seriously overdue.... our trip to the caribbean side of costa rica

so several weeks ago we took a weekend off and headed to the caribbean side of costa rica. it was quite the adventure. there's a relatively new road that heads north out of san jose and makes the trip much faster. however, not far out of san jose we hit a major traffic jam. we waited an hour (bad move) and finally decided to try and converse en espagnol to find out what was going on. it turns out there were DESRUMBES EN LA VIA (thanks to street signs i knew that meant a landslide.... although i probably just spelled that wrong now) and the road wouldnt be open until 5pm. so we turned around and went the alternate route. it took a LONG TIME and we nearly got lost several times but we finally made it!

and we saw this cool old ruin thing along the way in cartago. since we were racing daylight we didnt stop to find out what it was, i took pix in transit:



we headed down to cahuita, which is the first (northernmost) town in the little strip of towns. we spent the night there in a cute little cabina, and then the next morning headed down to see as much as we could possibly see in one day. our favorite spot was manzanillo, which is the southernmost town... there was a little trail that lead thru the jungle and took us to a few great lookout points and some secluded beaches. VERY cool.


















the caribbean had a very different feel from where we are. there were a lot more jamaicans and caribbean island people, so a lot more people spoke english and many spoke a kind of creole. the feel was more "islandy" than where we are, which has a heavier spanish influence.

on the way home, we hit traffic AGAIN! this time we wasted no time and i hopped out and discovered that yet again there were DESRUMBES EN LA VIA so we turned around and went back the way we came. a bit of a bummer since we were hoping to see the new road, its supposed to be really beautiful scenery. oh well! maybe next time :)