Publié: 02.08.2017
After the beautiful boat tour - returning from Tortuguero - and some bus transfers, we arrived back in San José. We stayed here for one night to reach our next destination, which is the Volcan Tenorio National Park. When we arrived at the terminal at 4:45 am to catch the 5:10 am bus, the guard told us that no buses run at this time and that our ticket would have been valid for the previous evening. When we looked at the ticket, we saw that the ticket was indeed valid for the previous evening. The colleague had issued us a wrong ticket. At the counter, we explained our situation and luckily got new tickets for the 6 o'clock bus.
When we arrived in the small village of Bijagua, our route continued through the national park to our homestay. There were no buses going there, so we had to hitchhike because the taxi drivers demanded about $30 for 14 km. After a short time, we found a nice man who drove us there. The homestay was located in the middle of the jungle, only local people inhabited the few houses around us and there were no tourists. Just to our liking. David had chosen this national park for this reason. In the afternoon, we went to the "Rio Celeste" river, which was just around the corner. Here, you could already see the sky blue color of the river.
The next day, we went to the Tenorio Volcano National Park. Again, we had to hitchhike on this day and got to know a nice Austrian family, whom we later saw again in the national park. After the entrance, a small path snaked through the rainforest. Our first destination was the "Laguna Azul". Then we continued to the "los Teñideros", where we saw how a chemical reaction in the confluence of two rivers creates the turquoise blue color that gave the river its name "Celeste". This color is actually produced by the mixture of different minerals in the water. The highlight was the Rio Celeste waterfall. Unfortunately, due to the bad weather, we couldn't get a glimpse of the 1916 meter high Tenorio Volcano, as it was hidden in the fog. Actually, we had travelled there for this very reason, but there's nothing we can do about it. We also saw some animals here, but unfortunately not the rare jaguarundis, pumas or olingos. Instead, we saw two beautiful sparrows. A local told us that five months ago, a man was riding his bike on the street and collided with a puma. Both were unharmed and the puma quickly disappeared. There were also several hot springs here, which were mainly noticeable due to the strong sulfur smell.
After two days in the national park, we set off to Bijagua to drive from there to the northwest of the country. Now we're heading to the Pacific.