Costa rica trip started from Arriving in San Jose in the evening of Tuesday after taking a 8.5 hrs bus from Granada, Nicaragua. This was the first time I crossed inter-country border by land so I was both excited and nervous about the Visa handling stuff, nervous because it was a visa on arrival.
Arenal Green, Arenal, Costa Rica
Arenal Green, Arenal, Costa Rica
Arenal Green, Arenal, Costa Rica
Puero Viejo's Playa Negra
Puero Viejo, Playa Negra (Black sand/beach)
The bus stop for Transnica is in the downtown between Ave 3 and Ave 5 on Calle 222.
We had to take a taxi(=2000 colones) from the bus stop to the Best Western Inn. Based on some consulation from the the taxi driver and the hotel personnel we headed to commercial center El Pueblo as the place for Latinos to hangout for reggeaton and other latino music. On arriving El Pueblo we figured it was pretty dead. The place didn't really have any crowd.
A bar which is very audible from outside played the pop music even that bar didn't have more than 10 people mostly a bunch of white guys :) talk about Latinos hangout and latin music. It was clear that the place is no fun on a Tuesday evening. It turns out that most places are good only from Thursday to Saturday evening. We could try that again when we get back to San Jose.
Anyway we decided to eat at the place called "Lukas", the place gives a fine dinning feel from the very start and the food is worth the praise on guidebooks and internet. The waiter and cook pays lot of attention to individual details of the order and veggie food didn't have to suck therefore. Priyam mentioned that the non-veg stuff was pretty good and so were the cocktails.
The trail at Cahuita National Park
Next day as we had planned earlier we left for the Caribbean city of Cahuita, we hadn't preplanned the trip a lot actually and once we were in Nicaragua and heading to Costa Rica we figured our options given number of days(=5). We quickly decided to skip at least one side of the country as the whole transport system was based on the capital San Jose as a hub. So from any city on east to any city in west and vice versa you were traveling inland for about 4 + 6 hrs (to and from San Jose) and most connections won't work late evening. Based on some discussion we decided to see the Caribbean side instead of pacific (turned out to be a good decision).
Beach by the trail at Cahuita National Park
Cahuita city isn't a big one in any way. As the guide book described its pretty much two parallel streets. I was excited to see that it was the "reggae" capital of the area, only later did I realize that Reggae isn't reggaeton and was pretty disappointed. Anyway since we were in the city to see the Cahuita National Park we did that, turned out even the park was nothing but a 1-2 miles trail along the beach. The beach and the scenery are quite beautiful and makeup for the otherwise nothing-worth-visiting part.
Next to Cahuita is the city of Puerto Viejo where we had decided to stay overnight instead of Cahuita based on the guidebook (fortunately), I can't believe I was actually planning to visit Cahuita for the night-life until I figured the difference between Reggae and Reggaeton. So we were at Puerto Viejo
Bob Marley is every where in the Carribe side of Costa Rica
pretty close to the bus terminal stop at a restaurant looking for a place to sleep for that evening. The confidence we had in the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican restaurant for providing free wifi access was showing up and it kept up all the time.
At Cahuita National Park
We figured a place nearby called Maritza hotel, went and looked at the place which offered both Dorms and Private rooms for reasonable prices (6$ and 30$ respectively) and ended up taking the private rooms which were pretty comfortable. Talking to keeper I came to know about the Bar in front offering Salsa lessons and dancing on Wednesday i.e that night, wow finally, I was going to be able to dance Salsa. So I did, the number of people was small but the music was great, they even had reggaeton, cumbia, merengue and bachata along with some unavoidable hip hop/pop music. After dancing there for couple of hours we all headed to the place called "Johny's". This is a great nightclub right next to the ocean, great music, lot of people. Though in sometime I figured the social dancing scene wasn't that big and eventually I decide to head back to hotel.
Cahuita National Park
Next day we were going to try Scuba diving or Snorkeling based on whatever was possible/good. Turned out the water was not good enough for diving (poor visibility) and the guy suggested we instead try surfing. We did. We were able to get surfing lessons from the friend of this guy for about 50$ per person for 2 hours. In short the lessons were just amazing. In 2 hrs we were actually able to stand surf with little guidance and high success rate at the end. (In case you want to try the same, we got the referral from the PADI certified dive center by the Johny's place IIRC the guy's name was Rony.)
The famous Playa Negra at Puerto Veijo
We took the afternoon bus to San Jose. In short El pueblo was bad even on Thursday night. Anyway as planed we headed to Arenal next morning. The bus ride quite scenic and hilly is about 3 hrs with a change needed at La fortuna (IIRC).
Puerto Viejo
At Arenal we stayed at Arenal green, which is slightly away from the city center but had good room and reasonable prices ~62$. Being home of the famous live volcano makes this city hotels very pricey. So its suggested to stay slightly away from city center and pay taxi charges which aren't that bad plus most tours provide pickup and drop-off anyway. In Arenal we did Ziplining which was my first time. It was good stuff definitely recommended. The zipline tour we had a surprise thing called Tarjan jump which was definitely the best part :)
Dos Pasos Restaurant in Puero Viejo
We came back to San Jose on Saturday evening, this evening I was able to visit the place called Fiesta Latino in El Pueblo which was a big dance floor with rotating latin music. Here came to know Costa Rican Cumbia which I am now a big fan of. Here is a illustrative dance video of the same to finish the post:
If you come across some good Costa Rican cumbia music, please drop by a comment.
I went to New York on the Memorial day weekend, where I was joined by Priyam on our 2-3 day exploration of the Big Apple. I had a great time and the delay in composing this post shouldn't give any wrong idea about the same.
I absolutely loved few things about the city which include the Public transport and the busy well lit streets of the downtown and all major tourist attractions. Besides the weather was pretty good at that time much more pleasant than San Francisco city (its pretty hot by now though.).
We took the New York city pass for 79$ as we liked everything in the pass and wanted to try doing as many things as possible.
The city has some amazing Museums. We spend one full day covering just about half of the Metropolitan museum of arts (MeT), which is definitely the biggest Museum in U.S. Turns out that Loovre in Paris is the among the biggest in the world but I spend a much shorter time most likely because I didn't understand much of Art etc. and didn't have company of someone who did, which in this case was Priyam.
My observation at the MeT was that for up to 19th century the complexity and intricacy (details) etc. in the paintings were increasing as time progressed and then came Modern Art.
In the evening we went to the Empire State building, the line for which took about 2 hours after getting in the building at sunset time. Definitely missed the sunset view and wondered if coming may be around 10-11 pm would have made it easier. The view was definitely great though view we had next day from "Top of the Rocks" tower was far better.
The next day was for American Museum of Natural History which had a Planetarium show. The show was okay but the Museum is again impressive. You can definitely spend as much time as you want seeing all the exhibits which include life size imitation of many biological species, Meteor rocks and lot of chemical compounds. They have pretty interesting coverage on evolution and movement of ppl around the world in early days.
After the museum we went to Wall Street and took a tour of the Island by ferry In the evening we went to Top of the Rocks tower for the Panormic view which I felt was better than that from the Empire State Building probably because you can see the Empire state building itself from this view :). After we took a stroll on the famous Broadway street and the times Square area which makes you feel like you are in Vegas with its similar lighting and billboards along with big displays and tickers. Next day Priyam went to see MoMa but I had already had enough of art Museums and I decided to visit whatever beach was possible by public transport, that turned out to be RockPort beach. The easy connectivity by the Metro train makes it a popular destination as was seen by the big number of people on the beach.
The water was pretty cold but unlike California there were people in the water. So I decided to try it out, a little girl who was swimming with her father told me how it would be easy after few minutes and it was indeed so. I would have spent next 1-2 hours in the water, when I was initially fearing to soak my knees.
What happened next was interesting. Suddenly at about 5 PM or so everybody started leaving the beach at once. I could figure it was something to do with safety on the beach in the evening so I followed everyone. We all walked to the station and were to figure out that the station was closed and there was "Police, do not cross" ribbon everywhere. Anxiety! Fortunately people and cops spoke English and I learnt that we were better off walking to next station which was about 10 or so blocks away as this station was closed under the fear of overcrowding and it was not easy to determine when it would re-open.
After about an hour or so of uncertainty we were finally on way back to the city. The train was as busy as the busies subways I have seen in multiple cities (though not close to Rio's new year rush at all) and this was a Sunday evening.
Once I was back in the city I rushed to the Brooklyn bridge a photo on/of which was required to complete the trip to New York. Thankfully the Sunset was at late as about 8:30 pm giving me enough time to take photos of the bridge before and after it.
Here comes the look back at the year post timed around B'day. Last year I delayed writing this post so much that I never did. This time around I will start with something and try to append it over time.
New Things:
1) After a long long time I finally took the change of moving to Mountain View, California. The first time I ever relocated out of my country.
2) My first vacation to a country in South America. I spent 15 days in Brazil for the Christmas and New year break.
3) Bought my first Road bike in December and have been enjoying biking ever since completed about 1600 KMs in 5 months after a relatively poor 300 KM in first 3.
4) My first trip to United Kingdom: Britain and Scotland.
5) First Couchsurfing experience being hosted by Maira in Rio De Janeiro amazing experience
6) First shot at running a half marathon and completing it successfully.
7) My first ever multiday treking experience in the Uttarakhand (65 KM hiking in 6 days).
Old Fun Stuff that continued
1) Attended the second Salsa Rueda Festival in San Francisco in Feb 2010.
2) Learned many more interesting dance forms including Lindy Hop/Swing/Cha cha.
3) Interest weekend trips in California, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Mt Shasta and to other places: Crater lake in Oregon.
4) Language learning continued. I am much better in Spanish now though my French and Japanese didn't get any attention
5) Visited Malaysia on a team offsite.
Looking Forward in next year:
1) Triathlons
2) Visiting (more) countries in Central and South America
3) Scuba diving
...
I just realized I have gotten careless about blogging trips in California. So trying to catch back on some.
Santa Barbara is a city called the American Riviera and has been pretty famous for its scenic beaches though various TV shows and movies. So on a long weekend we decided to give this city a visit. This city is reachable by either taking Highway 101 S like for LA or by the Scenic Highway CA-1 route. We decided to take CA-1 as we had loads of time :) We did trip on the Martin Luther King weekend (Jan 16-18th).
Brasilia is often an ignored city when it comes to tourists visitors who would be overwhelmed by other famous places to visit with associated names like Rio (culture capital), Sao Paulo (business capital), Florianpolis (Industrial capital) and so on. But this Political capital city has its own charm and deserves a visit though may be shorter one than others.
Brasilia trip for me was mostly based on the idea of visiting my only Brazilian friend, Camila at that time to try experience the Brazilian culture more closely being hosted by a family and Wikitravel on Brasilia did tell about few interesting places to see like the Cathedral, the TV tower and various government buildings. One drawback for this city is its big distance from other important cities being in the center of an otherwise famous for its coast country. Brasilia is one of the most modern cities of Brazil and being so its very well planned and organized. You would clearly feel so as you drive around, watching well laid out roads, gardens and parks besides the modern residential buildings. Keep it very green and beautiful.
I arrived in Brasilia from Sao Paulo by plane taking about 2 hrs and departed to Rio from there in bus which took about 17 hours. On that note all websites in Brazil are pretty broken when it comes to English users and more importantly most of them only accept Brazilian credit cards and/or American express cards. So good luck purchasing your tickets !
In Brasilia my hosts gave me a very warm welcome and the two days I spent there were amongst the best traveling time I have repeated mentioned how big fan I have become of Brazilian hospitality and this family definitely played the biggest role in that.
Camila also introduced me to her friends and we had some long discussions about both countries' culture, history, past and present. Dancing, Music, food and politics. As I reflected open these conversations and I realized another great aspect of them their open mindedness and again friendliness. I have lots of sweet memories of you guys!
So what did we do in Brasilia besides talking, here is the summary (little text, many photos)
Evening 1st day:
We went to take pictures with the Christmas lights in the center of the city called Esplanada. Followed by going to a party called "Funfarra". I didn't really like the party though it was set in a nice place, the park, next to a lake etc. The music was pretty bad.
2nd Day: We went to lunch in Naturetto and to Ponte JK, Esplanada and Palácio da Alvorada (Lula's house). These bridge and the goverment buildings are very beautiful specially the one of ministry of external affairs. The cities modern architecture differentiates it from those of Rio and Sao Paulo very clearly. The well planed way in which this ~50 year old city has been laid out is itself something interesting to see.
At night we went to pub named Velvet but we just stayed like half an hour as some other friends wanted to go elsewhere. We then went to Cristina/Martinica. I tried the Brazilian dish called Tapioca here and loved it.
3rd day: We went to the TV Tower to get the panormic view of the city but rained spoiled the plan as they stopped the tour at that time. Interestingly the TV tower is surrounded by a market which looks very similar to those big markets with multiple small shops or "mela" like setup pretty common in India.
