Switzerland of Central America

After a long day of travel, which you might remember from here, we arrived in Playa Grande, Costa Rica. Someone in El Salvador had aloofly told us that Costa Rica thought they were the Switzerland of Central America. Well we were excited to discover that this statement wasn’t without warrant and a welcomed change. The roads were good, the fences were straight, the beaches were clean, and you could drink the water! Yay for the Switzerland of Central America, we’ll take it!

It was so fun to meet up with our friend Cody, who was working in Playa Grande and meet his awesome world of friends there. Surfing different breaks, a surprise hatchling of baby turtles, trips to Samura and surrounding beaches and the best wave of George’s life, sums up almost 2 weeks of time here. The El Manglar hotel and the crew that runs the place made for an awesome time. Will, our friend that you may remember from here, was also in Costa Rica and as always it was super fun to see him and enjoy the party that inevitably ensues when he’s around.

Eventually the heat got to us and we were keen to head for higher ground. We made our way to Monteverde, to be welcomed by an earthquake when we pulled into the parking lot. We hiked through the Monteverde cloud forest and checked out flora and fauna, suspension bridges and waterfalls. Since we skipped out on our tourist activity in Leon, which you may remember here, we decided to set something up in Monteverde. Claiming to be the home of the first ever zipline, it seemed only appropriate to partake in this breathtakingly fun adventure. And because George couldn’t resist, we did the 40ft leap to Tarzan swing at the end. It was nice to be in the cool weather, enjoy a hot shower and slightly scare the shit out of ourselves.

From Monteverde we had a fantastic drive to Arenal. Albeit it took us all day it was my favorite drive of the trip. We encountered road closures, a super nice guy at a casada that hand drew us a map (which included instructions for 7 river crossings), windy steep roads, views of the Pacific and the Caribbean, stunning green mountains, and a distant view of the Arenal Volcano.

At Arenal, we searched for and found the free hot springs, which was actually a full-blown river of hot water. We found a set of rapids that offered a little massage and soaked for as long as we could take it.
When the grill of the van was melted, which you might remember from here, we asked on thesamba.com (an online forum that we use frequently for all of our van quires) if anyone knew a place south of the boarder that we might be able to find parts. From this post we had a Canadian couple reach out to us and invite us to stay at their home in San Ramon, Costa Rica. You can read their account of our stay here. We were grateful for their generosity, great food, washing machine and willingness to show us around their area. When we thanked them as we left, they told us they hoped someone would do the same for their kids.
George learned about a big swell coming through and Seman Santa and its crazy traffic was almost upon us so we decided that from San Ramon we were going to make the long haul to Pavones.