First impressions Close your eyes and picture a tropical jungle and a calm sea. Yep! That is the Golfito area in the Osa Peninsula. The Osa peninsula is really wild. In the Golfito, the green “lush” slopes of jungle end up in reddish deserted sand beaches and a sea teeming with large marine mammals. The … More The scouting trip (V, and last)- Osa Peninsula
First impressions It takes barely 1 hour to go from Manuel Antonio to Uvita. The road has a speed limit of 80/60 km although it is really good. It is a beautiful road with palm trees and forest visible throughout the trip. Arriving at Uvita is especially nice since one starts seeing the green mountains … More The scouting trip (IV)- Uvita
The road from San José to Nosara It takes almost 5 hours to drive from San José to Nosara. The first part of the road is really good -asphalted and well indicated- until one needs to deviate to Sámara and Nosara. The last 60 km of the trip is a dirt road full of potholes, … More The scouting trip (III). Nosara
First stop in the scouting trip: Puerto Viejo, in the caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Of the four destinations shorlisted, this is the one for which we have more doubts. On the positive side, Puerto Viejo is surrounded by a national park (Cahuita) and a protected area (Gandoca-Manzanillo); has access to one of the best … More The scouting trip (II). Puerto Viejo
So, after some delays and changes of plans (I got the Chickenpox the week before I was supposed to travel to San Jose!!), I was finally on my way to Costa Rica for the scounting trip! I was exahusted and still quite weak from the illness, but full of excitement about what lied ahead of … More The scouting trip (I). First impressions arriving to Costa Rica
The to do list- 8 months before The Reboot your life book by Allen et al, suggest a list of to do´s for 8 months before the start of the sabbatical related to planning an educational sabbatical, organising work, financing the sabbatical and preparing the house. Our highlights of that list were the following: Apply … More To do 8 months before: the scouting trip and other to do’s
In my last blog, I indicated how the wish list helped identifying some of the key criteria to decide where to live in Costa Rica. So, out next addition to the planning board was the criteria list for where to live in Costa Rica. In our case, the main criteria was: Close to National Parks (more or less … More Where in Costa Rica?
So, once that we had decided the date -2020- and the place – Costa Rica- everything became much more concrete. Butterflies in the stomach!. Yes, the time to dream about it was gone. We were going to do it!! (do you also hear the fireworks in the background?). Needless to say, once that the place and … More The planning board
Once that we made the decision to take a year off, the key question was where? We both agreed that it had to be a tropical country. Despite the fact (or may be because of the fact) that we live in Sweden, we both hate cold weather. Spending our money on a one year sabbatical … More Why Costa Rica?
THE FLIP FLOP LIFE 