San Jose, Costa Rica - Day 172

For the last day of our adventure, we decided to go out with a bang...bungee jumping of course! We did a little Google searching and found a company called Tropical Bungee, which has been around for over 20 years with no mishaps, so we felt like they were trustworthy. And, like their website says, due to the bridge's extraordinary height (265 ft high), lack of traffic, and scenic beauty, it was a perfect spot! The free fall lasted for 4 seconds, and then we swung black-and-forth under the bridge a number of times before being pulled up. It's unbelievable how fast you fall!! It was really fun and we recommend doing it!

Normally this would be a celebratory feast, but to get psyched up, this was our pre-jump meal.

Scared face!

Really scared face!

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blast off!

Hanging upside down gives you a pretty big head rush.

Kris jumping out as far as he possibly can. It feels more like flying this way instead of just falling off a bridge.

Down he goes!

Almost 265 ft down!

What a rush! By the look of Kris' hair you can tell how fast you fall!

 

Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica - Day 170-171

Our last stop in Costa Rica was Manuel Antonio National Park. We spent two days hiking around and hanging out on the beaches. Due to the many animals and close proximity to the beach, Manuel Antonio is the most visited park in all of Costa Rica. In fact, Bella came here with her family 9 years ago on vacation! 9 years ago, the park had a lot of trash everywhere, so it was great to find not one piece of trash anywhere! With the growing popularity, the park realized they needed to keep it clean, but unfortunately the growing popularity also means some animals have left the area and others are aggressive because they have acquired a taste for human food.

Troops of White-faced Capuchin monkeys were everywhere.

This monkey stole an apple out of a tourist's hand! He was very aggressive and demanded more when he finished it.

 

Dominical, Costa Rica - Day 164-169

As our trip comes closer and closer to the end we realized that most of our time during the last 5 months has been spent trekking through the mountains while enduring much colder temperatures than we would have liked, hiking through bug infested jungles, and sitting on buses for weeks. Since we will be heading back to the mountains of Colorado, we decided that the remaining time of our trip was going to be spent at a warm beach with some surfing! So we headed north once again to the tiny surf town of Dominical on the Pacific Ocean. Dominical is known to have some of the most consistent waves in Costa Rica, warm water, and is a great place to learn how to surf on the white wash from the big waves without any crowds. For six days, we surfed in the morning and afternoon and watched the sunset at night while drinking cold beers. We also took a side trip to Hacienda Baru Wildlife Refuge to see more jungle creatures, which was better than we expected because we saw many new animals!

Since everyone in Dominical spends their days surfing, Bella decided to take a lesson. Here she is heading out with a local instructor.

As expected, wipeouts happen

But it didn't take long to stand up!

Surfing the white wash is easy!

Bella liked it so much, we rented boards everyday to try to catch waves on our own. Can't forget to get those butt cheeks tan!

The first of many small and then medium sized waves for Kris.

Surfing on a tropical beach is pretty nice! Especially when we were usually the only people out surfing!

Classic poser shot

Hiking in the wildlife refuge, we came across this really cool toucan.

Well hello there, peccary

We spotted a couple sloths hanging completely motionless from the tree branches. They are SO difficult to find!

Typical view while drinking our evening beers

 

Parque Nacional Corcovado, Costa Rica - 160-162

Costa Rica will be the last country we visit and our first stop in Costa Rica will also be our last big trek of our 6 month adventure. This final trek was the jungle trek we have been waiting for since we started our adventure 5 1/2 months ago. It was a long and unguided 3-day trek through the jungle and we couldn't have chosen a better place to do it. Parque Nacional Corcovado is considered by some as the most biodiverse spot on earth, and of all the places we have visited so far we could see why.

With fully loaded backpacks, we began the trek from the north end of the park at Los Patos Ranger Station. We hiked 12 miles through the heart of Corcovado to the south end where we finished the day at a jungle lodge called La Sirena. This portion of the trek felt as though we were hiking through a zoo. After only hiking for 10 minutes we saw our first peccary (wild pig), later there were spider monkeys swinging through the trees everywhere, parrots and macaws squawking, and even an anteater walked right in front of us and began digging for ants, seemingly unaware of our presence. Just before finishing the hike, we watched a 6 foot long snake chase down a huge bullfrog, and while watching the snake and frog battle it out, a pack of 30 peccaries came out of nowhere and really scared us! Packs of these wild pigs can be aggressive and will tear skin off with their tusks.

We spent the night camping at La Sirena and the next day doing several long hikes around the lodge and saw more monkeys than we could count and many more jungle creatures. While hiking out on the last day, we finally saw our first Tapirs, (large jungle cow/rhino like animals), and finished the trek by hiking another 12 miles along pristine tropical beaches to the tiny town of Carate where we caught a taxi back to town.

Taking pictures in the jungle, especially animals high up in the trees, is extremely difficult and requires a speciality camera which we did not have so our pictures did not turn out so great. :( We also saw way more animals than we could take pictures of, which is why you'll all have to visit the park yourselves!

Very cool Strangler Tree. Strangler Trees start off as vines that grow around other trees until they completely take over the original tree. This Strangler has grown over another Strangler Tree.

Walking Palm

An anteater digging away at a tree stump to find some ants.

Peccaries crossing the trail. This group only had about 5 pigs, so they weren't as big of a threat as the huge group we encountered earlier.

Spider Monkeys are the most common out of the 4 monkey species found in the park. Their arms and legs are extra long, which makes them look creepy, but they seem to move through the treetops with more ease than other monkeys.

Toucan

An Agouti running across the trail. Agoutis look like large rats that hop around.

We found a Coati eating ripe bananas, so we decided to grab some for ourselves! Here he is patrolling his food waiting for us to leave.

The luxurious lodge! If you don't camp, you can stay in nice rooms and have people cook all your food for you.

On the look out for crocodiles while crossing a river on the hike out.

During high tide, the beach is impassable, so you have to time it correctly.

Beautiful beaches stretched all along the hike out. It was hot backpacking on the sand.

 

Playa Venao, Panama - Day 154-155

Our next stop was Playa Venao, a beach on the Pacific coast of Panama. We camped for 3 nights at an Eco-lodge called Eco Venao. The area is under reforestation, and Eco Venao does its part to operate as sustainably as it can. We were there at the very end of the dry season, so unfortunately everything was very brown and barren, but there were monkeys everywhere!

Playa Venao is a surf hot spot in Panama. This is one of the few times Kris was able to stand up.

Bella playing in the waves. The water was the perfect temperature!

These howler monkeys were everywhere around the Eco lodge and provided hours of entertainment as we watched them while lounging in hammocks.

 

Panama City, Panama - Day 152

Panama city is Famous for the Canal which connects the Pacific ocean to the Caribbean and with it comes big business and the most modern city we have been to in a while. Although the city does not have a huge population (around 500,000), there seemed to be more sky scrapers than people. We stayed in the old section of the city, called Casco Viejo. Casco Viejo has inhabitants of extreme wealth and extreme poverty living right next to one another, as well as very modern buildings right next to dilapidated ones that were built by the Spanish Conquistadors. All of this was in high contrast after coming from the deserted islands. Instead of visiting the Panama Canal (which doesn't look any different than any other boat harbor), we decided to visit a jungle in the middle of the city called Parque Nacional Metropolitano.

Casco Viejo

Very old buildings next to new ones

View of Panama City from the park

Parque Metropolitano has hundreds of different bird species. We were lucky enough to find Woody The Woodpecker!

Sloth hanging out on a building

 

San Blas Islands, Panama - Day 143-151

To get to Panama, we chose a 4-day island-hopping boat tour through the San Blas Islands. Although it's not the fastest way to get to Panama by boat, it was by far the most scenic. Our journey to the San Blas Islands from Cartagen consisted of multiple bus rides and boats, but after 2 days, we made it. We spent the first 4 days island-hopping with 18 other people on our launch boat, called the Darien Gapster. We only spent about 2 hours each day total on the boat and spent the rest of our time swimming in the clear-blue Caribbean water, snorkeling among the coral reefs, and hanging out on tiny islands with white sand and coconut palms. Many of the islands are deserted and some are so tiny they only have room for 3 palms.

Those that are not deserted, are inhabited by the Kuna people. The Kuna are an autonomous community living with their own laws and systems. They even use coconuts as currency (although due to tourism, dollars are accepted here). They do not need tourism and can live sustainably fishing and farming on the mainland of Panama. Because Panamanian law does not exist here, many drug traffickers use these waters to transport their cargo between Colombia and Panama. Sometimes, the Kuna find contraband washed up onshore when the boats wreck on the reefs and sell it back to the drugs dealers for more money than they know what to do with.

After our 4 days with the Darien Gapster, we decided to stay on a very small island until Semana Santa (Easter Week) was over. We got dropped off on Isla Iguana to camp for 5 more nights. With only a few other people on the island, it was paradise. Unfortunately, even the secluded islands cannot escape Semana Santa vacationers, and the island quickly filled up with what seemed like 100 people throughout the weekend, but then died back down to peace and tranquility on Sunday.

The Darien Gapster

One of the Kuna villages we visited

Kuna bathrooms that we used during our stay in the village. Kuna bathrooms don't need plumbing; everything goes straight into the water and the fish gobble it all up!

Beautiful little beach we paddled to in a dugout canoe.

Brain coral. The water in San Blas was the clearest water we have ever snorkeled in.

Huge ray that swam by

This was the smallest island we visited, roughly the size of a tennis court.

Our first campfire during the whole trip! rum n' cokes and s'mores included.

Isla Iguana is about the size of a football field. The Darien Gapster dropped us of here to camp for 5 more nights.

Side view of Isla Iguana.

Our front porch

For $1, the Kuna will cut down a fresh coconut for you, and when you're done drinking it, they will chop up the rest for you to eat...delicious snack.