Tioga Hotel Puntarenas

First day of classes! July 6, 2009

The night before all the students and the professors had a big dinner at a local restaurant on the beach accompanied with the orientation earlier that day. The food was very good (muy rico) and I ate my fair share since I was practically starving from only have gallo pintos (beans, rice and spices dish..a Costa Rican staple) and eggs and a few yogurt cups earlier. Afterwards most people were going to go out ...

... are common and used whenever it takes. They say "eco-tourism" was invented in Costa Rica. I have to check this out, but I'm a little, no a  lot suspicous about this things. But let the show begin, we got plenty of time to check this out. Before we arrive, we met a bunch of howler monkeys. They're wonderful. CR has 4 kind of monkeys and we sincerely hope we will be able to spot all of them.00 It is hot, but not that hot. We (6 co travellers and our guide Annemieke and her "novio" Lenin ...

... that can be very difficult, but to sit on the deck and hear the birds talking, the monkey's howling and the breeze blowing through the trees is sooooo relaxing. If you're a 5-Star hotel type person who likes to be catered and doesn't want to "rough it", the Nicoya Penninsula is probably not for you. On the way to the property, Alex subtley asked us why we didn't rent a car. Since ...

... det med at de fleste af os sov da klokken var 19 :) I går var det den 1. December og jeg havde lyst til at lave lidt julehygge. Så jeg snakkede med et par piger om, at det kunne være hyggeligt at lave risengrød og spise sammen. Det udviklede sig til at vi spurgte en masse af de andre om de ville spise med - så vi lavede risengrød, med kanel, sukker og smør til 25 personer. Det var en rigtig god aften, og jeg tror alle kom en lille smule i julestemning. Den 1 ...

... after this dive so thought he would sit the next one out - big mistake! After lunch and our dive briefing was to the 5 of us as the 3 others had also decided to take the afternoon off. So I and my 4 Mexican muchachoes namely, Jorge, Alejandro, Fernando and Alberto with Eduardo the Columbian guiding us once again. We were told that 'Lobster Ridge' was to be our dive site, well as soon as I heard the word lobster mentioned I thought that sounds like a really **** site to go ...

... at my hostel in the morning, taken to a jungle river (near Turrialba) and dropped off at my hostel in San Jose in time for dinner. I'd never done rafting before, and it was a memorable end to an amazing trip. Now I'm back in cold, snowy Ontario. It's great to be home, but I will miss seeing new and beautiful things every day and making friends with people from around the world. I feel very lucky to have had such a great experience.

... from the hanging vines. The trees look furry. Usually it´s covered in a cloud, but we were lucky and it was a beautiful sunny day. We didn´t see many animals - a few birds, a squirrel, and a crab, but the plants were amazing. We also hiked up to a tower where there was a view of the Arenal volcano. Back in town we went to check out the frog pond, where there were something like 30 species of frogs on display (live in terrariums). The evening is the best time so go ...

... room, (picture attached) and decided not to wait anymore. I went for a walk on the beach and met a dad and daughter duo, Big Mike and Alison. They invited me to have a beer and we chatted about the states and Costa Rica. Alsion is a teacher in North Carolina and therefore we had a lot to talk about. After dinner, I tried the apt number again and finally Karie answered. Apparently they had called after I left to catch the ferry and Martin (our maintenance ...

... really hard to take a picture. The hardest part was actually hiking back up the hill after zip-lining down. Apparently, on the full-day trip, you ride on horseback up the mountain, then zip-line back down. The half-day is $45 and the full day is $75, not including the $10 bus fee. The half-day did not include lunch, we were back at the hotel by 12:30 (we left at 8am). We also stopped to learn about some trees and sample the fruit from a mandarin ...

... 70ft - but it don't arf wobble! During the 1.5 hour walk I learned an unimaginable amount of stuff - and missed as much again, usually because I was out of earshot as I'd stopped to take photos. There is some stuff that I can remember though... Now, here's a termite nest. They always build in trees as a means of avoiding anteaters and other things that like termite-tasting. However, that's not enough as ...