Il buongiorno si vede dal mattino
15-03-2006
In this section we were supposed to talk about our "risky adventures" in Costa Rica but, as we felt the need for adrenaline already in Madrid, we decided to almost miss the plane.
It happens that Madrid has a brand new airport full of very tempting and lavish shops which are the worst place in the world to look for a plug adaptor. As we didn't even know which adaptor we needed among several hundreds of them, we thus decided to buy some other goods of primary necessity such as m&m's and Toblerone (Tobler 1 for english-speaking people).
Time passed by and we realized that it was time for us to show up at the boarding gate, but we still hadn't figured out how huge Madrid's new seducing airport was.
We hence had to experience a most pleasant and breathtaking 23 minutes rush to the furthest gate of the entire airport. Not only was it the first time for our fully-loaded backpacks to have a nice little run, but it was also the first time that an airport saw a sails-man and a mountain-climber running together towards the same destination.
Albeit it's hard to believe, the sails-man was the guy from Brescia, wearing his light Timberland shoes and T-shirt, while the mountain-climber was the guy from Lecce with his heavy trekking-boots and his 100% polyester jumper.
Anyway, we finally made it in time and now all that we have to hope for, is that the battery of the camera will last for 4 months since we yet don't have an adaptor.
Making friends in San José
16-03-2006
As leaving the hostel in San José to have supper around 9 o'clock p.m., the owner told us "suerte" which sounded quite awquard since we were expecting a simple "hasta luego". Nevertheless, thirty seconds later, the infinite wisdom of that "suerte" was revealed: San José by night is more dangerous than Berlusconi leading a country.
Appealing "lap dancers" perform around any given traffic light thus distracting the drivers; beggars, pimps and pick-pockets bug and threaten you all the way and all of the policemen are either getting drunk or "performing" with the "lap dancers".
Therefore, feeling a little bit like Whitney Houston, we decided that we needed a bodyguard. We were thus delighted to make the acquaintance of José Alejandro: this Costa Rican young man impressed us immediately because of his outstanding physical features, in fact he was a lame hunk back as thin as Carla Fracci.
Needless to say that we employed him straight away as our personal Kevin Costner, we were then safely escorted by him to our restaurant.
El camino al Caribe
18-03-2006
Once visited San José and its surroundings, we decided it was time for us to tan. Since tanning is a matter of capital importance in Costa Rica, we thought it was necessary to go to the biggest beach of the Caribbean coast, which was obviously the furthest one and the most difficult to reach.
To start with, we had to face a 3 hours long bone-breaking bus ride to the middle of nowhere; in addition to that, the only way to reach our destination was a 2 hors boat trip on a river that crosses the rain forest. Anyhow, the idea of the beach and of the Caribbean cuisine which were waiting for us in Tortuguero, as our guidebook said, kept us going.
Finally, we ended up in a place unexpectedly run by an Italian lady who was very proud of proposing us her "spaguetti boloniesa": yummy!
The beach was quite disappointing as well: even if stunningly beautiful, the waves were to big to swim and the swell was to strong to bear. We hence decided to have a long walk on the beach: unfortunately the sun set at 5 p.m.!
We were almost discouraged, but then we found out that giant turtles use that beach to nest, as the name "Tortuguero" should have suggested us since the beginning. Unfortunately though, because of the jet lag, we were to tired to go hunting for a giant turtle in the middle of the night and so we fell asleep at 9 p.m.
Creatures from the jungle
19-03-06
Tortuguero is a beautiful place, but we thought that a one-day stay could be enough. Moreover, we had planned to reach the next destination by boat and we were looking forward to pushing our path trough the jungle with a three hours long boat trip which would have allowed us to spot crocs, toucans, monkeys etcetera.
Not only did we spot a couple of alligators, but we also bumped into a very peculiar creature named "Susana". She is a 65 years old Uruguayan lady who claimed to be the most educated woman in her country as well as the richest one, as proven by the huge amount of jewelry that she was wearing in the middle of the rain forest.
After a two hours long monologue about her various beautiful houses, her "chic European friends", the unreachable qualities of her sons and obviously her perfect preparation in international relations, we finally arrived in Moin.
Once there, we were so lucky to find out that Susana was also the most unexpected hitch-hiker of the world: she forced a poor guy to give us a lift to Puerto Limon (15 km away) and, not satisfied with that, she also managed to have him giving us "una vueltita" around the town.
After this extremely teaching experience, we found the inspiration and decided to name our 2 kilos heavy voltage converter after our Uruguayan friend: Susana!
Pura vida!
20-03-2006
Just as heavy as our voltage converter, Susana insisted in joining us in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, a cozy village on the Caribbean coast which is packed with weed consumers and Bob Marley wannabes. This pushed us to chose a hostel which offered only hammocks as sleeping commodities: thanks God Susana's back was aching!
We were glad to discover that, escaping from Susana, we had arrived in an extremely cool place: mellow vibe, people from all over the world and endless white sand beaches made the trick.
The description of this place should help you to understand why this story is about to end: we're definitely not in the mood for writing.
Dos sopas por favor!
4-4-2006
Ten days in Panama allowed us to discover a weird country: bridge between two worlds, its social gap is just as wide as its canal.
Costa Rica is much easier to live... at least this is what we thought until we decided to visit Corcovado national Park. The plan was to hike (and camp) for three days in the jungle and thus we needed to prepare ourselves for the expedition.
In Puerto Jimenez, the gateway to the park, we had been strongly recommended to hire a guide, but after a two hours and a half of negotiations about the price, Kissinger told the guy that his offer was a rip-off: "We'll leave alone!"
We then spent the whole afternoon studying maps, buying food, renting a tent and obviously paying attention not to make our backpacks too heavy. At the end of the day, even if exhausted, we were quite satisfied with what we had done and hence decided to go to a good restaurant and relax in view of the next day's departure.
Albeit, reading the menu, we were suddenly struck by a terrifying thought: we hadn't bought a spoon to eat the only food supply which our simple minds had taken into account: cans of vegetables. Lucky enough, we didn't despair and, when the waiter came to take our order, each of us at the same time asked for two soups.
When we left the restaurant with two spoons in our pockets, we both thought we were definitely born for camping!
Jingle in the jungle
7-4-2006
Sure enough we would have made our way through the jungle quite easily, we woke up at 5 o'clock and left Puerto Jimenez.
Nevertheless, after eight hours of extremely tough hiking under a roasting sun, we started to consider the idea that spending two years in a library may not be the best way to train for what we were doing. Especially because we had been told that one should be able to reach the ranger station we were heading to in about five hours.
Anyhow, too proud to admit that we were walking slowly, we thought that the explanation was obvious: we hadn't spotted the station and so we had walked beyond it.
Fortunately, we insisted in the same direction and finally made it to our destination with an enormous delay.
As soon as we were able to speak again, we were asked if we preferred to set up our tent indoor or in front of the station: Francesco, being a master in camping (in Australia he once spent a night in a tent...), made up his mind immediately: "we'll sleep outside!"
As a result of that, he slept deeply all night long, while Joska, maybe because of a one-meter tall tapir who was grazing around the tent, found it a little hard to fall asleep.
The day after was even more humiliating: our legs were still sore when, around noon, Molly suddenly appeared from the jungle. This American girl, who was carrying a backpack which could have easily contained the British Encyclopedia, had walked our same path in half the time!
At this point our pride hurt more than our legs; we thus immediately proposed her to go back together the day after: not only were we able to bear Molly's rhythm, but Francesco, in order to prove he was tougher, hiked in the jungle for 20 Km wearing his flip-flops!
On the beaten track
12-4-2006
Ten days of almost complete isolation had been enough and, after our experience in the jungle, we definitely needed to go to a crowded place.
Montezuma is a touristy village on the Northern Pacific coast, which we found out to be one of the Italians favorite spots in Costa Rica. In fact, we immediately bumped into a hostel run by four old, slimy and ill-looking Italian gays. After being unpleasantly asked if we were a couple, we thought that spending the night there might be a little risky and thus decided to leave.
Our decision turned out to be very wise, since we finally met Rocío, the most charming Costa Rican girl, who was delighted to have us in her hostel.
Once settled down, we started appreciating the atmosphere of the place: tourists, boozers, locals, artists, junkies, surfers and people just passing by hang around a dusty road. The good part of it is that everybody wants to make friends and so there we were being asked to play snooker by three Costa Rican girls: luckily both of us had skipped enough school to learn how to play!
A few days in Montezuma were very pleasant, but definitely enough for us. Nevertheless, we met several guys who decided to move to this place and that, by now, have been living there for years. However, the "Semana Santa" was coming and with it the "ley seca" (literally the "dry law"): no alcohol can be sold for two entire days.
This seemed an excellent reason to leave!
Cenere e lapilli
14-04-2006
Have you ever experienced a 13-hour long journey including five "colectivos" (Central America's cheapest buses) and a ferry? This is what it takes to get from Montezuma to Volcán Arenal, even if on the map it seems much closer.
Luckily we arrived in a small village famous for its relaxing hot springs that allowed us to vent the stress of the journey.
Initially we wondered around the springs to find the right water temperature and, above all, a spot not too packed with whale-sized, flatulent American tourists. Nevertheless, once found what we were looking for, we were so relaxed that we almost didn't realize that an army of Chinese kids was invading our pool: anyhow, when we felt that the water was getting even warmer (and maybe also a little bit yellow…), we decided to conclude our experience in the springs.
It was by then almost 9 pm and, since the volcano started to erupt, we caught a bus heading to the best place to see it: we will definitely remember for long the last show we saw in Costa Rica!
15-03-2006
In this section we were supposed to talk about our "risky adventures" in Costa Rica but, as we felt the need for adrenaline already in Madrid, we decided to almost miss the plane.
It happens that Madrid has a brand new airport full of very tempting and lavish shops which are the worst place in the world to look for a plug adaptor. As we didn't even know which adaptor we needed among several hundreds of them, we thus decided to buy some other goods of primary necessity such as m&m's and Toblerone (Tobler 1 for english-speaking people).
Time passed by and we realized that it was time for us to show up at the boarding gate, but we still hadn't figured out how huge Madrid's new seducing airport was.
We hence had to experience a most pleasant and breathtaking 23 minutes rush to the furthest gate of the entire airport. Not only was it the first time for our fully-loaded backpacks to have a nice little run, but it was also the first time that an airport saw a sails-man and a mountain-climber running together towards the same destination.
Albeit it's hard to believe, the sails-man was the guy from Brescia, wearing his light Timberland shoes and T-shirt, while the mountain-climber was the guy from Lecce with his heavy trekking-boots and his 100% polyester jumper.
Anyway, we finally made it in time and now all that we have to hope for, is that the battery of the camera will last for 4 months since we yet don't have an adaptor.
Making friends in San José
16-03-2006
As leaving the hostel in San José to have supper around 9 o'clock p.m., the owner told us "suerte" which sounded quite awquard since we were expecting a simple "hasta luego". Nevertheless, thirty seconds later, the infinite wisdom of that "suerte" was revealed: San José by night is more dangerous than Berlusconi leading a country.
Appealing "lap dancers" perform around any given traffic light thus distracting the drivers; beggars, pimps and pick-pockets bug and threaten you all the way and all of the policemen are either getting drunk or "performing" with the "lap dancers".
Therefore, feeling a little bit like Whitney Houston, we decided that we needed a bodyguard. We were thus delighted to make the acquaintance of José Alejandro: this Costa Rican young man impressed us immediately because of his outstanding physical features, in fact he was a lame hunk back as thin as Carla Fracci.
Needless to say that we employed him straight away as our personal Kevin Costner, we were then safely escorted by him to our restaurant.
El camino al Caribe
18-03-2006
Once visited San José and its surroundings, we decided it was time for us to tan. Since tanning is a matter of capital importance in Costa Rica, we thought it was necessary to go to the biggest beach of the Caribbean coast, which was obviously the furthest one and the most difficult to reach.
To start with, we had to face a 3 hours long bone-breaking bus ride to the middle of nowhere; in addition to that, the only way to reach our destination was a 2 hors boat trip on a river that crosses the rain forest. Anyhow, the idea of the beach and of the Caribbean cuisine which were waiting for us in Tortuguero, as our guidebook said, kept us going.
Finally, we ended up in a place unexpectedly run by an Italian lady who was very proud of proposing us her "spaguetti boloniesa": yummy!
The beach was quite disappointing as well: even if stunningly beautiful, the waves were to big to swim and the swell was to strong to bear. We hence decided to have a long walk on the beach: unfortunately the sun set at 5 p.m.!
We were almost discouraged, but then we found out that giant turtles use that beach to nest, as the name "Tortuguero" should have suggested us since the beginning. Unfortunately though, because of the jet lag, we were to tired to go hunting for a giant turtle in the middle of the night and so we fell asleep at 9 p.m.
Creatures from the jungle
19-03-06
Tortuguero is a beautiful place, but we thought that a one-day stay could be enough. Moreover, we had planned to reach the next destination by boat and we were looking forward to pushing our path trough the jungle with a three hours long boat trip which would have allowed us to spot crocs, toucans, monkeys etcetera.
Not only did we spot a couple of alligators, but we also bumped into a very peculiar creature named "Susana". She is a 65 years old Uruguayan lady who claimed to be the most educated woman in her country as well as the richest one, as proven by the huge amount of jewelry that she was wearing in the middle of the rain forest.
After a two hours long monologue about her various beautiful houses, her "chic European friends", the unreachable qualities of her sons and obviously her perfect preparation in international relations, we finally arrived in Moin.
Once there, we were so lucky to find out that Susana was also the most unexpected hitch-hiker of the world: she forced a poor guy to give us a lift to Puerto Limon (15 km away) and, not satisfied with that, she also managed to have him giving us "una vueltita" around the town.
After this extremely teaching experience, we found the inspiration and decided to name our 2 kilos heavy voltage converter after our Uruguayan friend: Susana!
Pura vida!
20-03-2006
Just as heavy as our voltage converter, Susana insisted in joining us in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, a cozy village on the Caribbean coast which is packed with weed consumers and Bob Marley wannabes. This pushed us to chose a hostel which offered only hammocks as sleeping commodities: thanks God Susana's back was aching!
We were glad to discover that, escaping from Susana, we had arrived in an extremely cool place: mellow vibe, people from all over the world and endless white sand beaches made the trick.
The description of this place should help you to understand why this story is about to end: we're definitely not in the mood for writing.
Dos sopas por favor!
4-4-2006
Ten days in Panama allowed us to discover a weird country: bridge between two worlds, its social gap is just as wide as its canal.
Costa Rica is much easier to live... at least this is what we thought until we decided to visit Corcovado national Park. The plan was to hike (and camp) for three days in the jungle and thus we needed to prepare ourselves for the expedition.
In Puerto Jimenez, the gateway to the park, we had been strongly recommended to hire a guide, but after a two hours and a half of negotiations about the price, Kissinger told the guy that his offer was a rip-off: "We'll leave alone!"
We then spent the whole afternoon studying maps, buying food, renting a tent and obviously paying attention not to make our backpacks too heavy. At the end of the day, even if exhausted, we were quite satisfied with what we had done and hence decided to go to a good restaurant and relax in view of the next day's departure.
Albeit, reading the menu, we were suddenly struck by a terrifying thought: we hadn't bought a spoon to eat the only food supply which our simple minds had taken into account: cans of vegetables. Lucky enough, we didn't despair and, when the waiter came to take our order, each of us at the same time asked for two soups.
When we left the restaurant with two spoons in our pockets, we both thought we were definitely born for camping!
Jingle in the jungle
7-4-2006
Sure enough we would have made our way through the jungle quite easily, we woke up at 5 o'clock and left Puerto Jimenez.
Nevertheless, after eight hours of extremely tough hiking under a roasting sun, we started to consider the idea that spending two years in a library may not be the best way to train for what we were doing. Especially because we had been told that one should be able to reach the ranger station we were heading to in about five hours.
Anyhow, too proud to admit that we were walking slowly, we thought that the explanation was obvious: we hadn't spotted the station and so we had walked beyond it.
Fortunately, we insisted in the same direction and finally made it to our destination with an enormous delay.
As soon as we were able to speak again, we were asked if we preferred to set up our tent indoor or in front of the station: Francesco, being a master in camping (in Australia he once spent a night in a tent...), made up his mind immediately: "we'll sleep outside!"
As a result of that, he slept deeply all night long, while Joska, maybe because of a one-meter tall tapir who was grazing around the tent, found it a little hard to fall asleep.
The day after was even more humiliating: our legs were still sore when, around noon, Molly suddenly appeared from the jungle. This American girl, who was carrying a backpack which could have easily contained the British Encyclopedia, had walked our same path in half the time!
At this point our pride hurt more than our legs; we thus immediately proposed her to go back together the day after: not only were we able to bear Molly's rhythm, but Francesco, in order to prove he was tougher, hiked in the jungle for 20 Km wearing his flip-flops!
On the beaten track
12-4-2006
Ten days of almost complete isolation had been enough and, after our experience in the jungle, we definitely needed to go to a crowded place.
Montezuma is a touristy village on the Northern Pacific coast, which we found out to be one of the Italians favorite spots in Costa Rica. In fact, we immediately bumped into a hostel run by four old, slimy and ill-looking Italian gays. After being unpleasantly asked if we were a couple, we thought that spending the night there might be a little risky and thus decided to leave.
Our decision turned out to be very wise, since we finally met Rocío, the most charming Costa Rican girl, who was delighted to have us in her hostel.
Once settled down, we started appreciating the atmosphere of the place: tourists, boozers, locals, artists, junkies, surfers and people just passing by hang around a dusty road. The good part of it is that everybody wants to make friends and so there we were being asked to play snooker by three Costa Rican girls: luckily both of us had skipped enough school to learn how to play!
A few days in Montezuma were very pleasant, but definitely enough for us. Nevertheless, we met several guys who decided to move to this place and that, by now, have been living there for years. However, the "Semana Santa" was coming and with it the "ley seca" (literally the "dry law"): no alcohol can be sold for two entire days.
This seemed an excellent reason to leave!
Cenere e lapilli
14-04-2006
Have you ever experienced a 13-hour long journey including five "colectivos" (Central America's cheapest buses) and a ferry? This is what it takes to get from Montezuma to Volcán Arenal, even if on the map it seems much closer.
Luckily we arrived in a small village famous for its relaxing hot springs that allowed us to vent the stress of the journey.
Initially we wondered around the springs to find the right water temperature and, above all, a spot not too packed with whale-sized, flatulent American tourists. Nevertheless, once found what we were looking for, we were so relaxed that we almost didn't realize that an army of Chinese kids was invading our pool: anyhow, when we felt that the water was getting even warmer (and maybe also a little bit yellow…), we decided to conclude our experience in the springs.
It was by then almost 9 pm and, since the volcano started to erupt, we caught a bus heading to the best place to see it: we will definitely remember for long the last show we saw in Costa Rica!
