Bocas del Toro

To get to the island, we have to take a water taxi. We are waiting for it on a platform that covers the water, just like a lot of wooden sheds along the bay that looks like a river. The water taxi takes us out of the bay and we enter a vast open space of water which is flat as a mirror. After about 10-15 minutes we arrive at the island Bocas del Toro. It mainly exists out of one main street filled with hostels, restaurants, two supermarkets, a tourist information center and gift shops.
The next day we went to the party in town, which is Ladies Night (the ladies drink for free). Some girl said to me it is actually more like men's night since all the girls are drunk and playfull. I agreed totally... The party itself wasn't that great but hugely compensated by a swimming pool on the premises. Since the hotel was built on poles in the water, all the swimming pool is, is a hole in the floor revealing the water underneath. After a couple of drinks everyone started pushing everyone in the swimming pool all night long, so it became the best party ever ;-)
The day after this party we were supposed to catch a Catamaran for a round-trip along some islands, but due to the alcohol we missed it, so we opted for a shorter (and cheaper) alternative that also gave us the opportunity to see dolphins and go snorkeling.
We went snorkeling in front of an idyllic restaurant that had to be provided with food by boats (it was completely surrounded by water) and had ran out at that particular moment. When we were in the water some other people threw some shreds of bread in our vicinity and quickly we were surrounded by thousand of fishes swimming all around us trying to catch their share of the bread. When I was floating a little further off shore I saw many colorful fishes and other sea creatures living their underwater life. I suddenly gasped and nearly drowned when I noticed a jelly fish heading in my direction. After regaining my consciousness I managed to observe the jelly fish swimming which was probably one of the coolest things I ever observed in the wild. Still I didn't feel so comfortable anymore as I noticed more jelly fish so I headed back to the safe shore...
The last stop was red turtle beach. We had to pay 3 dollars to get into the natural park. We didn't see any red turtles and when we reached the beach at the other end of the park, it started raining. So then we decided to get a drink (I was travelling with English people) at the bar. Unfortunately the bar had burned down the day before...

Crossing a line

The border Costa Rica/Panama is easier to cross overland than by plane and it gives a much more authentic feeling too. The river defines a natural separation between the two countries so a small bridge allows a trouble free transfer. A bridge still wide enough for a BIG truck and a person. While walking to the other side, one after another of these mastodonts slowly advance to Costa Rica, coming to a full stop to allow me to take a picture. Their appearance on facebook is more important than the further drop down of the recession caused by their blocking of the other traffic that wants to cross the bridge.

Puerto Veijo

"Old Harbour", close to the border with Panama on the Caribean side, is a little village where life isn't too much affected by Tourism. I booked in in a hostel Called Rocking J's. The hostel has rooms for about 40 people, but they extended the capacity to 300 by putting 50 hammocks in a big room, side by side and a whole floor of tents, side by side.  The public kitchen was equipped pretty poorly, there were about 4 forks, 2 cutting knives, 6 pots an pans without a decent handle so you'd pour out your meal all over the stoves at the moments it's ready and you want to pick it up to serve it. It's a pity that the whole place had such a commercial feeling, because the whole floor, garden, benches, beams, doors where decorated a la Parc Gwell style. Guests could even create there own design and leave a permanent signature.

Guided Tours

There is lots of things to do in Monteverde. From zip-lining over the forest (you descend attached to a cable from platform to platform down from the hill, sometimes at speeds up to 60 Km/hour), to night-hiking trips, to coffee trips and birth trips. All these trips cost anywhere between 15 and 45 US Dollar. When I went to bed yesterday, some guys invited me to go for a hike on one of the only free hikes there, which they organized themselves. Around 8:30, after having breakfast and coffee, we left with 8 people and started walking. It started off on a hiking trail that was 4 meters wide until we came accross a sign warning us not to leave the tracks. It was placed in what seemed to be a small, dry river so after a short discussion we decided to follow the advice and stay on the hiking trail/road. After a hefty climb for 500 meters, one of the guys stopped us and opened the debate again, saying he couldn't believe this was the hiking path we were supposed to take. I told him I wasn't sure about it, but if he was going to take that route, I was going to do the same. 4 people decided to go on and us 4 went back down to try our luck on that trail. After only 2 meters it was already obvious that the river wasn't a river but the trail we were looking for. It led us straight into the jungle along a little river that surprised us from time to time with a beautiful waterfall from sometimes up to 15 meters high. Numerous time the path forked and after a while it became more like a joke choosing one, because no one had a clue where we were heading and sometimes we doubted if we even were on a path. One of the guys of this company had to return after a while because he booked for another trip in the afternoon. Two of us decided to go on and the other two turned back. After a while going on along sometimes track, sometimes not we ended up on probably the road we took at first. We started following that for a while which was physically probably the heaviest part of the track as it seemed to go up and up and up. After a while my company said he thought of turning back because this walking up on a road that probably didn't lead anywhere, didn't make any sense to him. I thought I should trust my gut and keep on going for a while (after all my intuition had been wrong all the time so statistically it had more chance of being right this time. Not so much later we arrived at a couple of tv-towers which made a lot of noise because of the wind blowing through them. We walked past a building in which Steve, the son of the responsible for the tv station up here, was playing World of Warcraft while listening to Slipknot. Since the door was open, we asked if there was anything up here or if this was where he lived. He answered the latter and invited us to have tea or coffee which was an unexpected but very pleasant surprise.

Quality comes with a price ?

My first impression of Costa Rica begins with a friendly local at the airport helping me out to find my sleeping bag and a backpack of an American guy, George at the luggage pick up. After 20 minutes of waiting I suddenly realize that I had my sleeping bag as hand baggage before switching planes in Panama City and that I never took it out... I won't need it for the first three months anyway...
My second impression was that Costa Rica is very clean, especially after getting used to the rubbish everywhere in the Dominican Republic. I share a taxi with George to a backpackers named "Costa Rica Backpackers". A very big hostel in the middle of San Jose with a swimming pool, a restaurant, lots of hammocks and free internet. The backpackers houses a lot of nice people and the staff is very friendly, helpful and multilingual (no Flemish though), but the kitchen lacks pots and pans, spoons, bowls, forks. It appears to me there way of promoting the kitchen.
The next day we decide to get out of San Jose and head north before we (or maybe just I) will head south. After a 4,5 hour bus trip we arrive in Pension Sante Elena in Monte Verde which is a fair big city considering the difficulties involved getting here. It resembles a bit like a skiing village and since the bus is full of tourists (probably because this place is in the Lonely Planet and I seem to be the only one who doesn't follow his guidelines) we have to hurry to get a bed in this hotel.
The price all this comes with, seems to be an identity-loss and a culture that's hard to spot.

Parc National de Los Haitos

About 10-15 Km from Las Terrenas is Parc National de Los Haitos. Geologically it is very young, only 15 000 year as opposed to the mainland. The Island is being pushed out of the water by seismic activity and contains a lot of interesting nature to visit.
Edit, de owner of Fata Morgana also happened to be a guide for over 19 years in this natural parc that you can either visit hiking or with a boat. 6 people were mandatory for Edit to be able to organize the trip. The 4 remaining people of the group of 7 all wanted to go and also another group of 4 Spanish people that stayed in the hotel wanted to come. They had to be back at 3pm so we choose the boat trip as this was shorter in time.
From Sanchez we embarked in a raft that brought us to the other side of the bay. The natural parc is protected by only 9 guards, but it's fairly hard to get on the island and only fishermen are allowed to have some shelter for there stay during their fishing days.
Our first stop was a cave where a river appeared out of nothing and Edit persuaded us to go for a swim in the water that's so pure you can drink it (which I did and it tasted very soft).
Next the boat took us to another (dry) cave thereby swerving between the numerous mini-islands above which many vultures were hovering in the seach for food. These next caves we were lead through a couple of wooden platforms and we were shown drawings that were estimated 1500-2000 years old, made by the indians when thy lived there. Later on in history these caves also housed the natives that fled from the Spanish and even more recently they have been used for political en juridical refugees. Consequently lots of drawings there are mimicking the oldest ones, but only a few are actually the real stuff.
Later on we also went into the mangrove were we got some explanation about the purposefulness of them for men and nature.
When we were about to head back, the sea became a bit more wild so we all put on yellow and orange coats and we put them on backwards.
Some people made a remark earlier on that I was still pretty white for being for two months in the Caribean, so I did a little effort this time. As a result my legs are painfully burned from the knee up halfway... The Dominicans weren't able to differentiate between me and there own people anymore !! (That's how tanned I am now)

Playa Moron

Supposedly one of the nicest beaches around (unlike the English meaning of the word), we decided to rent some horses and make a trip there. After a nice ride in the back of a truck, we arrived for the second day in a row in El Limon (almost fell as a local there), but this time with a bigger group.
So that was: me, Sarah, Anja, Noelle, Olivia, Danielle and Ray. 1 Belgian, 1 English, 3 Swiss and 2 Americans.
We checked out a Ranch that seemed okay and they prepared the horses for us. Overall the horses were pretty lame and obedient, but inevitably some were a little more furious (in the realm of Valium) than others. My horse needed a little motivation to put his next leg before the other. As a result of my continuus shouts as a real farmer ("hup hup horsie hup "), not my horse but the horses behind me started walking faster all the time...
On the beach all the horses started galloping (even mine) which was really nice, I never had done that before.

Tootache

An upcoming tootache was the forecast of a new group of visitors for Fata Morgana. They were a bunch of Aspirant Geographical Dentists that joined in a project fro an orphanage in San Pedro de Macoris, a city not so far from Santo Domingo. This gave me the opportunity to show off my knowledge of the region and at the same time move my lazy ass (excuse the language) so I took them on the same trip that I had done with Sooi, towards the "Salta de Limon".

Unlike last time we walked there instead of being walked on the back of a Mule (the locals first told us it was impossible to walk there, although we pretty soon noticed it was a bunch of crap since the guides walked along the horses). Since we, at that time, discovered on the trip that we were paying RD$500 an hour, we turned back at (what I discovered this time) only 1 minute walk from the real spectacle. I also discovered that some ranches organise a horse-back-ride to the falls for as little as RD$400 !

Dominicans that offer services for tourists can't be trusted. It's so bad that even honest Dominicans say "Hey, I'm Dominican, I know, but I'm not a thief"

Alien Abduction

Yesterday night I was abducted by aliens.
Lucky for me the held me ransom only 2 mm away from the place they abducted me from. They conducted all kinds of vivisections (and even a dissection when I wasn't looking) on me and replaced several body parts with exact replica's. 3 hours later I was completely exhausted and largely fed up with it so I turned on the light and discovered their home base under the neighboring pillow. With one mighty swipe I wiped these ants away from my bed and told them to go and abduct some banana tree or so (which they did).
I also fell with the motorbike and turned my big toe in a bloody mess.
Now the locals can track me down following the red dots. I wonder how I will taste boiled...