International Travel Advisory
I had wanted to post about my recent trip to Bermuda, thinking that I always post when I take a big trip somewhere special.
But then I realized that I completely missed my chance to post about my trip to Costa Rica. This was back in October 2016, soooo yeah I really missed that boat. But I'm determined to write about it. If only so that I can maybe post like 3 times this year and really feel accomplished. (Even though I posted literally 0 times in the last 11.5 months.) Well, I'm gonna make up for that now.
So back in August 2016, my good friend Charles informed me that he was taking a trip to Costa Rica with our other high school friend Chris, and Chris' wife Em. I said "Aww that sounds awesome, I wish I could go." Charles said "You should come!" The trip was two months away and I'm usually not THAT spontaneous, but I went over the details with Mike and he thought I should go. My friend Jenn of Ben n Jenn was staying over at the time, and she told me it would be a great experience I shouldn't pass up. So that was that.
Wednesday, September 28th:
I worked most of a day and then met up with Charles at the Rochester airport, where I dropped off my car for the return trip. I was traveling TO Costa Rica with my friends, but traveling back a bit early because at that point I didn't have any vacation days at work. Then we hopped into Charles' car and took a road trip to Chris and Em's place in DC. The car trip was fun, since Charles and I never seem to run out of things to talk about, plus hearing him sing songs at the top of his lungs is always amusing.
We got to Chris' place around midnight, and needed to be up at about 3am for our flight, so I ended up getting roughly 2 hours of sleep that night made worse by me trying to sleep while Charles was watching a baseball game next to me. Then we all got up and got on our super cheap Spirit flight (about 120 dollars) to Costa Rica by way of Florida!
Thursday, September 29th:
We arrive around 11am, exhausted. I slept a little bit on the flight, but the flight to Florida was very short and the flight to San Jose, Costa Rica wasn't much longer. But after arriving in San Jose, we immediately hopped onto a bus to Cahuita, where our bungalow was. Charles had been to Costa Rica twice before, and had stayed in Cahuita previously, so we deferred to him for bus knowledge. That bus trip was a good 5 hours, so I got some bumpy bus sleep in, although I stayed awake a bit to see the beautiful scenery along the way.
We arrived in Cahuita around dinner time. It is a cute little town on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. Very small, you can walk through the whole town no problem. The main road is parallel to the ocean, and you can pop off basically at any point to go for a quick swim (and yes, I did that). I'm not sure why, but when we were there, I saw very few other tourists. Maybe because San Jose is the only main airport and Cahuita is not close, so most tourists go elsewhere? Either way, it felt like we had just moved to a little Spanish/Caribbean village and it was great. Also, random beach horses are great.
We checked in to our "hotel": a series of small houses surrounded by wildlife, with a communal outside breakfast nook for coffee and wifi access. Charles and I shared a room with bunk beds and a single bed (he took the bunk), and Chris and Em took the main bedroom with the large bed. There was a living room and a kitchen area, and a little outdoor porch with a hammock. It was great, especially for like 50 dollars a night. Although not being able to flush ANY toilet paper can get weird. I'm glad we were out of that bathroom after 3 nights.
We dropped our stuff off and then headed out to find dinner. There was nobody out, so we ended up at this place where a friendly guy named Walter cooked fish for us and told us about the local lingo. He kept saying "Boombata" and we'd have to say "Pata boom boom!" It was probably just a made up joke he plays on tourists, but it was still fun.
The food was great, and afterwards we kinda wandered a bit, but we were all exhausted so we went to bed early. I had tiny lizards on my walls and ceiling to keep me company during the night.
Friday, September 30th:
My only goal on this vacation was to snorkel. I had done it in the Bahamas (another international trip I never wrote about, although we spent all of about 8 hours on international land because it was a Cruise), and it was one of the coolest things I'd ever done in my life. So now I'm determined to snorkel whenever I have the chance. The others were on board, so we headed off to the local tourism office to ask about booking that. The guy told us the waters were too choppy and murky today, but we could try back tomorrow. Ok fine.
After that we decided to hike in the local park along the edge of town. We had heard there were sloths, monkeys, lizards, and lots of fun birds for Chris to look for (he's a birder). It was a gorgeous hike. We felt like we were in the jungle, or maybe in Jurassic Park (they filmed that movie in Costa Rica), and there were some breaks in the foliage where you could pop off to the ocean, or at least see it, and it was amazing.
I was trying like crazy to see a sloth in the wild that day, but no luck. They barely move and they live up high in the trees, so you have to have great observational skills to get a glimpse of one. And my observational skills are sorely lacking. However, we did get to see a Basilisk lizard, some scary-ass spiders, and a couple Capuchins playing around in front of us! We also heard Howler monkeys in the distance. Those things sound like lions, it's nuts.
After our morning hike, we took about an hour bus ride to the famous Sloth Sanctuary. A guy who sounds American was running the show that day, and it turns out his grandparents started the Sanctuary. He took us around to see what they do for the sloths, like how they help them when they fall out of trees or are struck by electric wires. We saw some babies, and learned the differences between two-toed and three-toed. They were all adorable.
The Sloth Sanctuary also offers riverboat trips to paying customers, so we got on a little rowboat with a tour guide. I was a little afraid of crocodiles, but we didn't end up seeing any animals at all. Maybe because they do these tours so often that the wildlife is mostly scared away. We did see some cool banana trees and other plant life I would never see otherwise, but it started pretty heavily raining so we got outta there and back on land.
We took the bus back to Cahuita for dinner, and ate at this little Caribbean place run by a crabby lady. We went there so Charles could get jerk chicken, but he decided to forgo his favorite dish so he and Chris could share a large meal. I got some random dish where I didn't know half the ingredients, and then became convinced I was eating brains and got weirded out, but I looked up the strange ingredients later and it was just beef with vegetables I'd never seen before. Phew.
On our way home a couple street dogs kept hanging out with us, which we thought was cute until one followed us all the way back to our bungalow. He was super cute but literally waited outside our door until morning. The owners of the place weren't too happy that he spent the night, as their own dog was supposed to be the only dog on premises. But we didn't know how to get rid of the dog, until he followed us into town and then found another dog and trotted off. Phew again.
Saturday, October 1st:
I woke up to find out that one of my friends had spotted a blue dart frog on our lawn. I scrambled outside and it was still there! I obviously didn't touch it, but the blue was an amazing color to see in the wild.
After that we again went to the tourism office to schedule a snorkel adventure. Again we were told that it was too murky and choppy. Arg. We didn't have another plan, but Charles really wanted to go to Panama just to go to Panama, so we hopped on another bus and got off at the end of Costa Rica.
I must've forgotten that border towns are usually pretty economically difficult places (I'd been to Nogales once), because as we walked over the bridge into Panama, it was very run down and kind of dangerous-seeming. Kids were running all over asking for money, and there were barely any places to eat and only a few markets. If we tried to go into a store, they told us they needed to take our backpacks, so we didn't really do anything.
Em ended up being very creeped out, so we only spent about an hour in Panama before deciding to head back. But first I needed the bathroom. That proved to be more difficult than normal. Luckily I know passable Spanish, so I told a guy what I needed and followed him further than I would have hoped along town, behind a ...schoolhouse? into an outhouse, where I paid another guy the equivalent of a dollar to use the outhouse. Eesh.
On our way back out of town we got stopped by border police. We got called into an office and I tried to communicate to them with limited results. What we found out after all the confusion was that we had somehow neglected to get our passports stamped when we came into the country, so they were wondering how we got in. Umm it seems pretty easy to wander into Panama, but okay whatever. We managed to make out that they will let us out of the country no problem, but we had to leave IMMEDIATELY (which we were doing anyway) and we weren't getting a stamp. So it was basically like we were never there and then kicked out. Alright Panama, I'd had enough of your country after an hour anyway.
We got back into Costa Rica and took the bus to Puerto Viejo, a touristy spot not far from Cahuita. The ocean was beautiful there, and it reminded me of Myrtle Beach. Lots of partiers and shops littered the area. We ate at a spot on the beach and then bought some souvenirs from a market. Then Charles and I went swimming while Chris and Em waited on the beach.
We went back to Cahuita for a late dinner at a dead restaurant, where we laughed about Em (who is from Hungary) attempting to say the word "comb". "Come! Like you put in your hair! Come!" And then bought some liquor in an attempt to drink and have fun, since we were finally over our sleep deprivation. Welp, Em passed out early anyway and Chris and Charles just wanted to watch baseball, the Simpsons, and Sharknado 3 on tv. I ended up in the hammock with headphones on. So our partying definitely left something to be desired, but oh well.
Sunday, October 2nd:
This was our last day in Cahuita. The other guys were spending one night in San Jose to do some things around there, and I needed to be home on Monday, so I was leaving around 3am that night. We tried one more time to go snorkeling, but this time we heard that there was a hurricane in some nearby country (Costa Rica doesn't get hurricanes) and that's what was making the water so choppy over here. We didn't have any other plans and had to leave by mid-day, so Em and I went swimming while the guys took another hike in the park.
The waves were huge from the distant hurricane, so Em and I had a lot of fun just jumping into them and letting them smash us around. We were in the water for about an hour. We went back to town to wait for the guys, and when they came out of the park they told us they saw a sloth. We got jealous and said that we had to go check it out. So they told us roughly where it was, and we went to look. We didn't see the sloth, but we did see a beautiful colorful Toucan. Chris had been looking for one on this trip and hadn't seen one, and we saw it without him. So the guys saw the sloth and we saw the Toucan; I guess it was sort of even?
We got all of our belongings together and grabbed a bus back to San Jose. Charles had gotten us a great deal on a fancy hotel, so we wandered around the "big city" until we found some food, and then went back to the hotel to chill in the hot tub and pool area. At this point Chris was barely speaking to anyone, and Charles wandered off by himself. Em and I watched an old home video of me, Chris, and Charles at a party, and the guys kept to themselves. I found out later that Chris was upset because the excursion he had wanted to do the next day got cancelled last minute. Everyone was in such a weird mood that I didn't mind leaving the trip early that night.
I got a couple hours of sleep again and then took a taxi to the airport. I flew back to the Rochester airport all by myself, unless you count the bottle of special rum I got for Mike, and I felt proud that I am able to travel internationally by myself.
Wow, I remembered most of that with no photo prompting. Pretty good for a trip from almost 2 years ago.
Next post: Bermuda! Stay tuned.
But then I realized that I completely missed my chance to post about my trip to Costa Rica. This was back in October 2016, soooo yeah I really missed that boat. But I'm determined to write about it. If only so that I can maybe post like 3 times this year and really feel accomplished. (Even though I posted literally 0 times in the last 11.5 months.) Well, I'm gonna make up for that now.
So back in August 2016, my good friend Charles informed me that he was taking a trip to Costa Rica with our other high school friend Chris, and Chris' wife Em. I said "Aww that sounds awesome, I wish I could go." Charles said "You should come!" The trip was two months away and I'm usually not THAT spontaneous, but I went over the details with Mike and he thought I should go. My friend Jenn of Ben n Jenn was staying over at the time, and she told me it would be a great experience I shouldn't pass up. So that was that.
Wednesday, September 28th:
I worked most of a day and then met up with Charles at the Rochester airport, where I dropped off my car for the return trip. I was traveling TO Costa Rica with my friends, but traveling back a bit early because at that point I didn't have any vacation days at work. Then we hopped into Charles' car and took a road trip to Chris and Em's place in DC. The car trip was fun, since Charles and I never seem to run out of things to talk about, plus hearing him sing songs at the top of his lungs is always amusing.
We got to Chris' place around midnight, and needed to be up at about 3am for our flight, so I ended up getting roughly 2 hours of sleep that night made worse by me trying to sleep while Charles was watching a baseball game next to me. Then we all got up and got on our super cheap Spirit flight (about 120 dollars) to Costa Rica by way of Florida!
Thursday, September 29th:
We arrive around 11am, exhausted. I slept a little bit on the flight, but the flight to Florida was very short and the flight to San Jose, Costa Rica wasn't much longer. But after arriving in San Jose, we immediately hopped onto a bus to Cahuita, where our bungalow was. Charles had been to Costa Rica twice before, and had stayed in Cahuita previously, so we deferred to him for bus knowledge. That bus trip was a good 5 hours, so I got some bumpy bus sleep in, although I stayed awake a bit to see the beautiful scenery along the way.
 |
| My favorite part of this is the guy on the right. |
We arrived in Cahuita around dinner time. It is a cute little town on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. Very small, you can walk through the whole town no problem. The main road is parallel to the ocean, and you can pop off basically at any point to go for a quick swim (and yes, I did that). I'm not sure why, but when we were there, I saw very few other tourists. Maybe because San Jose is the only main airport and Cahuita is not close, so most tourists go elsewhere? Either way, it felt like we had just moved to a little Spanish/Caribbean village and it was great. Also, random beach horses are great.
We checked in to our "hotel": a series of small houses surrounded by wildlife, with a communal outside breakfast nook for coffee and wifi access. Charles and I shared a room with bunk beds and a single bed (he took the bunk), and Chris and Em took the main bedroom with the large bed. There was a living room and a kitchen area, and a little outdoor porch with a hammock. It was great, especially for like 50 dollars a night. Although not being able to flush ANY toilet paper can get weird. I'm glad we were out of that bathroom after 3 nights.
We dropped our stuff off and then headed out to find dinner. There was nobody out, so we ended up at this place where a friendly guy named Walter cooked fish for us and told us about the local lingo. He kept saying "Boombata" and we'd have to say "Pata boom boom!" It was probably just a made up joke he plays on tourists, but it was still fun.
The food was great, and afterwards we kinda wandered a bit, but we were all exhausted so we went to bed early. I had tiny lizards on my walls and ceiling to keep me company during the night.
Friday, September 30th:
My only goal on this vacation was to snorkel. I had done it in the Bahamas (another international trip I never wrote about, although we spent all of about 8 hours on international land because it was a Cruise), and it was one of the coolest things I'd ever done in my life. So now I'm determined to snorkel whenever I have the chance. The others were on board, so we headed off to the local tourism office to ask about booking that. The guy told us the waters were too choppy and murky today, but we could try back tomorrow. Ok fine.
After that we decided to hike in the local park along the edge of town. We had heard there were sloths, monkeys, lizards, and lots of fun birds for Chris to look for (he's a birder). It was a gorgeous hike. We felt like we were in the jungle, or maybe in Jurassic Park (they filmed that movie in Costa Rica), and there were some breaks in the foliage where you could pop off to the ocean, or at least see it, and it was amazing.
I was trying like crazy to see a sloth in the wild that day, but no luck. They barely move and they live up high in the trees, so you have to have great observational skills to get a glimpse of one. And my observational skills are sorely lacking. However, we did get to see a Basilisk lizard, some scary-ass spiders, and a couple Capuchins playing around in front of us! We also heard Howler monkeys in the distance. Those things sound like lions, it's nuts.
 |
| This guy can run on top of water. |
After our morning hike, we took about an hour bus ride to the famous Sloth Sanctuary. A guy who sounds American was running the show that day, and it turns out his grandparents started the Sanctuary. He took us around to see what they do for the sloths, like how they help them when they fall out of trees or are struck by electric wires. We saw some babies, and learned the differences between two-toed and three-toed. They were all adorable.
 |
| Baby sloth! |
The Sloth Sanctuary also offers riverboat trips to paying customers, so we got on a little rowboat with a tour guide. I was a little afraid of crocodiles, but we didn't end up seeing any animals at all. Maybe because they do these tours so often that the wildlife is mostly scared away. We did see some cool banana trees and other plant life I would never see otherwise, but it started pretty heavily raining so we got outta there and back on land.
We took the bus back to Cahuita for dinner, and ate at this little Caribbean place run by a crabby lady. We went there so Charles could get jerk chicken, but he decided to forgo his favorite dish so he and Chris could share a large meal. I got some random dish where I didn't know half the ingredients, and then became convinced I was eating brains and got weirded out, but I looked up the strange ingredients later and it was just beef with vegetables I'd never seen before. Phew.
 |
| Brain Food |
On our way home a couple street dogs kept hanging out with us, which we thought was cute until one followed us all the way back to our bungalow. He was super cute but literally waited outside our door until morning. The owners of the place weren't too happy that he spent the night, as their own dog was supposed to be the only dog on premises. But we didn't know how to get rid of the dog, until he followed us into town and then found another dog and trotted off. Phew again.
 |
| The minute we opened the door in the morning... |
I woke up to find out that one of my friends had spotted a blue dart frog on our lawn. I scrambled outside and it was still there! I obviously didn't touch it, but the blue was an amazing color to see in the wild.
After that we again went to the tourism office to schedule a snorkel adventure. Again we were told that it was too murky and choppy. Arg. We didn't have another plan, but Charles really wanted to go to Panama just to go to Panama, so we hopped on another bus and got off at the end of Costa Rica.
I must've forgotten that border towns are usually pretty economically difficult places (I'd been to Nogales once), because as we walked over the bridge into Panama, it was very run down and kind of dangerous-seeming. Kids were running all over asking for money, and there were barely any places to eat and only a few markets. If we tried to go into a store, they told us they needed to take our backpacks, so we didn't really do anything.
 |
| More like "Adios Panama" |
Em ended up being very creeped out, so we only spent about an hour in Panama before deciding to head back. But first I needed the bathroom. That proved to be more difficult than normal. Luckily I know passable Spanish, so I told a guy what I needed and followed him further than I would have hoped along town, behind a ...schoolhouse? into an outhouse, where I paid another guy the equivalent of a dollar to use the outhouse. Eesh.
On our way back out of town we got stopped by border police. We got called into an office and I tried to communicate to them with limited results. What we found out after all the confusion was that we had somehow neglected to get our passports stamped when we came into the country, so they were wondering how we got in. Umm it seems pretty easy to wander into Panama, but okay whatever. We managed to make out that they will let us out of the country no problem, but we had to leave IMMEDIATELY (which we were doing anyway) and we weren't getting a stamp. So it was basically like we were never there and then kicked out. Alright Panama, I'd had enough of your country after an hour anyway.
We got back into Costa Rica and took the bus to Puerto Viejo, a touristy spot not far from Cahuita. The ocean was beautiful there, and it reminded me of Myrtle Beach. Lots of partiers and shops littered the area. We ate at a spot on the beach and then bought some souvenirs from a market. Then Charles and I went swimming while Chris and Em waited on the beach.
We went back to Cahuita for a late dinner at a dead restaurant, where we laughed about Em (who is from Hungary) attempting to say the word "comb". "Come! Like you put in your hair! Come!" And then bought some liquor in an attempt to drink and have fun, since we were finally over our sleep deprivation. Welp, Em passed out early anyway and Chris and Charles just wanted to watch baseball, the Simpsons, and Sharknado 3 on tv. I ended up in the hammock with headphones on. So our partying definitely left something to be desired, but oh well.
Sunday, October 2nd:
This was our last day in Cahuita. The other guys were spending one night in San Jose to do some things around there, and I needed to be home on Monday, so I was leaving around 3am that night. We tried one more time to go snorkeling, but this time we heard that there was a hurricane in some nearby country (Costa Rica doesn't get hurricanes) and that's what was making the water so choppy over here. We didn't have any other plans and had to leave by mid-day, so Em and I went swimming while the guys took another hike in the park.
The waves were huge from the distant hurricane, so Em and I had a lot of fun just jumping into them and letting them smash us around. We were in the water for about an hour. We went back to town to wait for the guys, and when they came out of the park they told us they saw a sloth. We got jealous and said that we had to go check it out. So they told us roughly where it was, and we went to look. We didn't see the sloth, but we did see a beautiful colorful Toucan. Chris had been looking for one on this trip and hadn't seen one, and we saw it without him. So the guys saw the sloth and we saw the Toucan; I guess it was sort of even?
We got all of our belongings together and grabbed a bus back to San Jose. Charles had gotten us a great deal on a fancy hotel, so we wandered around the "big city" until we found some food, and then went back to the hotel to chill in the hot tub and pool area. At this point Chris was barely speaking to anyone, and Charles wandered off by himself. Em and I watched an old home video of me, Chris, and Charles at a party, and the guys kept to themselves. I found out later that Chris was upset because the excursion he had wanted to do the next day got cancelled last minute. Everyone was in such a weird mood that I didn't mind leaving the trip early that night.
I got a couple hours of sleep again and then took a taxi to the airport. I flew back to the Rochester airport all by myself, unless you count the bottle of special rum I got for Mike, and I felt proud that I am able to travel internationally by myself.
Wow, I remembered most of that with no photo prompting. Pretty good for a trip from almost 2 years ago.
Next post: Bermuda! Stay tuned.
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