There’s A LOT to do in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Especially if you’ve got the cash. You can do a canopy tour, rappel waterfalls, hike up mountains, swim beneath waterfalls, ride horses, tour coffee and sugar cane farms, wander (and wonder) through cloud forests, go bird watching (or sloth watching or monkey watching) by day or by night, check out a cheese factory, or visit the insect house, the frog house, the butterfly house, the snake house, or the orchid house.

To give you an idea of the per person costs… park admissions for the reserves cost between $15-18 USD, cheese tours and animal houses were about $10 each, canopy tours were in the $30-50 range, coffee tours and bird watching were about $35-40.

We, on the other hand, don’t have a lot of cash. Luckily, we found a hostel in Santa Elena (which is also called, Monteverde) for only $7 USD per person, breakfast included – which is cheap by Costa Rican standards. Mom and Terry stayed just up the street from us, and we all got together to experience some of what the area had to offer through a few guided tours, despite the cold (the elevation of Monteverde is such that it is significantly colder than other areas of the country… Mike and I are used to 30°C, so temperatures in the low 20’s are quite chilly for us).

In addition to what we did, Mom and Terry did an early morning bird watching tour and an afternoon coffee tour (both of which they really enjoyed).

Heads up, the photos with a big play button in the middle of them are actually movies!  Click to enjoy.

Canopy Tour

Costa Rica is world famous for its ziplines and Monteverde is where it all got started. So not doing a canopy tour was not an option. We booked our tour with a company called Aventura. It cost $35 USD per person and included transportation to and from our hotel, 16 platforms including a Superman line, a 15 m rappel, and a Tarzan swing. With a bit of coaxing, even my mom joined in the fun. The first few lines were to practice braking (we had to brake ourselves by pressing down on the line with our thick leather fortified gloves) and then it was smooth sailing from there. The guides were great, and helped out anyone having troubles. The views were spectacular!

Ziplining

Mom had a little trouble with the braking

The rappel

View from one of the platforms

Mike on the Superman line

My graceful Superman entry

Terry on the Tarzan Swing

 

Night Walking Tour

A lot of the wildilfe in Monteverde is nocturnal, so a night tour just seemed to make sense. We paid $20 USD per person for a tour of Finca Santa Maria, which included transportation, lights, a guide, and a two and a half hour walk through the forest. I must admit, I was a little skeptical about whether the tour would be worth its pricetag, but I was happy to see my doubts fade away. The tour was easy walking and our eagle-eyed guide spotted an owl, a pit viper, a huge tarantula, fireflies, click beetles, may beetles, a huge stick bug, leafcutter ants, tink frogs, a couple of two-toed sloths, a couple of coatimundis, and an armadillo. I think I was most blown away by the armadillo, but the whole experience was really interesting and informative.

Click Beetle

Can you spot the huge stick bug?

Coatimundi

Walking to the Middle of Nowhere

The afternoon of the night tour, Mike and I set out to find the Monteverde Cloud reserve. We figured we could just walk there (or at least part of the way there) and see how pretty of a walk it would be. We set off with the little map we picked up at our hostel. Unfortunately we misread where the bus stop was and headed off in the completely wrong direction.  Luckily for us, the walk had some of the most beautiful vistas we saw while we were there.

Walking through the Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde

After our failed attempt the day before, Mike and I set out for the Monteverde Cloud Reserve once again. This time, we planned to take a bus there to save our energy for hiking the trails in the reserve. Despite the fact that all the schedules said there was no 7:00 am bus running on Sundays, the seemingly knowledgeable young man at our hostel assured us that there would indeed be a bus. As it turns out, he was wrong and we ended up sharing a cab to the reserve with another traveller for $3 USD per person (instead of the $1.25 USD pp the bus should have cost).

The entrance fee to the reserve was a hefty $18 USD pp. You could hire a guide for another $15 pp, but we opted to explore on our own. The reserve’s workers were very helpful, providing a map of the trails, and a suggested route for the time we planned to spend there.

We spent most of the day wandering the trails (we had the place nearly to ourselves it seemed) and covered nearly every path in the park (about 14 km or so). We brought a picnic lunch of crackers, cheese (we actually found decent cheese made at the Monteverde cheese factory just outside Santa Elena), and salchichon (garlic sausage).

At about 2:00pm, we were ready to head home. There were still no buses running and we couldn’t find anyone else to share a cab with. We decided to walk the 7 km back to Santa Elena, stopping at the cheese factory for some homemade ice cream. We didn’t really see much wildlife (one rodent in the reserve and a lot of insects), but the cloud forest was so impressive we didn’t leave disappointed.

Here’s a sign to get your blood boiling

For those lacking in Spanish language skills, it says “For sale: Turtle Eggs in tomato sauce and more”

Appalling. That photo was taken in Playas del Coco, Costa Rica. The sign was located on the main street in front of a small stand where they also sold ceviches. Every time I walked b , I just couldn’t believe they had such a bold sign right out in the open. It just seemed so wrong.

This is more they type of sign I was expecting to see

Again for those lacking in Spanish it says, “My eggs are not the solution”

I’m not totally naive – I knew that there was a black market for turtle eggs, just as there’s a black market for everything that’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Including Viagra. I just didn’t expect to see it so blatantly advertised.

Then a funny thing happened. I sat down to write a post damning all of Costa Rica for their trade in turtle eggs, and I came across this article: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/costa-rica-turtle-eggs.shtml

Turns out harvesting turtle eggs isn’t all bad

To sum it up:

• Turtle eggs are legally harvested on the Ostional beach in Costa Rica as a conservation project which began in 1983
• The Olive Ridley Turtle lays eggs on this beach in groups as large as 300,000 turtles at one time (depending on the time of year)
• The turtles that arrive to the beach later on dig up and smash the eggs that were laid by the early arrivals
• All those smashed eggs breed fungus and bacteria which greatly reduce the amount of hatched turtles
• Up to 1% of the early arrival eggs are harvested
• Harvested eggs are legally sold at regulated prices below that of a chicken egg to discourage poaching
• This legal harvesting has been shown to increase the overall hatch rate
• A formal co-management model between the University of Costa Rica, a community organization called ADIO, and the Ministry of Natural Resources (MINAET) in Costa Rica, was installed to regulate the program. They meet every 5 years to review the program.

Of course this conservation project also has its critics. One of the biggest criticisms being that the supply chain is poorly controlled, and these legally harvested turtle eggs could present a cover for poachers to harvest and sell eggs illegally.

Things aren’t always so black and white. What they’re doing seems to be working, and I guess that’s a good thing. Personally though, I’m not about to run out and eat turtle eggs. They fall into that too darn cute to eat category.

Mike and I consider ourselves to be fairly intelligent human beings.  But we’ve recently come to the realization that we’ve got nothing on the average Central American petty thief.

If you recall, back in September our camera was pickpocketed in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.  It didn’t matter that we were told not to take anything with us to the fair except for the money we absolutely needed to get through the day.  More specifically, we were told that the money we take should be stuffed into my bra, not left in a pocket.  Being the smart ones that we are, we ignored that bit of advice,  figuring that the camera would be fine in a zippered front pants pocket.  We were wrong.  Some clever fingersmith outsmarted us and got a camera out of the deal.  Lesson learned.  Right?  Well… not quite.

Mike and I were relaxing at the hotel room we shared with my Mom and Terry in Playa del Coco, Costa Rica when there was a knock at the door.  There stood Mom and Terry in only their bathing suits – no shirts, no shoes.  “We were robbed!” my mom explained.    Mom and Terry had left their Merrell sandals, Terry’s shirt, and Mom’s sarong that she purchased in Cozumel earlier this trip sitting on the beach and went for a walk.  A 45 minute walk.  They thought it would be fine.  And, like us with our camera, they were wrong.  You see, every beach we’ve been to in Central America we’ve been given the “watch your stuff” warning.    In fact, at most beaches, we’ve been given the “don’t even take a bag to the beach” warning.  Guess those people giving the advice know what they’re talking about.  Now the lesson should be learned.  But….

A mere four days after the beach incident, we were all on a chicken bus from Monteverde to Puntarenas, en-route to Jaco, Costa Rica.  I’d be lying if I said that we hadn’t been been told on several occasions to never put anything in the overhead compartment of a bus.  Can you guess where this is going?   Since leaving Utila, we were carrying two extra bags that we received as part of our divemaster course.  One was full of food (so wasn’t really an extra bag, as we often carry a food bag with us).  The other was full of divemaster books, slates, and underwater camera enclosure weights that we didn’t really need but figured we should send home with my mom.  We put these bags in the overhead compartment, figuring that they were pretty disposable anyway.  Still, we kept our eyes on them during the crowded trip.  When we got off the bus, the bag with all the divemaster books was gone.  The funny thing is, Mike spent most of the trip trying to figure out how he would say “Hey, that’s my bag.  Give it back!” in Spanish if someone did try to walk off with something of ours.  Once again, we were outsmarted.  Maybe there was something to that advice after all.

So, what have we actually learned from all this?  A few things.

1.  When advice is given to you by locals and other travellers, it is usually warranted.  Listen to it.  Even if it means the inconvenience of carrying your shoes at the beach or holding an extra bag on your lap on the bus.

2.  We felt absolutely no emotion over our dive bag being stolen.  I think that’s a good indication we didn’t need to send it home in the first place.  I guess we are still working on breaking our attachment with stuff.  I would have liked to see the thief’s face when he opened the back to discover that what he probably thought was a laptop was actually a bunch of PADI books.

3. While petty crime is prevalent throughout Central America, it is rampant in Costa Rica.  We were robbed twice in the course of a week.  This kind of took us by surprise, as it’s the wealthiest Central American country.  However, nearly all the travellers that we’ve met that have had problems with crime in Central America have had those problems in Costa Rica… backpacks taken from the storage bins below the bus, bags taken from overhead compartments, thefts on beaches, robberies at gunpoint, etc. etc.  We recently met a local woman in Somoto, Nicaragua that described Costa Rica as a beautiful country, but one that was too dangerous to visit.

Let us know… have you had any problems with crime in Central America?  If so, what happened?

Just about every traveller that we’ve come across who’s been through Costa Rica has had the same thing to say:

Costa Rica was nice, but we only stayed half the time we planned on. It’s really expensive.

It’s not too surprising, as many of the locals we met in Nicaragua had similar things to say:

Costa Rica is beautiful, but it’s expensive, and a bit too dangerous.

Okay, okay. It was starting to sound a lot like what we had heard about Belize before we visited it firsthand. But Belize wasn’t overly expensive. In fact, when all was said and done, it turned out to be cheaper than Mexico, and still well within our daily budget. So I was pretty skeptical about all this price hype.

Sad to say, all the hype was true. Costa Rica is expensive. Dare I say too expensive for us. It all started when we arrived at the border. They have a policy where they do not grant entry visas unless you can prove that you have onward travel tickets. We didn’t have said return tickets, and were stopped at the border on our first attempt through.

Sitting in nomads land, we didn’t have a lot of options. All we had was a Tica bus station selling one way open ended tickets from San Jose, Costa Rica to Managua, Nicaragua for $25 a piece (at least double the price it should have cost using public transportation and without the flexibility of being able to break the trip up over several days and several towns). We bought the tickets because we had no choice, and slipped through the border on our second attempt without issue.

I freely admit it, we didn’t get off to a good start with Costa Rica. But costs kept racking up. Accommodation was a big shock. We had been accustomed to spending somewhat less that $10 a night on average in the rest of Central America. Once we crossed that border, the cheapest accommodations we could find were pushing $30 a night. We may not have minded the hefty accommodation bill so much if it translated into a bit of luxury, but it didn’t. These were the types of places where the showers didn’t work, and there were no toilet seats.

Then the nickle-and-diming started. Every thing you want to do in Costa Rica costs extra. While we were accustomed to spending between $0.50 and $2 to see an art gallery or museum in other countries, the same entrance fee here would be a minimum of $10 per person. That same $10 could buy you entrance to a beach, $18 for entry to a nature reserve for the day, another $10 to see a waterfall, and so on, and so on.

In the end, we limited ourselves a lot, choosing not to pay our entrance fees more often than not. We had originally planned to travel farther south and see more of the country before leaving, but after only 10 days in the country, we decided to cut our losses and use that bus ticket we were forced to buy.

Sunsets were still free at least!

We met up with my mom in Nicarauga, and made a speedy path through the country.  We might have lingered longer, but our C-4 visa which covers Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua was just about expired after our lengthy stay in Utila, Honduras.  We had to get to Costa Rica to reset it, but even so, we left the Nicaragua on the last possible day, taking in as much as we could.

Nicaragua Summary:

Length of Stay: 16 days
Average Cost per Day for Two People: $31.80 CAD
Cities Visited: 7
Distance Traveled: 779 km in 12 automobiles and 2 boats
Days Sick: 0 for Ashley, 1 for Mike
Number of Items Lost: 0
Biggest Tourist Traps: The beach at San Juan del Sur was full of touts hawking everything from jewellry and sunglasses to wooden bowls
Exchange Rate: $1 CAD = 23 Cordobas

For more great stats, check out our statistics page!

Tree in Granada park

Our Route:

Managua – León – Las Peñitas – Granada – Isla de Ometepe (Moyogalpa, Merida) – San Juan del Sur

Highlights:

• Seeing my mom!!!
• Full moon lava hike at León
• Beautiful sunset walks at Las Peñitas
• Fried yuca at the market in Granada
• International Poetry Festival in Granada

Lion guarding the León Cathedral

Lowlights:

• The food at Hacienda Merida on Isla de Ometepe (it was exceptionally tasty, and expensive to match.  The alternatives were likewise cheap, and not so delicious)
• The “typico” Nicaraguan meal from a mall food court in Managua… should have known better
• We couldn’t stay in Granada long enough to experience more than a night of the International Poetry Festival
• Nicaragua didn’t enamour us the same way as other Central American countries have – probably because we had to move too quick to let it

View from the rooftop of León Cathedral

Surprises:

• Nicaragua is supposed to be the poorest country in Central America, but we didn’t really get that impression… there were a lot of cars everywhere we went.
• We had heard Nicaragua would be cheap.  While the prices were definitely reasonable, it wasn’t as cheap as we were expecting.

Lessons Learned:

• Travelling quickly through a country makes it difficult to fall in love with a place.  We easily could have spent more time at nearly every town we were in, but were limited by our visas.
• Always reapply sunscreen after playing in the surf.  Ouch!

Sunset at Las Peñitas

Nicaragua Journal – Where Did We Spend Our Time?

Managua – 1 night
We didn’t really see much of this place… it was just a meeting point with Mom and Terry.

León – 2 nights
León was a beautiful city with lots to see and do.  We took a tour of the Cathedral, wandered around an art gallery, and explored a strange folklore museum housed in a former prison.  The highlight of our time here was the full moon lava viewing hike on Volcan Telica which we did with Quetzaltrekkers.

Las Peñitas – 2 nights
This quiet black sand resort beach was a great place to relax after our all night hike.  We napped, swam, and walked the beach at sunset.

Granada – 3 nights
Granada was probably our favourite city we visited.  We joined Mom and Terry for a horse and carriage tour of the beautiful city, explored the graveyard where the first president of Nicaragua can be found, wandered the parks, went to a chocolate museum and caught the start of the International Poetry Festival.  We watched the performance of Nobel Prize winning poet Carlos Martinez Rivas’ work and took in the free Katia Cardena concert.  Mom and Terry did a boat tour of Las Isletas, while we wondered the city getting Mike’s glasses fixed.

Moyogalpa, Isla de Ometepe – 1 night
This town was where the ferry dropped us off.  It was almost sunset when we arrived, so we decided to stay the night before moving on.

Merida, Isla de Ometepe – 3 nights
We stayed at a hacienda just outside this small town.  The location was beautiful, but food options were limited.  The hacienda had stellar food, but a small and expensive menu.  Some of the best food we had here came from the Valentine’s Day festival in town, which included some bull riding.  We went horseback riding to San Ramon waterfall, walked to some Petroglyphs, learned how to make tortillas and hung out in the hammocks at the hacienda.

San Juan del Sur – 4 nights
This was a touristy beach town.  We played in the waves until our blistery sunburns kept us out of the sun.  Spent some time relaxing, reading, visiting with Mom and Terry, and catching up on the blog.

Hanging out in the lobby of our hotel in Granada

Bird on Isla de Ometepe

Butterfly in our hotel in Granada

For more of our Nicaragua pictures, check out our gallery.

Aside from horseback riding we didn’t really do much on Isla de Ometepe.  Our time on the beach of San Juan del Sur was quite similar… a few days of relaxing and catching up on the blog at each place.

On Isla de Ometepe, we stayed just outside of the town of Merida at a resort with highly overpriced but good food.  The town of Merida is quite small and has only three restaurants of the lowest quality.  It’s easy to surmise that the budget travellers in us ate enough bad cheap food to drive us off the island completely.  That was a mistake.

Merida did have it’s positive points though.  For one, there was the Valentine’s Day festival and rodeo – complete with painted baby chickens, bull riding and Valentine’s Day rice.

San Juan del Sur is a nice beach with strangely cold water.  So cold, it reminded me of swimming in a lake back in Saskatchewan, Canada.  I’m not sure if we were just there at the wrong time and caught a freak current, or if it’s always that cold.  We’ve been in the Pacific Ocean at points both north and south of San Juan del Sur, and it’s definitely the coldest place around.

Regardless of the bad food, or cold oceans, we managed to get out there and take more than a couple of photos.  Here are some of the highlights.  As always, there are more available in our photo album.

Isla de Ometepe

Unloading the ferry.

Valentine’s Day Chicken.

Spectacular Scenery.

And some more.

Really old Petroglyphs.

Sunsets.

San Juan del Sur

Christ watches out over this town.  I’m not quite sure what he’s trying to point out though.

Every day at sunset we would head down to the beach with Ashley’s mom and Terry just to watch.  We were never alone.

One of the things that Mom and Terry wanted to do on their journey with us was go horseback riding. Now, given my propensity for falling off things and my slightly irrational fear of riding horses (stemming from my first ever attempt to ride by myself – I was about 13 or so – when my trail horse took off at a gallop along a busy highway and I couldn’t do anything but hold on for dear life), I was a little less than gung-ho about the whole idea.  But I figured now was as good a time as any to try to get over it. Especially since one of Mike’s biggest goals is to ride horseback across Mongolia.

Thought I’d practice “riding” this wagon before getting on a horse….but it didn’t do much to bolster my confidence

We decided to rent some horses near Merida on the island of Ometepe and ride to the San Ramon waterfall.

Isla de Ometepe, formed by two volcanoes

The trip took about four hours in total, including a short hike on foot up to the falls and some time to relax and possibly swim under the waterfall (well, stand, really, since the pool beneath it was a shallow).

At the last minute, Mike decided to stay back at the hostel and try to beat the cold he had been getting. Truly, I think he was feeling sicker about the cost of the horses (a hefty $8 USD per person per hour), but we let him stay behind anyways.

Mom, Terry, and I set out with Harry of Harry’s horses and his helper, Carlos at about 1:00 pm. Five minutes in, Harry was telling me my form was good but I needed to loosen up. I tried to untense my muscles, but it just wasn’t happening. Every part of my body was clinging on for dear life.  Fifteen minutes in, my entire body seemed to be cramping up.  I was looking at my watch thinking How the hell am I going to make it four hours? This is painful!. I continued checking my watch every 3-5 minutes for the first hour, thinking this was some sort of crazy torture and wondering if I could just jump off my trotting horse and walk beside him. Given what I figured was the high probability of falling or being dragged from this action, I decided to power on.  Then, something changed. Despite my sore butt, I felt like I fit better in the saddle and could finally relax my aching muscles. When we broke into a canter on a flat stretch, I actually couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

Terry’s horse, checking in at the entrance to San Ramon waterfall

After about an hour and a half, we tied up the horses and hiked a short but steep path to the waterfall. Since the horses had brought us most of the way up, I didn’t find the hike so bad, but I had a few volcano summits under my belt. Mom and Terry struggled up the path behind me, unaccustomed to the steep slopes that you can’t find back home in Saskatchewan.

Me and my horse, Pinto

Finally at the waterfall, we took in the beauty of the spot.

The sun even came out from behind the clouds to show us the rainbow in the falls.

Mom and Terry rested, dreading the hike back down, I think.

Tired out from the hike

Back at the horses, I slid into the saddle and felt immediately comfortable. I was given the option to go ahead with Carlos, while Harry stayed back with Mom and Terry’s slower horses. The two of us cantered and galloped back, slowing down to give the horses a break, to check out the amazing views, and to chat in Spanish (much needed practice for me after so many months in English-speaking Utila – I believe I told him I had been married for 27 years before correcting myself).

So was it worth the cost? The jury’s still out. At $32, I found the price tag quite a bit higher than I would have liked. If seeing the waterfall was my only goal, I would have been just as happy hiking there. And there’s cheaper horseback riding options in other parts of Nicaragua. But Harry and Carlos were great with us novices and I gained a newfound confidence on horseback. I was really happy to get past the discomfort of the first hour with the longer ride, though Mom and Terry (and their butts) would have been happier with a shorter ride. Would I do it again? Probably not ($32 can go a long way on living expenses here), but I don’t regret it at all.

I still have a long way to go before riding across Mongolia, but I’m getting there. As I told Mike after… I’m still not sure that I like horseback riding, but at least I can now see how people might like it. That’s definitely progress.

Pretty flowers on Ometepe