Arrived in Costa Rica

In early January, we started the second part of our trip. With a few complications, we flew from Düsseldorf via Madrid to San José. It was very foggy in Madrid that day, so no planes were allowed to land there for a while. Therefore, we could only take off from Düsseldorf with some delay. So we had only half an hour to change planes in Madrid. We thought it would be fine, without knowing that we had to cross the entire airport in Madrid and the airport is not small. So we sprinted from one gate to another, just arriving on time. But since many others were in the same situation, we also started with a one-hour delay in Madrid. So all the rushing was in vain:-(

San José

After arriving in San José, we spent the first two days completely at our accommodation. We had to plan our route a bit, as we hadn't managed to do so in Germany. In addition, the weather was not really good.

Monteverde

Our first real stop was Santa Elena in the Monteverde region at an altitude of about 1500 meters, which is known for its cloud forests. Unfortunately, the weather here was even worse. Constant wind and rain. Nevertheless, we set off for trekking in the Santa Elena Cloud Forest. The forest was really cool. Unfortunately, we didn't see many animals there. And in all the rain and mud, we immediately ruined our long clothes for the first time.

In the evening, we booked a night walk hoping to see some animals this time. It was really worth it. We had the chance to see an armadillo, an olingo, a sloth with a baby (not very well recognizable in the picture), a green viper, and a tarantula. That was really cool. We were soaking wet again, but this time it was worth it.

After the two days in Monteverde, it was really time for better weather. Before we left, we briefly went into the forest and climbed around in an old fig tree;-)

Liberia

We then took the bus through a beautiful landscape with magnificent mountain panoramas back down to the lowlands to Liberia. Finally, it was 30 degrees and sunny. Liberia itself doesn't really have much to offer. You can stroll through the city, eat at various American fast food chains, and that's about it. It was cool that there were still free-living iguanas in a small park in the middle of the city.

In itself, Liberia only served as a stopover before crossing the border to Nicaragua. We will report on our beginnings there in the next article.