Three Trips to Costa Rica

By Donald Bates-Brands and Donna Brands

Enjoy reliving one couple’s experience with three separate trips to both the Quepos, Manual Antonio and the Arenal, La Fortuna areas of Coast Rica. These trips encompassed both rainy and dry seasons over eight years. Many things stayed the same and many were different, but we always found a friendly country with a lot to say about ecology, peace, and responsibility for the environment.

Suffering from the empty nest syndrome, my wife and I decided it was time to do something different. Not only were we interested in escaping winter to sandy beaches and tropical rain forests, we wanted to learn and experience a very different world from that which we had known while raising kids. We decided to go to Costa Rica and have returned two times.

Our first trip to Costa Rica was in January of 2009. Not being familiar with the country, we took the advice of travel agents and planned our first trip for the dry season. The second two trips were during the wet season. All of our trips were very enjoyable and even educational. After having visited during both seasons; we now actually prefer the wet season and would recommend it. There are many advantages as you will see.

This is a small country with a lot to say to the rest of the world. They are moving forward and improving their infrastructure at a steady rate. Having abolished their military and not being burdened with this expense has greatly facilitated this progress. There is a lot of work still to do, but my wife and I noticed considerable forward progress between 2009 and 2017 in the areas of education, telecommunications and roads.

The literacy rate is very high and as a group; Costa Ricans, are a highly educated people. They are very proud of their country and aware of the world beyond Costa Rica. This pride and awareness tends to manifest itself in a very positive way toward the tourism industry. Having some command of Spanish, I was able to interact with these people and found their story very interesting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald Bates-Brands
• Release date: Oct 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370585410

Donald Bates-Brands

Boats and the sea have been my life. I think I was about eight years old when I got my first boat, a dilapidated canoe. A few years later I graduated to a healthier canoe with a lateen sailing rig. This was my first sailboat. I capsized it a lot, but had thoroughly caught the boating bug. I started racing sailboats by the age of 12. In 1968 I joined the Coast Guard at the age of 17 and was discharged in 1975 with the grade of First Class Quartermaster. My first tour in the Coast Guard was an oceanographic trip to Africa on the CGC Rockaway. It was a three month tour with most of the time at sea, but it was my first adventure out of the country and I loved it. My second oceanographic tour on this ship took me to the Barbados, Trinidad, the Bahamas, and Puerto Rico. Later in this hitch I was transferred to the CGC Lilac, a triple expansion steam buoy tender, a fugitive from museums built in the early Thirty’s. I believe it is now being refurbished in NY City for display in the near future. I returned to the CGC Rockaway to finish my first hitch and made a Cadet cruise to England. Discharged from the Coast Guard on Oct 22, 1971, I returned to England for a 3 month tour by bicycle. In January of 1972 I rejoined the CG and reported aboard the buoy tender CGC Firebush at Governors Island NY. In the summer of 1972, I took leave from the CGC Firebush and enjoyed a two week cruise along the south coast of England with a British friend on his 27’ Trident class sloop. This was a bilge keel rig that proved to be fairly important in an area with 30 foot tides. Many times at low tide we were aground, but vertical resting on the two keels. After returning stateside to the CGC Firebush, the wanderlust hit me again and I requested and received a transfer to the CGC Gallatin which was making a cadet cruise through Europe. On this trip I got to Gibraltar, Portugal, Germany, Denmark and England. In 1974 I bought the Chesapeake Skipjack "Pale Moon" and sailed it from Maryland's Eastern Shore to NY for Opsail '76. Throughout this period I was involved in one design racing. Since my discharge from the Coast Guard in January of 1975, I have been working on large seagoing tugboats and currently hold a 1600 ton Ocean Master's License as well as Unlimited Third Mate and an Unlimited Radar Observer endorsement. I have written extensively on marine safety for Offshore Magazine and other publications. I have now retired from going to see and am pursuing my writing full time. On my free time, I enjoy cruising with my wife on our Catalina 22 on Long Island NY's Great South Bay.

Book preview

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Three Trips to Costa Rica

Published by Donald Bates-Brands

Copyright 2017 Donald Bates-Brands

Photography by Donna Rae Brands except as noted.

Copyright 2017 Donna Rae Brands

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Smashwords Edition

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Trip One

January 24, 2009

January 25, 2009

January 26, 2009

January 27, 2009

January 28, 2009

January 29, 2009

January 30, 2009

January 31, 2009

Trip Two

November 5, 2012

November 6, 2012

November 7, 2012

November 8, 2012

November 9, 2012

November 10 2012

Trip Three

May 22, 2017

May 23, 2017

May 24, 2017

May 25, 2017

May 26, 2017

May 27, 2017

Summation

Appendix A: Editorial on Life in Costa Rica

Appendix B: Essential Spanish for driving

Appendix C: Signs in hotels, airports, train stations, etc

About Donald Bates-Brands

About Donna Rae Brands

Other Ebooks by Donald Bates-Brands

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Introduction

Costa Rica has become a very popular destination for tourists wanting a relaxing tropical experience. This country has developed a very positive image in regard to peace, the environment and a zero carbon footprint. In my three trips to Costa Rica; I have come to really appreciate the people and what their government has tried to do. This eBook is not a complete treatise on the entire country. Rather, it is a detailed description of one couple’s experience on three different trips; one during the dry season and two with the tropical rains.

Our trips were to the areas of Quepos-Manuel Antonio and Arenal - La Fortuna. Our first trip to Costa Rica was in January of 2009. After 30 years of marriage and suffering from the empty nest syndrome, my wife and I decided it was time to do something different. Not only were we interested in escaping winter to sandy beaches and tropical rain forests, we wanted to learn and experience a very different world from that which we had known while raising kids. We decided to go to Costa Rica.

Not being familiar with the country, we took the advice of travel agents and planned our trip for the dry season or summer as the Tico’s call it. Tico is the affectionate preferred term for the Costa Rican people. We had a really terrific time, but when planning a return trip we were wondering what it would be like during the rainy or green season, sometimes also called winter.

First we knew that it would be considerably cheaper during the rainy season. Days would be shorter and the weather would be, well rainy. Might we also see more plant and animal life? Would sports such as white water rafting be more exciting? Doing a little bit of research divulged that the rains, while a heavy and daily event, were also reasonably predictable. Much of the day would still be sunny. With many prices half the dry season rate, we decided to go for it and as you will see, we weren’t disappointed. Our last trip was during the rainy season in May of 2017. Things had changed some by 2017, but I still found Costa Rica to be a very friendly and verdant country that values the natural environment.

First, I would like to give some background on this fascinating country. On December 1, 1948, President José Figueres Ferrer abolished the Costa Rican army. Since then, the country has devoted the resources previously spent on the military to education, social projects, and building up the country to be an eco-tourist destination. A large proportion of Costa Rican politicians were former educators and place a very high priority on learning.

A recent President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, has been very active in promoting peace, education and a carbon neutral environment. His efforts are not only being carried out within Costa Rica, but worldwide. Arias was responsible for helping to negotiate an end to civil conflicts throughout Latin America during the eighties and earning the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in 1987. He has been very vocal against war on a worldwide forum. He and others have worked extensively to further education in this country, moving it from a nearly totally agricultural society into a more balanced economy supporting the technical manufacturing needs of the 21st century.

This is a small country with a lot to say to the rest of the world. They are moving forward and improving their infrastructure at a steady rate. Not having to support a military has greatly facilitated this progress. There is a lot of work still to do, but my wife and I noticed considerable forward progress between 2009 and 2017 in the areas of education, telecommunications and roads.

The literacy rate is very high and as a group Ticos, are a highly educated people. They are very proud of their country and aware of the world beyond Costa Rica. This pride and awareness tends to manifest itself in a very positive way toward the tourism industry. I have to admit that I can only speak with conviction for the people in the Central Pacific area, but I believe this attitude is prevalent in most of the country. The internet and cell phones have been as important to modern day Costa Rica as ecotourism has been. Ticos themselves are a very friendly and cooperative people, but more on that later.

There are a couple of possible explanations for the origin of the term Tico. In Spanish, the diminutive/affectionate suffix for words is ito. It’s like saying mommy instead of mom. In Costa Rica ito is frequently changed to tico. Another possible explanation is that it is short for hermanitico (little brother). This was also a friendly and respectful term that these people used to describe themselves in the past.

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Trip One

On our first trip we weren’t very familiar with the country. We took the advice of travel agents and planned our trip for the dry season or summer as the Ticos call it. Before our first trip, Costa Rica was so foreign to us that we felt it would be best to stick to soup to nuts packaged tours, but that just didn't happen. For our taste, packaged tours were too packaged with one size supposed to be fitting all. They tend to cover a lot of ground in a short time. This is fine if you want to brag about an impressive itinerary of where you have been, but how much do you really see?

We met a number of people who had taken these tours and they were having all sorts of problems with last minute cancellations, being booked to see sights that were closed, and having last minute schedule juggling as a result. These planned-out tours tried to do too much in too short a time. Where was the relaxation? The hotels were adequate, but not luxurious. In short it looked like we would be seeing Costa Rica as a blur with no time for relaxation, savoring the ambiance, or learning anything about the country and its people.

So, we gave up on the idea of allowing professionals to preplan our trip. Now, all we had to do was plan in detail the vacation of a lifetime, to a place we had never been, and do it ourselves! We desperately needed to work out a system. First, we learned as much as we could about the major sections of the country and what they had to offer. Then, we chose two of those areas that weren’t too far from each other. In this case, we picked the central Pacific beach area of Quepos/Manuel Antonio and La Fortuna/Arenal Volcano in the north central region. We used travel books, the internet, talking with friends, and whatever else we could find to give us an idea of what was available.

Checking out the multitude of tours and activities available in these places soon became overwhelming and we were growing discouraged at being able to undertake this planning process on our own. Then it occurred to me that we might be doing this backwards. Let’s pick the hotel first. We wanted luxury. Booking into a four or five star hotel should also give us the services of a good concierge. We could