Hotel Liberia

I woke up not feeling well this morning and went back to bed, but I was still able to catch the 10:30am bus from Montezuma to Paquera, which worked out fine. I talked to a Canadian lady who has been living out here for 5 years, and then I slept the rest of the ride. Next I got on the ferry without having to wait at all. I got into Puntarenas earlier than I thought, so I was able to catch the bus going to Liberia. At this time things were looking okay. The bus to Liberia took longer than expected (just got here 1 hr ago) and I jumped in a taxi and had him take me to a hostel that I found in the Lonely Planet guide book (which had a nice pleasant description of the place). Got there and it was a dirty and damp place with no one in it. So I walked down the street to the second hotel (Hotel Liberia) listed in Lonely Planet and it was no better, if not worse, but I had no other options.

There is only a couple other people (supposedly) staying here. I get into the dorm (which of course no one else was in) and I go to lock the door, but the lock is broke and the room is right by the entrance, which is not locked either. So I asked if there was another dorm that locked available and he said the only other dorm was the boys dorm and he couldn´t put me in there (even though there are no guys staying here right now). So he says, for $2 more you can have a private room, so I had no choice. It´s a tiny damp dirty dark room. It´s so disgusting I can hardly describe it. The ´bathroom´is a toilet right next to the bed and there is a dead cockroach in the shower (the hell am I getting in there in the morning). I thought about taking a picture of the room, but I don´t ever want to remember this room again. At this point I am really hungry cause I haven´t eaten all day (since I had no time inbetween transfers) after 9 hrs of traveling. So I went to the soda just a couple of buildings down the road and ordered the typical casado. I got it and there was a half dead big black ant in my salad and the rice was hardly cooked. I sucked it up and ate most of the meal (not touching the salad of course).

Sigh, well now I am at an internet cafe, which is luckily right across the street. The internet is slow, but not as bad as the last place. I just want to leave for Nicaragua first thing tomorrow morning. I don´t even want to go back into that room. I plan on staying here in this internet cafe until it closes and then popping a Xanax or two in order to fall asleep, or otherwise it´s not happening.

Good night, and don´t let the bed bugs bite (hopefully not, but probably very likely).

Liberia

* This post is from Sarah, but was not published since the junky internet cafe kept on crashing *

Okay, after the second attempt today and 15 minutes later I finally have minimal internet connection. My goal now is to make my way up to Nicaragua, but I will have to back track a bit together. Tomorrow I will be catching a 8:30am bus back to Paquera and catching the same ferry I took here back to Puntarenas. Then I will be catching a bus to Liberia where I will stay a night. There is not a lot to do in the town, but

* 5/23 8:45am AZ time, I just got a call on the telephone from Sarah. She will probably spend a night in Puntarenas, but will call or email once she has Internet access again. *

Map of Costa Rica

Montezuma

The first bus I took left at 6am this morning and was about 3 hours long. Then I spent almost 2 hours looking for the ferry and waiting for it to arrive in Puntarenas. Next took a 1.5 hour ferry ride to Paquera and waited another hour for the next bus which was about a 3 hour ride. Finally after 9 hours of travel I am in Montezuma. It's a very laid back small town on the ocean. I am staying at Hotel Lucy which ended up being a few dolars more than I expected, but there are not  lot of choices here. There is no internet at the hostel, but I found a internet cafe. I'm not even sure what I am being charged right now, so I can't make this long. What is nice is that the hostel is right on the beach! I can see and hear the ocean from my bed and it's very relaxing. I will probably be here for two nights. 

Bye-bye Monteverde

Tomorrow I am catching the 6am bus to the city of Puntarenas. From there I will take a ferry over to the south end of the Nicoya peninsula. Then I am not 100% certain on where I will be staying. I was going to head to Montezuma, but the town the ferry arrives in has a day trip to an island right off the coast, so I might stay there I night. I will let you know tomorrow.

Monkeys

Today was my best day in Costa Rica thus far. I went to the actual cloud forest of Monteverde and it was amazing! Wildlife is not seen as often there because the forest is so big, so the animals and birds don't usually hang out near the paths, but I got lucky. I saw all sorts of colorfull birds and giant insects and best of all I saw tons of monkeys. As we (me and my new friend chen) crossed the suspension bridge two spider monkeys appeared from the top of the trees. They continued to crawl down the tree closer to us to eat leaves. I had my binoculars with and I was able to actually see him shoving the leaves into his face. Then he passed right over my head. Towards the end of our hike (4 hours later) all of a sudden we heard really loud calls that sounded like gorillas. It was actually pretty scary at first, but of course they were only howler monkeys. There were several of them and I think they were yelling at the spider monkeys which were in the next tree over. I got some awesome videos that you can hear the monkeys yelling at eachother.

Originally I was only going to spend two nights here in Monteverde, but I love it here and I'm going to stay another night. Tomorrow I am going to check out the other cloud forest, Santa Elena and maybe walk across several suspension bridges.