Hotel Condovac la Costa Playa Hermosa

... and my grandmother are wonderful and have helped me out to get a new one..just need to get it down here....woo!

but anywho, i was given this last weekend as vacation time and headed to a cute, but very westernized town called Playa Hermosa...where many of the houses were mini mansions, lived in once or twice a year by american/european millionairs and their families...

luckily there is still a bit of real costa rica left in the town ...

... which is great, we were all so happy for her. Raf got a job as well earlier in the week..so seems that we have some good karma going on. But think about it about 5-7 years ago...do you think you would be in the middle Costa Rica on a laptop???? Well we are going out to dinner at Dragonfly then probably to some club...so probably a drunk update later on tonight. Here are a few pics...

... amazingly different calls. However, on the negative side: we only saw a few hummingbirds (which come to the water and sugar bowls at the entrance of the park), and one too many centipedes. The rest of the wildlife was impossible to see with the rain and the mist. Unlucky. In any case we still walked around the park for 4 hours, so good exercise was done. We decided to take a short cut back when the small mud paths started becoming mini ...

I caught a chicken bus back to Rivas. While I was waiting for an other chicken bus to take me to the border, a taxi pulls up with three people already in it. They start shouting ¨Frontera! Frontera!¨. I was about to say ¨No¨ when I remembered that I was hot and bothered and hungry as I has skipped breakfast. The idea of splitting a cab suddenly sounded good. So I jumped in. It only cost $5. In the Taxi I meet a Costa Rican couple who spoke English. Bonus! I somebody ...

... that bask on the river bank. We arrived at Hotel Las Olas in Playa Hermosa. Our room was on the second storey. It had no glass windows, just fly screens. Our balcony overlooked the surf. Within 30 minutes I was waxing my board and straight out the front for a surf. We had booked our room for 5 nights but ended up staying two weeks. I surfed most mornings early in waves ranging from 3 - 6 foot while Mandy videoed or took photos, before a mid morning breakfast of bacon, eggs ...

Bahia Salinas After crossing the border from Nicaragua to Costa Rica I headed straight to La Cruz, the first small town about 20 minutes south of the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border. La Cruz lies on top of the hillside that leads down to a huge bay on the Pacific Coast, called BAHIA SALINAS. It's a bay that no ordinary tourist puts on a list of places to see but the truth is, it's one of the most beautiful places I have been to, natural ...

... 3:30pm bus to Playa Hermosa. This playa is not for backpackers at all. I stayed in Ecotel for $15 per night. The place is so peacefull and nice. You are sorrounded by Iguanas and crabs. Lots of them. The place is right on the beach and there is a very nice ocean front seafood restaurant close by. The best seafood with the best sunset view you could possibly think of. If you have money and time, I recommend this place otherwise it is not for backpackers.

... only about 3cm long and apparently not poisonous but would numb your arm for half a day if it bit you according to the main man here at the school. I reckon that´s poisonous then! Trust me to find it!!! Toe news: The bigger hole in my toe has been sealed for 2 days now so am quite encouraged but it´s still quite long at over 1 cm so will still take a while to ´skin over´. Had another electricity cut yesterday. We get quite a few ...

... warm, and the beach sand was so fine! Most of it was black, too. very cool, my 1st black sand beach. I liked it better than others cuz the sand is so fine, it's nice. I also went scuba diving on a coral reef and saw tropical fish like in an aquarium but 100 times better. And Jellyfish! they stung us, but they could not conquer our spirit! We prevailed, and the trip was a total sucess. Thank you all very much.

The best beer in Central America comes from Nicaragua and it's called Victoria. It's a full-bodied brew with a very refreshing aftertaste. Costa Rica has a couple of decent choices in Pilsen and Imperial. These three golden thirst quenchers rank at least as high as any of the mass-produced beers of Canada. In Guatemala things change for the worse. The beer of choice there is called Gallo or "Rooster" in Spanish. It could be likened to an American beer, watery and shy on zip. When you travel ...