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Hello my dear readers,<br /><br />In the past five years, while I travel extensively, I have visited most of the places which "I wanted to visit for all my life". Fortunately I found more places I wanted to visit, mostly from reading other travelers' stories. One of my favorite is Vladimir Dinets. In Central America I follow his footsteps. See "America Latina" at his Internet site: http://dinets.travel.ru/

Central America (part III)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 18:36:24

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After you reed Dinets's stories you are eager to visit places he visited and described. It is exactly opposite to what I feel when I read my tour-book. This time I took "Let Us Go". The "Lonely Planet" tour-book for Central America is four years old and therefore is obsolete. While "Let Us Go" is more or less accurate in describing hotels, transportations, boarder crossings and other useful stuff, their false, enthusiastic style is very irritating:

"Go, go party, rub shoulders with locals (Garifunas for example)" they invite you. In conclusion however, they do not forget to advise you, to go in large groups and to take a taxi on your way home. So following the Vladimir Dinets, I went to Santa Rosa National park right after entering Costa Rica from the Nicaragua.

The major difference between the two of us is the following:

Vladimir traveled with his girl friend, but I travel with my bike. The bike has certain advantages and disadvantages compare with a girlfriend. The bike makes me more mobile. But while I love my bike, I cannot make love to it.

So from the border I rode the bike to the entrance of Santa Rosa park. I was not so lucky as Vladimir with hitchhiking and had to ride the bike down to the bay on a terrible and steep road, made from pretty large loose stones. The Brompton amazingly survived this very rough test. The bay which Vladimir visited is closed for tourists now and I went to another bay, which is described by the tourbook as the best bay for the surfers. The best bay for surfers is the worst place for everybody else. There is a huge sand beach and crushing waves. There is absolutely nothing to do there, if you are not a surfer. There was also no drinking water or food there.

I met there a man who came there just because of this reason. He came to lose weight. He wrote a book "I lost over 30 lbs and quit smoking in 35 days" His Internet site is: http://www.bitemeproductions.com/

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