Where Have You Been?

Carrie &Jonathon,

I’m confused looking at your site… you guys have traveld a lot looks like… where all have u been?

james

Hey James!

Well, we have done a lot of travel in the past, but since October, we’ve been Read the rest of this entry »

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Podcast #5: The Northern Part of Central America

In this podcast, we cover about 7 weeks of travel, from the time we left Granada, Nicaragua, early in December, through today, January 18.

Download the travel podcast MP3 here
We cover our travels through places and experiences like:

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How We’ve Spent The Last Few Days

There’s not much newsworthy to report when you spend a few days in a hotel in Costa Rica, working on a computer and talking on the phone

(We use Skype for most of our calling – Carrie’s actually on the phone with the hotel lobby in this photo).

But I think it’s important to post here too about the work we do.

Alongside all of the cool things we get to do, and places we get to go, we also do spend a fair amount of time working.

So, we’ve spent a few days at the Adventure Inn hotel, not really going on any adventures in Costa Rica.

But the hotel is nice, relatively quiet, and the Internet is good speed (especially compared to the speeds we’ve experienced in many parts of Central America).

That means that this is a good time and place for us to be working.

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Tourism Map of Central America: Our Map from 3 months of Travel

In three months, we visited 6 countries, covered over 2,500 land miles (mostly by bus) and saw some really amazing places.
We also met some truly fantastic people – both people who are involved in tourism as tourists and tourist guides, and people who are living their lives in the countries we visited.
This map is not yet 100% complete, but gives you an idea of the places we’ve been and what we’ve been up to.
If you’re looking to ride Ticabus or Tracopa and want to know exact locations, this map should be rather helpful for you.
Also, we’ve tried to put in all our hotel stays (Think we got them all on here) and will be linking from this map to the reviews on our site so that you can easily get to everything in one place.
This should help you know where to stay if you visit these countries.
If you’re going to Central America, we hope that this helps you to both find things you’d like to see and do, as well as to know where exactly those things to see and do are located.
If this map does prove helpful for you, please comment below and let us know!

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Carrie’s Current countries visited

visited 15 states (6.66%)
Create your own visited map of The World
On our trip through Central America, I got to add 6 countries to my map of visited countries. It’s too bad not all of them have a stamp representation in my passport.
I’ve actually been to more countries that this, but I didn’t spend the night, so they don’t count. I’ve been to France numerous times when I lived in Germany, and I also drove through Austria. They’ll be added to the list sometime soon through.

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Geckos, Roosters, Fireworks, Car Alarms, Children, Dogs, Sneezing, Parades and Bells, Doorbells, and Construction

What can you really do about so much noise but laugh?
I’m a relatively light sleeper, and have learned to travel with earplugs. In fact, before departing on this part of our travel/working experience, Carrie and I bought a box of 500+ earplugs on Amazon.
We used some of these at La Tortuga Feliz and haven’t used them too much since. Not that we haven’t had occasion to. With the exception of Hotel Angela (where we had an interior room) and our time in Boquete, Panama, every morning and often in the middle of the night, I’ve been awoken by the sounds of roosters, children, fireworks, children, dogs, parades, or bells. In general, I find North Americans and American culture to be pretty noisy, but I’m finding Central Americans and Central America to be even noisier.
As I’m writing this, Carrie just woke up and asked me (first thing – not “good morning” or anything like that, but) “Is that a dog or a sick frog?”
In general, every city in Central America (and in Argentina) has some stray dogs which seem to do the majority of their barking between 9PM and 3AM. About 2:30 AM and continuing through to about 5:30 or 6:00 AM come the roosters. They continue throughout the day, but this is when the majority of their sounds occur. Roosters are PLENTIFUL in almost every place we’ve been in Central America, most of them sharing their calls LONG before I can see any sign of sunlight.
Then come the fireworks. I like fireworks as much as anyone, but regardless of where we have been (again excepting Boquete), there have been fireworks every day just before 6AM, just before 6PM, and frequently around noon. Sometimes they also get shot off for a few minutes at midnight.
Why so many fireworks? Well, apparently that’s what they do in Central America in December and January to celebrate Christmas. There’s even a saying in nicaragua which goes something along the lines of “a man always has money for beer and fireworks, even if he can’t afford to feed his own family.”
In Granada, Nicaragua, they have 9 days of celebrations for the Immaculate Conception of Jesus in which they revere statues of Mary and parade them through the town to the church. These are fun festivals which include candied apples, trinkets, and of course, fireworks.

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La Paz Waterfall Gardens: Waterfalls Near Poas Volcano

La Paz Waterfall Gardens (includes waterfalls – $35/each for non-nationals – $70 total.).
La Paz Waterfall Gardens is not only a set of gardens and waterfalls, it’s also a small zoo with monkeys, birds (including toucans), jungle cats, frogs, and my favorite part of all, a butterfly house.
Carrie and I are not big fans of going to zoos. Though we think in concept they’re a good idea to get people interested in conservation and to make people aware of what exists in the world, for ourselves, we’d just rather find a way to go see the animals in the wild. But not all people are thinking that way, so it’s good that the opportunity exists in many cities around the world in the form of a zoo.
Anyway, because the road was closed due to an earthquake from a year or so ago, the only way to see the waterfalls was to pay to go through the gardens/zoo.

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Poas Volcano and National Park: Costa Rica’s Poas Volcano

Today was a great day in Costa Rica.
We spent some money to do it, but we got to the top of Poas Volcano (our second day attempting to see Poas).
On the way up the volcano, we got some very good advice from the driver of a tour minibus who had stopped his bus so tourists could take pictures of a natural sloth he spotted.
We stopped and took pictures of the sloth as well.

This Poas guide’s advice: if it’s rainy in the morning on the top of Volcano Poas (regardless of what the weather is doing elsewhere in the country), go to La Paz waterfall gardens or do zip lines first, and then go to the top of the volcano.
So we took his advice. (More on La Paz Waterfall Gardens in a bit.)
We got to the first crater of Poas at the right time for the sky to be clear and to see the whole crater ($10/person +$2/car for non-nationals).

We learned some interesting factoids about Poas that I would like to share, just in case you want to come to Volcano Poas as well.

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Crazy Costa Rica: Ruminations on Costa Rica

Irazu Volcano and National park, where we tried to go today but didn’t see much due to fog:
http://www.costarica-nationalparks.com/irazuvolcanonationalpark.html
http://www.costaricamap-online.com/php/map03/map03map.html
Guayabo National Monument, where we did go today even though we got there shortly after it was closed, but didn’t see much due to pouring rain:
http://www.costarica-nationalparks.com/guayabonationalmonument.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guayabo_National_Monument
Costa Rica. Ah, Costa Rica

This might become a bit of a rant. If you’re not up for that, this particular post may not be for you.
Looking at the past couple of days, I feel like one good thing I can say is “At least nothing bad happened.”
And I think it’s terrible to have that be one of the primary thoughts in my mind about a country which clearly has a lot to offer.
While venting these thoughts about Costa Rica on Facebook, I was a little disappointed.
Someone said I sounded like a typical American with my complaints about things not going according to plan or schedule.
I’m familiar with the “typical American,” also known as the “ugly American.”
It’s the first time I’ve been aware that something I’ve been talking about with regard to our travels has come across that way. Hopefully it’s the last time I’ll come across as a typical American in a negative context, and I’ll definitely be more aware of that going forward.
At the same time, I have felt frustrated or annoyed nearly every day we’ve been in Costa Rica, while not at all in Panama. The first week at Hotel Aranjuez in San Jose, the second week at La Tortuga Feliz, the turtle project near Bataan (south of Tortuguero), the third week in Puerto Viejo, and now, this week, outside of San Jose.
One good thing I can say about Costa Rica is that the people we’ve met here have been really nice.
None of this is a reflection on them.
Here’s what I’m running up against, I think, in thinking about Costa Rica…

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Thanksgiving in San Jose, Costa Rica

It’s always more fun to celebrate Thanksgiving with other people than by yourself. This year, Jonathan and I decided that we would invite Kattya and Ricardo over for Thanksgiving dinner.
They couldn’t make it on Thursday night, so we had Thanksgiving on Friday instead.
One thing about traveling is that you have to be flexible with what you can and can’t find in a grocery store. Our menu was a bit different than “normal”.

We had a roasted chicken (We couldn’t find turkey anywhere, so Jonathan roasted a chicken), mashed potatoes (made by Jonathan – and they were absolutely fabulous), green bean casserole (which I made from scratch with fresh green beans and a b

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