Con Mucho Gusto!

3/16/07 to Blog by Kirsten

Sometime in January Alex and I magically had tickets to Costa Rica. I still don't know exactly how it happened. I was looking into taking a vacation in March. My first choice was actually Prague, but it was oddly expensive to head to the CR. So I was fooling around on tripadvisor and found this crazy B&B ran by a couple of lesbians on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Well, they were booked, but our interest was peaked. We booked a flight and started planning. Here's the day by day breakdown.

Day 1: Flight into San Jose.

Considering I had a nasty cold leading up into the trip and wasn't completely recovered this part wasn't so bad. Well, except for the fact that Continental has chosen to not offer vegetarian meal options on their flights. Fuck you, Continental, I don't want some gross turkey sandwich, but thanks anyway. If I have any other option I won't be flying them again. The flight attendants were unnecessarily rude and looked at me like I was an alien with three heads when I asked about a non-animal meal. Eh. Anyway.

We landed and were met by Steve, our ride to the first stop on our trip, the Orquideas Inn. It's a really cute hotel about 15 - 20 minutes from the airport, on the hillside of Alajuela. I wouldn't recommend staying here your entire trip, but it's perfect for the first or last night stay in the San Jose airport area. And definitely get the 10 buck pick up at the airport. It made everything so much easier, and Steve was a super nice guy. The accomodations were pretty simple, but very clean and large. The pool area is lovely and they have a bird rescue project they work on that eventually releases the birds into the wild.

The owners also have three dogs that roam the grounds, Marilyn, Pancho and another we never got the name of. They also have an unfortunate obsession with Marilyn Monroe. The restaurant/bar area is covered with memorabilia and pics and stuff. I've never understood people who obsess over Marilyn or James Dean or things like that. We ate dinner there- it wasn't half bad but the best part was the breakfast. It was, by far the best breakfast we had in Costa Rica. It was typical Costa Rican fare, but made exceptionally well. Beans, rice, plantains, huevos, and these leaf wrapped tamale type things that were oddly addicting.

Day 2: Poas Volcan, La Paz Waterfall Gardens, Selve Verde Lodge

We picked up our car from Tricolor rentals (highly recommended) and set off. Our first stop was the Volcan Poas Parc Nacional.
I'd never looked into a volcano. This was not what I expected, but it was still super cool. There's also a rather difficult climb to the old crater that's now filled with rainwater. Kinda cool, but also kinda unnecessary.

Next Stop: La Paz. Expensive and a little Disney, but still awesome. La Paz has a butterfly garden, a hummingbird area, serpentarium, frogs, a mean cow, and five waterfalls. I had no idea that some butterflies create cocoons that look like gold and silver. Totally neat! I love learning things. And, a pretty butterfly landed on me, I would post the pic Alex took but I look like poop in it.

The hummingbird garden was nice but it was hard to take pics cause, damn, those little things move fast! I was also surprised to learn that they only fly about 20% of the time. They aren't constantly batting their wings like it's often portrayed.

We skipped the serpentarium cause 1) Snakes are cool, but they are often not doing anything cool while in glass cages and 2) I was starting to have a panic attack it was so crowded. Booo! So we went on to see the mad cow. The cow looked pleasant enough. He was a cool spotted thing and he was attached to a cool looking wagon that was painted in a hippy-esque fashion. Turns out he's not so nice. I was going to have Alex take a pic of me in front of said cow. Cow starts to grunt and move. I get close and BAM right in my face. Cow tail. It stings! Mean cow! I didn't get to touch cow because I was afraid he might gore me. That would have been bad. As a result, unlike in Greece, I didn't get to touch any animals excepts dogs and kitties and that's pretty mundane. Oh well.

On to the froggies! Frogs are cute. Even poisonous ones, which, it turns out you can actually touch just don't have a cut on your hands or wipe your face. We didn't learn that here, that came later, but, still. Good to know.

The main attraction: the waterfalls. . Up until my trip to Costa Rica my experience with waterfalls was pretty minimal. There are Boulder Falls in Colorado and I think I saw a small one in Greece. Costa Rica is a waterfall paradise. They are freakin' everywhere. La Paz has five that you can walk around and be pretty close to. The hike is really easy, though. It's all downhill for the most part, but you do get the rush and exhiliration of being so close to the spray off the falls.

Our final stop of day 2: Selva Verde Lodge. Selva Verde is beautiful. The Lodge is actually on two lots, divided by the road. Alex and I stayed in a bungalow away from the main lodge area across the road. We were the only ones over there! Completely awesome! Our room was gorgeous. Clean, spacious, and inches away from the rain forest. The only bummer: I chose Selva Verde because they have a private rainforest reserve you could allegedly wander about it. We headed over the suspension bridge across the river to the reserve. Locked! What the fuck? Turns out a bunch of idiots got lost and now they only allow you in with a guide. Boo! Probably a group of stupid Americans. Anyway- instead of hiking around we took a cooking class, which wasn't as lame as it sounds. That was actually the best meal we had at Selve Verde. The lodge only has buffet style meals that are obviously mass produced and kinda nasty. Edible. But not good.

We also explored our half of the grounds. There were supposed to be hiking trails, but they looked as if they hadn't been used in years. Which was fine with us. The first trek we encountered a family of Spider Monkeys that stalked us through the jungle. Awesome! I took some pics, but they didn't turn out. Monkeys are sneaky.

The next morning we explored the rain forest behind our bungalow. The path was impossible to find and I nearly put my hand on a gigantic nasty spider. Gross. Instead I got a nasty bruise on my arm trying to climb over something. Anyway. The path here was even more abandoned. We crossed sketchy bridges, rotting logs, and stanky streams. We saw lots of frogs and birds- no monkeys on this side.

Days 3 & 4: Arenal Volcano area

The trip to La Fortuna was pretty uneventful. Despite the warnings, driving in Costa Rica is no worse than driving in Boston. We stopped just outside Muelle at this awesome little Soda and had an awesome plate of cassada. Once back on the road we made a quick stop in La Fortuna, the closest town to the Volcano. La Fortuna is a typical tourist town, much like you find in the states. Lots of souvenir shops, internet cafes, restaurants, and a nice plaza in front of the local church. We wandered around for awhile before heading up to the Arenal Observatory Lodge. Don't be confused by the pictures on that site. 1) You can't see the lava flow from that side of the volcano anymore and 2) the grounds and rooms are breathtaking. Unfortunately both days we were staying in the area a heavy cloud cover was on the volcano so we missed seeing a couple of explosions.

The Lodge is up a 9 kilometer dirt road with some massive potholes. But once you get up there it's quite worth it. Our room was gigantic with vaulted ceilings, gorgeous wooden floors, and a balcony with a lovely view of the volcano. The Observatory Lodge staff were also extremely awesome. Laura, who works at the front desk, was extremely patient with us and all our questions. And our waiter that first evening made Alex a flamable drink called "Voyage to Hell" and let us borrow his wine opener. Too bad the food in the restaurant is just okay. But there were lovely views of the Arenal Lake and the surrounding forest.

The lodge has some lovely trails to walk on. The first night we did a moderate hike to their waterfall. Alex fooled around in the water while I was too chicken to go in. On the way there you cross a suspension bridge, pass the pool/hot tub area and the extremely manicured lawns. There is also a fairly steep hike down to the old lava flow area. It's pretty down there, but there's pretty everywhere in Costa Rica and I'm not sure it was worth getting all sweaty for.

The best part about the Observatory Lodge are all the pizotes that hang out and the beautiful birds flying around. Pizotes are raccoon-like animals that I'm sure the locals find annoying but tourists find cute.

The second day in the area we booked a canoe tour of the Pena Blanco and San Carlos rivers. We were a little wary of doing anything with a guide, but it was awesome. We booked through our hotel with the Canoa Aventura company. It was just me, Alex, and our guide, Carlos. And it was worth every penny. We drove about twenty minutes out of town to the river's edge and started on our way. The whole trek took about 3 hours during which we saw numerous howler monkey groups (Carlos does a wicked impression), vultures eating some sort of dead animal, long nosed bats, crazy birds, and Carlos treking through the jungle to find a frog. I stupidly didn't re-apply my sunscreen so I got burnt, but at least I didn't get sun stroke and vomit like a certain person I know.

At the end of the canoing part Carlos set up a lunch spread and we had a good time chatting and resting before heading back to Fortuna. Best part? When we first started the trip Carlos asked us if there was anything in particular we wanted to see. My goal in Costa Rica was to see monkeys. Alex's goal was to see a sloth. Unfortunately we didn't see any sloths on the river, but Carlos didn't let us down. He drove us to this little village and in a tree next to the local bus stop? Yep. A sloth. The school kids were waiting for the bus and were completely uninterested in the sloth. They probably see him every day. They did, however, love seeing him through our camera. Carlos had this neat trick where he would take pics of the wildlife with our camera and his binoculars. I'd put the pic of the sloth up, but it's kinda fuzzy. But he was definitely there and he was definitely super cute. He put Charlie to shame.

After the canoe trip and sloth sight-seeing we hit Arenal's second biggest attraction, the volcanic hot springs. There are several places to go to. Tabacon seemed to be universally hated by the locals. It's big. It's Disney. It's expensive. It's gross. Eco Thermales is where I originally had wanted to go, but you have to make reservations and you can't come and go. So we decided on Baldi. Both Carlos and Laura said they were good. We arrived in the mid afternoon and the place was practically empty, which is good since I don't like being seen in my bathing suit. It started to get busy around 4 so we headed back into town for some dinner. We came back after dark (it gets dark at 6 year round in Costa Rica) and the place had emptied out again. We were sitting in on of the pools when we finally saw the lava! Although the top was cloud covered you could see some of the explosion and lava flow in the dark. We headed back to the hotel to hit the bed early- tomorrow was the big trek to Monte Verde.

Days 5 & 6: Monte Verde area and Santa Elena

This is the part of the trip most visitors to Costa Rica will tell you about. There is only one way up to this area of Costa Rica and it's up a very nasty dirt road. But, again, not nearly as bad as everyone said it was going to be. I did it in record time. The trip from La Fortuna to Santa Elena was supposed to take 5 hours. I did it in 3. And I wasn't a speed demon either. I just wasn't a chickenshit. I grew up in Colorado I know about driving on twisty mountain roads with no guardrails. Anyway- I hated Santa Elena. We got into town and it was a mad house. It's super tiny and there are tourist buses everywhere. Blech. We finally arrived at our lodging, Tina's Casitas and I pretty much didn't want to leave again. Luckily Alex forced me out and we explored the town a little.

Words of warning: the main ATM in the center of town doesn't work. It didn't work for any of the American's we talked to. You have to walk past the Serpentarium and use the coopmex ATM. But only take out 50,000 colones at a time. We made the mistaked of taking out 100,000 so we could have enough money for the rest of the trip. Bad idea. Turns out that was a 100 buck mistake. They only have use 50K and the machine went out of service. My bank statement still says I took out 100K. Boo. Anyway.

That night we met some crazy Germans who were travelling. One guy had been in Latin America for the last four months travelling from Mexico City, to Gautamala, to Nicarauga, to Costa Rica. He was wearing leiderhosen. Seriously. But they were fun and it was nice to talk to other people and I got to geek out about European Union politics with people who cared. And there was a kitty with kittens! Yeah!

Day two: We woke up and hit the sketchy soda next to our cabina and waited for our transport up to Selvatura. We were gonna zipline, baby. Is ziplining touristy? Yep. But is it awesome? Yep. And, it's relatively eco-friendly unlike all those stupid ATVs and Tram things that some people use to explore the forest. The guides at Selvatura were awesome- they knew what they were doing. Yuu felt amazing safe zipping around the forest hundreds of feet in the air. The whole experience brought me back into the trip. I was feeling kinda homesick and the whole Santa Elena experience was a downer. But up on the mountain it was awesome.

After we finished the zipline stuff we ate an early/light lunch and, at the recommendation of a couple from DC, we walked about a half kilometer up the road to the Santa Elena Cloud Forest reserve. Most people head over to Monteverde, which we had also planned to do. So glad we didn't. Santa Elena reserve is breathtakingly beautiful. We were there on a particularly cloudy and rainy day so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. We ran in to one other family the whole time. The reserve has about 4 or 5 different hikes you can take ranging in difficulty and length. We went for the mother trail- and did an excursion- taking us over 5 kilometers. By the end of the hike I was a muddy mess. If it's that wet, get some rubber boots. Blech. Oh, and of course I fell on my ass, getting even more muddy. I rule. By the end of the day we were completely exhausted.

After we got back to our rooms and cleaned up (warning, Tina's has this strange eletronic water contraption- that pretty much means no hot water) we headed back into town. We stopped in the internet cafe under Cafe Morpho. The woman that works there is a US/Costa Rican duel citizen and really cool. She helped us out with dinner options and how we should get out of the city the next morning. Really sweet girl.

Anyway- we had a glass of wine at the place next to the tree restaurant thing waiting for the dinner place to open. Wine was not nearly as expensive as we were lead to believe- which is good cause cacique is fun, but not something you want to drink a lot of.

Our meal at El Marquez in Santa Elena was the best of our entire trip. The atmosphere was lovely and the food completely awesome. We thought our "fancy" dinner would be in Manuel Antonio. It was definitely in the tiny, poor, but incredibly busy town of Santa Elena. I finally fell in love.

Days 7 & 8: Manuel Antonio

We were worried we weren't going to make the park in time (they cut off at a certain number of people every day) so we left super early. We got there in plenty of time- despite the traffic in Quepos. Man, Quepos sucks. There is one bridge in and out of that crappy town. It's rusted, it's not paved, and it's only one way. On the way out of town we actually got stuck at that bridge for over a half hour while everyone but the shriners on their tiny bikes came across the damn thing. I thought my head might explode. Anyway.
We finally make it to Manuel Antonio. At first I was worried we had made a horrible mistake. When you drive down to the beach it's covered with awful people. It's like spring break gone bad. I actually saw a dude hit his wife. Not cool. But we parked the car and headed toward the park. You walk a little ways, go over this hill, and paradise. It's quiet. It's the cleanest, most beautiful beach I've ever been on. And the water? Oh my god, so warm. I wish I was in it right now.

Alex did a mild hike around Cathedral point and saw plenty of capuchins. I stupidly forgot to charge the battery of my camera the night before so I didn't get nearly as many pics as I would have liked. Especially when those silly monkeys stole our food. Yes, they warn you about such stuff, but we didn't think it would happen to us! We had brought some fruit into the park for lunch. We had a couple star fruit and some crazy thing that was filled with tasty seeds. We went back into the water when the Canadians that were in our vicinity started waving us back into shore. Yep. The little buggers stole our fruit. And then, they didn't even like it! The seedy things were tossed to the ground after they got their monkey germs all over it.

We finally left the park to check into our lodging. We stayed at Didi's Bed and Breakfast. Alex and I agreed, it was the best place we stayed. The room was gorgeous. The whole place was phenomenal . Ezio is a crazy little Italian guy that runs the place. He has two equally nutty dogs and a parrot. Unfortunately Didi passed away last winter, which is a shame, because from the pics and other reviews we read she seemed super cool. Didi's was the perfect place to spend our last few lazy days in Costa Rica. By the time we go there we were just exhausted and it was the perfect place to relax and read.

We also had some pretty good dining experiences in MA. First, Ronny's. Ronny's is up a dirt road (we chose to walk), so be prepared. The food is pretty good (the ceviche was almost as good as the stuff we had at El Marquez), the Sangria great, and the view spectacular. It gets pretty packed at sunset. We also managed to get a blind dog to follow us all the way up and hang out with us for a couple hours while we consumed two pitchers of Sangria. We named him Thereseus because we are pretentious.

We also stopped at Cafe Milagro had some sandwiches and purchased coffee. They have a cute little patio in the back where a sloth occasionally likes to hang out. He was MIA the day we were there though. We stopped at the Cafe after we spent a few hours at a very tiny beach up the road. You have to hike in to the beach, and I can't freakin' remember its name- but it was gorgeous. There's a little soda right there and some guy offering kayak tours. There weren't more than 6 or 8 people there the whole time.

Our last night in Costa Rica we went the super touristy route. We went to El Avion. El Avion is built around an old cargo plane that was shot down by the Sandinistas and lead to the whole Iran Contra Affair. We sat on the porch, had some more sangria, watched a gecko cross the ceiling, and had some pretty decent food for our last night. It was perfect.

And the perfect end to this post?


Words not necessary

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