Month: November 2023

I stood in the shade of a closed shop doorway and booked a room at the Hotel Don Robert a few blocks away. Even last year, this would have terrified me! Travelling somewhere without booked accommodation, let alone arriving somewhere without a hotel booking would have kept me up at night, I would feel like I wasn’t in control. (PPS+R … protect, promote, satisfy and repeat!)

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I’m really not sure where I want to go next, or what I want to do, so I have decided to travel to Puntarenas for at least one night before moving on – probably – south down the Pacific coast.

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We were each given small torches and off we set with our guide. It did start to rain quite heavily but under the cover of the forest, not a lot was getting to the ground. The tour was great fun, an interesting diversion despite the weather. Not that I got to see too much during the tour, it is of course potluck which gritters you might spot. I did see a couple of tarantulas, an opossum, various birds trying to sleep in the trees, some different spiderwebs, caterpillars and bees. I enjoyed the walk, and I enjoyed the experience.

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Zipline #6 was 800m long and you had to go down it in pairs. I was on my own, so I was paired up with Karin from Germany. I was behind Karin and had to put my legs around her waist, something I don’t normally do with strangers!

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The Jeep isn’t a Jeep! It’s a compact mini-bus with 18 passengers and baggage!

But the First Principle of Transportation is Safe Arrival so I will put aside my expectation… for now at least. But it is clear from the comments of the other passengers that expectations were being challenged.

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I was considering walking the lava trail inside the Arenal Volcano National Park but the tour company I contacted just wanted to sell a guided tour. In hindsight, I should just have gone by taxi. But hindsight is both a blessing and a curse.

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I did eventually venture outside. The small town of La Fortuna has a compact and easily walkable centre. The town is very touristy with all types of travellers. So it’s all quite buzzy, and lots of locals speak more than a smattering of English. Since arriving in La Fortuna, I have noticed that Costa Rica is relatively expensive, possibly even more so than Bocas del Toro in Panama!

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For all of my best plans and efforts to get to the airport on time, the flight departure time was delayed by one hour. Bang goes my already slim chance of catching my preferred direct bus to La Fortuna. Nevermind, I think there are indirect buses that will get me there eventually. I had only settled on La Fortuna yesterday as my first destination in Costa Rica because of the direct bus. I don’t have a hotel booked yet and I am not sure of my next destination.

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I took a circular route back to Studio Coliving Hotel noticing quite a few – but not all – shops, banks and offices had been newly boarded up, as if a hurricane were forecast. Then I remembered the recent and ongoing protests all over Panama because of alleged government corruption in relation to recently granted licences for open cast copper mining. As I got closer to the hotel, the protestors gathering at Iglesia del Carmen Metro station were gaining in numbers and becoming more vocal.

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Travelling with cabin size and weight baggage (under 10kg) is a liberating rather than limiting way to get around. In the past I would travel with at least one, and sometimes two bags, to check in as well as my cabin bag(s). Nowadays, I like to travel simply to simply travel. It is a lot easier, less complicated and much cheaper this way.

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