Costa Rica March 2006

Sandy's travelogue and impressions.

Hotel Itinerary:

PART I.  Arrival in country,  Arenal.
Day 1
Our day started early - we got up at 3:30am and headed to the Dayton airport around 4:40 for a 6:15am flight.  We ended up carrying on our small suitcases as well as our backpacks.   We changed planes in Houston and had uneventful flights.  We landed in San Jose around 1:30pm.

It took about an hour to get through Immigration in San Jose.  There was no problem, just long lines.  We paid our exit tax while in line for immigration, and that saved us having to pay for that on the day we left the country.  They give you a receipt and a form to fill out, and you have to present these when you check in for your return flight.

After that Andy changed some cash at the airport. We had planned to use the ATM at the airport to get some Colones but found it didn't take our card.   Then we found a phone out in front of the airport to call Thrifty.  Someone offered to assist us with the call, and Thrifty picked us up in a shuttle.  We rented a 4-wheel drive Diahatsu with manual transmission and took the basic insurance package that was offered.   It became obvious to us later that we would not have been able to drive the places we needed to go had we not had a 4-wheel drive automobile. 

We also rented a cell phone for the week.  Thrifty had signs up for cell phone rental.  The cell phone was $4  a day or $25 a week, and came with a wall and car charger. We had one free 2-minute phone call when we rented the phone so we used that to call back to the states and give a relative the cell phone number.   We never ended up using the phone after that, but were glad we had it in case of being lost or having an accident.  The cost was something like $1 a minute if we did use it, so we really only planned on using it for emergencies.

We started out for La Fortuna around 3:45pm or so.  Fortunately the Tabacon Lodge had provided very clear directions on how to get there so the drive was not too bad.  It was quite warm and humid and we had a light sprinkle of rain off and on.  We drove over an amazing bridge on the way there,  rickety bridge over a gorge.  It was 2 lanes wide, except where metal ramps crossed the 6 foot gap where part of the bridge deck had fallen out.  I stuck the camera out the window for a few shots but between my not focusing well and the oncoming darkness,  they don't capture it very well.

We arrived at Tabacon just after dark - perhaps 6:30pm.   We had an expensive but tasty dinner at the hotel,  hit the hot springs, and tumbled into bed around 10pm.

Day 2
After a great sleep we had the free breakfast buffet at the Tabacon and headed to Arenal.   This was an easy drive from the Tabacon.   The turnoff from the main road towards the park felt like a rough road at the time (our standards and judgment of road quality changed quite a bit as the trip went on).  

We spent most of the day at the park,  where we could hear and see the volcano spewing large boulders down the side of the cone.  It sounded to me like gun shots and thunder.  We hiked the trail to the right (sendero coladas) which crosses an old lava field and descends into a forest (sendero tucanes). We turned around after reaching the river.   We saw a coati and several birds on this hike.

Then we hiked the short horticultural trail to the left of the parking area (sendero heliconias) where we saw more birds, a squirrel unlike the ones we are used to seeing back in the states,  some very large hairy spiders living in bromeliad cups,  and lots of leaf cutter ants.  We were surprised at the well-worn paths of the leaf cutter ants. 

It was a warm humid day with occasional light showers,  but the clouds did clear for a while and we were able to see the entire cone of the volcano. 

Rather than drive back towards the main road we instead drove further up the dirt road and took a left toward Arenal Vista Lodge, driving down to the river we had previously hiked to, and then turned around again.  On this drive we passed a troupe of howler monkeys in the trees on the side of the road.  We took many photos of them as darkness approached.  We also saw several interesting birds on this drive.

We stopped at the Tabacon after that, cleaned up, and headed into Fortuna. We stopped at a bank in town, and a grocery store. (We picked up a bottle of rum for about $10, and some juice.  These two things together costs about the same as purchasing a few rum drinks back at the Tabacon).  We had a nice dinner at the Choza de Laurel. When back at the Tabacon we made ourselves some drinks and headed back to the hot springs.   We took a light with us and got a look at some frogs croaking in the river.

Day 3
We headed to the hot springs again in the morning and saw many lizards when we were there in the day time.  Andy had broken his collarbone a few weeks prior to this trip, and the hot water waterfall felt good on his sore shoulder.  After a nice soak we had the Tabacon buffet breakfast then showered and checked out. 

We drove around Lake Arenal to Tilaran.   This was a beautiful drive.  We passed a group of coatis on the road. Not only did they not run away when I got out of the car to photograph them, they approached me as if looking for a handout.  A kilometer or so down the road this made sense as we saw a woman and her child feeding another band of them.  They were trying to climb up on the kid, it seemed like a bad idea to me.

Around the town of Arenal we stopped at a scenic overlook near the Arenal Botanical Gardens.  Then we stopped at the Botanical Gardens proper. The parking lot is on the side of the road, out of site from the Gardens.  After so many warnings about theft I stayed with the car while Andy went in and took some photos. 

We had a little trouble following our route in the town of Arenal, where the road to take was not obvious.  But outside of that had an easy drive to Tilaran.

Sandy's impressions of Fortuna,  Arenal,  and the Tabacon:
The garden of Eden must have looked like this.  This might be the most beautiful place I've ever seen.   I think the Tabacon would be a wonderful place for a honeymoon with its lush, lovely vegetation and all the little secluded pools in the Hot Springs (I think I counted 16 different places to hop in the water, some of them very private and all of them beautiful).

If you have a few meals in town and if you acquire your own alcoholic drinks rather than buy them at the Tabacon you can cut down on your costs.

The Tabacon felt secure to us  there was security in the parking lot including night vision cameras, and a good-sized in-room safe for our valuables.

The volcano was cool and we enjoyed our hike around it the most of all our hikes during our week in Costa Rica.    The drive around the lake was lovely.

Had we had more time in this area we would have hiked the sendero los miradores in the Arenal park to the lake, and we would have gotten a massage at the Tabacon.
 

PART II.   Monteverde, Santa Elena.
The road between Tilaran and Santa Elena was easily the worst road of the week.  To say this was a bad road would be an understatement.  Particularly between Quebrada Grande and El Dos de Tilaran,  it was just awful.  We kept thinking we must be on the wrong road but according to the GPS and everyone we spoke show that we were indeed on the correct route.  It was as if you took a cobblestone road and removed 2/3 of the stones.  And perhaps turned every other stone that was left on its side.  The maps and guidebooks I kept on the dash or in my lap continually fell to the floor. Its just as well, as we there was too much jarring for me to read the maps anyway.

After Dos de Tilaran the road smoothed slightly, into a normal washboarded dirt road.  I was thrown by the fact that there are signs for Santa Elena, and signs saying things like "bienvenido a Monteverde" well before you actually reached the towns of Santa Elena and Monteverde.  I thought we had missed our turn to Cloud Forest Lodge when in fact we just hadn't gone far enough yet.

We ended up at the lodge shortly after dark.  We had dinner and some much-appreciated cerveza, and then grabbed our headlamps, flashlights and went for a walk before bed.

Day 4
We had breakfast at the lodge and went for a short hike down one of the trails.  We saw another coati in the forest.

Ideally we would have liked to do the 7:30am canopy tour but my stomach was feeling iffy, so we had made reservations for the 10:30am tour instead.  This left right from the lodge, and was a safe and fun thing to do.  Unlike my rock-climbing husband,  I was a bit nervous about it,  but it felt safe and foolproof.  We went over about 7 zip lines and had two rappels down out of the canopy.  The whole thing took about 1.5 hours.  We heard but did not see monkeys while in the canopy.  We did see some very beautiful birds.

After the canopy tour we did another hike along the River Trail, and happened upon more coatis and some agoutis!  We were unable to get any pictures of the agoutis, which is a shame.  They had pretty coats.   Following this we drove into Santa Elena and visited the Monteverde Frog Pond.   The pond has well-informed guides and a nice gift shop.  If you keep your receipt you can come back after dark for free and see the frogs again when they are more active.

We had a good dinner at Morphos and then tried for a night tour at the Santa Elena forest reserve.  Unfortunately our information was incorrect and the tour left at 6pm, not 7pm. We arrived at 6:30pm and were too late.  So we went back to the Frog Pond to watch the frogs some more then headed back to the lodge and to bed.

Day 5
After breakfast at the lodge we did a long hike along the Pizote trail/Avocado trail. We didn't see much in the way of critters but the vegetation was lush and beautiful.   Its amazing to see so many of the plants we buy in the store as houseplants growing naturally here. 

We checked out of the lodge and headed towards Las Juntas for the next part of our journey.

Sandy's impressions of Santa Elena and the Cloud Forest Lodge.
The Cloud Forest Lodge was isolated.  It seemed at times that we were the only people there.  The only noise was from the wind which was blowing hard most of the time, from birds, and from the trickle from the small waterfall next to our room. The room was spacious and clean.  There is no TV or phone in the rooms,  but the office/restaurant is not far and it has these things,  plus a small bar, and a nice deck with a good view.  There are feeders off  this deck that were frequented by several different kinds of hummingbirds.  Initially I thought the candles in the rooms were for ambiance, but the room lost electrical power a few times while we were there.  The outages were short and never caused us any trouble.  While there was no in-room coffee, we were able to pick up coffee at the office early in the morning without much trouble.

The nights were colder than I expected. The days felt warm with low humidity.  The forest was dryer than I expected.  Our guide books had lead us to believe the cloud forest was always damp, even in the dry season.  It was not true.

Had we had more time here we would have hiked in the official Santa Elena or Monteverde reserves rather than in the trails around our lodge, tho I was happy to have these trails to ourselves like we did.   I would also have arranged a night tour in one of the reserves.   I believed the guide book without confirming the time, that mistake caused us to miss the night tour we had hoped to go on.

PART III.  Playa Grande.

Day 5, continued
We headed through Turin and Candelaria on our way to Las Juntas.  We thought we were lost at one point but were in fact right on course. What threw us was the fact that we never went through something obviously called Turin, even tho this town appeared prominently on all our maps. When we came to Candelaria we realized we were OK .   At Las Juntas we had lunch at a soda on a corner on the left side of the road as you head into town from Candelaria.  I wish we had made note of the name but we did not.  We chose it because we were pretty hungry and it was full of locals which we took to be a good sign.  Andy had beef tacos which were deep fried and dry, I had a burger that was amazing.  Man that was a tasty burger!   We ordered Cokes to drink.

We managed to lock the keys in the car when we stopped for lunch.  This was not the disaster I thought it might be.  Even though no one at the soda spoke any English,  it was easy to point at the keys in the ignition and get across what had happened.  People helped us out, fetching a mechanic who quickly got the car open and charged us about $10.

Past Juntas we joyfully got on highway 1 and had a pleasant drive on a paved road up to Liberia, and then onto highway 21 down to Belen.    At Belen we got on highway 155 headed toward the coast.  This was not a good road.  Its amazing that a road towards so many tourist destinations could be so bad.  Apparently the road had been full of large potholes and they had graded down the pavement in these areas in preparation for repaving. But the repaving never occurred.  The result was a constant transition from deteriorating pavement to washboarded dirt and back again,  often with significant drop offs from the pavement to the dirt.  Often driving on the shoulder of the road was the easiest, smoothest route.

We followed the road to Huacas, then onto Metapolo and Playa Grande.  We arrived at the Hotel Las Tortugas just in time to check in,  grab a few beers, and watch an amazing sunset on the beach.

We had an excellent dinner at the Hotel and called it a night.
 
Day 6
We got up early for a walk on the beach and were rewarded by seeing three baby Olive Ridley turtle hatchlings make their way to the sea.  How cool!   Andy also found tracks where a large adult turtle had come ashore to lay eggs the night before.

After breakfast at the hotel we waked north on the beach and checked out the tide pools.  It was low tide and we saw lots of crabs, some brittle stars, urchins, etc.   Avellanas, the hotel dog and mascot, kept us company.

With Andy's broken collarbone we had to bypass canoing in the estuary near the hotel as originally planned, and we just didn't feel like taking the  bone-jarring drive down to Tamarindo, so we opted for a lazy afternoon at the hotel instead.  We laid in hammocks and watched hummingbirds and iguanas, which were plentiful, and swam in the pool and drank rum drinks.  It was very hot in the 90s, but not humid.

Around 3:45pm we walked the monkey trail down to the estuary and back.  This was a two-hour walk initially through a natural area, then through a nice neighborhood, and then back into a wooded area near the estuary.   At the estuary is a ferry service that will take you across the river, but we didn't have time to go across since we wanted to get back to the hotel before nightfall. We got back to the hotel in time to watch the sunset on the beach again.

We continued to be really pleased with the hotel restaurant so just had dinner there again. After dinner we went for a walk along the road near the hotel.  We saw horses roaming around on the road.  One of them was walking towards us very determinedly in the dark.  We think he was a stallion and was keeping us away from one of his mares.  We considered it a sign to turn around and head back to the hotel and to bed.

Day 7
We got up around 5am for an early walk on the beach again.  Its lovely that the hotel sets out a coffee pot and mugs very early   we grabbed much appreciated coffee and took it with us on our walk.  We headed south this time, with Avellanas at our side again.  We saw lots of turtle tracks and did encounter one leatherback hatchling who was on his back.  I believe Andy only saw him because of this. He was waving a flipper in the air.  His siblings and all the others were long gone to the sea by the time the sun came up.  Andy turned this little guy over and he made his way to the sea too.  While I'm sorry this guy had such a rough start, we felt very fortunate to have seen him.

After breakfast we lounged a bit near the pool   those hammocks are addictive!   then showered and headed back toward San Jose for tomorrows flight home.

Sandy's impressions of Playa Grande and Hotel Los Tortugas.

This beach was gorgeous, not very crowded, and is a world famous surfing beach.

I liked the hotel a lot.  Our room was spacious and attractive and clean.  It had an in-room safe. At night I opened up the windows and let the breeze blow through.  In the mornings we awoke to the sounds of birds and monkeys.  

The restaurant tables are outside and you can hear the ocean.  Iguanas and squirrels and birds were in the trees off the deck and you could watch them while you ate, often with Avellanas laying nearby.  In fact the bold and beautiful magpie-jays will take food off plates if the plates are left unattended.

The original owner of this hotel was instrumental in getting the turtle reserve set up, and the beach is currently protected as a turtle nesting site.  I hope that this continues   there appeared to be a lot of planned development that will soon take place along the beach.

If we had had more time here we would have taken a boat tour of the estuary in hopes of seeing more wildlife, tried some other restaurants in Playa Grande,  and probably checked out Tamarindo.  We heard Tamarindo was the Daytona Beach of Costa Rica.  While that's not what we were looking for,  it may have been interesting to see what it was like.

PART IV.  Return to San Jose, and flight home
Day 7 continued

We did not drive back towards San Jose the way we had come. Instead we took route 21 south from Belan through Santa Cruz and Nicoya, then got on highway 18 and crossed the La Amistad de Taiwan bridge across the Tempisque River.  This was a pleasant drive.  We stopped for lunch at the Tentacion soda on the square in Santa Cruz and had a very tasty chicken/beans & rice lunch, plus soft drinks, for about $6.50 total for the two of us.

All was fine until we got on highway 1 at Limona.   The occasional passing lane would make a world of difference here.   Itís a two-lane road here and there are a lot of slow-moving trucks.  Because itís a busy road, passing opportunities are often few and far between.  This means you can go for long stretches going only 20 kph.  There is also a lot of unsafe passing going on.  We weren't prepared for just how long it took to make our way from Limonal to San Jose.  We crawled most of the time until we reached San Ramon, where the highway was occasionally 4 lanes instead of two,  and when it did drop to two lanes there was occasionally a passing lane on the uphill parts of the road.   We had left Playa Grande around 12:30 and stopped for perhaps an hour in Santa Cruz and didn't make it to the Best Western Irazu until 7pm.

The Best Western Irazu is a casino.  The hotel restaurant is a Dennys.  The hotel has free WiFi and a few PCs with free internet access for hotel guests.  It has a pool and a nice exercise room.  You could forget you were in Costa Rica here.   We walked to a mercado around the corner to pick up a few more souvenirs, some Salsa Lizano and some coffee,  and some more juice so we could kill off the bottle of rum we had bought back in Fortuna.  We had burgers at Dennys.  The cell phone guy we had rented from called us and asked if he could pick up the phone this evening instead of picking it up early tomorrow at Thrifty.  This worked out well for us.  He came to the hotel lobby and picked it up.

Sandy's thoughts on the Best Western Irazu, and our drive back to San Jose.
If we were doing it again we would have allowed more time to get back to San Jose, so we didn't have to finish our drive in the dark.  We may have checked out the alternative route between Barranca and San Jose, using route 23.  

Had we gotten to the hotel earlier in the evening we would have checked out San Jose.  We would have used the exercise room in the hotel and taken advantage of the free breakfast.

The hotel was a good choice for us given what we used it for.  We were looking for some place easy to get in and out of, and not much more.  It was perfect for its location and convenience.

Day 8
The hotel had free breakfast but since we wanted to get a very early start we did not take advantage of it.  We had an easy drive back up highway 1 to the Thrifty rental car office, and an easy shuttle ride to the airport.  We left the Best Western at 6:25 and were at the airport by 7am with lots of time before our 9am flight.   Naturally we used this time to spend our remaining Colones on more Britts candy.

Our flight to the states was pleasant   we lucked into a row to ourselves so we could stretch out.  There were no clouds so we were able to discern the planeís route.  We flew along the east coast of Central America   I took a photo of the Nicaraguan/Honduras border,  of the burning fields in Cuba,  of the Florida Keys.  Unfortunately Newark, being Newark   caused us a problem.  Seems like we often have problems with Newark.  High winds had traffic backed up, so everyone was going into a long holding pattern there. Our plane didn't have enough fuel for this so we landed in Baltimore for more fuel.  This ended up being a 1.5 hour long stop, and many people missed their connections out of Newark.  We had a long layover so it was not an issue for us.  We cleared customs in Newark,  and then our flight to Dayton was delayed anyway.  We got home around 10:30pm.

Misc. comments about Costa Rica

There were wild fires. We saw several on our drive to and from Playa Grande.  The dry season really is dry.  Some of these brought flames right up to the road.

We read many times not to leave any valuables in our car.  So we didn't.  We usually left nothing in the car and left it unlocked.  Those times we did stop when we had our luggage in the car, we parked the car where we could see it, or one of us stayed with it.   We didn't have any problems.

We are map-followers.   But several times our Costa Rica maps didn't match reality.  There would be a town on the maps that didn't actually seem to exist.  And sometimes we would come to a town that didn't appear on our maps at all.  For these reasons I really recommend using a GPS and having some pre-plotted waypoints to help you figure out if you're on track or not, in addition to having several maps.  Andy did a great job with this and it was reassuring to know we were headed in the correct direction.

In the tourist areas you could find people who spoke English, in other areas we had to make due with our limited spanish and gestures.  In the tourist areas things were sometimes priced in dollars rather than colones.

We had terrific fresh fruit in Costa Rica.

In most areas it was obvious that dogs were not spayed or neutered.  However unlike our trip to Mexico,  the dogs I saw did seem to be OK - not mistreated, hungry, etc.  In the more populated areas we did notice some veterinarians.   We didn't see many cats.   We did encounter many dogs, horses and cows along the sides of the roads and sometimes in the roads.  There are also a lot of people walking along the shoulders of roads,  often wearing dark clothing.   You really need to keep a sharp eye when driving and if possible drive during the day.

In case it wasn't obvious from the above, the roads are bad.  The country is beautiful, and the people were friendly.  I look forward to going back again.

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