My taxi driver dropped me off about 200m before the immigration office on the Nicaraguan side of the border. When grabbing my bags from the trunk a local border hustler tried to help me with my things. There are usually dozens of these types of people swarming tourists at borders, and I usually ward them off. This little guy persisted. He spoke decent English and had bright eyes and a big smile, so I let him carry a bag for me and show me where to go for $5. Alejandro and I chatted on the way to the office.
At the office, I stepped inside to get my exit stamp while he waited outside. At the desk, I realized I had left my passport in the bag Alejandro had. I went outside and experienced a moment of panic as Alejandro was nowhere to be found. “Holy fuck that little rat just ran off with my backpack and passport!” I asked a couple border agents where the guy in the red shirt went and they didn’t know, but a lady patted me on the arm urgently and indicated he went around the corner. I ran around the corner to the back side of the immigration office, heart pumping. He wasn’t anywhere. I scrambled, looking for the little bastard when I heard a whistle from behind. “Mateo! Mateo! Where are you going?” Alejandro was standing in the doorway of the immigration office on the backside of the building. The door I would exit from after receiving my stamp. He was waiting for me dutifully. “You need to go in other side. I wait for you here,” he explained thinking I was confused, not knowing I thought he’d run off with my bag.
I sheepishly wandered back, and retrieved my passport from the backpack, and proceeded to the front of the office, relieved. I gave the border agent at the desk my passport and he asked me for my entrance ticket. I was 95% sure it was in the passport, but he demonstrated that it wasn’t. I’m pretty sure he quickly snatched it after I handed him the passport when I wasn’t paying attention, but maybe I was just extra paranoid that day. I had to pay a $10 bribe to get through.
Alejandro took me to the Costa Rican side and pointed me to the immigration office. I thanked him and gave him $5 and the rest of the Nicaraguan Cordobas I had leftover.
In the immigration office, it was a short wait before getting my stamp, and then had to get my luggage scanned. Overall a quick, effortless process on both sides, despite the bribe.
Outside, I found a bus to Liberia. It was nearly full when I boarded. I asked the driver to put my big backpack in the luggage compartment, but he said no. I carried it overhead to a seat, and then had to awkwardly sit with it on my lap and my other bags in between my legs for the 45-minute ride.
In Liberia, I found Hostel Dodoro only a couple blocks away from the bus station. I checked in, and then ventured out to explore and find a bank to get some Costa Rican Colones.
Liberia is the main city in the Northwest of the country and a big transportation hub. It’s not the most glamorous place. The streets and sidewalks were in various states of disrepair and I noticed many dusty, vacant lots. The center of town has its charms, but Liberia is mainly a place to stay for a night or two before bouncing onward to lusher pastures of Costa Rica.
In the late afternoon, I returned to my hostel to research my next move after Liberia, and what to do the next day.
In the evening, I headed out to Café Liberia, the top-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor. The hostess clarified that I was dining alone then seated me at a table in the corner. I noticed the clientele was all other couples having candlelit dinners. Turns out it was Valentine’s Day. Womp womp wahhhh for me. Anyway, I had a perfect medium-rare chimichurri ribeye with a glass of red wine, and it was fantastic.
The next morning, I did my morning ritual (yoga, pushups and squats, and meditation) in the courtyard of the hostel. Some people must’ve been looking at me weird, but I don’t care. After getting into a daily practice on the farm, I was now looking to maintain it regardless of circumstances for the rest of my travels.
At about 11am, I ran to the supermarket, then caught a bus to Llano de Cortes waterfall about 30 minutes southeast of Liberia. The bus dropped me on the side of the highway, and I had to then walk about 3km or 30 minutes to find the waterfall. Along the way, I practiced speaking by reciting the MLK “I Have a Dream” speech, which I have on my phone. After a while, I finally arrived at a parking lot, then hiked 10-minutes down a trail to find the waterfall. It was lovely.
I had lunch, then went for a swim. Like the water at Ojos de Agua, the water here felt silky smooth against the skin. It was nice and cold too, which was invigorating after walking in the Costa Rican heat. I spent some time behind the waterfall having a short meditation, and underneath the streaming water, letting it purify me.
I would then alternate between laying in the sun reading and taking a dip to refresh. At about 4pm, I packed up and headed back to the highway. I was practicing the MLK speech again, when a SUV stopped besides me and asked if I wanted a ride. “Sure!”
I rode back to Liberia with Fred and Jane, a couple of about 40 from Miami. They were in Costa Rica for a surfing vacation, something they do every other year. We immediately got into some interesting conversation, including talking about ayahuasca, on the way. They were both yogis and the spiritual type, so we got along well.
They dropped me at the main square in Liberia before heading out to Playa Coco on the coast. I made dinner and spent the evening reading about ‘Envision,’ a festival taking place in Costa Rica I’d heard about from a few different people, now including Fred and Jane. I took the plunge and bought the 4-day pass, got early entry, and rented a tent. It was by no means cheap, but the festival was beckoning to me.
The next day it was time to get out of Liberia. I packed up and wandered to the bus station at about 10am, hoping to catch a bus to Monteverde—into the mountains of Costa Rica. I had to wait until 11:30am, then caught a bus to Puntarenas which I’d have to disembark about halfway and catch another bus. I asked the bus driver to let me know when it was my stop, which he didn’t do. Luckily, at Las Juntas, a friendly portly gentleman getting off the bus asked if I was going to Monteverde and let me know this was the stop. I walked across the road and the gentleman showed me a small bus stop, and told me the bus to Monteverde would be coming at 3pm. It was only 1pm, so I had to wait on the side of the road for about two hours. Luckily, there was a nice tree near a paddock not far away that I sat under and to have lunch and read.
The bus eventually arrived, and took me on an hour and half ride up and through the winding mountain roads of central Costa Rica to reach the beautiful confines of Monteverde. Misty evening cloud cover was setting in as I disembarked, creating a cool, luscious atmosphere. It was quite nice after having been in the heat of Nicaragua and Liberia for so long.
I found my way up a few mountain roads to Hostel La Suerte (‘The Luck’ Hostel ?). After checking in, I met some of the hostel folk, and went out to dinner with Sian from the UK and Nicki from the Netherlands. They briefed me on the attractions of Monteverde, and after dinner I booked a canopy tour for the following day.
After breakfast and my morning ritual, I was picked up by a shuttle at 10:30am. The tour was run by a company called 100% Aventura. It featured ziplining, including the longest zipline in Central America, a couple ‘Superman’ ziplines, and a ‘Tarzan Swing’ (which is basically jumping off a platform 40m high and freefalling before being caught by a rope connected to your harness that then swings you back and forth).
The start of the tour was a bit slow, as I dreaded, similar to the Southpark episode where the boys go ziplining, but I was fortunate enough to be in line next to two vacationing cops from New York City. Johnny and Donny were like a combination of Super Troopers and the cops from Superbad. They were absolutely hilarious, and we had a good time making jokes and fucking around to pass the time. “Perps” LOL.
Once the tour got moving and we started ziplining platform to platform, it was actually quite awesome. The Superman ziplines were amazing, flying super-high above the canopy for nearly a mile. The Tarzan Swing was also pretty intense, as the tour facilitators gave me barely 5 seconds after they secured my harness to mentally prepare for jumping off the platform before they more or less pushed me off. I screamed like a girl as I plunged in freefall. My scream turned into a “Whoo-hooo hooooooooooo!!!!” as the rope caught me and launched me swinging.
After the tour, I had a late lunch complete with a Tico coffee at the Treehouse Café with my cop buddies. After, I wandered around the city center of Monteverde for about an hour.
In the late afternoon, I found my way to the top of Monteverde to visit ‘The Ficus Tree’. A giant, several hundred-year-old Strangler Ficus tree. Long ago, it grew around a giant ancient host tree. The host tree died and rotted away, leaving a massive Ficus with the center, where the old tree used to be, hollow. You can climb up through the center to emerge hundreds of feet high in the tree with an amazing view over the mountains stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Climbing the tree was somewhat difficult and requires you to contort through a couple narrow points, but popping out of the trunk at the tree fork is amazing. The tree gives birth to you out the top. There is a death-defying moment where you’re forced to lean over the abyss and grab onto roots to pull yourself out of the trunk and onto the tree fork. If you slip or lose your handhold, you’re dead. I made the mistake of looking down, and my heart was pumping as I pulled myself out and around to a standing position in between the limbs of the massive tree. Luckily, I had two compadres already at the top to coach and ‘spot’ me as I was climbing out from the hole. After a couple deep breaths, I noticed magnificent views of tropical forest covered mountains glistening underneath low angled daylight.
I made my way down through the trunk in the twilight, then walked back to my hostel. I stopped at a couple vistas along the way, and saw several Coati-Mundis playing.
In the evening, I made dinner at the hostel with a few hostel-folk. I decided I would have to be moving on in the morning—due to Envision, I had to get down to Uvita in four days, which is about ¾ of the way to Panama down the Pacific coast, and I was still in the north of the country.
In the morning, I left my hostel at 5:30am to make my way to the bus station and caught the 6am to Jaco.
The bus to Jaco arrived at about 10am, and let me off on the side of the busy, touristy main street. I went to a couple hostels, only to be told there was no vacancy. A person at reception in one of the hostels told me there was a festival going on, and there was no vacancy at any hostel in town. Undeterred, I proceeded to stop at about a dozen other hostels and cabanas over the course of about 3 hours in the oppressive heat only to receive the same message. One huge party hostel offered me an air mattress for $15. Aside from that, the cheapest room I could find was for $90. I sat at a café and searched Hostelworld and Booking. There really was no lodging in town.
It was ok. After being Jaco for only a few hours, I got the gist. It was another debauched beach party-town. It reminded me of San Juan del Sur, which I just came from four days earlier. Only bigger and seedier.
I found a place to stay in Quepos, about another hour down the coast, and closer to Uvita, and tried to catch the 4:30pm bus.
While waiting for the bus, I met Ollie from New York. He was a fellow ayahuascero whom had quit his job and was now walking the earth. Sounds familiar. He was also the guy creating all the visual animations/artwork and lightshows for the main stage at Envision. Rad.
We had a beer on the side of the road while waiting for the bus. Ollie was in town scoping out the animations at the other festival in Jaco. He said Envision was going to blow this festival away, describing the stage and setup he was working with.
The bus failed to show up by 5:15pm, and we walked to a tourist office to inquire. They told us, traffic had been diverted due to a parade. We had to haul ass to the detour route to catch the 5:30pm bus. We made it there in time, but the bus failed to arrive until 6:15pm. That’s just how it goes down here.
The bus finally stopped at the Quepos bus station at about 7:30pm. I had some difficulty contacting my Airbnb host since I was supposed to have arrived two hours earlier, but eventually was able to check in and spend a nice quiet evening relaxing in an air-conditioned guest house.
The next day I wandered around Quepos. Being a small fishing village, there was not too much to see unfortunately. I watched a soccer match between ~10-year-olds for about 20 minutes. I was amazed how good these kids were at soccer, utilizing passing and strategy like professional teams. Much more advanced than my intramural soccer team. Scrubs.
I made my way to the Pacific to see the port and spent some time chatting with a lad from San Jose. Later, I found a butcher and bought half of a beef heart.
Back at my rental, I slow cooked the beef heart in a crockpot, did my ritual, and video called home before settling in for a Sunday of poker. I didn’t accomplish much in the way of building my bankroll, but had a nice day of R&R in air conditioning with the nourishment of my beef stew.
The next day, I left the Airbnb to move into the Wide Mouth Frog hostel in the center of town. I had come to Quepos to go to the Manuel Antonio National Park and planned to go that day, only to learn the park is closed on Mondays.
Instead, I hung out in Quepos. However, it’s a small town without much to do aside from the National Park. I found Café Milagro, a coffee roasting company, and was fortunate to get a tour from the owner. I hung out for a couple hours, sampling way too much coffee, but all their different roasts were so good and they kept offering me more. Afterwards, I had a late lunch, and spent the rest of the day reading and lounging around the hostel.
The next day, after my morning ritual and breakfast, I took a twenty-minute bus ride to Manuel Antonio at about 11am. I spent all afternoon hiking about the park, basking in the beautiful tropical forest and swimming at the amazing beaches. I saw some wildlife, including sloths, monkeys, toucans, iguanas, and snakes. Most of the animals required a high-powered camera to capture though.
In the late afternoon, I was reading on the beach under a grove of trees, when a pack of monkeys descended upon me from the canopy above. They came down to within two feet of me, hoping I had some food to offer. The monkeys then proceeded to swarm the beach, digging into unattended bags, stealing anything they could get their hands on. It was hilarious. I watched two or three times as they’d dig into the bag of a sleeping beachgoer, then the person would awake to the rustling sound only to be startled when they realize it was monkeys.
Not twenty minutes later, and I heard more rustling behind me. I figured it was the monkeys again, but heard a weird howl and realized it was jungle raccoons. There were two right behind me, five feet away, and I looked over to find another halfway inside my backpack. I scared them off, but they didn’t stay away long. They were extremely cute and curious. I shared some dark chocolate with one and it loved it. Then the raccoons proceeded to raid the beach just like the monkeys.
After the park closed, I got a frozen coconut, and wandered around the shops and stalls near the entrance of the park. In one shop, a wide-eyed, almost strung out looking Israeli guy, the shop owner, greeted me. As I poked about a bit, he started telling me about his experience over the past week. He was undergoing some sort of ‘awakening’. What he described to me sounded basically like what happened to Eckhart Tolle. He went to sleep one night after horrible fight with a family friend, had a powerful ‘dream’, and when he awoke, everything was different. He had expanded consciousness and awareness, and everything he previously knew was irrelevant. He was no longer interested in money or his previous path. He said he was now communicating with a guide spirit. He told his wife and mother about this and preached to them of what he had learned, and they thought he went crazy and wanted to call the authorities.
Since then, he hadn’t mentioned any of it to anyone… until he saw me. He said he felt like he could talk to me. Flashes of what Dr. Bill and Keith had told me in Guatemala flashed through my mind. Over the course of almost two hours, I did my best to hold space for this guy as he spilled his guts to me. I offered my opinion and advice where I could, but mostly just held space for him come to his own realizations.
People entered the shop, and would listen to us talk for a bit then show themselves out (LOL). One lady who entered, Barbara (35, NYC), heard us talking and engaged. She into spirituality herself, and dug our conversation. We spent some time talking, and offering him resources to reference. Eventually, we wished him the best, and left him to close his shop for the night. I think he was in a better place than when he approached me.
Barbara and I went out for dinner and a drink afterwards to discuss it all. More interesting conversation ensued. I thought for sure she was in Costa Rica for Envision, but she hadn’t heard of it. I gave her the details and she said she’d get in contact if she could get a ticket.
Afterwards, I took a colectivo taxi with three Costa Ricans back to Quepos. I hung out with some hostel-folk before calling it a night.
The next day, I packed up and inquired about catching a bus to Uvita. I needed to arrive at Envision for early entry. I missed the direct bus to Uvita, so took a bus towards Dominical and then changed buses in the middle of the road to board another bound for Uvita. There were a bunch of Burner-types aboard and I instantly became excited for the imminent festival in the jungle.
Nice mustache!