I flew into the SJO airport on the first day around 2 pm and met up with the three other girls (Bianca, Kellie, and Cynthia) coming in on a separate flight from Pittsburgh. Fortunately, everyone got their bags and we managed to find our shuttle to the Holiday Inn Express. There may have been one "Taken" close call, but we quickly halted the situation. Our hotel was only a few minutes down the road. Since we weren't sure about potential delays, we didn't plan any activities for the day we arrived.
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| Windy photo shoot at the lookout point |
Unfortunately staying so close to the airport meant we’d be in a fairly long cab ride no matter where we went. For lunch, we decided to walk next door to the Rosti Pollo. This reminded me a lot of a TGIFridays. We all order our first traditional-style meals of the trip and feasted on chicken fajitas with rice, beans, plantains and guac as sides. Everything went down pretty easily, especially when paired with a local Imperial beer. After lunch we all laid in the sun for a while by the hotel pool and organized our bags for the next few days. That evening we took a 25 minute cab ride to the Xandari hotel for drinks and tres leches cake on their deck overlooking the San Jose lights. Everything was delicious and with only a minor hiccup trying to get home (it took forever to find a cab and when we did it was quite the adventurous drive), we ended our first day with all our limbs intact.
Day 2 – 3: Monteverde
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| Hummingbird garden |
The next morning, a mini-van came to pick us up for our private transportation to Monteverde. It was a bit of a drive, but our driver was very nice and we stopped along the way at a beautiful lookout point where the wind was whipping around us making a very memorable photo op. We climbed some serious altitude along the many windy and unpaved roads. When we arrived at the
Monteverde Villa Lodge, the host checked us in and showed up to a very cute room with 3 beds and a big table that was perfect for drinking wine and playing games. He asked us all to come down for a welcome coffee before we walked into town to explore the shops and grab some snacks at the grocery store. One of the first things we noticed about Monteverde was how rainy and windy it was. We were later told that a cold front was moving in, but it was drastically different from San Jose! Each night we were convinced a hurricane was coming because of the noise outside our windows. The upside to the weather was that we didn't have to worry about sunburn or bugs on this leg of our journey!
After we got settled in, our transportation arrived right on time to take us to the
Don Juan coffee tour. The tour was advertised as a coffee, chocolate, and sugar cane tour, but it was definitely more coffee. We arrived at a small farm-like location and we taught all about how and where coffee grows. We even had a chance to pick some fresh coffee berries off of the trees and suck on them. From there, we were given a small demonstration on how they used to manually separate the shells from the seeds and leave them out of dry. This is a demonstration only, we didn't actually tour a coffee plant. At the end we were able to try some coffee from different roasts and look over the property with our cups in hand. The sugar cane part was about 15 minutes as the guide showed us how to squeeze the cane into liquid. He did make us a delicious lemonade to try with the juice. Lastly, the chocolate part was about 20 minutes or so since the cacao doesn't grow in that part of Monteverde. He grinded up some cacao and made us a little chocolate cup to try. That was very good! Because the put the chocolate and sugar cane parts in between learning about the coffee, it seemed to flow together nicely. All in all, it was a cute little tour, but nothing over the top. That night we ate in town at one of the many delicious restaurants.
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| Ziplining in Selvatura Park |
The next morning we were picked up and taken for a nature walk in the cloud forest reserve. The bad weather had scared away a lot of the mammals, so we mostly saw birds. Some of the cool ones included a turkey vulture and a Resplendent quetzal. We also spent a little time at the end of the walk in a cute hummingbird garden to see some of the small birds up close. After our time in the reserve, it was time to go ziplining at
Selvatura Adventure Park. I've been ziplining before and didn't think it would be a big deal, but the rain added an interesting element to it. You couldn't even see to the end of some of our longer lines because of the cloud coverage. We really were in the cloud forest! We all picked the superman option at the last zipline, which meant that we carried a little extra weight in our backpack the whole time, but it was worth it. I was also really impressed with their safety measures there. We were always hooked to a wire, even when we were on the high platforms, and all of the lines had stoppers to prevent you from barreling into the end. The night we went to dinner at a restaurant built into the side of a tree and drank wine / played games while the wind howled around our room. It was a good way to end our time in Monteverde.
Day 4 – 6: Arenal
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| Eyelash Pit Viper |
The transport from Monteverde to Arenal including a bus ride, a boat ride, and another van ride to the next hotel. It didn’t seem very long though because the boat ride broke up the trip and added a little bit a tour-like feel to what would otherwise be pretty boring. The hotel,
La Pradera, looked very nice from the outside. They had a pool, a fleet of ATVs on the front lawn, and a beautiful open air restaurant. Unfortunately, all that niceness stopped outside our little cabin. Inside were a lot of dark shaded corners (barely any light, natural or artificial), lots of bugs, and random animals scampering on our roof in the middle of the night. Fortunately, we had dreams of Tulemar (the last resort we were going to stay at) to pull us through those two long nights.
After we all soaked ourselves in 98% DEET, we were picked up for a Arenal Volcano National Park Nature Walk. The lingering rain made us think that it would be another low-light of the trip, but it mostly cleared up and we were able to hike to a nice vantage point to see both the volcano and the lake. We also saw an eyelash pit viper that made me think twice about looking up in the trees when walking through the forest. We were then transported to the
Baldi Hot Springs for the second half of the evening. It was pretty quiet there and while the place was huge, it did not have the “natural hot spring” feel. It was mostly built up with different pools and bars. I think because we were think mid-week, some of the bars were not attended. We also had a dinner buffet which was somewhat average in comparison to some of the other good food we had on the trip. I had a good time here, but I'm not sure that I would go out of my way to go back.
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| Baldi Hot Springs / dance club atmosphere |
The next morning, we had breakfast at the restaurant before our pickup for the
Lost Canyon Adventures Canyoneering. In my opinion, this was the highlight of our trip and an absolute must-do! Over the next few hours we walked through a river, repelled down waterfalls, did some free-falling, and laughed over and over again. We ended with a yummy buffet lunch, a round of Imperials, and memorable pictures.
That evening we explored La Fortuna a bit then packed up again for our last transport. As part of our transfer on the last day in Arenal, we opted to do some white water rafting on the Rio Balsa before driving to Manuel Antonio that evening. Because we were the only ones not going back to La Fortuna, we had our own bus and driver who stayed with our bags. We were picked up at 9 AM and drove approximately 40 minutes to the launch site. We ended up having to wait a little for the dam to release because the water wasn’t high enough for the rafts. After about 20 minutes, we were all suited about and given a brief, but thorough, instruction on how to man our raft. The four of us were in a single raft with a guide.
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| Me rappelling down a waterfall... no big deal |
Days 7 – 10: Manuel Antonio
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| Rafting on the Rio Balsa |
The last leg of our trip was in Manuel Antonio. We arrived at
Tulemar using another private transport from Arenal. Along our way we stopped at the Tarcoles River to see a very large family of crocodiles hanging out by the side of a river, just under the overpass built for traffic. Some research done after our trip lead me to this wonderful article about how a man fell over the railing on this bridge and was
eaten by the crocodiles. At least it wasn’t an American Tourist, they (we?) are notoriously dumb sometimes… The resort was tucked away on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Our bungalow could not have been more perfect, but since we arrived late at night, we didn’t really know it yet. Our concierge, Chris, met us to check in and gave us a quick tour. He helped us make a dinner reservation for later that night at the restaurant on site and set us up with a Sloth Walk the next morning.
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| One of the many sloths we saw on our walk |
Taking Chris’s recommendation for breakfast the next day, we walked down the street to
Café Milagro for some amazing lattes (Vanilla Chilla was my fav) and a very filling breakfast. The café became a morning staple for the rest of the trip but the downtown area was not within walking distance, so we ended up spending most of the time at the pool or beach. After breakfast, we met our tour guides (more like ecologists) at the reception area for our Sloth Walk. Two other resort guests also joined us. As we walked through the property, we learned how to find the sloths hiding in the trees as well as monkeys and several birds. The guides told us all about the Sloth Institute –Costa Rica and how Tulemar is partnering with them. After a few hours, we ended down by the beach. It was a great way to see and learn about sloths, but not our best sloth encounter of the trip (stay tuned…). We returned to our rooms to change into our swim gear and spent the rest of the day out in the sun. That evening we had dinner at Kapi Kapi. The Asian fusion restaurant was recommended on Trip Advisor. The décor was cute, and while it wasn’t bad food, it definitely wasn’t the best. It was very muggy inside and It was also very expensive, even for me coming from Boston.
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| Our awesome balcony overlooking the water! |
The next morning we had a scheduled kayak tour of
Damas Island with Rancho Los Tucanes. Two of the four girls stayed behind, but Kellie and I powered on for another morning of adventure! Our drive through the city included a few other hotel pickups and a little bit of education about Quepos. We also drove by a grove of trees used to supply palm oil. Once we got to the dock, we all boarded our kayaks and started our path down the river. Our guides told us about the mangroves we were rowing through and took us down a few water passages that come and go as the tide changes. We passed a cashew tree, several different color herons, some bats doing a little dance on the underside of a tree, and a whole swarm of monkeys (like 50 of them!). As we floated under the capuchins, we were warned that they sometimes jump onto the kayaks because they are curious. Fortunately, none were that interested in us! I would not have wanted to topple over and swim in that silt infused water… ugh.
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| Kayaking trip |
The trip ended with a delicious lunch buffet. It was a nice relaxing way to see some of the fauna. After we returned, we went back to the pool and then later to the private beach to watch the sunset. While we were relaxing on the lounge chairs, we overheard a bunch of people excitedly screaming about a sloth. Since we went on the sloth walk the day before, we were all a bit slow to get our cameras and walk over, but when we did we saw a sloth crawling down a tree on the beach! He was coming down to poop! One of the more interesting facts we learned on our walk was how once a week the sloth comes down the tree to go to the bathroom – what a rare sighting!
We started our last full day at Tulemar with an in-room spa service of mud wraps and massages followed by more time in the sun. That evening we packed up and went to
Z Gastro Bar in Quepos for a final dinner. The food was delicious there and we took advantage of their free shuttle service to and from our resort. The next morning we were picked up bright and early and taken back to San Jose to the airport. Our driver was very sweet and took us to this giant souvenir shop so we could pick up some last minute items outside of the city. The rest of the trip ran smoothly.
I had a wonderful time in CR and would definitely go back. I probably would pick a different hotel in Arenal, but other than that, I highly recommend every activity as well as Desafio as a tour company. The transportation was always spot-on and we were never uncomfortable with our driver or in our buses/vans.
Pura Vida!
