The Longest Day

Traveling from San Jose, Costa Rica to Paris was a long and rough trip... probably the worst trip I've ever had...
It began well enough on Monday in Costa Rica; the plane was in time and the board bag was taken care of quickly and efficiently... a first!
Things got really ugly in Miami though... the plane taxied for over a half an hour waiting for a gate... so we only had 45 minutes to get to our connecting flight. (no problem...)
eeek... Miami being the worst international airport out there, we had to go through immigration (a big no-no for me since I really did not want a new US stamp in my passport...), get our bags, re-check the bags, and go through the gates all over again... in 45 minutes... well, that wasn't going to happen.
We got our bags and then went to wait in line for another hour to get another flight. In the meantime, there was no help from anyone either from the airport or from American Airlines to try and actually get us on our actual flight or get where we were supposed to be... so I was fairly angry...
Anyway, we finally got to a rather efficient lady who got us on the very next flight to London, connecting to Paris... So we were back on and running to our next flight, which we caught....
During the flight from Miami to London, I ate something that didn't agree with me... at first i thought it was just the nasty airplane coffee, but it stayed.... I was nocious the rest of the flight to London, while waiting in line for more security checks in London, then threw up in London, and again during the flight from London to Paris, and again and again in Paris.... lovely!
Oh yeah, of course, as expected with all these connections and changes, one of our bags didn't follow; but that seemed minor after the rest! (It arrived a few hours later at my sister's apartment.)
It is the kind of trip that makes you dread taking the plane again but at least, we got to Paris in one piece and with all our luggage!

The Costa Rican portion of our trip is coming to an end quicker than we originally expected… We originally had plane tickets on Air Madrid to return to France on the 20^th of February, which we had to purchase before returning into Costa Rica from Panama, to show that we were indeed leaving the country at some point. Unfortunately, out of the thousands of airlines out there, this is the one that had to file for bankruptcy and cancel all flights two weeks later…

Luckily enough, a headline on a Costa Rican newspaper caught my eye soon after that, which related the bad luck of the thousands of passengers stranded in airports right before Christmas… But we basically didn’t have a return ticket anymore…

Of course, the airline was unavailable to answer calls and it was not taking responsibility for anything… so after many unsuccessful attempts, we resorted to getting brand new tickets… that worked out OK, but now, instead of leaving around the 20^th of February, we’re leaving the 12^th, which was definitely cheaper… but… that’s less than a week away!

So we’re now getting psychologically ready for cold weather and enjoying our last few days of warmth and beach. For me, it’s a mixture of excitement at going home again and at the same time a bit of dread at the thought of the lovely Paris February weather (wet and cold), for which we’re definitely not prepared!

In the meantime though, let’s not waste time and take advantage of the last Costa Rican days for a little lesson in surfing technique, with Mr. Topp…

And here, the proper technique in doing a cut back…

And this is what the same technique should result in if applied to bigger waves (Playa Cocles).

And here, a great demonstration of the Nose-Ride.

And finally, last but not least, the tricky Walk-on-Water technique.

Tada! and if you can master these, you're on your way to good surfing...

OK, so this is what we will be doing (well, really, what Paul will be doing, and I will just do what I can… surfing well is definitely harder than it seems!) during our last few days in Puerto Viejo. We are due back in San Jose on Saturday for the last minute Mercado Central shopping and then on the plane on Monday.

Cahuita National Park

The weather having improved quite a bit in the last few days, we went to visit the Cahuita National Park, a half an hour away by bus. The Park is along the coast and protects both near shore habitats and the coral reef that is just offshore. It is always great to expect little and get more! The Lonely Planet wasn’t very talkative about the park other than about the coral it was protecting and it did not seem very popular.

The trail followed the coastline in the rainforest and wildlife was not very shy… 2 minutes in and we already had spotted a yellow viper on the side of the trail. It was very still and had ants around its mouth, so it might have been dead, but then again, its eyes were very open and looking really mean…

Five minutes later, we were in the middle of a group of howler monkeys. They were up in the trees and kept their distance (sort of) but apparently did not care at all about our presence.

As we walked along, there was plenty more wildlife to see, including blue morpho butterflies, nasty-looking spiders, sloths, and more monkeys.

In addition to the howlers, there were also a lot of white-face monkeys (“Marcel” for the Friends buffs); now these were definitely not shy, they were actually interested in people! Well, actually they were not so much interested in people as in their potential as food source…

They had figured out that cameras and camera bags had no food so they didn’t pay too much attention to us, but a lady that walked by with a small pack of crackers in her hand got it stolen quickly! (There were signs telling people not to feed the monkeys, but obviously that did not do much good because the monkeys knew very well what looked like food and how to open plastic wraps.) That made for an entertaining hike though!

Along the way we met a French couple; the guy must have been some sort of field biologist because he’s ability to find wildlife was phenomenal… Every other step he found something: from the sloths perfectly camouflaged in the trees to the pink viper hidden under a bush… very helpful!

Find the sloths (2)...

After four hours of hiking, we were worn out, but the day was far from over… after a good typical Costa Rican casado lunch, we set out to wait for the bus…. Two and a half hours later, it finally came! Apparently, there was a broken bridge somewhere, which delayed three buses… So we finally got home that night around 9:30 pm!