Costa Rica Trip Report

[bigbabyjesus]

[ QUOTE ]
When planning a trip, how do you go about choosing where to go and how long to stay?

[/ QUOTE ]

I planned the trip mostly on impulse. I wanted to go somewhere new, and soon, and figured in a program like this I'd learn two things I wanted to learn as well as have people to hang out with.

I had been interested in Costa Rica before, perhaps as a place to play poker and live for a few months. It just seemed like a cool place that was America friendly.

[ QUOTE ]

Why specifically Costa Rica and not some other affordable America-friendly country?

[/ QUOTE ]

No real good reason to this. I wanted to learn spanish and surfing and have considered (based on ome readings) costa rica as a place to live to play online poker. I didn't do too much research on similar places.
[ QUOTE ]

What percentage of Costa Ricans can speak English?

[/ QUOTE ]

In the service industry, most of them speak it ok. Some speak it very well, some speak very well, some speak none at all. You could get by in this area without any spanish but it can be hit or miss with the locals.
[ QUOTE ]

What do you do on a daily basis? What does your schedule typically look like?

[/ QUOTE ]

For the class, I do 1 2 HR session of surfing a day. I do 1 2 HR session of spanish (w/ a class of 5 right now,) and then a 2 hr "Lab." The lab is more of learning new words or playing memory type games, etc.

Once a week we do a trip type thing during the day with the school. Last week was a kayak tour, this week is a croc tour.

We just chill alot otherwise. I've been reading books in my free time. We go into town and eat out alot. Me and some other students have begun to rent boards so we can surf in non-class hours ($6 a day.) Unfortunately me and another student basically ate [censored] on the same wave near each other and the fin of his board managed to slice my board.. probably about $50 to fix.

We party on occasional nights. This weekend we will probably make a trip to another area of Costa Rica (the national park fo Manuel Antonio is within 2 hours, and is one of the biggest tourist attractions around. Supposedly there are monkeys everywhere which sounds awesome.)

[ QUOTE ]

How do you get around there? Can you rent a car?

[/ QUOTE ]

You can rent a car. I am not sure of prices but it's probably not that expensive.

When we go to manuel antonio and such we will probably just take a bus. They are very cheap and probably bearable if you're with a group. Alot of the roads are in poor condition here, especially in the more rural areas (which 95% of the land around here is compared to the States) so it can take awhile to go to other regions.

[ QUOTE ]

How much cheaper are things there? Give examples plz.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thigns aren't really that much cheaper. I am in a town that is beginning to "blow up" with tourism; there are probably 5-10 huge condo projects that are just beginning here. This town w ill be much much different in 10 years. You can find pretty good meals (rice, beans and fried plantains + a meat is a meal called casado and very popular, can get for around $5-7 after drink + tax + tip.)

Alot of goods here are more expensive then in the States due to import tax. You can find some things that are pretty cheap here and there but really it's not like a huge bargain, just 10-30% cheaper than what you're used to.
[ QUOTE ]

How much surfing experience do you have?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not much. I took some lessons in LA in summer. I surfed a little with my buddy but had to ride his 6'2" shortboard and I never got close to catching a wave (I caught waves during the lessons but they were with a bigger board and better beginner waves.)

90% of the people who are here have little to no surfing experience. I'm standing up pretty consistently and am now learning to turn, recognize waves, etc. Surfing is a sport that is very hard to get good at. I'm standing up on waves but in reality I still suck very hard.

[Paul B.]

Were you there with CTS?

[Slider]

He's there by his lonesome while I have sex in every corner of the apartment.

[TheMetetron]

OP,

My issue isn't with Pura Vida. You screwed up something else grammatically, but it really is just me nitting it up. It is fairly basic Spanish though so I'm surprised you wrote it incorrectly.

Nice to hear about the surf. Costa Rica is moving up in my list now.

[bigbabyjesus]

Yo,

been lazy about making a new post. I have about 4 more days here and will make a pretty detailed post then.

I messed up my knee surfing this weekend and can't surf for the rest of the trip [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Otherwise, I have done a ton of stuff, bungee jumping, seeing tons of monkeys at manuel antonio, and seeing lava pour out of a volcano (truly one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen.)

[bigbabyjesus]

Here's one video I made of monkeys with my crappy digital camera and amateur filming skills:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...deoID=21531685

also:

[imozyslow]

plz post a TR when you go to the Del Rey kthnx. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[ligastar]

I recently spent two weeks in Jaco (Oct. 17 - 31) and would be happy to assist in answering any questions. I also kept a blog which is still up:

Costa Rica blog

[bigbabyjesus]

Hey guys,

I'm going to list a bunch of stuff and tell you a little about them then do an extravagant trip report. To sum up Costa Rica, it's a laid-back, friendly tropical area that was somewhat cheap. Also, I really enjoyed the "learning vacation" concept. I basically wanted an immediate vacation and wasn't going to bother rounding up someone to go with me and I think a learning vacation is a great way to travel if you're going to go alone.

Some stuff about Costa Rica:

Volcano Arenal

We took a weekend trip up to Volcano Arenal, which is located in the northern mountains. It's a famous volcano that was dormant for 400 years when an earthquake caused it to erupt in the 60's or 70's, killing 80 or so people in the valley below. It's still active, and is constantly smoking and there are viewpoints where you can see lava flowing out sometimes, which we were able to see at night.

It looked something like this (didn't have my camera on this night



It was one of the most amazing things I've seen in my life. The lava flows off and on but flows like an avalanche and is so bright orange compared to the dark background there's just nothing like it in nature.

On the way back from the volcano we stopped at a bungee jumping place that was near San Jose. It was a 260 foot off a bridge overlooking a river. I was incredibly nervous, despite having skydived previously this year. There's just something a little more scary about having the ground right there when you jump.. but I sucked it up and did it. I'm glad I did it but didn't really enjoy the feeling of being upside down for so long. Some pics:





Manuel Antontio, Dominical

We headed south from Jaco on a 1 1/2 hour bus ride (only $1.20!) to what some consider the crown jewel of Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio. MA is a national park located on the pacific coast, which an abundance of amazing white sand beaches and monkeys. We only had time to spend about 3 hours here and I spent most of the time observing the monkeys. This is just something that anyone who comes to CR will have to check out.

A beach in MA:





Viewpoint in MA:


Then we made a trip to a surfer town called Dominical, on the southern pacific coast. From Manuel Antontio, the stretch of coastal highway to Dominical is only 44 KM, but it takes up to 3 hours by bus. There's no paved roads (according to Lonely Planet, this is because the government of Quepos/Manuel Antonio owns the roads and won't build as to prevent tourism easily spreading south.) It's quite a journey as every bridge makes you feel like it's going to be your last.

Dominical is a very small town but still one of the bigger towns in this area. There are no paved roads, but plenty of surf shops. It's known as a gringo place with a lot of surf bums and pot. Walking around I probably saw more white people here than in Jaco despite the fact there were many many more people running around Jaco.

The weekend was somewhat of a bust as I sprained my knee surfing the first morning. I got wrecked pretty good and felt my knee move akwardly when I slammed down with the wave. It hurt pretty bad and I couldn't move my knee for about 2 minutes, meanwhile I'm trying to stay afloat while getting hit by oncoming waves. It freaked me out a little and I was limping and off my board for 5 days (it's been a week and a half since it happened and my knee is still pretty sore, but I managed to go surfing again before I left.)

Here's what the surf looked like (taken off the web


Since I was holed up in the hotel room getting drunk to escape the pain, I didn't see much of the town.

Jaco

The town I stayed in, Jaco, is one of the larger beach towns (by large, I mean it has some paved roads and probably a local population of 20,000.) It's blowing up in development, though, and has a ridiculous amount of condominiums being built and will probably look completely different in 10 years (and remind someone more of Cabo San Lucas than a Costa Rican beach town.)

It's known as one of the more "ghetto" areas of CR since there's a large amount of drugs and prostitution. I got offered weed and coke on every street corner on some nights. Despite this, it doesn't feel that sketchy to walk around or anything. There's barely any violent crime here, word is there's some petty theft but I didn't see any of it. Basically you're not going to get your ass kicked and your wallet stolen but you might get pick pocketed in a club.

Prositution

Based on the Thailand thread it seems you guys want to know about this stuff. It's legal in CR and pretty prevalent in the clubs. Ho's are everywhere. It's actually quite annoying in Jaco because you have no idea who are the regular local girls are. One surf instructor told me, you just never know if a girl's a hooker or normal.

Only Jaco really has this problem. Other areas of the country, it's not going to be engrossed with so many hookers. There are a lot of 50+ year old white men who spend time in these bars and this is basically there reason for being in the country.

You also get your ass or dick grabbed by the hookers alot. I just found it annoying and had no interest in banging one. One of the surf instructors lived with a hooker for awhile and told me they're not as cheap as you'd expect and can run $300 for a whole night. I was thinking $15 blow jobs and didn't even want any.

I'll make a post in a little bit about the school, more about the learning vacation stuff.

[SossMan]

This is an awesome TR.

I'm getting married at Villa Calletas (just south of Jaco) in a couple weeks. We are going to MA, and going to go on some of the day trips. Are there any particular ones that you thought are can't miss. Obv everyone talks about the zip lines and such. Did you do any rafting? How was the croc tour?

We are staying for 2 weeks, so the first week will be at villa calletas and the 2nd week we are staying at the Tabacon Resort at the base of Arenal.

I can't wait!