The Costa Rican Road and Money Woes

Costa Rica has been the next step of the journey. When I finished the last post, I was in Tamarindo on the northern part of the Nicoya Peninsula. That was an interesting place for me. It was quite beautiful there but had obviously been over run by tourism and there was really no local flavour to the place. It was basically Florida, in Costa Rica. It was also a bit of a stressful time for me there as well because apparently somewhere between Nicaragua and Tamarindo I lost my debit card, and didnt know where it may be. However, I did have my credit card, and thinking that would be fine it eased my mind for a bit until I needed to take out money. The option for me to cash advance was not put on my card so I couldn't take out money, and the supply that I had was quickly running down. So a few calls and stressful hours after that there was a Money Gram set up so that I could receive some money from my parents until I could get my debit card replaced. This happened on a Saturday and so the chance to take out money with the money gram would have to wait until Monday, and I was seriously low on cash. So extreme budgeting came into effect, which is incredibly difficult in a place like Costa Rica with prices very similar to Canada. Pushing my ability to be cheap and eat some less than spectacular meals, I waited till Monday. Then came a series of trips to different banks to try and access the money that had been wired down. One bank the system was down but I was referred to another. Well the next one didn't do money grams at all, but they know another that did. Turns out that one didn't do it either, so it turned into running around town trying to figure this out and getting more and more frustrated as the time went on, cause by now I have $0 in my possession. Thankfully Kale lent me some cash so that I could keep traveling, which was huge and really made my day and week for that matter. A good friend who stepped in for me and helped out when it was really needed.
So the past week has been the struggle to access this money that is down here but floating in some cyber bank of inaccessibility, which is going to be my next challenge. I however was able to Western Union myself some money today so that should be a big help till I get to Panama City and hopefully can get my debit card replaced and sent there. Oh the joys of traveling.
Other than that the time has been great. As I said in the last post, I am now traveling with an Australian named Dan Grec (http://dangrec.com/) which has been great. We continued our way down the Nicoya, stopping at some beautiful city's and just relaxing and enjoying the beach and some of the most beautiful places that this tropical paradise has to offer. Stopping in Samara, we were able to watch Avatar on some community center´s wall, enjoying some Cola and popcorn. Continuing on, even though we could have stayed there much longer, we went to Mal Pais and Santa Teresa. This was a quaint little surf town with some of the biggest and strongest waves I have ever felt. After that we moved onto Montezuma on the southern point of the peninsula. This was a chilled out Rasta town, with some of the most beautiful series of three waterfalls I have ever seen. We were able to scale the side of a hill to access the waterfalls at the top, and do some jumping. I know many of you who know me wont believe this but there was a 10m waterfall at the top, and yes, I jumped it after some hesitation and second guessing about 56 times. Well worth it and a huge confidence booster for me.
After that we moved back to the mainland after a neat ferry crossing. Now we are located in Monteverde in the Costa Rican Cloud forests. Stunningly beautiful and refreshingly cool change in temperature from the oppressive and humid heat of the coast. Today we went of a series of hikes which was great fun and had the chance to see yet another waterfall. This one was arguably more beautiful but we went able to jump from it. In total it was 90m top to bottom with some real cold water at the bottom, I tested that out, trust me its cold.
Tomorrow we are going to go and do a canopy tour in the Cloud Forest which should be pretty wild. This one is the biggest and longest in Costa Rica, with a 1km superman line...I'm going to fly. I will definitely let you know how that goes.
I am continuing to enjoy my trip and have some incredible adventures along the way. I hope that you have enjoyed the update, and I'm sorry that this was a bit of a poorly written piece. I will try to do better for you next time and be a bit more descriptive and exciting.
The road continues...

Bye for now

Mike