Shopping Day

Yesterday was shopping day. I realized when I arrived to California that a girl can’t survive with only 6 tops a whole month in California. Especially if that month includes a 4 day trip to Las Vegas/Grand Canyon.

Yesterday morning I had also realized that I had totally missed my budget in Costa Rica, since I forgot to include all the activities. That was quite a lot of money. I had no once else to blame but myself. Anyhow - even if my budget was limited I wanted to go shopping.

The problem is that the shopping in California is too good. My sister and I went to Macy´s (like Åhlens in Sweden) just to check out a few things and we ended up in a Calvin Klein sale. Before I knew it I had bought:

• 3 new tops
• 1 dress
• 1 pair of pants

We decided to have a coffee break before I checked out the bikinis (my bikini got destroyed in Costa Rica, so I needed a new one). I almost fainted when I got to the bathing suit/bikini department – there were sooooo much to choose from.  Before I knew I had my arms filled with different things I liked. Unfortunately I liked tem so much so I bought a lot of it:

• 1 bikini
• 1 bathing suite
• 2 tops, where one was from Michael Kors

I only needed one more thing; a pair of shoes and I had already decided that I wanted something like Converse and within minutes I had bought a pair of shoes also. Suddenly I was totally newly equipped. 

So what is wrong with me?? Why am I shopping so much when I had realized that I was out of money?? Well – for most of the time I’m careful with my money, but send me into a sale with clothes that I like and I can’t stop myself.  But I had to say that I’m extremely happy with all the things that I bought. I can’t even remember the last time where I felt so happy with the clothes that I bought. All day today I have had a smile on my face since I’m wearing one of the new tops. To feel pretty is worth a lot, even for a Tom-boy like me. 

Today we flew to Las Vegas. So I’m writing this laying on my bed in our hotel room on the 26^th floor at the Rio hotel - looking down on busy Las Vegas. I have to say that it feels like I have arrived to a parallel world here. Already at the airport it was clear that this was Vegas, since there where slot machines everywhere. When we arrived at the hotel we even got lost among all the machines and games before we could find our way to our room. It is almost sickening to see how people play games everywhere.

We, on the other hand, are just taking it easy before we go and see the “Penn and Teller” show tonight. Tomorrow will check out “the Strip” and on Friday we are flying helicopter to Grand Canyon. It will be busy days and of a totally different character than I had in Costa Rica. But that was sort of the whole point of my trip: to experience totally different things.

Observations during flights

Yesterday I flew the whole day. I left the hotel at 8.20 in the morning and arrived to my sister’s house at 23. Add then a couple of hours of time difference an you get the picture. Luckily I had only around 25 min delay on the last flight (all others were on time) and got my luggage in the end. I was actually expecting to get some problems with it. I even packed for the risk to lose my luggage.

To travel during the day is in a lot of ways just a waste of time. You end up watching endless amounts of movies and/or TV shows. I couldn’t find any good movies yesterday, so I ended up seeing multiple episodes of House, Law and Order, CSI…. You name it.

But I amused myself by doing some observations:

·         The Continental staff from Costa Rica to Houston really needs to go on some service training. They just through the food at you, spoke fast and low so it was impossible to hear what they said and had a bored attitude. Again – Lufthansa is so much better.

·         Houston Airport was a pleasant surprise after all my struggles at Newark. In Houston I went through Immigration, Customs, and Security check plus walked to the lounge near my gate within 20 minutes. In Newark it took my more than one hour to pass immigration.

·         The Continental lounges in USA are far behind Lufthansa lounges. They served coffee (of course not coffee to the European standard), tea and water plus fruit and some cookies. Lufthansa offers food and drinks, where the food is enough to replace a meal and the drinks include everything from soda to sparkling wine and whisky. In the Continental lounge there was a bar, but you needed to pay.

·         I was served a cheese burger in Business Class. I don’t think any European airline would do that. It was a good burger, but I don’t think it works with burgers on a plane. People tend to need more space while eating that. ;-)

·         On one of the flights I had a good looking young man sitting next to me. He was drinking a lot of white wine while reading “Guns & Ammo”. For some reason I found that to be a funny combo.

Now I will need to do some shopping. Tomorrow I'm off to Las Vegas!!!

My final day in Costa Rica

The round trip in Costa Rica ended yesterday, but I had one more day before I’m flying to California. I decided to use it as much as possible and booked a trip to a nearby volcano. 

I need to explain something before I go on. I need to explain what it means to travel with Intrepid. Intrepid trips are like back packing on your own, but you get help to arrange transport (often public) and accommodation (simpler hotels, hostels or camping). People travelling with Intrepid are mostly travel freaks that want to really experience the countries that they visit and want to avoid luxury hotels and tourist traps. My group the last 10 days has been like that. We have enjoyed living in simpler hotels (still very good, but not luxurious) and we all agree on what it means to be a responsible traveller.

Today, on the volcano tour, I met a totally different type of travellers. There were a couple of things that got to me:

·         One woman was looking for bull fights. This is forbidden by law, but she still wanted to see one. I think that is just WRONG!!!

·         One woman wanted to try the meat from some sort of big Ginny pig. The meat is supposed to be delicious, but you are forbidden to hunt this animal. Still she wanted to find out where she could eat it. Again  - so WRONG!!!!

This type of traveller really gets to me. L So that took some fun out of the day.

The volcano trip was also very touristic. For example we went to a Zoo (which is a typical tourist trap). I like to see the animals in their real surrounding. Animals in cages make me feel sad. The only good thing with this is that I could make some nice photos of birds, frogs and butterflies that can be hard to do out in the jungle. But even when I’m looking at these pictures it feels like I’m cheating.

The guide was also quite boring. It is a difference between a guide that likes “his/hers subject” or one that just states what is said on the official information. This guide was just stating the obvious and couldn’t add anything extra about what we saw and experienced. He was just rabbling facts someone taught him. The amazing thing with him was that he always said everything in 2 languages: Spanish and English. It sounded funny when he almost spoke the 2 languages at the same time, but it is worth my admiration.

BUT – I got to see an active volcano and that made up for the rest of the day. So all in all it was quite ok. I would have preferred a volcano trip without the zoo, more engaged guide and with a different kind of travellers. You can’t win them all and I had a fantastic trip before this.

Now I’m off to California. It is going to be an interesting flight. I’m flying from San José, Costa Rica to first Houston, then Phoenix and finally to San Francisco. The first 2 legs I’m flying with Continental Airlines and the last one with United Airlines. It is a flight that has increased chances for some problems, either with luggage or delays. But I’m might be lucky and since I’m staying with my sister I will be fine.

Summary of Costa Rica

It feels funny - it is already the last night on our trip and at the same time it feels like we have been travelling together for such a long time.

Costa Rica was my nature and animal stop on my trip around the world and BOY did Costa Rica deliver up to my expectations.  It has been a fantastic trip. I love this country, so beautiful and full of adventure.

I also got 2 bonuses on my Costa Rica stop:

1.       My trust in Intrepid (my travel agency) has been reinstalled. After my round trip in Malaysia with Intrepid I really started to wonder if I should travel with them again. But Allan, our dear tour leader here in Costa Rica, turned out to be one of the best tour leaders I have ever had. It surprised me since he is also the youngest.  He has done everything right: guided us in Costa Rica’s cities and nature, prepared us for what to expect, given us good recommendations on what to do and always been around to help us in every way.

2.       I travelled with the perfect group: only 5 people, all girls and all travel freaks. This means that we all had the same kind of expectations and it was easy to get along.

For those of you that have read all my blogs - you might wonder why I can be so happy with a trip where it has rained so much (it has rained every day and quite a lot every time). The thing is; I didn’t travel to Costa Rica to experience beaches and sun. Nature + animals don’t require sunshine.

As always on the end of trip it feels a bit sad. I seldom return to a country and I seldom meet the people I have travelled with again, with a few exceptions. So you know it is good bye – a good bye from something great. I hope I will have a reason to come back and that I will meet these people again, somehow, sometime.

A Big Thanks from me to Allan, Margie, Merryn, Mari and Taja. You made the trip great!

A summary of 3 days

Oups…3 days without any blogg. That wasn’t the plan. But first I had a day where not too many things happened (transport day - but we saw some crocodiles on the way) and then I had days where too many things happened. It is hard to have a balance. ;-)

Anyhow – we have reached Manuel Antonio on the west coast. It is a very, very cute village where the main attraction is the national park. On the day of arrival it rained A LOT, so we ended up just sitting in a coffee place looking at the beach and the pouring rain. But to cheer us up we decided to use the happy hour in a bar close to the hotel: 2 for the price of 1. The drinks were quite good, but since we were supposed to hike in the park the next morning we ended up going home early. You have to prioritize on a trip like this and partying is not on the top of the list for neither one of us in the group. I’m so happy that we think alike in the group. We haven’t disagreed on anything so far.

The hike the next morning was exactly as full with animals as they had told us in advance. Even if the park is small you see a lot. The animal we saw the most of was the sloth (sengångare in Swedish), but we also saw monkeys, spiders, lizards, crabs, birds, frogs and turtles. No snake this time. J It was a fantastic little hike. When we finished the hike with the guide we decided to go on a little hike on our own. We didn’t see so many animals (it is hard to spot them – this why you pay the guide) but we saw some fantastic views. I also went on a 1,5 hour hike on my own. It is always a bit exciting to walk in the jungle on your own. You hear all this noises and you can never be sure what is causing them.

Yesterday night we went dancing. I got the privilege to dance with our young and very cute tour leader. Oh boy, he could dance. I was out of practice and not totally sober so I got lost quite many times, but Allen always managed to get me back on track again. I wish more men could dance like that. It is such a treat to dance with someone who is good at it.

This morning we went for a sailing trip. The idea was to spot dolphins and to do some snorkeling. We didn’t spot any dolphins, the snorkeling was terrible since the rain has made the sea muddy and finally there were a lot of waves so half of the boat got seasick. Luckily I was not one of them. Ah well – most of our activities have been fine so if one was not perfect, who am I to say anything.

Now I’m enjoying my final cup of coffee before we will head back to San José. I haven’t decided if I will do a final activity there or just enjoy some free time and shopping.

A day off adventure

I had a day off adventures. J I needed that. Adventure is exhausting, even if I enjoy every minute.

Today we started early in the morning with a short hike in the “Cloud forest”. It was really nice and beautiful but nothing really exciting happened. We looked mostly at plants, insects and birds. I took a couple of OK shots of birds that you can see below. Oh, I forgot - we saw another snake. :-)

After lunch we just sat in the sun outside a coffee place and talked about all or nothing for a couple of hours. Then it was time for massage. Yeah – I know – AGAIN!!! But what can I say – I like to pamper myself. I mean; no one else is so I need to do it. ;-) The massage was quite good, but not nearly as good as the other day. But somehow I enjoyed it a lot since I could hear the rain pouring down outside, knowing that for once I was not out in the rain getting soaking wet. You have to enjoy the little things in life. ;-)

The evening started with a visit to the frog farm where we could see around 25 different frogs/toads out of the 180 that exist in Costa Rica. Who knew that frogs are so cute?? And that they can have so many different colors. Unfortunately you can’t take picture with a flash there and it was too dark without. I did however like the “Blue jeans” frog the most and I have a picture of that from the day when we floated down the river. I just forgot about it. You can see that below.

By the way the frog is poisonous.

We ended the day with a dinner in a tree house. The view and the restaurant were cool but the service and the food was not the best. Why is it always like that? Is like wine – the cooler bottle the worse content.

Tomorrow we will continue our trip around Costa Rica, so tonight I’m packing – again. I love travelling - I just get so totaly bored with all the packing and unpacking. Oh well - tomorrow is another day in paradise.

Another rainy day in paradise

Costa Rica is starting to be two things for me: animals and rain. Today we had another fantastic day with plenty of animals and today we got soaking wet again – third day in a row. But I can’t complain - we are in rainy season.

We started the day with a bus, boat, bus ride from La Fortuna to Monte Verde. It was an interesting ride, since it took place on one of the worst roads I ever travelled. Luckily we had an ok minibus and arrived safely without any problems.

As soon as we arrived to Monte Verde we started to book the activities for the day. Two of us decided to do Costa Rica’s number one tourist attraction – the Zip line and the other two decided to go for horseback riding. (One person lay sick at the hotel.) Guess what I chose??? Well, when I’m given the choice of Zip-lining (which is high up in the air and I have a fear of heights) and horseback riding (I love horses) the choice was not that difficult. No chance in h… I’m paying a lot of money to be scared to death, when I can do something I actually enjoy. So I spent 2 hours on a horse and got soaking wet – AGAIN!!! But I enjoyed every minute of it.

After that we decided to go for night walk in a National Park to see some animals. We had fantastic luck. We saw sloth (very cute fury animal high up in trees), raccoon (another very cute fury animal high up in tress) and finally we say an armadillo. It is very unusual that you get to see all three animals in one night, especially the last one (armadillo). We felt so lucky. Unfortunately it is impossible to take pictures of these animals, mainly because they are so high up in the trees and it is dark. The armadillo appeared in pouring rain and that time I had put my camera away.

But we also saw plenty of insects and a tarantula and these you can see in the pictures below. They were easier to catch with the camera. Tomorrow morning we are going for another animal hike. Let’s see how that turns out. But I’m guessing it will rain. J