Travel Announcements Only (No questions or comments please)

[BabyHuey]

I just tried to post some information about another website. I'm sorry if this was against the rules, and I gues it was since the url was blocked. I question the sense behind this, because, personally, I post information on several different boards. The one i was posting about is the reason I finally discovered Costa Rica. They are the reason I am able to come here and post about my experiences in Costa Rica. I'm just saying that Jackson should understand that, we are not going to jump ship if we find out about another site. I think that if more people knew about the other site, then more people would go to CR and come back and post reports on both sites. That would in turn bring even more patrons to this site, as well as the other.

An 99% of you already know the other site anyway.

Honestly, if Jackson could work out a deal where could get a card that gave me the kind of discounts I get with their's, I might just stop going over there. Probably not though.

[BabyHuey]

Demetrius,

First I would recommend visiting dub dub dub dot ************** dot com. Become a VIP member, your $39 investment will pay for itself in a very short time in SanJose. Hotel savings alone in sponsor hotels will save you that much in two nights.

Second, I say RTFF. There is a lot of information here, and on the other site that I mentioned. If you have any specific questions, there will be guys on either site that will be happy to answer them, but don't expect anyone to answer when you ask for general advice. It's all here, you do the research.

[Demetrius]

Hey Smoke,

Which do you prefer the DR or CR? I wanted a change form Santo Domingo so am deciding on CR.

Bring some money

[Underwriter]

Planning my first trip to SJ Aug. 2.. Any good advice from the veterans here.

Thanks in advance

A lot of the real veterans might not agree, but for your FIRST trip to San Jose, you HAVE to stay at the Del Rey. It is the easiest way to get to know the area. Everything that you will need is walking distance and the Blue Marlin, Key Largo and Monkey Bar are all right there. Once you start going back more and more, you can stay elsewhere. But for your first time, stay at the Del Rey.

Go to the beach for a day and check out Jaco. Go to the Beatle Bar.

UW

[Smokers Rule]

Bring some money

Planning my first trip to SJ Aug. 2.. Any good advice from the veterans here.

Thanks in advance

[Demetrius]

Planning my first trip to SJ Aug. 2.. Any good advice from the veterans here.

Thanks in advance

[Prolijo]

I don't know what gringo owned hotel outside of SJ that starts with an R you're talking about, but you might want to check out the Hotel Castillo. It has a pool table and is much more conveniently located to nearly all the places you mentioned for nightlife except the one in Escazu (HDR/BM/KL, bar castro, el pueblo) than some hotel outside of SJ, Sabana Sur or even the Royal Dutch. Check the "other site" for additional discounts even beyond their one for cash.

BTW, you said you'd go someplace like El Pueblo first and "save del rey or Key largo for late night if necessary". I don't know what your idea of late night is but El Pueblo's bars don't really start to get going until around 11-12PM. you won't find that much action there before that and if you stuck around there until much later than that, it would be very very late night indeed before you got to the BM/KL. Plus El Pueblo has become such a dangerous place late at night, that I no longer recommend it to others anymore (its still good for dinner and a stroll earlier in the evening). Some other non pro nightspots you also might want to check out instead include the Calle Amarga bar district in San Pedro (near the university), the disco at the San Pedro Mall (I always forget the name), El Cuartel de la Boca del Monte about halfway to the Mall, and the Club Vertigo (www.vertigocr.com) in Centro Colon. Frankly, I'm not sure how much luck you'd have with non-pros at any of these places coming to CR only once per year and staying only a few days before taking off around the rest of the country (unless you're figuring on turning them into semi-pros), but it is always fun to try.

As for your other travel plans:

1) You can "keep it simple" and take the Greyline shuttle to Jaco if you want for $27. But it wouldn't be that much more "complex" to take a cab (or even walk) to the nearby bus station (if you're staying downtown anyway) and take the public bus. It is nearly or just as comfortable as the shuttle, is just as fast (or faster since you don't have to make the rounds of the hotels picking up other passengers), is about $20-25 cheaper and you have your choice of 5 daily departures instead of just the 2 that Grayline has (or even 4 more if you don't mind taking the SJ>Quepos bus and then a short local cab from where they drop you off on the PAH just outside of Jaco).

2) I assume you're thinking of renting a car because the tourist shuttle companies like Grayline don't offer regularly scheduled service between Jaco and Dominical, but those are not your only choices. Public bus service is not quite as convenient between those 2 places as it is to/from SJ but it is certainly still possible and it will be a helluva lot cheaper than renting a car. Plus you won't have to return to Jaco to return your rental car but can go directly back to SJ from Dominical and see a VERY scenic part of the country that I'm betting you haven't checked out before. There are 5 buses per day between Jaco and Quepos (plus, again, 4 more if you catch the SJ>Quepos bus when it stops just outside of town). From Quepos there are 4 buses per day to Dominical (not including the 5am one which obviously you won't be able to make).

You'll have to check the schedules to see which ones leave you the least waiting time in Quepos, but I'd probably just catch the 9:30 bus from Jaco (putting you into Quepos around 11am), have some lunch, chill out or look around the town and then catch the 1:30pm bus the rest of the way to Dominical. Alternatively you could catch the noon bus from SJ as it passes by Jaco around 2:15 and then catch the 4pm bus from Quepos to Dominical, but that would leave you only 15 minutes between buses which might be too tight.

3) If you have the time, you might also consider stopping off for a night at one of the lodges along the Cerro de la Muerte on the way back to SJ from Dominical. That area is one of the best places in CR to spot the elusive quetzal plus it is a great place to do a little mountain trout fishing.

[Daveinpgh]

This will be my first mongering trip. I will be in CR on May 16, and from 17 on will be sightseeing. If anyone is there to meet up or provide advice just pm me. I have gotten a lot of info from here. I will post my experience as soon as i can.

[Hello0]

Visiting CR. For the first time. In 1st week of June. Btw Jun 5 to Jun 9.

[Big Bossman]

Arriving May 18 for my first ever trip to CR. I've mongered in Europe and Asia and the good ol' US, but nothing south of the border before. So, if anybody will be in San Jose May 18, 19 (my first two days there, before I possibly head out and see the country a bit) and wants to show a CR-newbie around, PM back.

Just got my tix today ... I guess I should start looking into some hotel reservations. That, and break out my spanish-english dictionary.

[Belmont]

Travel time!
Hello,
Visiting April 8 till the 17th.
15th+ time. Been a couple years.
Visited Argentina, Thailand, Colombia, DR.
Anyone up for a drinking, story trading sesion at Blue Marlin?
PM me.
Belmont

[Zzblue]

I will be in Costa Rica on May 3 and will be staying for two weeks. I am coming from the Great White North (northern Canada), am a newbi and appriceiate this form and hope I can contribute when I return (reminds me I need to pay some fees). I will start at the Del Rey (seems the centre of the action) for a few days and then see what happens from there. If there are any fellow mongers who want to look me up and play some pool, crib, poker while looking for the ladies then look me up (how I am not sure).

Thanks again for the good information on this forum and I hope I have posted this on the correct thread.

[Prolijo]

Hello fellow mongers,

I am planning on my very first trip to central. south america. In need your help in my trip. I want to start from Costa Rica. Panama- Colombia. equador. Peru. chile. Argentina. brasil. then back to Costa Rica. I also want to stop by Venezuela if possible. I will be traveling for about two month period and I need help and suggestion in which route I should take. I would also like some info on best way to get from country to country w/o taking plane. (ex. Via bus, train, boat). Any info regarding the cost and travel time from each destination will help me alot. Please, also inform me with your wisdom on visa requirements and any hotels that you recommand + must visit place. I would like to enjoy mongering as much as sight seeing. Please enlighten the newbie <-me with your wise experience in hotel prices as well as transportation cost + fun activities that you recommand I try (ex. ATV, jet ski, .) And please provide me with going rates for the girls so I know what to expect and not over pay. I read many post on cr and know asking price is 100 but 20, 000colon is best way to pay. However I don't have much updated info on other s. American countires except Quito, rates are $7-10 for 8-9 and 15-20 for 10's.

Jeesh, is that all you want to know about? You really need to go out and buy a book or something. If you're going to ask questions here and expect guys to want to help, then you need to learn how to ask much better TARGETED questions. As others have already said, RTFF(read the friggin forum). Presented with a laundry list like that, one would hardly know where to begin and at best could only scratch the surface. Despite all that, I'll try to offer some ideas that while not really answering all your questions might help point you in the right direction.

First of all, this is mongering forum. Guys here can answer general travel questions too, but there are probably better forums for that particularly for your form of travel (sin avion). If I were you I'd focus here more on JUST the mongering part. For travel topics beyond mongering, you'll probably find a much broader (and possibly more appropriate) pool of experts on other forums. For example, since you seem to be interested in ground travel rather than flying, a backpacker type forum like Bootsnall or Lonely Planet's Thorntree forum might provide more of the (non-mongering) information you seek.

Secondly, post questions for each country or city you plan to visit in THAT country or city's forum section. The guys here may know something about those other countries as well but CR is what the guys here know best. Besides, anybody here who does also know about those other areas probably checks out those sections too and will see your questions there. That way the questions and replies in each section will stay relevant to the section they're in and you won't be asking guys for a zillion tons of info in a single post. The main exception to this guidance would be if you have questions of general applicability to mongering (i.e. really apply to many countries such as safe practices, etc.), which you can post in any section you'd like.

Thirdly, this sounds like a very ambitious trip for someone who has never been to the region before. Do you at speak at least a little spanish? Compounding the problem for the newbie is that you plan to rely so much on local transportation rather than more traditional western tourist modes of travel (ie planes). That will not exactly be like going to the local Greyhound station. You might want to consider starting out with a shorter trip to get your feet wet and determine how much you like the area and how well equipped you are to cope with it.

Fourth, forget about trains. Rail systems throughout Latin america are decrepit except in a few isolated instances. Where they do have them, they wouldn't really serve as a practical mode for you to get from one place to the next. More likely they'd serve as a scenic excursion with you returning to the same place of departure. One place you might take a train is near Machu Pichu, but that is about it. Locals are far more likely to get around by bus, truck or boat. BTW, another mode of travel everyone should check is the monorail to get across the Darien Gap www.goodtimebob.com/monorail.htm jk

Finally, as for your specific itinerary, I won''t go into any great depth but I will tell you a few things.

1) CR to Panama by bus is no problem. You can go straight through from SJ to Panama City in 16 hours on Ticabus for $25 or you can split up the trip and go for even less on other carriers. That is largely representative of the cost of bus travel for trips of similar length through out the region, but you can go even cheaper depending on how much comfort you're willing to sacrifice. The bigger issue is time. SJ to PC is a relatively fast run over decent roads compared to what you'll encounter in many places later in your trip.

2) Panama to Colombia can not be done by ground transport. The Darien Gap in southern Panama is the only place where the Pan-Am Hwy does not go through. You can trek to the Colombian border but you better have lots of guns for protection or someone at home with lots of ransom money once you get on the other side. The only ways over are to either to wait to hitch a ride on a boat or to fly.

3) Colombia to Ecuador means taking a bus through a heavily narco-guerilla controlled area of southern Colombia and then dealing with a possibly closed border or worse. It remains to be seen how bad the current military standoff between Colombia and Ecuador will get or how long it will last.

4) Ecuador to Peru - no problem

5) Peru to Chile - the biggest thing to see in Peru is Machu Pichu near Cuszco. That is up in the Andes and a long hard bus trip from Lima on the coast. Once you get up that far, you could head back down to the coast near Arequipa and on to Chile, but it makes more sense to me to head across Lake Titicaca to La Paz Bolivia and then cross back over to Chile through the salt desert near Uyuni.

6) Chile to Argentina - no problem, except if you went straight through from Santiago to BA, due to your time restrictions, you'd miss the whole southern half of the country which is arguably the best part.

7) Argentina to Brazil - The direct route from BA would be through Uruguay. Since you didn't mention that, I'm assuming you plan to head north and cross at the Iguazu Falls since they'd be one of the highlights to see in that area anyway. Again, every twist and turn means your trip will take more time.

8) Brazil to anywhere - Brazil is one big ass country. If you plan to head by bus anywhere in that country, particularly exiting to the north, then you better have a shitload of time. TAM & Varig have country airpasses (which you've ruled out anyway) which would save you a lot of time and are fairly reasonably priced but you have to fly into the country to qualify for them. If you want to go to Venuzuela next you'll probably want to work your way north along the coast through Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza and then take a boat upriver from Belem to Manaus (I'm not sure it can even be done by bus). The boat ride alone will take a week. And then you've got to take a bus north to Boa Vista and cross into southern Venezuela or Guyuna, but you don't want to do that during the rainy season.

AND YOU WANT TO DO ALL THIS WITHOUT ANY FLYING IN ONLY 2 MONTHS!!!! I think you're crazy. If it can be done at all it would probably mean spending every day on long bus rides with little time to actually stop in each place and really get to check out what you ostensibly came to see. I'd figure on it taking AT LEAST twice as long as you've figured and quite possibly longer. Either extend your time or scale back your plans significantly. I've been planning a similar trip, but I've been figuring at least 6 months for it.

[Toadtamer2]

Skip the Columbia trip. If you haven't heard, a war with Venezuela has started. Alot of politcal BS going on. Save your money from Bendicks. Do it yourself. Educate yourself here and at Costa Rica T., then jump in.

[Prolijo]

I plan my first trip to Costa Rica in April.

What do you think of the Bendrick Adult Travel club?

RIP OFF!!!!

Just RTFF.

Is that concise enough for everyone? (that's an inside joke, beachguy)