March 11, 2010 - Filed under Drinks
In Costa Rica it’s safe to drink the water, but why would you when you’ve got all these other choices? ;) Costa Rica has one major brewery called Cerveceria de Costa Rica which is owned by the Florida Ice and Farm Co., but they brew a variety of beers locally. And there’s a few other canned beverage alternatives too. It’s the local custom to have your beer in a glass with ice, but as gringos we rarely had to ask for it without (‘sin hielo’).
Posted by: Shim
March 5, 2010 - Filed under Stuff to do
We don’t tend to buy a lot of souvenirs. They’re heavy and they take up too much space. We also don’t do a lot of sight-seeing. We don’t visit temples or museums and very rarely go on tours. Some might say we’re pretty crappy tourists. Instead we capture most of our “souvenirs” in the form of photos, and experience a place’s culture by doing things that are activity-based rather than passively seeing “the sights”.
On our last week in Tamarindo, I ended up with the first souvenir of our year and a half on the road. I took a pottery class and learned the traditional art of making Chorotega Pottery.
Posted by: Kelly
February 11, 2010 - Filed under Eats, Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography
Since arriving in Costa Rica nearly 6 months ago, we haven’t been scuba diving much compared to the 80+ dives we did last year in Southeast Asia. We did a 2 dive trip to the Catalina Islands from Tamarindo a couple months ago where we saw a few eagle rays, a school of jacks, and 3 or 4 white tip reef sharks, but the visibility was really poor and with the Papagayo wind in full effect since then, we haven’t attempted another dive until this last weekend when we decided to take a quick trip to Playas del Coco.
We got on the local bus to Liberia at 9am which meanders in and out of each town on the way to it’s destination; picking up and dropping off school children, workers, and food and drink vendors as it goes. Liberia is approximately an hour away from Tamarindo by car, but the local bus takes anywhere from 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours to get there. We got off the bus before Liberia at the turn off to Playas del Coco (shortly after Filadelfia) and switched buses. Our next bus came along within 45 minutes and we continued on through Sardinal. Within a half hour, we had completed our 3.5 hour journey arriving at Coco.
Posted by: Shim
January 18, 2010 - Filed under General
Kelly was interviewed by Nora Dunn from theprofessionalhobo.com not too long ago as part of her ‘A Week-In-The-Life of’ series. People sometimes assume that because we’re living in a tropical destination, we must be semi-retired, or that we’re always hanging out on the beach or diving… Truth be told, it’s been a very busy few months work-wise since we arrived in Costa Rica. For a closer look at what went on in an average week when we arrived in Costa Rica, have a look at Nora’s latest post here: A Week-In-The-Life of Kelly & Mike: Have Internet Will Travel
Posted by: Shim
January 1, 2010 - Filed under General
2009 was an amazing year for us. It was a year full of travel, new experiences, fantastic memories, and thankfully a lot more ups than downs. It was our first full year without a permanent home and our first full year freelancing from the road. We visited 7 countries in 12 months, took 18 flights, and made a million new memories.
Below are just a few of those memories, as we look back and reminisce over an amazing 2009.
We rang in the New Year with some friends at a beach resort in the Philippines. We had some great dives in January, made some new friends, rented a motorbike, and celebrated my 30th birthday. Read More…
Posted by: Kelly
December 28, 2009 - Filed under Bikes, Trikes, and Automobiles, Stuff to do
I haven’t been getting my motor-sports fix lately, so Kelly and I decided to take an ATV trek this week. We booked a tour with FourTrax Adventure ATV tours and were picked up by a shuttle and transferred to the briefing point, a few minutes outside of Villa Real.
We ran over the basic controls; pretty familiar for a motorcycle rider, and took the ATVs for a quick test lap around the property. Because of the lack of counter steering on an ATV, it wasn’t immediately as intuitive for me as a motorcycle, but I got the hang of it soon enough.
Posted by: Shim
December 28, 2009 - Filed under Bikes, Trikes, and Automobiles, Drinks, Travel
As a tourist in Costa Rica, you can stay for a maximum of 90 days before you have to exit the country for 72 hours before reentry. Shortly before Xmas, our first three months in Costa Rica were coming to a close. Nicaragua is considerably nearer to Tamarindo than Panama, so we opted to head to Nicaragua for a quick visa run. Being so close to Christmas, many dates for the buses to Nicaragua were already fully booked, but luckily we were able to book a couple seats on the Ticabus (around $40 each) to and from Nicaragua as opposed to the ‘chicken bus’ where you walk across the border and catch another local bus on the other side.
Posted by: Shim
December 28, 2009 - Filed under Stuff to do
Tamarindo is a popular spot for learning to surf. The waves are fairly small (though there are a couple larger points along the beach) and it’s well suited for those just picking up the basics. There’s plenty of board rental shops along the beach, most of which will provide lessons for around $40 for a two hour lesson. So, a few weeks ago I decided to try surfing on my next day off.
Saturday came around and Kelly and I wandered down to the beach to find that a huge swell had come in and the usual 1-3 foot waves had turned into some monster 5-7 foot waves and bigger! I wandered into a surf shop to see if a lesson was doable in those conditions and they convinced me that by 3pm things would probably have calmed down a bit. Read More…
Posted by: Shim
December 24, 2009 - Filed under General
December 2, 2009 - Filed under Weekly Report
Since Lauren left we’ve pretty much just been working and hanging out at the beach, and while that’s definitely better than being back in cold & rainy Vancouver, it doesn’t make for very interesting blog posts.
We’ve decided that rather than force ourselves to post something every week about what we’ve been up to, we’ll only post when we do something of interest. We’d rather have good content that’s sporadic, than mediocre content every week.
Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that you aren’t gonna hear from us on a regular basis, it just means that our posts are going to be about specific topics rather than a bunch of random stuff we happened to do in a particular week. We’re hoping this will help us index better on google, and make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for when searching our site.
So… say goodbye to the weekly post, and stay tuned for some highlights of our upcoming trip to Nicaragua!
Posted by: Kelly
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