Blog entry, December 29th 2003
Trip Start
Oct 17, 2003
1
4
34
Trip End
May 22, 2004
San Jose,
Province of San Jose,
Costa Rica
Monday, December 29, 2003
Well, after being in Flamingo I spent four weeks in Playa Samara, which is also on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. It was quite a bit different though, we partied a whole lot more (about 6 out of every 7 nights!) than in Flamingo and, again, I met some very nice people from all over the world. The highlights were watching NFL a whole Sunday afternoon (12pm til 11pm...), surfing a couple of times (including getting smashed into the ground and getting a bloody face as a consequence...), undertaking a kayaking trip to the reef close by (to snorkel and eat pineapple), skipping school for one week (the last one, couldn´t be bothered to learn all those useless tenses nomore...) and the many parties and graduations with my friends! Our favourite place was called "Las Olas" (no doubt about what the name of that bar stands for...) and they had pool and foosball tables to use for free. Don´t think my pool (or my foosball) skills improved, the pockets are still to small and the ball never does what I want it to do...
For Christmas I was supposed to go to Bocas del Toro, Panama, and we almost made it there too. While we (my friends Heidi, Kristin, Kellie and me) were waiting for the bus to Panama at the station in San Jose, some asshole played a trick on us and stole Kellie´s backpack with all her money, airplane tickets, credit cards and passport in it! After looking for a police station with her for about one hour, I decided to stay with her to help organize the stuff lost. Since it was Saturday we had to wait until Monday to be able to get things done. That was ok, it gave us time to come up with a game plan and eventually it only took us two days to set her up once again. Besides that she´s a British citizen now for the next ten years (the Aussies don´t have an embassy in CR, but thanks to the Commonwealth she still got a passport...), everything is ok and we finally changed the scenery on the 24th.
Thus we´ve been spending the past six days in Puerto Viejo, which is on the Caribbean coast in the Northeast of Costa Rica. It´s a great place, although a bit touristy, but there are numerous beautiful beaches close by and we´ve explored almost all of them by bike. The athmosphere is also different, you´d think you´d be in Jamaica or something, since the population is mainly of black Jamaican descent. They also speak some sort of English dialect similar to Patois (and they listen to Bob Marley, while smoking huge blunts...). We were also blessed by an earthquake the other day, epicenter in Panama with a 6.1 on the Richter scale. That was quite weird, waking up to your bed rocking back and forth while people outside are screaming "Earthquake, Earthquake!!"...
Good, that´s about all the exciting news from my side for the moment. The current plans are to dislocate to Montezuma, Pacific coast, tomorrow (30th) morning for about a week or so. Depending on their answer, I might travel in Mexico and Guatemala with the Norwegian ladies from mid-January to mid-February. That plan would leave one open week in January, for which I haven´t yet decided my destination.
Again, I´d like to wish everyone a happy New Year 2004. If you´re still looking for a New Year´s resolution, I´d recommend planning a trip to some nice place for a period of at least two months! Everybody´s got the right to take time off and relax, you´ll never forget an experience like this!! Just do it!
