Here is a blog post about our recent trip to Costa Rica... it was a fun experience (first time for all of us in Central/South America).
Relatively uneventful flight down from Boston to Miami, then after a couple of hours in the Miami airport, it was on to San Jose CR. The San Jose airport is gleaming and very spiffy; I think it's just been open a couple of years. From the airport we caught the shuttle to the Holiday Inn Express (about a 3 minute drive), dumped our bags, and collapsed in bed.
Slow start the next morning; we had time enough for both a relatively leisurely breakfast and a trip to the hotel gym. Beautiful weather -- blue skies, warm but not hot. In the breakfast area Ethan and I briefly watched two English teams playing soccer on the tube (Everton vs. Chelsea in the FA cup). Yes, this is a soccer nation :-).
Amy had arranged with an outfit called Toucan Tours for our transfers, and at 9am a car turned up to collect us. The person behind the wheel turned out to be the woman who owns the outfit, "Rosy". She was very nice; interesting to talk with and a very capable driver. She has a daughter who is between Ethan and Lydia in age, so we had a good deal in common in that department. The drive to Arenal followed the Pan American highway for a little bit, then cut north on a 2-lane road up over the mountains. Very curvy, very foggy for most of the mountainous stuff. Ethan chatted with Rosy in Spanish, which was nice.
In retrospect I am actually pretty glad that we decided to go "carless" on this trip as opposed to renting a car and driving ourselves. Driving in Costa Rica is definitely not a walk in the park-- the roads are frequently very steep, very narrow, often quite crowded, and of course the surfaces can be in horrendous condition, so you have to really pick your way along carefully dodging the worst of the potholes and big stones.
After getting over the mountains, the last third of the drive was through a very flat, agricultural area (lots of cattle ranches). The fields in Costa Rica look very strange to North American eyes, since they nearly always have so-called "living fence posts", e.g. each post is a smallish tree with greenery sprouting from the top. Turns out that for this specific tree variety, you can cut a log or large branch from a live tree and plant it in the ground, whereupon it will take root in a month or two.
La Fortuna is a medium-sized town, with a fairly busy center and plenty of shops. Our hotel ("Arenal Paraiso") was another 10 minute drive up the road that leads to Lake Arenal. Big kerfuffle over the room when we arrived there-- the hotel got confused and tried to stick us in a room that was much too small. After a lot of back-and-forth (during which they did their best to convince us that "all of the rooms in the hotel were the same size"), Amy eventually had the good idea of logging onto the hotel computer and showing them the email from the manager in which he had agreed to a room with three beds. This had the desired effect; they agreed to put us in a room of the correct variety, so we went to eat lunch at the hotel restaurant while the room was being made ready.
The food was quite good; we enjoyed all of the meals we had there. Lunch was our first introduction to the Costa Rica "casado typico" -- plate with rice, beans, cheese, some sort of salad, a couple of corn tortillas, fried plantains, and a small portion of meat or fish. You can get this same meal in nearly every restaurant in the country, which is kind of cool. The rice and beans are usually fairly uninteresting, but the plantains were really amazing-- an eye opener. After eating we stepped out to take pictures of a sloth that had appeared in one of the trees outside the restaurant-- first time I had ever seen one.
After lunch Amy and I planted ourselves by the pool and read while the kids swam and explored. The hotel actually has its own small hot springs, in the form of a series of pools that run up the side of the hill, with water ranging from tepid to very warm. Ethan and Lydia had fun walking from pool to pool and clambering around on the surrounding stonework (there was also a more conventional cooler-water pool down at the bottom).
Lots of interesting bird life here. Just sitting by the pool I saw a red-wing blackbird of a sort I'd never seen before (in fact this is more like a red-backed blackbird):
Lovely bushes and flowers around the hotel cabins. Ornamental ginger, also loads of helliconia, which you see all over the countryside:
Following the swim we returned to the hotel lobby area to wait until our room was ready to move into. While waiting, we proceeded to observe another group of Americans arrive and receive a "room treatment" very similar to our: the first room they tried had someone already in it, on the second try their key didn't work, then there was some other problem after that, and so on. Not an especially well-organized hotel management crew here.
The actual Arenal volcano is very impressive-- classic "cone" shape, very steep sides, top perpetually shrouded by clouds. Apparently it's been very active in the past 50 years or so. Back in 1968 there was a huge eruption that wiped out a couple of the small towns near the volcano, including "Tabacon" (which now exists only as a set of hot springs). I was also surprised to find out that Lake Arenal is actually man-made; they put in a hydro-electric dam in 1979 that tripled the size (had to flood a couple of towns to do it).
Saturday evening Amy had made a dinner reservation at the Tabacon hot springs resort, so we gathered our swim suits, headed down to the front desk, and asked them to call a cab. Lots of waiting around-- the cabs have to drive up from La Fortuna, so we had to sit around for a good half an hour until it turned up. Given that we were pretty dependent on cabs to visit the surrounding area, this was a bit of a pain in the neck. Tabacon was not an especially long cab ride (less than a mile?) but it would have been very impractical to walk, unfortunately.
Tabacon was fun-- the dinner buffet was unremarkable, but they had fantastic desserts. The dessert table was filled with lots of tiny dishes of this and that, which meant that you could sample a half dozen things (or even take one of everything, the strategy that Ethan used). After dinner we headed down to the changing rooms, put on our bathing suits, and walked over into the hot springs. "Springs" I think is something of a misnomer; it was more like a hot river, with huge volumes of very hot water running in a bunch of separate brooks/streams/channels through a landscaped area with bushes, flowers, trees, etc. There was a big waterfall where you could clamber up a set of stone steps and then actually climb _behind_ a 6' high 30' wide sheet of water, then sit on stone benches behind the water. Very cool. There was also a water slide (with hot water, a first for me) which the kids enjoyed thoroughly. We swam until even Lydia had had enough, then changed and cabbed it back to the hotel.
Rain that evening; we all woke up to hear it pouring down in the middle of the night. In the morning it was still a little drizzly/foggy, but not too bad. We breakfasted-- big crowds of British and Canadian tour groups, and much to our surprise a sizable contingent of American teenagers who turned out to be from Acton-Boxborough (field trip for the school choir of all things).
A smallish bus came to collect us for the trip up to "Sky Tram", the zip-lining place, which turned out to be maybe 10 kilometers or so from our hotel, a little ways around the volcano slope and overlooking the lake. Very bumpy ride to get there-- lots of bouncing around. Most everyone else in the van was America, or so it seemed. Representative road picture:
With roads like this, you can fairly easily imagine the driving style-- lots of speeding up and slowing down (depending on terrain) with the driver weaving like crazy from left to right trying to pick out the section with the fewest bumps.
At the main building we got geared up (climbing harness, heavy-duty zip line "runner" with carabiners, straps, etc), then headed over to sizable gondola/tram (very Teutonic-looking, labeled "Made in Austria"). The crew running the show was all young-looking Costa-Rica guys; they all seemed to be wearing rain jackets and rain pants, so I decided I should probably keep my rain jacket on. The kids opted to go with t-shirts.
The guides gave us an extremely brief safety lecture, then showed us how we should be positioning ourselves while riding. These particular zip-line runners had metal handles coming out the sides, so the general idea was to lean back with your arms straight, your legs forward and crossed. This means that you can't really see directly in front; you can only see off to the sides and down for the most part.
At this particular place there were a total of eight zip lines: two tiny ones first so that you can get the hang of it, followed by six long lines for the real deal. The guides told us that we were allowed to "chicken out" after the first two lines, but that if we went on the third line, we would have to do all eight (seemed reasonable). So off we went...
I would have to say that the first run was definitely the scariest-- although the line didn't look very steep, you wind up picking up speed at quite a clip, and after about a hundred meters or so you are really whooshing along. The line was fairly high up over the forest canopy, so by the time you reach the middle of the line, you are completely surrounded by fog, the bearings in the runner are absolutely screaming. Very invigorating :-). The kids loved it, of course-- they thought that this part was the very best. Here is Amy coming in for a landing:
We eventually worked our way down the mountain from line to line; Lydia rode in tandem with a guide (since she was too small weight-wise) while Ethan rode on his own. Lighter riders don't go quite as fast, and run the risk of getting "stuck" just short of the final platform. When this happens, one of the guides will clip onto the line, zoom out, grab a hold of the stranded person with his legs, and then haul them in (very efficient).
We did get a little wet and muddy in the process-- the zip line runners would throw off teeny drops of mud occasionally as the runner went over a wet patch, so by the end we were a little bit scruffy. Towards the end of the sequence we descended below the main cloud layer, so we did get some very nice views of Lake Arenal while riding.
Afterward we took the bouncy mini-bus back to the hotel and had a nice lunch. The guide books that I read about Costa Rica were all a bit disparaging about the food, but in fact I thought it was really quite good. One book implied that it was difficult to get fresh vegetables on a regular basis, but we did not find that to be the case at all. In the afternoon the kids took another swim while Amy and I read (and/or did journal writing). The hotel cleaning staff had fun with our blankets and towels while we were away:
To get some exercise I took a walk before dinner on a "nature trail" behind the hotel, which much to my delight turned out to be a small muddy track, incredibly steep (nearly vertical in fact), running down into a valley with a river. I'm happy to say that I got very dirty and nearly fell of the trail several times (mainly because I was going too fast) but managed to reach the advertised destination: a waterfall.
Dinner that evening was at "Don Ruffino", which is supposedly the best restaurant in La Fortuna. Amy's pasta dish was OK, and the appetizer that Ethan and I shared was decent, but the grilled seafood that they served us was overdone (burnt, basically), so I would not give it especially high marks. It was also quite expensive (upwards of $150, even though we were fairly restrained in what we ordered.
The next day: packed up, checked out, and embarked on the second transfer of our vacation: the so-called "jeep-boat-jeep" ride. In fact the "jeep" portions of our journey turned out to be via the ubiquitous small buses that you see all over the country ferrying tourists around, not real jeeps They are maybe a little bit bigger than Volkswagen micro-bus, but not much. Photos:
Fantastic weather again for this journey; we had a short drive to the lake, then transferred our baggage to the boat, and took a ride down maybe half the length of the lake to the western side. Great views of the volcano along the way, also a nice peek at a kingfisher and an osprey along the banks. The kingfisher was of the "Ringed" variety I believe (from googling).
After the boat we transferred our gear again to another bus (the luggage was all tied onto the roof this time) and started out on a tiny, bumpy, windy dirt road up into the mountains. Incredibly green landscape-- strange to think of this as the "dry" season. Here is a photo of the hillside (you can make out the "living fence posts" that separate the pastures):
Lots of small dairy farms in this part of Costa Rica; our driver told us that most of the milk is collected and sent to a cheese factory in Monte Verde. After a half hour of winding up into the mountains we came out onto a sort of ridge-line road (still very rough and bumpy), then in another half hour we stopped for a break at a small coffee and dairy farm along the way. Entertainments:
Another half hour after that we were in Santa Helena, the main town in Monte Verde. Santa Helena has a much nicer vibe to it than La Fortuna-- more "hippyish", with more smaller businesses and "mom and pop" stores in addition to the big stuff. Photo:
We finally made it to our hotel, "Los Pinos" (the Pines), which in many respects reminded me of the place we used to stay in at Pacific Grover in CA-- small cabins, pine trees, cool and very windy. Photo of our cabin:
We dumped our luggage in the cabin, then headed out to explore the grounds, which were pretty substantial. One of the most interesting things about Los Pinos is that it has its own "hydroponic" garden. We had expected to see a couple of plants and maybe a few rows of herbs, but in fact it was a pretty major operation, with loads of tomatoes, swiss chard, all sorts of herbs, scallions, beets, lettuce, etc. We picked enough for a good salad and then headed back to the cabin.
Los Pinos is uphill from the main part of Santa Helena, so we decided to walk down to the town and then cab it back up once we had eaten something and loaded up with groceries. Lunch was at a local place called "Mar y Terre" (?), decent but nothing to write home about. We hit the ATM, visited the grocery store, and then schmoozed around to do a bit of souvenir shopping. At the ice cream shop in the central part of town there was a row of pay phones; as the kids sat and ate their ice cream, we observed a steady succession of college-age and teenage America visitors making calls. Most of the calls seemed to be of the "Hi Mom, I'm doing fine, yes, I am having a good time, yes, the weather has been OK, yes, I have enough money" variety. The cab ride back was only 1000 Colones -- much better than the 7500 Colones we had to pay to ride a couple kilometers up the hill from La Fortuna.
After a short siesta, we got our gear together and and went out to meet a bus that brought us to a small farm where Amy had arranged for horseback rides. It was a slightly odd group-- the four of us, three young men as guides, and a multi-generational Dutch family (grandfather, grandmother, mom, dad, and a small child who looked to be around 2). Amazingly, the dad was able to strap on a baby carrier (front-facing), plop in the kid, and then put a pillow underneath to make it more comfortable; everyone seemed very happy with the arrangement. I hadn't been horseback riding in ages, so it was interesting to climb back up in the saddle. Amy's horse was "Morro" (blackberry), Lydia's was "Tico", Ethan's was "Pinto", and I wound up with a horse named "Rambo" (?!?). In spite of his name, Rambo was actually a really nice horse, very co-operative. Amy's beast was weirdly hungry: it kept on trying to stop to take bites out of the local vegetation. It was a nice ride; we went down the hill through the forest a ways, then came back via the meadows.
We saw a brown vulture (which interestingly enough wasn't very brown) and a very interesting looking woodpecker with a big red crest:
The guides made an attempt to pick up the pace on the way back and get the horses to canter, but Amy was not having any of that. Beautiful sunset off over the bay of Nicoya. Photos:
Dinner was cooked in our cabin kitchen: a sauce made from the tomatoes we had picked earlier, salad, rice, and cheese; cookies for dessert. Very windy-- lots of whooshing noises from the surrounding pine trees and various bits of debris falling on the cabin roof. We spent a quiet evening reading; Ethan has been working his way through a Dan Brown novel ("Angels and Demons") and Lydia is now totally absorbed with Harry Potter (book number 3).
Another Monte Verde photo, this one looking up into the hills from our hotel. You can see some of the fog/mist coming off of the high areas; the cloud forests in this area are formed when warm, moist air from the oceans hit the colder and higher elevations. Oddly enough, the clouds and rain are restricted to a very specific areas in Monte Verde, so you can have cloud forest in one place and then a mile away it's a nice sunny hillside.
Tuesday morning: after breakfast it was onto yet another minibus to take us up to the Selvetura ziplining place. This one was a little bigger and more developed than the one back in Arenal, with more things you can do aside from just riding the lines. Nice weather; sunshine, not too hot. After signing in we headed for the gear room but unfortunately fell in behind a huge group of America teenagers (darn those Americans!), which meant we had to wait around a fair amount. The gear at this place was fairly similar to that at Arenal (including incredibly stinky helmets at both places for some reason), although the zip-line runner here was a bit smaller and lighter. They also supplied us with gloves that had a very thick leather pad in the palm, since at this place you actually wind up using your hand either to brake or to keep yourself oriented properly. Here is Lydia getting strapped in for a ride:
For some of the longer lines, they took a couple of kids and paired them up with a guide, to form a sort of "pod":
Here is Ethan riding solo on one of the lines:
Ethan again:
Other assorted shots:
The final entertainment was something called a "Tarzan swing" (yikes). The kids liked this one a lot:
Selvetura has 13 zip lines (compared with 8 at Arenal). It turned out that there was also a great deal more waiting around, however-- not sure whether it was due to fewer crew members, or simply the size of the group (or maybe the dreaded American teenagers ahead of us) but we did spend a fair amount of time on the platforms waiting around to get the "go ahead" from the guides. I enjoyed this set of zip-line rides a bit more; the riding position was a little more amenable to sight-seeing, and the weather was nicer.
After we finished the course we headed back to the main base lodge, had lunch, and then after a brief period of digestion went to visit the "reptilarium", where we learned all sorts of things about Costa Rican snakes, frogs, and lizards. We learned about the Fer-de-lance (deadliest snake by far in Costa Rica), assorted vipers, rattlers, boa constrictors, vine snakes, and razor snakes. The frogs and lizards were fairly interesting too, so it was a nice visit. A Costa-Rican rattlesnake:
This guy is called an Eyelash Viper -- what a color scheme! Apparently they come in all sorts of peculiar shades:
A frog keeping a low profile during the daytime. We actually saw this same type of frog out in the wild several times later on during the trip.
Lydia informed me that this critter (raiding the "organic waste" bin) is called a Koati:
After that it was off to the hummingbird garden. No commentary from guides here; you just planted yourself in the garden and watched the traffic fly by. Lovely birds; there were two main varieties (one green and one a striking "deep purple"), along with a couple of other smaller green ones that were less plentiful. The birds were very tame (you could get very close to the feeders without startling them).
We took the 3pm bus home and had our showers (long overdue), then after a bit of downtime walked down the hill to the "Ranarium" (frog museum). We got there just after the sun had set, so the tour around the frog hall was conducted essentially in the dark, with the guide shining his flashlight into the cases to illuminate the various subjects (who were starting to become more active as a result of the dark). The guide was very entertaining, with a strange and twisted sense of humor (appropriate for nocturnal frog lectures I suppose). Dinner at an upscale pizza place, "Johnny's".
More reading in the evening; very quiet. I have been working my way though "The Imperfectionists" (by Tom Rachman) which was decent, and a Carl Hiassen novel ("Native Tongue").
Wednesday: Happy Birthday Lydia... hurray! Nice sunny weather again. Our driver (Rosy again) appeared to collect use (a bit late) in the morning, and we were off down the mountainside. This road was probably the worst we had seen yet-- very dry and dusty, and full of huge rocks that had to be carefully steered around. Rosy did a superb job, and after about 35 minutes we finally re-emerged onto the paved roads (everyone heaved a sigh of relief). The entire drive to Manuel Antonio took about three and a half hours, not too bad. We made a pit stop here at a bridge to look at crocodiles:
The local town near the park is called Quepos; our hotel ("The Falls") was on the road that runs between the park and the town, which loops up over a big hill and then down to the beach next to the park entrance. The area up on the hill has a nice feel to it-- breezy, with views of the ocean every now and then. We had a very leisurely lunch at the hotel restaurant and then the kids spent the afternoon swimming and noodling around the hotel. For dinner we made an attempt to go eat at "Agua Azul" (smallish but very good reviews); we walked down the road and arrived to discover that it was closed (!), so we visited a neighboring place (Barba Rosa?). It was a decent meal, although not gourmet cuisine by any stretch of the imagination.
Thursday: up very early to go kayaking in the mangrove swaps. The start time was determined by the tides (high tide is a fairly hard requirement), so the alarm went off at 5:30 and we were picked up around a bit late from the hotel by the tour outfit "Priss Tours". The bus arrived more or less on time (e.g. no more than 15 minutes late), and the guides actually looked somewhat surprised that we were actually ready to go. We then did several other pickups, including two couples that had to be rousted out of their hotel rooms (hmm). We drove down through Quepos and then maybe 15 or 20 minutes north on the coastal highway past part of the big palm oil plantations. The tour folks had told us they would be providing breakfast, but as they got out the kayaks it became clear that the eating part of the tour would actually come after the kayaking, oops (I wish we had packed snacks). We hopped into our kayaks, hit the water, and we were off (Amy and Ethan took single kayaks, and I paddled with Lydia).
Here is Juan, our guide:
A representative mangrove tree:
The swamps are a huge network of channels through the mangroves, with dark green brackish-looking water (our guide, Juan, told us that it was about 50/50 salt/fresh). Most of the mangrove trees are the so-called "white" mangroves, with small leaves, whitish bark, and the very distinctive branching root systems. There were also a few other different varieties of mangrove, most of the smaller and less interesting ("red" mangrove, "black" mangrove, and so-called "pineapple" mangrove). The white mangrove thickets were amazing-- it was really fun to paddle around in these little channels between the trees (tricky and rather technical paddling, too-- had to pay attention).
Many herons, mostly "small blue" and "green" (both of which I have seen in Hilton Head, interestingly enough). Mangrove seeds are also kind of interesting-- they look like oversized and somewhat pregnant green beans.
In this shot you can make out one of the numerous crabs that crawl around on the mangrove root systems near the waterline. They are pretty cautious critters; as soon as they see you, they start edging around to the other side of the root so as to hide from you:
In this photo the two brown blobs are actually proboscis bats, asleep during the day. We saw bunches of sleeping bats later on in some of the other parks, too:
About midway through the trip Juan was able to entice over a couple of Capuchin monkeys by immitating their calls (the pair arrived in a huff, with somewhat hostile expressions-- maybe they had expected to encounter interlopers). Amazingly mobile-- it was fun to watch them zooming along the mangrove roots just above the water line:
The kayakers:
We also saw a tiny ant-eater (spotted by a guide in one of the other boats) clinging to a tree-- a small ball of brown fur maybe about the size of a cantalope. It was clearly interested only in clinging to a branch (probably nocturnal). These anteaters are apparently one of the smallest in the world.
Some sort of heron-- the name escapes me:
Breakfast afterwards was at a restaurant in downtown Quepos-- we were all famished. The kids spotted this pair of birds while we were eating breakfast; they had made a nest at the point where two electrical wires had joined. Juan informed us that this is a Golden Flycatcher.
Lunch at the hotel again, and the it was off on another tour again, this one to a spice farm. We wound up sitting around in the hotel lobby again waiting for our pickup-- this appears to be the normal pattern for this sort of thing. When the car did finally arrive it turned out to be Hank, the owner of the farm, who is actually an American. We spent a while waiting in the car while Hank tried to track down the next group of people that we were supposed to pick up-- we eventually figured out that the reason for the delay was that they were out getting a massage, and the massage was running late, oh brother.
Hank turned out to be a soft-spoken American guy: tall, lanky, gray haired, and friendly. He had first come to Costa Rica more than 35 years ago as part of a peace corps gig, and had eventually decided to stay. The spice farm that he started is interesting-- not very big at all, but organized and run using as many "sustainable" agricultural practices as possible (organic methods, etc). The ride to the farm took around a half hour, nearly due east once we left Quepos, with the first third on paved roads and the next 2/3 on gravel. Hank told us that their first attempts at spice farming were big disasters-- they had planted fields with just a single crop, and none of them lasted more than a year or so before getting sick. The current farm is a sort of crazy mixture of different trees and plants, all jumbled together. I think the theory is that by mixing everything together and adding in lots of native species, the whole area becomes more resistant to pests and problems (apparently this turns out to be the case). The "fields" are basically rows of trees, shrubs, and bushes, with a mix of cacao trees, vanilla plants, and assorted pepper and cinnamon trees.
Our guide for the farm tour was a woman named Giselle; we started off inside the farm warehouse where she showed us the various crops and talked about how they were harvested and processed:
Inside the warehouse there was a crew of guys working on taking the bark off of cinnamon tree logs, which was interesting. There were two guys who whose job was to take the outer bark off the logs, then another guy who was slicing off the inner bark (which actually forms the cinnamon) using a machete:
Vanilla beans:
Very warm; we were all glad to be in the shade for most of the time. After the warehouse session we headed out into the "fields" to look at the actual growing spices.
The vanilla plants were probably the most surprising to me; I hadn't realized that they were epiphytes-- they look like a sort of oversized philodendron or orchid hanging off some other tree. In fact just the other day I was looking at some product packaging (American, not Costa-Rican) that had a very official-looking picture of a vanilla plant:
Official-looking, but in fact almost entirely wrong... so much for truth in advertising.
I also had no idea how much work is involved in actually producing a single vanilla bean. The plant only flowers during the dry season, when it is "stressed" (no dry season? no flowers!). During the flowering period, each blossom opens only once, from around 7 in the morning to around 10 in the morning. The farm workers have to be on the lookout for the blooms, since they have to be pollinated by hand when they are open. Once a bean starts to grow, it takes a full 9 months before it can be picked (the timing is rigid-- pick too soon and you get nothing, pick too late and the bean opens on itself). Then after the bean is picked there is an elaborate drying process in which the beans have to be kept inside most of the time and then taken out to be aired/sunned for a couple of hours each day-- this goes on for months. No wonder vanilla beans are so expensive-- lots of labor involved.
Cacao pod:
These are vanilla beans, ripening on the plant:
Pepper bush, with green peppercorns:
It was fun to see pepper growing, and to taste the green peppercorns, also to see what allspice looks like (smallish tree, similar to pepper).
After seeing all of the various things growing and walking around the fields, we made our way over to a pavilion of sorts at the edge of the property (nice view from an overlook) where Giselle gave us various treats that they had made using ingredients from the farm. The first thing was a cool glass of cinnamon tea, made from Ceylon cinnamon grown on the farm. It was fantastic-- lightly sweet and wonderfully flavorful, not cloying:
Then it was a tiny dish of vanilla cheesecake (yum), then a tiny dish of vanilla ice cream, a couple of varieties of chocolate cookies, and finally a cup of "hot chocolate" (prepared Mexican-style, just with water and chocolate and sugar, no milk).
We finished up with a visit to their spice shop, with various things from the farm on sale (tiny place-- obviously they don't yet understand that any gift shop should be at least 2 or 3 acres in size, heh). It was a nice tour; we learned a lot, and saw all sorts of things.
After getting back from the tour it was later than we had planned, so we grabbed out swimming gear and ran out to catch a cab down to the beach to swim in the last bit of daylight. The public beach was really wonderful-- nice warm water, very sizable waves (plenty of surfers there) and nice sand.
We finally got a chance to try a "pipa" (green coconut milk); bought one for 1000 colones from a grizzled-looking vendor with a bucket and a machete. We all sampled it-- Amy was not so hot on the taste, but the kids and I decided we liked it.
Assorted beach pictures:
We watched the sun set and swam until everyone was tired, then cabbed it back up the hill to the hotel.
For dinner we made another attempt at Agua Azul, but this time it was way too crowded (45 min wait), so we had dinner at Cafe Milagro instead. It turned out to be a very good choice-- excellent appetizer (pulled pork with corn cakes), then we ordered fish and "jerked" chicken for the main course. Early bed after that; we were all pretty tired.
On Friday we were up at 6:30 again to shower, eat breakfast, and get prepared for another 7:45 tour pickup. We had signed up for a guided walk in the nature preserve at Manuel Antonio; the bus turned up (late, as usual) and it turned out to be the same tour outfit as the kayaking, with a couple of the same people we had kayaked with as well. The guided walk in the park was a bit of a disappointment, I have to say. It turned out that a good two thirds of the trails in the park were shut down, having been damaged in some sort of storm around 6 months ago. This meant that all of the visitors were crowded onto a single large trail (dirt road, really) that ran from the main entrance to the beaches. It was very hot and sweaty, and with all of the people it felt like being in a train station in summertime with the air conditioning on the fritz.
Green iguana (we saw quite a few of these guys):
These brown bumps on the tree are actually sleeping bats-- they apparently liked to be lined up in a row. The tree itself is called "Manzanilla de la Muerte", which is a really nasty plant if there ever was one. Extremely poisonous-- even just a little it of sap is enough to do you serious damage. The park hangs signs from the branches to make sure that unwary people don't use them for shelter along the beachfront.
Our guide, Danny, was a nice guy and was quite good at spotting interesting things to look at (he was also good with trees, which I appreciated). We did see some interesting birds and wildlife, but it was definitely not an ideal walk. We eventually reached the beach within the park (which is lovely-- we would have brought our swimsuits if we had thought we'd be spending any time there), then curved back and returned to the park entrance via a path along the water line. Lots of waiting around during the walk, either to wait for the path to clear up, or to collect all the various members of the group. Even more waiting when we finally reached the end of the walk (for the tour bus to turn up). We were a bit on the grumpy side when we finally made it back to the hotel; a swim in the pool did wonders for everyone's mood, however.
After lunch we retrieved our luggage and began to wait for the driver who was on his way to pick us up and take us back to San Jose... and waited... and waited... and so on. He called and left a message with the hotel office a couple of times, once a little before 1pm (original pickup time) and then again at 1:30, but the we didn't hear from him again until he finally turned up almost at 3. By this time both Amy and I had had pretty much had enough, after all the waiting around that we'd had to endure earlier in the week and earlier in the day, so we were not especially nice/friendly people when we finally got into the car. The driver, Luis, made a few feeble attempts at conversation and then said "OK, you can kill me, but wait until I get you back to San Jose first" :-).
It turned out that the main road that provides access to San Jose from the south had been closed due to mud slides for a couple of weeks, and all of the traffic was being re-routed onto a windy, 2-lane road that went way up into the mountains and down again. This was the reason Luis had been so late in arriving, but of course we wound up having to do it all over again on the way back, so it was a very long drive indeed.
Luis was born in San Jose, but spent a large chunk of his early working years as a flight attendant working for US airlines and living in California. He had some interesting observations on life in the two countries, so it was fun to quiz him about that and about life in Costa Rica. Along the coast he pointed out several "dead" real-estate developments and condo complexes, all of which were apparently victims of the financial crisis. Turns out that a fair number of North Americans had been buying vacation places down here, and when the crisis hit, the market for the vacation houses went completely into the tank.
We drove through the town of Ocatina, which is known as one of the "fruit basket" areas of Costa Rica-- it was cool to see all of the mango trees, which were loaded with mangoes just starting to ripen. According to Luis, Costa Rica sells almost their entire mango crop in Europe; they are apparently willing to pay more than the North Americans. Various other agricultural areas as well-- I remarked to Luis about the absence of corn crops (in spite of the fact that there is a fair amount of corn in the Costa Rican diet). He said that they buy nearly 100% of their corn from the USA-- the crop subsidies mean that the price is about half of what it would cost to grow corn locally-- anyone who tried to grow corn here would go broke before even getting started.
We finally rolled into the hotel (the "Bouganvillea") in San Jose around 7:30, which gave us time for dinner and a trip to the gift shop, but not much else. Too bad, since the hotel has a very elaborate formal garden and grounds, and it would have been nice to give the kids a swim. They were good sports about it, though, and we were all fairly tired from the drive in any case.
Easy cab ride to the airport the next day; we were able to get through security and have a somewhat leisurely breakfast (it's not such a bad airport to spend a couple of hours in). We visited the bookstore, where Ethan bought yet another Dan Brown novel (which he proceeded to devour for the remainder of the day, going through about 700 pages); I bought a book of Stephen King short stories, and Lydia opted out of new books in favor of rereading Harry Potter. She and I also had a lot of fun making up limerics of various sorts -- some with pristine language, some rather rude, and a few with complete nonsense words. At one point we were cackling so loudly in the departure lounge we were starting to get dirty looks from the people sitting next to us.
All in all, it was a nice trip. I think if we were to go back again, we would almost certainly give Manuel Antonio a miss, but we're definitely return to the Monte Verde area (and maybe try some place farther north on the Pacific coast, perhaps Guanacaste). Fun activities, great places to explore, and friendly people.
