Hotel Internacional JM Alajuela

We leave Sarapiqui in the morning. Louise thinks a very last time of her Chili beautiful raft guide and off we go to Nicaragua. We have planned to enter Nicaraqua throught the water. That means that we have to drive to the little town Los Chiles. Lenin will take our van back to San Jose.

The road to Los Chiles is interesting but not superb. We see a lot of fruit factories. Del MOnte is surely present in Costa Rica. Although CR ...

... merkt, dass der Flug Verspaetung hat. Und einem dann, im Flugzeug vertickt wird, dass es jetzt laenger dauert weil wir Flugzeug 18 auf der Startbahn sind... Zum Glueck war ich dann auch so muede, dass ich vom Flug nichts mitbekommen habe ausser das Essen... Komisch ist auch, dass Passkontrolle und Zoll in Amerika so ewig dauern. In Costa Rica ist das ne Sache von 10min (mit Schlangestehen) http://www ...

... we went out for drinks with the boys, Diego and Alfredo. I had an amazing time once again with them, they are quite incredible people with such passion and positive energy it rubbed off on me, they are inspirational. They know what they want from life and have the right values as well as going for it. Diego is studying Classical Philosophy whilst Alfredo is studying Rural Tourism, it was a shame that we were leaving la fortuna the next day.

... Costa Rican Merlot, watching gas flares, fiery spumes, boulders the size of pickups being ejected, and lava flows. http://www.arenal.net/cabinas-el-castil lo.htm Well, it was a great fantasy. After checking into our cabin, we took a steep walk along the road above the town. Costa Rica can claim to possess a huge variety of butterflies and a hundred varieties of snakes. According to the signs we had the opportunity to visit a butterfly museum and a serpent garden ...

So, after a week or more in the middle of nowhere, we´re back in somehwere you could call a town. We´ve been into the rainforest, on boats in crocodile and shark infested waters and conquered a castle. The last place that had a cash machine is a ...

It's SO much cooler crossing a border by riverboat than by bus. I don't know why, it just is. San Carlos takes a lot of rap in all the different guidebooks, but I like it. There are lots of mosquitos and you have a feeling of being stranded in the middle of nowhere. There are boats out of there just twice a week (we missed ours by half an hour!) and the bus ride out of there is...well, you'll see....

Crossing from Costa Rica to Nicaragua via Los Chiles is relatively simple: - stamp passport (no cues) at Los Chiles - pay exit tax of $1 US - get on the 12pm boat (panga) for Colones 5,000 ($10 per person) During these procedures we managed to spend up to the last Costa Rican Colon as we didn´t want to take small change over the border. Luckily we had some dollars for the tax left which we didnt know about. We even tried to take some dollars out of ...

Just a short note to upload some pictures and to say we decided to move on to Nicaragua. It is raining lightly in Costa Rica today but it will get worse so we dont want to risk getting stuck in Los Chiles where there is nothing to do. The trip to the national park of Caño Negro is exclusively on a motor boat ($40 for 2 people for 3 hours) which means we would hardly see any ...

Ooops...it looks like we are moving into "low technology" zones again. We have arrived at Los Chiles which is a small town on the frontier with Nicaragua. We have not been able to upload the photographs yet. There is hardly anything here (apart from - strangely - about 8 supermarkets for a town that seems to have 1,000 inhabitants). It is the jumping point to Nicaragua and also where we can access the National Park of Caño Negro. We have decided ...

... do terminal Coca Cola, almoço pela zona (não foi grande a experiência comer de comida típica da Nicarágua) e apanhámos o bus vermelho Tuasa para Alajuela. Nota: devem notar vocês... então não viram San José? Na realidade, ao todo estivémos menos de 3 horas, todas as pessoas que encontrámos diziam que não valia a pena e o que vimos das entradas e saidas de autocarro, da cidade e das envolventes dos terminais do Caribe, São Carlos e Coca Cola, parece confirmar a teoria...