marking one bunch to see where it ended up in the world! Outside the factory there was a guy selling coconut milk who had a pet rhino beetle on a lead which was huge!
After the bus ride I got to a river and boarded out boat into the National Park (I stayed at a lodge in the park). The boat ride took about two hours through the thick forest and we got to see loads of monkeys, a ‘jesus christ’ lizard (they walk on water), tiny bats, more sloths and huge iguanas. It was pretty amazing scenery. Tortuguero National Park is the most important caribbean breeding ground of the green sea turtle, whose holes they were. Costa Rica actually has 6 species of marine turtle (out of 8 in the world), that nest in this park. That night after dinner I got to go to the beach again to see the Green turtles (which are approximately 75cm-1m long) coming in from the sea, digging their holes as well as a close up view of them laying their eggs (the guide held back a flipper so we could see the 100′s of eggs plop out – they are apparently in a trance while this is going on so it doesn’t disturb them). The turtle then cover their eggs and dig a dummy hole so predators don’t know where the eggs are and then struggle back down the beach to the sea. It was an amazing thing to see, and certainly something we will never forget.
The next morning I boarded a slightly smaller boat for another wildflife spotting trip through the myriad of rivers. I saw several toucans but the best bit was seeing a couple of caymans (small alligators), one of which had babies. They were so tiny you could almost be convinced they were cute!! I also got to see some black river turtles (apparently the males have a more curved shell so they can mate with the females!). After arriving back at the lodge we went for one final walk in the jungle to see the tiny frogs. They are red and blue and the size of your thumb nail. We got told that if you catch one, you shake it up and down in your hands to stun it so it will sit on your hand for awhile.
Following lunch with another great dessert (the desserts at this place were very interesting to say the least – I am sure on the first night it was some raw carrot cake mixture covered in cream), I got back on the boats and the bus to go back to San Jose. While I was enjoying my exotic vacation I was also making money online and you can read my money blog for more information about investing online. On my hyip monitor you can see what high yield investment programs are paying.
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