South America

Sunday February 18th

This morning we overheard Crazy Mary’s unfortunate victims at the breakfast table tell her that the subject matter was inappropriate to talk about at the breakfast table. She must have been talking about being raped and sodomized again, but she just kept going, as if nothing had been said. We were lucky to escape without interaction. We checked out of the hostel and took a long slow bus ride from San Jose to La Fortuna. As always, it wasn't a long distance, but we stopped a lot and went slow. We covered 90 miles in 4 hours. The scenery was pretty, mostly through high elevation farm fields.

We have chosen to stay in another Selina hostel, and are really hoping it won't be a party hostel. It's a new property with nice facilities and a pool. We will be sleeping in a 10 bed dorm. We arrived before check in, so we stored our bags and went out for lunch at Soda Viquez, one of the best rated local places. They had veggie casados (meal of the day) on the menu. It was kind of a weird place because they have all of the food made and displayed cafeteria style, but you don't get to look at it or pick for yourself. You are seated and the lady who dishes it up chooses for you. Jeff and I ordered the same thing, but got slightly different plates. I would have much rather chosen for myself, but they never ask you.

We spent the afternoon around the pool and doing TripAdvisor and guide book research. At dinner time we went out for a walk and found a produce store, which got me excited. We'd planned to go out, but I ended up buying a bunch of produce and making food instead. We had black bean and sweet potato tacos. After dinner we went for another walk off the main road and through the neighborhoods. All of the houses seemed to be kind of upscale, probably only rich people can afford property here. We are in a really safe tourist town.

One of my favorite tropical flowers, a heliconia, in the yard at the hostel

Farm scenery on the bus ride

Veggie lunch plate at Soda Viquez, which unfortunately included a slice of fresh cheese and some sort of cheesy mashed potatoes. I really enjoyed the banana ceviche though!

Really good tiny bananas we found in the grocery store!

Another kind of heliconia in the yard at the hostel. There are nearly 200 different varieties. This one was really velvety.

Jeff enjoying the flamingo float, which someone broke that night! Darn hooligans! The social area of Selina hostels is called the playground.

Our travels today

Monday, February 19th

For breakfast we had Bob’s Red Mill 10 Grain Hot Cereal that I’ve been carrying around for about a month, since Playa Venao in Panama. We really haven’t done much cooking since entering Costa Rica. I am often torn between cooking and going out, and so far in Costa Rica, going out usually wins. When I go in grocery stores or produce stores though, I want to buy everything and cook it or make beautiful fruit salads or smoothies or vegetable salads.

After breakfast we went to the terminal to take the morning bus to Arenal Volcano National Park. The volcano is what this town is famous for, and the reason everyone comes. There are only a few buses a day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and a final one in the evening. It’s not a route that goes specifically to the national park, the bus just happens to pass nearby on its way to another town. The entrance to the park costs $15 per person for foreigners (way less for locals). We didn’t imagine it would really be worth it, but it’s one of the cheapest things in town to do. Most people visit the park as part of a package tour, which includes transportation, lunch and other activities like a popular waterfall and some hot springs. An all day tour like that costs a minimum of $185, depending on which hot springs you choose! There are 7 hot springs to choose from, ranging in price from about $15 to $80 for a day pass.

This town became a well established eco tourism destination because of the volcano. From 1968 to 2010 it was active. People would come here and hang out for a few days waiting for good weather and for the opportunity to see it spewing glowing red lava in the night. It’s no longer active, so the main reason people originally came here no longer exists. But in response to all the tourists being here biding their time, tour companies started sprouting up. There are now tons of competing tour companies and travel agencies in town selling every type of tour imaginable. You can zip line here, raft on your own custom made personal inner tube, walk on suspension bridges in the rainforest canopy, wind surf on a nearby lake, fly over the lake with a personal jet pack, guided hiking, rappelling, stand up paddle boarding, cave tours, ATVs, horse back riding, white water rafting, kayaking, scenic river cruising on a motor boat, hot springs, private forest reserves, birdwatching, animal rehabilitation centers, chocolate tour, butterfly enclosures, orchid gardens, coffee tour, etc. There are probably even more that we don’t know about. Most of these activities are ones we have seen just about everywhere we have been, so they aren’t special or unique. These types of tours have been more present and more expensive in Costa Rica than in Panama or Colombia, and we’re getting a little sick of it. We kind of don’t understand why Americans like Costa Rica so much. The town is also full of gringo restaurants and souvenir shops. The whole place is kind of ridiculous. Maybe we would be a little more excited if we hadn’t already done chocolate tours and coffee tours and hadn’t already seen all of these adventure tours everywhere else. I was here before in 2004, when the volcano was still erupting, then again in 2011, the year it stopped erupting. The place has changed a lot, as it seems everywhere in Costa Rica has.

We decided the experience most unique to this place would be seeing the actual volcano, so this is why we went to the national park. The bus drops off on the highway, 2km from the park. We walked in along a busy dusty dirt road with tour bus after tour bus blasting past. There was only one other person who had taken the bus and was walking in like us. After about 30 minutes we arrived to the fee station. We paid our $32. The prices is actually quoted in USD. It’s the same at all the hotels. If you want to pay in the local currency, they have to do a calculation to get the total for you. Currently 570 Costa Rica Colones = $1 USD. We often feel like we are inconveniencing people by paying in colones. It’s strange.

We got a park map and set out to conquer all of the trails. There are only a few miles of trails. The volcano was wearing a hat of clouds when we started, but eventually cleared up. Some of the trails were a little boring and had us walking through sugar cane like vegetation, and the rest were in forest. The forest had been cleared in the past for livestock pasture, but there were a few big old trees. We also saw some lava rocks that were part of the lava flow from the 1992 eruption. There’s another area where you can see the lava flow from the original 1968 eruption, but that’s on private land and requires another entrance fee. We found the national park to be overrun with people, especially around the lava flow where you can take some pictures. We managed to find an old view point up an unmarked set of stone stairs that are becoming overgrown and eroded. No one seems to use that trail anymore, and we had it to ourselves. We also saw a nice big old ceiba tree, but we had to share it with about 30 other people and Jeff also was asked to take group photos of a big annoying tour group that we kept running it to. The whole time we were wishing it could be lunch time so we could enjoy the highlight of the day, our packed lunch!

For how much we paid to get in and how many other foreigners were also there, we assume the national park must be amassing a lot of money. There was, however, little to no infrastructure. There were bathrooms only by the toll booth. There were no rest benches, no shade structures or picnic tables and they seem to only do the bare minimum where trail work is concerned. We saved for the very end a view point that was further up at the end of the entrance road, in hopes that there might be benches or shade for lunch, and amazingly there was! The shade structure was crumbling apart, and there were no tables, but it was good enough, and had a nice view. I suspect many people don’t venture up this road after having completed the other trails. We had it to ourselves, until the stupid tour group showed up with their bus and 20 styrofoam boxes full of chicken lunch!!

We almost skipped that last view point, because the volcano remained cloudy throughout our visit to the park. We were also feeling a bit tired, and we didn’t think there’d be much more to see, but the desire for lunch urged us on. While we were eating the clouds cleared and we got to see the top! Our lunch was plantain tacos again, like we had in Manuel Antonio, with refried black beans and pico de gallo. Just like before, it was delicious. It is a new favorite quick lunch that we will probably make again and again!

On our walk out of the park, we attempted to hitchhike because we didn’t know when the bus back to town would be. Jeff put his thumb out to a truck and it stopped for us! First try! Inside was a young Swiss couple. They didn’t speak good English. They had a the truck for 24 days and would be touring all around Costa Rica. Maybe they were on their honeymoon. We think they weren’t even going to town, but they took us all the way there anyway. It was about an 8 mile ride. It worked out quite well for us. We were back in the Central Park taking earth by 1 pm.

View of Volcan Arenal from town in the morning.

Hoards of people at the viewpoint. You couldn't get a picture without people in it.

Inside the tiny banana its more yellow than white. The yellow bananas are the best. Too bad we never find them in the US.

Volcan Arenal and lava rocks from the secluded view point.

View of Lake Arenal from the secluded view point.

Beautiful old ceiba tree

Ceiba tree

Me standing next to a huge bromeliad. These grow on the branches on large trees, but sometimes fall out.

We saw lots of neat trees with crazy roots like this one

This is the flower/fruit of a palm tree

Crumbling old shade structure with a view

Clear view

In the afternoon, we took sun by the pool again, then read in the lounge chairs until it was time for early bird dinner. We tried to go to a Peruvian Chinese restaurant that we’ve been wanting to try, but it didn’t open until 6pm! We ended up going to a cheap local soda called La Hormiga, which means ant. It’s hard to understand why they would name their restaurant after ants, something that people tend to associate negatively with food. They are open all day and have cheap casado meals. We both got simple vegetarian plates with salad, veggies, rice, beans and plantains for less than $4 each.

Often we find the set meals to be a little on the light side for us, so we went to the produce store and each picked out a potato and some smoothie ingredients. We went back to our hostel and had a papaya, mango and mint smoothie and microwave baked potatoes with mustard. We were real full after that. We stayed in the hostel the rest of the evening and went to bed real early. Overall we are as satisfied as we could be with how the day went. We saw some nice views, got some exercise got to visit the national park at a cost of $18 per person (one way bus and park entrance fee).

This is the view from the main town park. We love this place, it may be the best park of the trip.

A display of the many tour options available through one of the many tour agencies.

Tipi huts at Selina. These cost $70/night. Seems expensive. They offer little sound protection, but luckily it hasn't been noisy at night.

Tuesday, February 20th

We had more 10 grain cereal for breakfast, then rented bikes and took a loop around some of the back roads in the area. Our hostel has nice mountain bikes for $10 per day. We want to use them later to ride to the hot springs.

After our morning bike ride we came back to the hostel and Jeff read while I typed. We waited until noon for a sushi restaurant to open for lunch. I found this restaurant on Happy Cow and we were so excited to learn that they have vegan sushi boats full of 40 pieces of sushi! So we’ve been looking forward to it. Unfortunately, when we got there a little after noon they appeared boarded up. A lady came outside and stood next to the sign displaying the hours, with an opening time of noon, and told us they wouldn’t be open until 1! We are trying to get to the hot springs sooner than later, so we had to try somewhere else. We walked to Chifa La Familia Feliz, the Peruvian Chinese restaurant. They also looked closed, and the guy outside told us they were late with their morning vegetable delivery and needed 20 more minutes before they could open! There was no where else we wanted to eat, so we went and took earth in the park while we waited and I finished my typing.

We were really looking forward to the Peruvian restaurant, it’s #1 on TripAdvisor and also the best rated on Happy Cow, because it happens to be very vegan and vegetarian friendly. We ordered two tofu dishes and shared them. They both were like stir fries with a sauce that tasted like sweet and sour, and weren’t what we were expecting. They were good, but nothing special. We were the only ones there and had an awkward time with the waiter. After he cleared our plates, he just kind of hovered by our table until we asked for the check. They can never just bring you the check, like in the US, you have to actually ask for it.

Most people do lunch or dinner and the hot springs as a package deal. We considered this, but realized that it drives the cost up $17-22 depending on the place. Most of the hot spring serve a buffet and in my research of hot spring buffet it seemed there would be adequate vegetarian choices. In the end we decided not to because it would be about the most expensive meal of the trip, and probably not the best tasting. We will instead go back to town for our meal and enjoy a vegan sushi boat!

Papaya trees that we saw on our bike ride. The photo is kind of foggy looking because I had sunscreen on my lens.

A view down the main street.

Peruvian Chinese food, tofu saltado, with french fries in the stir fry, and traditionally made with beef.

I like anything that comes with plantains!

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There are 7 hot springs to choose from, and it’s really hard to choose. We ended up picking Paradise Hot Springs, because it’s one that’s on the cheaper end of the spectrum at $28 per person, closer to town and usually less crowded. We also considered Baldi Hot Springs. It’s more expensive, but is the worlds largest hot springs resort, and that sure sounded neat. We thought it might have a lot of kids though, and a lot of day drinkers. One other options was Tabacon Hot Springs. It’s the most expensive, $70 for a 4 hour time slot plus a meal. The main attraction at Tabacon Hot Springs is that they have the natural hot water river flowing through their land!

After our Chinese food we came back to the hostel to digest a little before beginning the uphill ride to the hot springs. The volcano was clouding over and the sun too by the time we began, which made it pleasantly cool for the strenuous activity. It was a slow and steady 30 minutes uphill to get there on the main road. The distance was 5k and there was little to no shoulder the whole way. The guy at the hostel looked at us like we were crazy when we told him we were riding to the hot springs. Most people take a taxi, which costs $8 each way. That’s another reason why people take guided tours here, they need transportation to all of the attractions that are spread out.

The hot springs were pleasant. There were 2 larger pools and 6 smaller jacuzzi sized pools, all of varying temperatures. They had nice vegetation surrounding each pool, and a few waterfalls. Some of the pools had built in lounge chairs. There is also a swim up bar in one of the pools, with expensive smoothies and alcohol drinks. There weren’t many people when we got there. We stayed about 2 hours and probably would have stayed longer, but it was getting dark, and crowded too. A large group of teenage exchange students had arrived and were being noisy and hyperactive.

Our ride back to town was glorious! We raced down the hill, making it back in half the time! We headed straight for vegan sushi boats! The vegan sushi lived up to the hype. There was a crispy tofu roll, a roll with sweet plantain ribbons wrapped around it, one with broccoli, avocado and bell pepper and another with bell peppers, avocado and cucumber. My favorite of course was the one with plantains! It was a good deal at $30 including the tax and tip. It didn’t fill us up as much as we thought it would though, so we went out for ice cream afterwards. We got a giant waffle cone to share with pineapple, guava and guanabana sorbets. The ice cream store is called Pops, it’s a Costa Rican chain that’s been around since the 60s.

Nothing exciting to report for the rest of the day. We’ll be in bed early just like always! I don’t think we’ve been up any later than 10 the whole trip! We’ll be leaving La Fortuna tomorrow and it’s always nice to be well rested and up early with the sun!

One of the big pools with swim up bar

A long narrow pool

Waterfalls were fun to sit under

The other big pool, this one had lounge chairs in the pool

Lounging

The most beautiful boat full of sushi!

Wednesday February 21st

Today was a good example of how the local people have managed to turn anything and everything into a tour. The next major destination on the gringo trail is the town of Monteverde. It’s not far from La Fortuna, but it is located on the other side of the mountains, making it difficult to get to. If you take the bus, it an almost all day activity and involves switching buses and riding on curvy roads. Tour companies came up with a solution, and they market it as the Jeep-Boat-Jeep tour. Maybe they once used jeeps, but not anymore. A small bus (27 passenger) drives around La Fortuna picking up people at their hostels. There are several buses doing this at once. Once loaded it’s about a 30 minute ride to Lake Arenal. We got off the bus at the lake and had to walk down a steep hill to the boats. It was funny watching all the tourists struggling to manage their giant rolling suitcases. Most of our companions had the extra large rolling suitcases for their 1-2 week vacations, probably at least double what we are carrying for 6 months. There were 3 boats each carrying about 45 people each. There were also other tour companies with more boats. We cruised across the lake at what felt like walking speed. Our boat ended up being the fastest and beating another boat that left 10–15 minutes before us, so they were really going slow! It was cloudy, so there were no volcano views. We were on the boat for about an hour, and it was a little boring. On the other side there were 10 vans and buses waiting for us. We’d all been given a number that assigned us to one of the 10 vans or buses. We were #1, and once again in a 27 passenger small sized bus. Our driver was Alberto, he laughed and smiled a lot, almost as if he was intoxicated. He may very well have been, but he was a good driver and pointed out a few things on the way to us. He even spotted a sloth in a tree and let us get out and look. This ride took about 2 hours and was on a steep and narrow gravel road. The scenery was pretty, misty and green. We drove over the continental divide and could even see the Pacific Ocean at one point. We drove mostly though ranch land. It was kind of depressing to see so much cleared land and to know that it would still be cloud forest if it weren’t for people’s need to eat cows and their secretions.

On the way all 10 buses stopped at the same restaurant for a bathroom break. The line for the women’s bathroom must have been 30 ladies long, so Jeff and I went out into the yard and found a place to pee in the bushes. I have a device called a urine diverter, it allows women to pee standing up. It’s basically a funnel with a flexible tube connected to it. It sounds gross, but it’s a real lifesaver with our active lifestyle. I honestly don’t know how other women hike or travel without one. I have had it since my bicycle trip in 2011, and can’t imagine life without it. I can pee anywhere Jeff can pee!

The restaurant we stopped at was a tourist trap sort of place with tons of souvenirs and food for sale. They must have made a boat load of money when 120 gringos descended upon them for 20 minutes. It seemed just about everyone bought food. They had a cafeteria set up with rice and beans and gallo pinto on offer. They even had boiled plantains, which are always very tempting for me, but we resisted. We’d had a nice breakfast of savory mashed green plantains with pickled onions, peppers and tomatoes, and we were saving our appetites for a nice typical lunch in our new town. That plantain recipe is becoming a favorite for me. I will probably continue to make it regularly even after we get home. Green plantains are relatively easy to find in the US, ripe ones are hard to find.

Motoring across Lake Arenal

Photo of the seating on our boat

Tourists struggling with their luggage. We actually saw people fall.

A blurry photo out the window of the bus, of the misty ranch land.

A sloth in the tree

Our bus on the side of the road under the sloth tree.

We arrived to Monteverde just before 1. Our driver delivered everyone to their hotels and hostels. We were the 2nd to last people to get out, so we got to see around town a little. This is a much less developed town than La Fortuna was. The town is made up of a kind of confusing network of winding roads that go up and down the hills here. There’s no grid of streets. Most everything is located along the side of the main road, our hostel included. We are staying at a hostel called Casa Tranquilo. I chose it because it has a vegetarian restaurant, and they serve fruit, gallo pinto and banana bread for breakfast!!

We went out to lunch at Sabor Tico, a restaurant serving traditional dishes at affordable prices. It’s actually the #1 ranking TripAdvisor restaurant for this area. It’s nice to see a local place in the top spot. They have the typical Casado offerings, but also a much more extensive menu than an average soda, but all of it is typical Costa Rican food. We got a chorreada (giant corn pancake) to share, and I got a vegetarian Casado. The Casado came with salad, avocado, pico de gallo, rice, beans and half of a full length plantain that was grilled or baked in the skin. The food is presented in a rustic ranch style sort of way, on large wooden cutting boards and feels fancy, even though it is no more expensive than any other typical restaurant. Jeff will occasionally get a meat dish when he wants to try something that’s popular with the locals. What he got today is called Chifrijo, a rice and beans dish topped with chicharrones. The original restaurant that coined the name is currently trying to sue 50 or so restaurants for using the name, so many variations of the name have popped up. Today it was called Chifritico. It is the hip food to be eating in Costa Rica these days and each restaurant that makes it has their own spin.

After lunch we explored the grocery store and got some supplies for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. I got a large jar of tomato sauce for free this morning from the hostel fridge, so I decided to make coconut curry soup again, like the one I made in Bocas Del Toro. I am glad the restaurant food is all good in Costa Rica and generally affordable, because I can’t say I really care for the grocery stores much. They are my least favorite of our trip when compared to Colombia and Panama, very limited selection. We don’t save much by cooking either, but I do enjoy using free ingredients and getting to save them from their demise. I hate seeing wasted food.

We hung around our hostel for the rest of the afternoon and evening and came up with a plan for the next few days. There were no dorms available when I made reservations, so we have a private room and our own bathroom. The price is good, just $30 per night. I really don’t mind the dorms most of the time, but then we get our own room, and it’s so nice spreading out our stuff and it’s hard to imagine sharing space!

The kitchen here is small, and a group of young British boys were taking up all the space when we wanted to cook, and blasting music while doing so. The receptionist actually had to tell them to turn it down. We almost gave up and went out, but decided to wait for them to clear out. I’m glad we did, because the soup was really good and now we have leftovers for tomorrow. I made this batch with coconut milk, tomato sauce, curry powder, cayenne pepper, thyme and oregano, sweet potatoes, yuca, malanga, carrot, bell pepper, onion, broccoli, garlic and ginger, served with homemade arepas. The coconut milk makes it very rich and buttery. I am happy to report that sweet potatoes have continued to be abundant. Every time I go to the grocery store, I want to buy them, and all the other delicious starchy veggies like potatoes, yams, green plantains, yuca and taro!! It’s really hard to resist. These are the times when I am torn between going out or eating in.

We booked some adventure activities for tomorrow through our hostel front desk. You can buy tours from every hotel or hostel, or from the travel agencies and tour operators in town. Some of the restaurants sell tours too, and we even saw a beauty salon selling them! Everyone is in it for the commission, so they all want us to go on tours! It got really windy after sunset, but it seems like it will be fairly nice weather during our stay here.

This dog was hanging around our hostel when we arrived. It looks just like my Mom's dog Luna. Luna is a girl. This dog was a boy, so we named him the Boy Luna.

We think these sausages look supremely disgusting. They must be really popular though, because we see them everywhere.

Heart of palm are really popular. There is always a large selection of cans in the grocery stores. Today we saw canned tofu. Ive never seen that before, not even in the US. I really wanted to try it, but at $5 per can it wasn't worth it! We never see tofu down here.

Thursday February 22nd

Breakfast is from 7-9 in the hostel restaurant, which is located in a separate building from where we are staying. It’s called Soda Passiflora and is actually a vegetarian restaurant with typical Costa Rican food, but in the absence of meat, they use processed soy meats, which we don’t really care for, so we haven’t had any lunch or dinner there. The owners of the hostel must own the restaurant too, because there is a hotel room door within the restaurant. I wouldn’t want that room! We were the first there to get food, and it was a bit awkward, because although it’s set up buffet style, you don’t get to serve yourself. There is a lady that hides out in the back and comes out to serve up the food. She serves tiny portions and we felt uncomfortable going back for more while still being the only people in there. They had gallo pinto, ripe plantain slices, pancakes, scrambled eggs, huevos rancheros, fresh cheese, banana bread, four kinds of fresh fruit, cereal and milk, plus coffee and many varieties of tea. It was quite an impressive spread. Maybe it’s less awkward for the people that eat everything. They just get one of everything, which is a ton of food, and are so full they don’t have to go back for a refill.

We decided to be like Señor Turista today and paid for two excursions, a suspension bridge hike and a zip lining tour. These are two of the most popular things to do here, and a number of tour companies compete to offer a more amazing experience. One zip lining company here is called The Original Canopy Tour, because they were the first zip lining tour company in Costa Rica. There are now 200 places to zip line in Costa Rica. Here there are 5 major tour companies to choose from, each of them offering something just a little different from the others.

Our first tour of the day was the suspension bridge walk. We went with the Selvatura company, but it is also available from a few other companies. You pay $35 for transportation and access to a 3 km trail through the cloud forest. The trail is able to be relatively flat because rather than going up and down drainages, there are suspension bridges. There were 8 bridges, the longest one was 515 feet, and the highest one was 110 feet above the forest floor. The heights don’t bother us a bit, but would probably be scary for some people. We got picked up at 8:30 and rode about 20 minute up into the cloud forest in a mini van. The road was narrow, steep and not paved. Our driver blasted past all of the tourists in their rental cars. We were surprised to see when we got there that there were tour buses in the parking lot. We wouldn’t want to drive that road! We began our walk around 9 and took an hour and a half to complete the loop. We enjoyed looking into the forest canopy and down on the canopy in some cases. We got to see a howler monkey from above. He even looked up at us while he was chewing on leaves and showed us his teeth! When we reached the end we decided we’d get our money’s worth and do it again in reverse, only faster. We were able to get some exercise and walk briskly back in just half and hour. There were a lot of big tour groups that were annoying to try to get past. They probably thought we were crazy for going so fast. While we walked we could hear and see zipliners whizzing through the trees. We didn’t do our zip line there though. We got on an 11 am shuttle back to town and had lunch at our hostel, leftover stew and arepas.

The cloud forest trees are covered in shaggy vegetation

Huge beautiful leaves from above

Cloudy view

Suspension bridge, one of 8.

So many different leaves, a lovely sight from above.

Huge tree fern

This tree is called a cecropia and is a favorite food for sloths. There is a small yellow bird in the photo called a Wilson's Warbler. We see them often.

The longest bridge

View of the forest

An approaching tour group.

Pretty hanging flowers

Fun tree flowers that look like broccoli

Howler monkey

Howler monkey on the move. His fur looks so silky.

The monkey moved to a tree on the other side of the bridge.

Another photo of the monkey. It was fun to watch him move.

Cloud forest

This bridge was like a tree tunnel.

Tree fern

Wild orchid looking flower

For our afternoon activity we went zip lining with 100% Aventura. The Original Canopy Tour Company has been outdone. The company we chose charges $50 and includes a rappel, a Superman zipline, the longest zipline in Latin America and the newest trend, a Tarzan swing. I have been ziplining 4 times I think, but Jeff has never done a formal tour, so it was new and exciting for him. They have 19 platforms and a team of guys who send you off from one platform and meet you at the next. It’s quite the production and must require a big workforce. It was fun doing the superman, in which you are attached to the cable in the back and get to fly through the air like Superman. The longest zip line was pretty amazing, you get to fly a long way over the forest canopy and way high up from the ground. Something new for me was the Tarzan swing, you basically walk out on a plank and two guys strap you in an push you off the edge. It’s like bungee jumping, because you free fall for several seconds before the rope fully extends and you begin swinging. It think bungee jumping might actually be more comfortable than the Tarzan swing. For both Jeff and I, when the rope ran out of slack, we both experienced a severe whiplash to the neck. The free fall was incredibly scary, as was standing on the edge of the plank waiting to be pushed off. The violent swinging also made me a little motion sick. We were in a group of probably 20 people, but we were at the front of the pack and never had to wait. We were shuffled so quick from one platform to the next that it was hard to enjoy any of it. It felt frantic and rushed. We were the first ones to do the Tarzan swing and got to stand on the ground and watch everyone else get pushed off, and hear their reactions. It was really funny. There was even a 6 year old that did it! Zip lining isn’t strenuous, but I think the vibrations on your body take their toll, and the snap to the neck also contributed to us feeling zapped when we were finished.

We headed straight to dinner when we got back. I haven’t been wanting to cook, because the British boys have been monopolizing the kitchen at lunch and dinner. They were on the zip line tour with us, and we keep running into them in the kitchen multiple times a day. They’ve kind of grown on us. They are probably all four just out of high school. The first day we talked to them, one of the boys was trying to clean up the dinner dishes and was doing a really lousy job. I don’t think he’d ever done dishes in his life. We ended up redoing a few of them, and even found some stacked ones in the drying rack with the in between dishes having been skipped. It made us laugh. Good for them figuring out how to cook all their meals and save some money!

We went to a different soda. There are many to choose from. I base my choices on TripAdvisor photos. I look up all of the vegetarian Casados and we go to the restaurant with the best looking vegetables! Tonight is was Soda Bonanza! I also liked the name! We were the only ones there at 5 pm. We sat and watched Novelas with the family while our meal was prepared. I got a veggie Casado and Jeff got fried rice. We shared a salad with hearts of palm on it, and we each got a smoothie, one mango and one papaya. They even gave us extra cups with all of the smoothie leftovers. I really liked that, I hate when blender leftovers get washed down the drain!! Our food was good and it was fun to feel like we were at someone’s house!

We are in bed early, preparing for another early morning. I am bracing myself for a sore neck and for a general all over sore feeling from zip lining. We will be going hiking in the Santa Elena cloud forest reserve tomorrow.

We saw a coral snake at the zip line place.

Jeff coming into one of the platforms. We didn't really get the opportunity for more photos because we were so rushed, and they of course want you to buy their photos.

You can't help but smile.

The 6 year old free falling out of the box for the tarzan swing

flying through the air on the tarzan swing

You go way up into the air on the tarzan swing

Pretty view down the mountains from town, it's hard to tell, but you can see the ocean from here.

A fine dinner

Friday February 23rd

Breakfast this morning

After breakfast this morning we asked at the front desk about buses out of here, because we had planned to leave tomorrow. They basically told us the only option for the direction we are going is to leave at 4:20 AM. We didn't want to get up that early tomorrow, so we decided to stay an extra night. There are a few other options, but they would take longer, not being the most direct routes, and they still leave before 7AM. There is space is the dorm now, which is only $10/night, so we will be moving to the dorm tomorrow.

We took a bus to Santa Elena forest reserve. The bus is a "public" bus, but you have to make a reservation for it and they come to pick you up at your hostel. It costs $4 round trip. The forest reserve is a private reserve and costs $16 to get in. There's another more famous reserve in town called the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, and that one costs $22 to get in! It's also more popular, so popular in fact that they have to limit the number of people inside at one time. Sometimes people have to wait outside for someone inside the park to leave. The two forests are supposed to have similar scenery, but Santa Elena is a little higher elevation, has fewer crowds and costs less, so we went there.

We had a rare dazzlingly sunny day, which was nice, but I also think the cloud forest is a little more interesting when its in the clouds! We hiked the Encantado trail and the Caño Negro trail, which accounts for most of the hikeable area. We saw a couple of monkeys and a few turkey like birds called pava negra, but not much else. Most of the wildlife is noctural, which is why guided night hiking tours are so popular. We enjoyed the forest and views of the volcano. While we were hiking we could hear zipliners whizzing through the forest at the nearby Selvatura.

Pava Negra

Sunny cloud forest

Nice big roots on a cloud forest tree

Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve

There is a monkey hanging from its tail in this photo

A nice natural bench with trees growing on it

View of Volcan Arenal

View from a tower along the trail

Another view from the same tower.

Fern tree

Instead of taking the bus back we decided to walk a few minutes down the road to selvatura. They have free shuttles back to town, and they also have a butterfly enclosure that we were interested in seeing. We had asked about it yesterday, but it was cloudy, and they said it was better on a sunny day.

We saved $4 by not taking the bus back and got $5 off the butterfly house for being repeat customers. They have the biggest butterfly enclosure in Costa Rica, and possibly all of Central America. I can't remember what they said. It was made of alternating strips of clear plastic and metal sheeting. The clear sheets let light in while the metal sheets heat it up. There weren't a ton of butterflies, but we spent at least an hour in there and really enjoyed it. There was also a rescued macaw that was fun to watch.

Pretty butterfly

Chrysalis

These chrysalis are meant to look like leaves

Huge enclosure full of tropical plants that wouldn't normally grow at this elevation

Chrysalis that look like metal!

Holes in the leave from a caterpillar

Gigantic hydrangea

An ornamental banana starting to flower and develop tiny bananas

Monarch butterfly on Jeff's finger

Monarch butterfly

Several butterflies feeding on a pile of fermenting banana, one of them is really well camouflaged.

The top left of this butterfly looks like a snack face and the bottom circle is like an owls eye, very good camouflaging.

A blue morpho, they are really hard to get pictures of.

The outside of a blue morpho

Pretty flowers

Milk weed, the preferred food of the monarch butterfly

Azaleas

Amazing color

Scarlett Macaw

The macaw in flight

She stops of get a peanut

Then flies back to crack it open. That was neat to watch.

The ornamental pink bananas in a flowering sort of stage.

This is a post card image of a blue morpho. They are so highly sought after that they are captured, and you can buy a framed and mounted dead one.

Post card image of a quetzal. There are in the forests around here too, but we didn't see any.

Pretty artwork in the lobby

More by the same artist

On the ride back we got off the shuttle at Sabor Tico. I ordered veggie fried rice, which normally only comes with salad. I asked for a plantain and beans to go with it, and ended up with the meal of my dreams! I'm sure going to miss Sabor Tico and Costa Rican food in general!

Veggie fried rice, plantain, salad and refried beans

When we came back to town we decided to locate the bus terminal and see if we could find out more about the bus schedule. It didn't seem right that there were so few buses leaving from such a popular tourist destination. I asked the lady at the ticket window if the only option for heading towards the Nicaraguan border was to take the super early buses. She acted like I was annoying her by even asking and told me yes. Across from the bus stop we found another Sabor Tico, on the second floor of a strip mall building. This location had a nice view and is closer to our hostel, so we made a mental note to come back. We also found another grocery store and a farmers market. I looked in the grocery store for the big balloon full of beans I've been wanting to buy, but couldn't find it. We got some fresh tortillas and cilantro at the farmers market, then headed back to the hostel. It would have been a nice night to cook, because the British boys moved away this morning! We didn't eat again though, just tea, reading and early to bed.

Saturday February 24th

After breakfast we packed up and stored bags. A little later today we will be able to move into the dorm room. We'd heard about a nearby tree that you can climb up, so we decided to go looking for it while we waited for the dorm to be ready. We had directions from a blog I found online. The description was incorrect and took us half an hour further than we needed to go, but it ended up working out, because when we finally found the tree it was occupied by a group of 4 hooligans up there playing club music and taking endless selfies. We'd seen them drive past us on the road, so it's good that they got a head start on the tree, because we waited 30 minutes for them to come down!

The tree is a strangler fig. It starts out looking like a vine that grows around a host tree, if it gets strong enough, it can strangle the host. This is what happened here. The host tree has rotted away, leaving a perfect cylinder inside of the vine for climbing up. Finally it was our turn to go up. By this time a couple other people had shown up and joined the line. Climbing up was fun, but at the top, climbing out of the cylinder was scary! We were so high up and there wasn't much space for moving around. I don't know how the four hooligans remained up there so long. We figured there must be room for at least 4 people up there since 4 came down, so a German couple followed us up. The other girl was so scared that she never even climbed all the way out of the cylinder. We stayed only a few minutes before going back down. It was really neat to see, but being scared my my legs feel all jelly like afterward. We'd plan to also go hiking after that up Cerro Amigos, the highest point in the area, but didn't feel like it after the tree, so we went back for check in time.

Jeff standing next to the climbing cylinder

Looking up into the tree

Perfect size for people

Jeff at the top. We can see the ocean in the distance.

View from the top of the tree

Me in the tree

Climbing back down

Looking back up

We went back to the hostel for lunch, more plantain and bean tacos and salad with mango. I got to use a lot of free foods, like free mango, cucumber and lettuce. It was delicious and we have enough left for lunch tomorrow. While we were there we further pressed the front desk boy and found out there is a noon bus we can take that take goes a slightly round about way to where we want to go, so it takes a little longer, and requires switching buses more than once, but it means we won't have to get up at 4 AM! It's a little annoying that it was so difficult to get this information. If we had known this yesterday, we could have left today after climbing the tree.

Instead of hiking like we planned, we visited the orchid garden in town. It's expensive, $12 per person to get in, but pretty neat, because most of the orchids are miniatures, so they give you a magnifying glass for looking at them! A tour is included in the price, which is helpful, because they tell you what to look for, then you're set free to explore the garden on your own. We learned that 80% of wild orchids are miniature and most of them grow high up on trees. It's possible that we could have seen orchids on the sky bridge the other day, but we wouldn't have known what to look for! We also learned that there are around 600 varieties of wild orchids in the area! While exploring the garden we got to watch a really good squirrel show, so that helped to make to worthwhile!!

Afterward we really wanted to sit somewhere and take earth, but there is no central park in town, or any parks at all that we know of, so we sat in the grass outside the herpetarium until it was time for dinner at Sabor Tico. I had my special fried rice plate and Jeff got a veggie casado. We had a chorreada for dessert. We got to enjoy the lovely view while we dined. Sabor Tico will forever hold a special place in our hearts.

I was craving something sweet after dinner, so we stopped in a coffee shop called El Trapiche. El Trapiche is the area farm that does tours that include coffee, chocolate and sugar cane. Their shop in town sells all of their farm products, plus pastries and fancy coffee and chocolate drinks and smoothies. We had a really delicious banana cake and a berry oat bar. We noticed they also sold bagged coffee, which included the natural/raisin process, and also the honey coffee. That is the kind of coffee we have so far liked the most, and it seems to be the hardest to find, so we decided we'd go back tomorrow before the bus. To finish off our night on the town, we went in two gift shops to see what people are buying. Nothing called out to us. So far we have bought zero souvinirs!

We found boy luna trotting around town again today!

This orchid only blooms for 1 day. We were there on the right day!

World's tiniest orchid, only a couple millimeters

Octopus orchid

Squirrel show!

orchids

These tiny ones are fun, they flower on the backside of these leaves

A plant with many blooms

A broader look at the garden

Many blooms on a miniature orchid plant, so pretty

This one was called monkey face!

These were neat and bloom on top of leaves

Enjoying my magnifier!

So fun! Only a few millimeters across!

Jeff is an orchid! :)

Mmm Sabor Tico!!

Sunday February 25th

At 2 AM we were awoken to the sound of pounding on our second floor balcony door. It was our roommate coming back from the bar. He was locked out of the house and although someone should be available 24 hours, and we think someone sleeps on the couch near the door downstairs for exactly this reason, he couldn’t get in. He ended up managing to climb onto the balcony and pounded on the door until we woke up. Jeff was already letting him in the door by the time I woke up and realized what was going on. It was a great opportunity to get up and pee. We couldn’t really be mad at him, we felt bad for him. We also noticed at this time that the other guy in our room was missing from his bed, and he never showed up. Perhaps he got locked out too, but wasn’t as strong or as smart as the other guy and gave up trying to get in!

We slept in til 7, and waited until the tail end of breakfast to go down and eat, so we could avoid the rush. This backfired though, as the gallo pinto ran low, and I didn’t get to have seconds!! I compensated with extra fruit and banana bread.

We took our time getting out of the hostel. We weren’t quite sure what time the bus was, but had gathered that it was sometime between 11 and 12. We wanted to go back to the coffee shop we discovered last night and have the raisin/natural process coffee again, so we left the hostel at 10:30, so we could have plenty of time. Going to the coffee shop ended up being a very involved process, in which the expert barista told us all sorts of things about how to prepare coffee and showed off all his fancy gadgets. We sat at the bar and watched him make fancy drinks and decorative lattes. The coffee shop is called El Trapiche, that’s also the name of the farm. There is a popular excursion to the farm to learn about coffee and also chocolate and sugarcane, which they process as well. If we hadn’t already learned about coffee and chocolate, we probably would have gone. Their natural process coffee is medium roasted, and not quite as nice as we remember the one at Café Ruiz in Boquete being, but still good! Not bitter! We will continue to find coffee growing regions all the way through Central America, I wonder if we will find the natural process coffee again. The barista processed this coffee in a chemex filter for us. That was the recommended method for the type of coffee.

We left there at 11:20 and walked to the tourist information center to try to confirm the bus time. The guy inside told us noon and said the bus would pull up right outside. We had some time, so we sat down at a picnic table and ate the lunch I packed, leftovers of yesterday’s lunch, bean and plantain tacos with salad. I got another free head of lettuce from the fridge this morning, so our salad was abundant and delicious. I don’t think I could ever eat too many sweet plantains! I never get sick of them.

Noon came and went and no bus arrived. We went back in the tourist info center and asked about the bus and learned that since it’s Sunday there is no noon bus today! It seemed we were out of options for leaving and weren’t sure what to do. We decided to go back to our hostel to use the bathroom and talk to the front desk guy. The guy wasn’t there when we got there, and a temporary girl was covering for him while he took and break, and she knew nothing and was no help. We decided we’d try to hitchhike, and started heading that way. We’d have to walk aways up a steep hill, and we’d already been walking on steeps hills with all our stuff and it was sunny and hot out! I didn’t want to spend the day being stressed out and standing in the sun on the side of the dusty road, so I suggested we just stay another night and leave on one of the early morning buses. We don’t have a reservation in Nicaragua until tomorrow, so we don’t have to go today, we were just hoping to break up the trip into two days instead of one. We’d been planning to stop for the night in Liberia, a large town about 2 hours from the border.

We stopped at the first place we saw called Los Sueños B&B. They advertised that they had dorms. We learned they cost $11 and included breakfast. We had a look at a room with 4 single beds and decided it looked good enough. We set down our stuff and went back out to check in and began talking with the guy about how we were trying to leave but that there were no buses since it’s Sunday. He told us there were indeed buses and proceeded to tell us a story about him taking the bus to Liberia a few days ago and getting there before dark. He went specifically to visit McDonalds, only available in the big city, because his girlfriend loves McDonalds hamburgers!! He bought 4 hamburgers and then turned right back around and left, haha! He gave us detailed information and encouraged us to go and said we probably were given bad information about the public buses because our hostel wanted us to give up and sign up for a shuttle, so they could get a commission! He was so incredibly nice and spoke perfect English. We’d been feeling depressed but he completely turned our day around. It’s pretty crappy what our hostel was doing, Jeff tried to convince me we should just take shuttle, but it cost $65 per person, and I said no! They would have taken us all the way to our end destination in Nicaragua, which is certainly nice and easy, but still way to expensive. Several other people at our hostel fell for the trap though and were taking shuttles to various destinations around the country.

We had to wait 2 hours at the bus terminal for a bus leaving at 3 pm, but we didn’t mind. While we waited, I typed and Jeff read. We also watched and listened to the parade of annoying gringos coming through to buy or ask about tickets. By the tone of his voiced it seemed the ticket agent was just as frustrated with them as we were, haha!

We rode the first bus for nearly two hours over a dusty dirt road that was bumpy with large rocks. It was also really narrow, and on a few occasions, on coming traffic had to back up and off the road for us to pass! Seeing the road conditions made me glad we didn’t hitchhike. There are a lot of tourists with rental cars, but I wouldn’t want to be in one with them! I’d much rather have a local driver that’s used to the road! It was only 22 miles from Santa Elena down to the main highway, but it took 1 hour and 50 minutes! The views were very nice, most of the way we drove along a ridge and a didn’t descend from the mountains until the very end. We could see the Nicoya peninsula and Gulf of Nicoya, plus lots of surrounding green hillsides and farm fields.

Once at the highway we got off the bus and immediately on to another one headed for Liberia. The bus we’d been on continued down the highway South to Puntarenas. We went the opposite direction to Liberia. It was only 45 miles on smooth paved highway, but still took about an hour and a half. We had to get off the highway in several towns to pick up and drop off at their terminal, and we also stopped often on the highway for picking up and dropping off. The sun was going down and nice breezes were coming in all the windows and it was a pretty pleasant ride.

We arrived just as it was getting dark and walked a few blocks to a highway motel we’d spotted on the way into town. I sure love roadside motels, and this one does not disappoint! It’s called Hotel Bramadero. It has its own traditional restaurant, free breakfast, a pool, a western theme in the hallways and rooms they feel like their right out of the US. We couldn’t ask for more! It sure is nice to escape the hostel scene for a night and forget that we are budget backpackers!!

We are just down the road from Taco Bell, which Jeff really wanted, so we went there for bean burritos before having our real dinner at the hotel restaurant. There was no vegetarian option on the menu, but they happily made up a vegetarian Casado for me and even included a really nice homemade corn tortilla for free! I couldn’t spent my last night in Costa Rica without a casado!! Our waiter was really nice and we left the restaurant feeling full and happy.

We are only a few blocks from the bus terminal, and can catch a bus to the border every hour starting at 5:15. We are looking forward to our free breakfast though, and definitely won’t be missing out on that!!