How to choose the right machete

How to choose the right machete

An imacasa machete with scabbard

A machete is the ultimate tool for everything. You can use it to work in your garden, you can chop off some small trees, prepare fruits for your food and many things more.

Did you know where the name machete is from? 

A machete is a large cleaver-like knife. The blade is typically 32.5 to 45 centimetres (12.8 to 17.7 in) long and usually under 3 millimetres (0.12 in) thick. In the Spanish language, the word is a diminutive form of the word macho, which means male or strong and was used to refer to sledgehammers. In the English language, an equivalent term is matchet, though it is less commonly known. In the English-speaking Caribbean, such as Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana, Grenada and in Trinidad and Tobago, the term "cutlass" is used for these agricultural tools. (read more on wikipedia)

A machete from Costa Rica

There are some different kinds of machetes available. Some of them are big and heavy, some of them are rather small, light but much sharper. If you want to use this machete as a garden-tool, you should get one of the bigger and heavy ones and one of the smaller sharp ones. People usally have more then one machete. Check out this video of a guy chopping down some coconuts. For working on top of the coconut tree, he has a big, not so sharp machete. After the is finished with his work and climbed down, he choosed another smaller, but much sharper machete to open the coconuts. This video was created at Casa Valeria in Samara, Costa Rica.

Buy an imacasa Machete

Probably the best manufactor of machetes is imacasa. They are building all kinds of machetes and garden tools. If you want to buy a machete, buy an imacasa machete.

Quality machete

An Imacasa Machete offers you:

• Industrial grade tempered steel
• Insuperable Edge
• Indestructible
• Life Time Warranty

Hotel Casa Valeria in Samara Costa Rica

Me chilling in front of my beach cabin at Casa Valeria in Samara

Review

Casa Valeria in Samara is located directly at the famous Samara beach. It offers different cabins for backpackers or "normal" tourists. The cabins are clean and equiped with a fan (some of them even air condition) and a warm shower. There are multiple hammocks tied to the palms where you can hang, chill and watch the surfers on the beach. You can also get free coffee through the whole day. Valeria is a very relaxed person who will try everything to make you a pleasant visit. We drove to samara right after visiting hacienda guachipelin.

My view from my hammock at samara beach

Casa Valeria is a place where you can chill after a few days travelling through costa rica and visiting all the national parks and volcanos. Here you can just relax, enjoy the sun and the beach. This is not a normal hotel in costa rica, cause it is mainly cabins build on the beach. From time to time you can go to the nearby shop and get some cold beer. Check the map on the bottom for the locations.

A guy plays with his horse and a dog

The rooms are equiped with basic furniture and everything you need. The "rooom-service" will clean your cabins daily. This is good, because there will always get some sand inside your cabin. That is the "bad" side living on the bach. On the picture you can see our cabin from the inside.

Simple & Clean: Casa Valeria

The whole day at Casa Valeria you will see a guy walking around, cleaning, sweeping and tidying up the stuff that occurs on the beach. He cannot speak english but he is a very friendly guy. Check out the huge crab he has found at the back of our cabin.

A huge crab at samara beach

Sadly there is no included breakfast at Casa Valeria, only free coffee. But you can get to the supermarket neaby (1-2 minutes), buy your stuff and cook it in the kitchen at Casa Valeria.
I don't like cooking in the morning, so we went to the "Sheriff" a soda nearby to get some real costa rica breakfast Gallo Pinto. On the map of the bottom I tried to mark the sport where sheriff is located.

Gallo Pinto at the soda sheriff in Samara

The last picture is dedicated to these interesting costa rica showers you will often see around in costa rica. There is normally no hot water available in costa rica, so people are using this kind of boiler or flow-type heater shower. It looks a little bit dangerous with the wires hanging around, but after three weeks in costa rica and showering unter several of these showers I can say they are safe.

A typical shower in costa rica

Fresh Coconuts on the beach

If you want to get some fresh coconut juice, you can buy some fresh harvested coconuts directly at the beach. Check out this video of us watching how a guy climbed up the coconut trees and chopped off some coconuts. If you want to buy an machete, follow my guide about machetes.

How to get to Casa Valeria in Samara

The exact address is:  200 m Este Centro de Samara, de la Guardia Rural, Sámara, Costa Rica

Traffic violations and fines in costa rica

Parked right in front of arenal

Driving your own vor rented car in costa rica can be great fun. You will see more of the country then while travelling by bus or even airplane.But you have to keep in mind that costa rica very strict traffic laws and quite high traffic fines for breaking these laws.

These are the best Tipps for driving your car in Costa Rica:

Always obey the speed limit:
Using a GPS navigation can give you a small advantage. The included maps mostly contain the allowed speed limit for your current road limit so your GPS can warn you in case you are to fast.

Drive friendly:
Most ticos are relaxed and chilled drivers. They will give you yield even if they could drive. Try to drive as friendly like them.

On a road like this you should
keep your distance and drive slowly

Do not try to cross big rivers
Crossing Rivers with a 4wd can be great fun. But you should always double check the depth before crossing it. If you are unsure about it ask some locals nearby. When these locals tell you not to cross that river, dont do it. Most car insurances in Costa Rica do not cover costs for a failed river crossing.

This driver is safe, cause he wears a safety belt

Always keep your eyes on the road
The main roads in costs rica are good to drive but the side roads are full of pot holes. Always watch the road cause these pot holes appear out of nowhere.
Take some double care of the dogs. Dogs in costa rica will sleep or play on the road no matter if a car is approaching or not. Always slow down when you see a dog on the road. Even if you are approaching a dog with your car they won't run away as you might think.

Current traffic laws and fines for costa rica

Here are the the current traffic laws and fines for costa rica. They might be outdated and even higher the time you read this. Please contact me if you have information that these information are outdated.

Traffic Offense	Fine in Colones	Legal Basis
Making a "U" Turn	280,000	143 (f)
Driving Using Cell Phone	94,000	145 (n)
Speeding in Excess of 120 km / hr	280,000	143 (b)
Speeding 20 km / hr above the speed limit	47,000	146 (v)
Speeding 30 km / hr above the speed limit	94,000	145 (u)
Speeding 40 km / hr above the speed limit	189,000	144 (g)
Speeding in a school zone above 25 km / hr	94,000	145 (p)
Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol 0.20 to .050	280,000	143 (a) (ii)
Running a Red Traffic Light	189,000	144 (e)
Failure to Buckle the seat belt	94,000	145 (q)
Not having the vehicle inspection up to date	17,000	147 (n)
Foreigners driving without a local license after 3 months	47,000	146 (q)
Driving with an expired vehicle registration	47,000	146 (x)
Illegal Parking	47,000	146 (n)

Hotel El Encanto Cahuita

Hotel El Encanto in Cahuita

El Encanto in Cahuita

Review

El encanto is a small hotel located in cahuita at the beautiful caribean coast of Costa Rica.. It is a two minute walk from cahuita city center to el encanto and another two minutes to the beach.

You can use free parking, wifi and even a little pool. The hotel is inside a very nice garden and contains of a few bungalows.

Entrance to El Encanto

The owner of el encanto (Alex) is a very friendly guy who can bake great pizza. I recommend the hawaii pizza with fresh pineapples.

Super tasty pizza at el encanto

Next to el encanto is an area with are huge trees. During my visit there was a group oft howler monkeys. Every morning and throughout the whole day you can hear these monkeys howl.

If you want to see more monkeys like capuchin monkeys, spider monkeys and a lot of other animals you should visit cahuita national park. You can reach the free Park entrance by foot in 10-15 minutes.

Chilling in front of by bungalow at El Encanto

Pros

• Near the Beach
• Free wifi + pool
• Great pizza
• Security at night

How to geht to el encanto

You should check the homepage of El Encanto for details how to reach cahuita by car or bus. It is quite easy, cause there are only very little roads in cahuita area.

The exact adress is:

300 mts. oeste de la Guardia Rural de Cahuita, Cahuita Limon

To drive from San Jose to Cahuita, you can use this map to plan your journey. You can also customize your route.

Map of Cahuita and places to see:

I marked the relevant spots and el Encanto Hotel in this map.

Hacker Paradise in Costa Rica

Hacker Paradise 2014

Hacker Paradise is a a coworking / programming retreat in Costa Rica. It will happen this September to November. As a professional Nerd I would love to visit this 12 week experience in costa rica, but I won't have the time to arrange this.

Hacker Paradise is a programming retreat in the beautiful country of Costa Rica, inspired by Hacker School. Our HQ is El Sueno Tropical, a boutique hotel located on the edge of the jungle in the coastal town of Playa Carrillo. Students come from all over to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and spend 12 weeks writing code and building things with other passionate individuals.

Make sure to check out their website http://www.hackerparadise.org/

Chikungunya in Costa Rica

Chikungunya

(Picture: Verdy license: Public Domain via wikimedia commons)

What is Chikungunya

Chikungunya is a virus transmitted by virus-carrying mosquitoes. The virus is very similar to dengue fever. Thats why a chikungunya infection is often mistaken for dengue fever. The bad thing about chikungunya  is, that it is much worse then dengue. You will have much more pain when infected with chikungunya. Dengue fever is called the breakbone fever, because the intense pain feels like your bones are breaking. Chikungunya is translated something like "that bends up", people cannot even walk anymore because of the extreme pain suffered from this disease.

Mosquito bites

Chikungunya even has another thing with dengue fever in common. There is no immunisation or even medicine for it. All you can do is take some painkillers and wait for it to finish. This might take 2-5 days. After this you will still suffer a long period of joint pains in the extremities. This pain might persist for years. Some people are still suffering from the infection. If you have been infected you will probably never have chikungunya again. Most people are immune after a first infection.

Symptoms for Chikungunya 

• Incubation Period:  1-12 days
• Fever up to 40 °C / 104°F
• Rash of trunk & limbs
• Joint pain
• Headache
• Vomiting
• Loss of Taste
• Photophobia

How to prevent Chikungunya

There is no immunisation or medicine agains an chikungunya infection. The only thing you can do is to use mosquito protection. Every mosquito bite is a possible infection for dengue fever, chikungunya or other viruses in costa rica. Mosquitos will hunt for your blood the whole day. The first thing you should do in the morning is to put on your mosquito repellent. There are a lot of different mosquito repellents available on the market. I would recommend Anti Brumm Forte.
Anti Brumm is a quite strange name. It contains a lot of DEET and when properly used, this stuff will keep all mosquitos away from you. You should put on anti brumm every 8 hours. When sweating or swimming you should re-new it more often.
Always ask the locals or the staff at the hotels, if they have heard any cases of dengue fever or chikungunya in the area.

The best mosquito repellent available

Latest news about Chikungunya in Costa Rica

There are not many known infections from chikungunya in costa rica until now. But lately six cases of chikungunya have been confirmed. Most of these cases have been to dominican republic or the Quepos area. So you should double check your mosquito repellent when travelling there.

Update 08.13.2014:
US assesses virus of the Caribbean
Researchers warn that a change of mosquito host could accelerate spread of chikungunya across the Americas.

More information about chikungunya infections can be found on the official who webpage.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs327/en/

Map of Chikungunya spreading

Source: PAHO/WHO

Good to know

Chikungunya (Makonde for "that which bends up") virus is anarthropod-borne virus, of the genus Alphavirus, that is transmitted to humans by virus-carrying Aedes mosquitoes.

CHIKV is transmitted similarly to dengue fever and causes an illness with an acute febrile phase lasting two to five days, followed by a longer period of joint pains in the extremities; this pain may persist for years in some cases.

The best means of prevention is overall mosquito control and in addition, the avoidance of bites by any infected mosquitoes.There is no specific treatment but medications can be used to reduce symptoms. Rest and fluids may also be useful (read more on wikipedia)

Hotel Hacienda Guachipelin Rincon de la Vieja

Entrance to Hacienda Guachipelin side buildung

Review

This is not only a hotel, it is a hacienda. Let me help you with a definition of a hacienda from wikipedia:

Hacienda ... is a Spanish word for an estate. Some haciendas were plantations, mines or factories. Many haciendas combined these productive activities.

The area of hacienda guachipelin is really huge. As you can see on the lower map you can do a lot of different activities like a canopy tour, zip-lining, canoying tour, visit a waterfall or hot springs and of course visit the Rincon de la Vieja national park. You can stay at this hotel for a few days and never get bored.
The hotel rooms are really big and equiped with air condition, a private bath and a fan. The hotel is split into several small buildings gathered in the center of the huge hacienda area. Even if there are many tourists at the area it does not feal like filled up with people.
They even have a great bar with good cocktails and drinks. Try the "guaro sour".

Map of hacienda guachipelin

Pros

• very friendly staff
• access to rincon de la vieja
• huge area to explore
• very beautiful nature

Rincon de la Vieja national park

While still on the hacienda you can use your car to drive the the ranger station of the national park. From the main building this will take like 10 minutes. On the sides of the road you can see some geothermal energy systems they are doing experiments with. 

A warning near the mud volcanoes

Entrance to the park is 10 dollars. You can walk on some trails through the forrest untill you find some of the hot springs, steam fountains and mud volcanos. A very bizarre area! Keep distance from the small volcanos and steam fountains. This is very hot and should not be underestimated.

A mud volcano at rincon de la vieja

How to get to Hotel Hacienda Guachipelin

You can reach Hotel Hacienda Guachipelin easily by car. You have to pass through a private road where you have to pay 700 colones per person to enter the area. You cannot use any other road, because this is the only way to reach the hacienda guachipelin and rincon de la vieja national park.
From Curubande it is a 10 minute drive.
The exact adress is:
Rincon de la Vieja National Park, Las Pailas, Liberia, Guanacaste
Click on the lower map to view the location or plan your route:

A very big bed at hacienda guachipelin

Monkeys in Costa Rica

Capuchin monkey

The capuchin monkey is known from various movies, shows and circuses. This kind of monkey can be found almost everywhere in costa rica. They are small and very clever monkeys. Do not feed this monkeys or let your stuff lay around somewhere. If you do not watch your belongings, these little monkeys will steal your bags and food. It has been observed, that some monkeys will try to get your attention while another one will try to steal your food while your are distracted by the other monkeys.

A cute little capuchin monkey

But on the other hand they are very cute little monkeys and they are incredible intelligent animals. Have a look at this video:

This was clipped out of recent TED talk given by Frans de Waal regarding moral behavior in animals. In a nut shell we get to observe reaction and response of two Capuchin monkey when they receive different reward for same type of work.

There are a lot capuchin monkeys at Manuel Antonio National Park, especially at the main beach.

Capuchin monkey in manuel antonio

Howler Monkeys

This is a kind of monkey you will probably not see very often but you will hear it. The howler monkeys are living high up in the trees. They start howling in the morning and continue for the whole day. It is like an alarm clock to wake up. 

These monkeys sound very dangerous and aggressive, but as long as you will leave them alone they are peaceful monkeys. After a few days you get used to the sound of howler monkeys in the trees. On the image you can see one of them sleeping with its baby. The image is taken in Manuel Antonio National Park. In Cahuita we could hear and see a group of howler monkeys right next to our hotel  inside a big tree.

A howler monkey in Manuel Antonio National Park

How to rent a car for Costa Rica

All about how to rent a car in Costa Rica

This car will bring you everywhere in Costa Rica

If you plan to travel Costa Rica on your own you need a car. It is very comfortable to travel to the national parks of costa rica by your own car. The best advice is to rent the car online while at your home country. This way you can compare prices and choose the right car for you. To travel all roads in Costa Rica with some kind of comfort you need to get an 4WD. You do not need such a big one as on the picture. But its a cool car I saw at Juan Santamaria Airport on my last day in Costa Rica. To compare the available cars, you should keep the following things in mind: capacity, gasoline consumption, price and insurance.
Most car rental services in costa rica are offering the same cars. You should consider choosing either a Suzuki Jimmy, a Daihatsu Terios or a Toyota Rav 4. These are reliable cars for a good price.

A typical tico car :)

Choosing the right rental car

The Suzuki Jimny is a small, two person 4WD-SUV. It is on of the cheapest 4WD available at Costa Rica. Many people like the Jimmy because it is a very reliable car. But it is also a very uncomfortable car, as you can feel the road while driving.

The Suzuki Jimny in an ugly white color
(Picture: TTTNIS license: Creative Commons by-sa 3.0 de / short)

The Toyota Rav 4 is a reliable 4WD-SUV. You will see hundreds of this car on your Costa Rica trip.

There is enough space for up to seven people including luggage.On our holiday trip to Costa Rica We had choosen the Rav4 because of the additional space in comparison to the Daihatsu Terios. The price was just 50 dollars additionally a week, compared to the Toyota Rav 4.

The Toyota Rav 4.

We rented the car at a typical car rental comparison site. Later we got to know it was rented by europcar. I did not have any bad experiences with europcar yet so I was happy.

Have a look at this table. You can See all relevant attributes for the Suzuki Jimmy, Daihatsu Terios and the Toyota Rav 4.

-	Suzuki Jimny	Daihatsu Terios	Toyota Rav 4
Persons + luggage	2 persons with light luggage	up to 4 persons with luggage	up to 7 persons with luggage
Gasoline consumption	37.3 MPG or 7.6 litres/100km	34.3 MPG or 8.3 litres/100km	38.0 MPG or 7.6 litres/100km
Comfort	quite hard	comfortable	very comfortable

GPS Navigation for Costa Rica

Most car rental services will try to offer you an additional GPS navigation for about 5 dollars a day. Read my article how to use your android smartphone as GPS navigation with a free navigation software and free offline maps for Costa Rica.

Picking up your rental car at Juan santamaria Airport

After you have rented your car and arrived in Costa Rica international Airport. You have three choices to get your car:

• take the car rental bus shuttle
• pick it up at the car rental station,
• or let the car rental bring it to your hotel.

The first is the easiest way. After exiting the airport, look for a guy with a sign of your car rental service. He will bring you to your car. If you do not see a sign of your car rental service, friendly ask a guy with another sign to contact your car rental. He will surely help.

The shuttle bus operates the whole day and drives from the airport to the car rental station and back.

You can also let your car rental service bring the car to your hotel. Just make sure to call them to arrange everything. From the airport, take your hotel shuttle to your hotel and if your car rental service arranged everything properly, your car will already be waiting for you.

Obey the costa rica traffic laws

The traffic laws and fines in costa rica are very high. Please make sure you read my article about these traffic laws. You can get in big trouble not following these tips. For example making a simple U-Turn can cost you up to 250.000 colones!

How to check a rental car

When picking up your car, make sure that all dents and defects are marked on your papers. Have a look at the receipe I got. My car was covered with dents. ;-) Because of the ugly gold paint you can barely see them. At the beginning of my trip I was unsure about this ugly color, but a lot of cars in costa rica have this color. The reason is simple, you can almost not see dust, mud, dents and defects. 

In case you are unsure, you should make pictures from your car.

My rental car in costa rica

Free android navigation for costa rica

Free android gps navigation for costa rica

Nexus 5 with Open Street Maps

It is time for some more advices for costa rica. This article will explain to you how you can use your android smartphone as a full feature gps navigation device with free offline cards. Without a GPS based navigation you are lost in Costa Rica. There are barely any signs on the roads and you do not want to get lost in a shady or lonely area.

As a tourist you will probably not have data roaming in Costa Rica. So you cannot use google maps for online maps navigation. You can also rent a gps navigation with your rental car, but this costs 5 dollars a day.

Navigator free app with costa rica map

Mapsfactor Navigator with open Street map

A free android app you can use in combination with free and good openstreetmap maps is Mapfactor Navigator.People from all over the world collaborate at openstreetmap to create free navigation maps for everybody. I use open street map maps on regular basis and I am fully satisfied with the quality of the maps.

The simple, but powerful Navigator interface

Install the app

First you need to install the free app. Download it for your platform from this link. After this, start the app and at the first screen select that you whish to use free openstreetmap maps.

Select the maps you want to download.

Download the free maps

To download the maps, open the app and click on the "Map Manager" button on the bottom. After this click on "download maps". Now you have to select all maps you want to download. To download the free costa rica map, open the "America" tab, scroll down to "Costa Rica OSM". The map package for Costa Rica is very small. Currently it is only 3mb.  Check how big the map data of your home country. The map data for Germany is about 600 mb.You should also download the maps of your current location, so you can test the app and get comfortable with it.
Now press "Download now", do download the selected maps. Thats it. Your navigation is ready.

Try out Navigator App

You should now try the app and use it to navigate somewhere in your home country. It has a lot of cool features, like google search api, favorites.

Some favorite places in costa rica

The app even switches the color theme to dark in the night-time. You will find various tools inside the app like calculate route, simulate route, record or replay gps files an Odometer and many more.

Cool tools inside the app

You can also use this app as a navigation while walking jungle trails in costa rica. Sure, you do not always need directions while walking or hicking. But if you want to see where exactly you are on the current trail so you can estimate the remaining time, this app is very usefull. Openstreet map even contains the path of most jungle trails in costa rica. Even very small paths you would not have noticed are inside this app!

Favorite POI Options

Use the gps history as a travel log

The app logs your journeys. This is a cool feature I recently notices when I was back from costa rica. Below you can see the odometer. 1875 kilometers does not sound much, but in costa rica all distances are travelled very slowly because of the bad road conditions.

Three weeks in costa rica

As you can see on the next picture, even short distances in costa rica need some time to travel. When you can travel on the main roads, try to do so and avoid the small side roads.

Detailled history of my travel log

The right phone holder

I use a quite cheap phone holder I bought at amazon. Most cellphone car holders are made for just this one device and you cannot fit any other devices into it, when buying a new phone. The mumbi car holder can be used with a lot of different devices.
You can see the phone holder at the first picture in horizontal mode.
Check it out at amazon.

mumbi cell phone holder at amazon

Arenal Volcano National Park Costa Rica

The arenal volcano

The Arenal Volcano is a huge and beautiful volcano inside the Volcano National Park. Unluckily the volcano does not errupt anymore. Not many years ago you could see lava running down the volcano.



But the beautiful nature around the National Park is almost as good as a active volcano.
The volcano has two different sides. On side of the volcano is covered with ash and stones which are getting slowly overgrown by nature. Most of the trees have been destroyed by lava and thousand of anymals have died. This is a very surrealistic area and you are not allowed to walk up to the crate, because it is very dangerous. The volcano is still very unstable.

The dark side of the arenal volcano

The volcano crate seems to crash and collapse from time to time and even people died during that. There are videos of people walking up a crashed plane on the arenal and finding hot lava stones on their way. Here you can actually see "flying" lava stones. So don't go past the allowed paths.

The area around Arenal volcano is dangerous.

The other side of the volcano did not suffer so bad from the erruptions and is covered with trees and nature. If you are lucky, you will be able to see to volcano without any clouds like on the first picture. The next picture shows the volcano covered in clouds. It is made just 10-15 minutes later. As you can see the weather can change quickly here.

15 Minutes later the volcano is covered in clouds

Trails & Senderos in Arenal National Park

Right at the ranger station you will get a map with the available trails/senderos you are allowed to walk in arenal national park. Have a look at this picture of the map. You can walk almost all trails one after another and you might be finished in 2-3 hours. 

Trails/Senderos in Arenal National Park

Good to know:

Arenal Volcano, in Spanish Volcán Arenal, is an active andesitic stratovolcano in north-western Costa Rica around 90 km northwest of San José, in the province of Alajuela, canton of San Carlos, and district of La Fortuna. The Arenal volcano measures at least 1,633 metres (5,358 ft). It is conically shaped with a crater spanning 140 metres (460 ft). Geologically, Arenal is considered a young volcano and the age is estimated to be less than 7,500 years. It is also known as "Pan de Azúcar", "Canaste", "Volcan Costa Rica", "Volcan Río Frío" or "Guatusos Peak".(read more on wikipedia)

15 minutes difference at the arenal volcano