Costa Rica! Pura Vida!
April 16th, 2011 Posted in travel | No Comments »Well pictures speak a thousand words and since this post is about 3,000+ words, I’ll post the pictures first for those who don’t have the time to read it all…
So here’s a ‘quick’ rundown of the trip:
Day 1 – Flew overnight on Frontier from Denver to San Jose, direct non-stop, left at 12-midnight Friday night and got into San Jose at 6am. Picked up our rental car and started driving to Arenal / La Fortuna area. Had some breakfast at a local bakery & fruit stand in San Ramon along the way. Got to our hotel the Royal Corin in La Fortuna around 9:30am or so. Driving was pretty uneventful, just lots of mountain roads and one-lane bridges, beautiful drive through the countryside. Checked in really early so we could leave our stuff at the hotel and went to check out the town and the waterfall. Drove to La Fortuna Waterfall and did the 0.6km steep climb down to the base of the waterfall where you can swim, there were more swimming holes just down stream as well. It was great to just relax and swim under the falls for a couple hours. Went into La Fortuna for lunch. After lunch we drove over to the Arenal Volcano to do some hiking and hiked the 2 hour loop that goes through the rain forest at the base of the volcano as well as the 1968 lava flows (that’s now volcanic rock). Got to see our first family of monkeys along with tons of birds, a snake, and incredible views of the volcano. Typically the volcano is socked in by clouds and not many people get to see the entirety of the volcano so we considered ourselves lucky considering we were only spending 2 days here. After the hike we went back to the Royal Corin where they have pools that are sourced by ‘hot springs’. There are lots of hot springs in the area, but it was nice to have the hot springs admission as part of our hotel stay so we didn’t have to leave our hotel much. The pools were all different temperature and just had another relaxing time in the pools and the swim-up bar. After which we went up to the top of the hotel for happy hour and again breathtaking views of the volcano. Had an incredible dinner to finish off the day at the hotel restaurant, I had the Tilapia and Laura got the Tropical Chicken, both were AMAZING!
Day 2 – We woke up early and again just had an amazing breakfast at the hotel, Eggs benedict, fresh fruit, amazing coffee, all sorts of freshly-squeezed fruit juices, beans and rice (local fair) and headed off to our zip-line adventure in the rainforest. We did the SkyTrek zip-line on the other side of Arenal. They do one in Monteverde cloudforest just on the other side of the lake, but takes about an hour via ferry to get there, or 2-3 hours by driving. From everything we’ve read and heard from people, the Monteverde cloudforest would be your best bet if you have more time. But since we didn’t want to spend time driving we did the one adjacent to Arenal and was still a LOT of fun. There’s nothing like going 40-50mph on a zip-line over 700ft. gorges looking over the rainforest canopy. I got some good first-person HD video of this I’ll share once I edit it down a bit. This took about half of the day so afterwards we went into La Fortuna to do a little shopping. I found some nice small shops selling some cigars so I picked a couple up. Lo-and-behold I found cloves there as well. And well since they’re illegal now in the U.S. I just had to pick a pack up. And at $4 well that was a steal. After going through all the shops and local artwork, we walked through the town park and headed back to the hotel to again relax in the hot springs. After a couple hours of relaxing we headed back into La Fortuna to eat dinner at the Lava Lounge. Incredible place with live music (saxophonist) and great local Tico (Costa Rican) type food. I got the Chicken Fajitas and Laura got the Chicken and Rice (Arroz con Pollo) two very typical dishes. This was also the restaurant I discovered my new favorite drink. I had asked if they could make me a Long Island and the waiter asked if I wanted to try something different, I said absolutely! He brought back what he called “Tico Tea” which is essentially the same as a Long Island Iced Tea but instead of Triple-Sec, they use Blue Curacao, and instead of Coca-cola they use Sprite, then add a shot of Guaro and sometimes a little lemon juice. I guess similar to an Electric Iced Tea. It was wicked good!
Day 3 – Woke up to our SUV with a dead battery, boo. It seemed like just low-voltage as we had trouble starting after a long night, but never when we just leave it for a couple hours. So we called the rental car company to get help, they said they could send someone out and would take 4-5 hours, or we could drive to San Jose to swap the vehicle for a new one. Luckily one of the workers at the hotel had jumper cables and offered to help us out, so we go the car jumped and headed to San Jose. (since we were driving to Puerto Viejo this day anyways and looked at the map, driving back through San Jose would only add 30 minutes, so this was our best option.) We left La Fortuna at about 10am after another great breakfast and drove back to San Jose, got a brand new Hyundai Tucson and drove the rest of the way to Puerto Viejo checking out all the banana plantations along the way and driving through SKETCHY Limon. Got to Puerto Viejo around 4:30pm and checked into our hotel Le Chameleon. From there we took a taxi downtown to check out the town and picked up rental bikes so we could cruise around the small town a little faster and to avoid paying for taxis to/from the hotel as it was outside the small town a bit (our hotel was in it’s own rainforest and had it’s own beach pretty much). The rental bikes was another adventure as my chain got stuck half-way back to the hotel on the dirt road with very few street lights and in the middle of nowhere. Luckily a couple came by and the guy actually owned one of the rental bike places in town and fixed the bike on the spot for me. Had dinner at a local joint called Mare Nostrum and was average food, nothing to really write about. As we were walking around town earlier someone gave us a flyer about dancing later that night, so we decided to check it out after dinner. Went to Club Mango in Puerto Viejo that night for some dancing and really cheap tequila and had a really great time, probably one of the favorite moments on the trip. There’s nothing like dancing when you don’t know anyone there…
Day 4 – Started out the day by going downtown Puerto Veijo for breakfast, ate at this small place called Bread & Chocolate and had another great breakfast, I had the French Toasties and some awesome coffee. From there we drove up to the Cahuita National Park. We had hoped to do some snorkeling here but all the guides said it was too murky. So we decided to do the hike through the National Park. Overall it was 8km (5 miles) or so from one side of the park to the other. We got to see sloths, monkeys, spiders, raccoons, crabs, birds, butterflies, and iguanas. Just incredible amount of wildlife just feet from the ocean! Once on the far side of the park there are places to swim, we swam a bit then headed to the bus stop to take the bus back to Cahuita. Our first experience with public transportation in Costa Rica. It was surprisingly cheap (70 CRC = 15 cents) to ride it. Once back in Cahuita the town, we got some groceries to snack on and headed down to Manzanillo. It’s known as one of the best beaches in Costa Rica (on the Caribbean side) so we drove down there (only about 10km from Puerto Viejo) to have some lunch. Ate at a restaurant called Maxi’s and had some more typical Costa Rican fair, pretty good food. Walked the beach for a bit as it was getting dark, then headed back to the hotel. After we got back to the hotel is started to rain a bit, so we jumped in the jacuzzi and pool to relax before heading to dinner. Ate dinner in Puerto Viejo at this place called Koki Beach, this place came in 2nd for best meals we had in Costa Rica, incredible filet mignon salad and their dessert called “Banana Box” was absolutely incredible! No pictures of it unfortunately because we were going to go dancing again, but the same Club was closed that night and we didn’t realize that dancing & live music only happens certain nights in Costa Rica. So ask the locals where the action is each night because in Manuel Antonio (later in our trip) we were told live music nights were typically Tuesdays and Fridays. Also some dancing joints are American friendly and some are more for locals where you may have to be a little more aware of your safety.
Day 5 – We got up late around 9am or so, packed our bags and headed down to breakfast at the hotel instead of going into Puerto Viejo. Breakfast was amazing again with fresh fruit, granola, fresh juices, yogurt, and the amazing Costa Rican coffee. Then we decided to go to the beach one last time as the weather was a beautifully clear day and the sun was shining. I almost got a bucket of Imperial (La Cerveza de Costa Rica) but it was still early and we had a long drive ahead of us. So from 9:30-11am or so we hung out at the beach sans sunscreen. Well Costa Rica is 9′ from the Equator so within that 1 hour, both Laura and I got sun. Not entirely burnt, but enough of a warning that we should have sunscreen on all day long. Then… the long haul from Puerto Viejo to Cerro Chirripo. On paper it was 350km (220 miles) or so and Google Maps estimated 5 hours (don’t use Google Maps in Costa Rica is all I can tell ya) so we figured 6-7 hours based on our previous driving experience in Costa Rica. The unfortunate part of Costa Rica is you either have to drive “seasonal roads” which are dirt roads that you have NO idea what condition they are in, half the road could be missing, landslides, bridges out, potholes, most REQUIRE SUV to drive and you average 15-20km/h, or you can drive the paved roads which generally speaking they are kept in MUCH better shape and you can average 50-60km/h. So while the paved roads seem to take you to the other side of the country and back, at least you know you’ll make it, even if it takes a little more time. Well it ended up taking about 8 hours and we ended up having to drive some of the most difficult roads at dark which we were hoping to avoid. I have some interesting video of the driving conditions here as well. Once we checked into the hostel in the VERY small town of San Gerardo we said our hellos to the other guests staying there and got our information for how to get our permits to hike Cerro Chirripo the next day.
*A few asides:
1. Driving in Costa Rica = It’s not nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. After about 30 minutes or so you’ll become quite accustomed to it, and if you’ve ever driven in another country before you will be fine as it’s kinda like Europe in the sense that you just go with the flow. If you take the paved roads they are in good shape, just lots of 2-laned roads with lots of semi-trucks, so you’ll need to practice your passing before you go LOTS of passing, unless you don’t mind going 40km/h behind trucks when the speed limit is 80km/h. The big gotchas are schools were there is a 25km/h speed limit when students are in session. Though we had no idea when those times were and never really saw kids IN school, just coming & going, so again just go with the flow. Generally speaking the Police seemed like they didn’t care much about traffic violations so much as they were just around for general security. The attitude of Costa Rica is very laid back, no road rage here, in fact many trucks as courtesy will put their blinker on when it’s OK to pass on mountain/curvy roads. Lastly just be careful as a lot of the roads are similar conditions to mountain roads, lots of blind corners, one lane bridges, and foggy & cloudy areas. The one other thing I’ll add is that the gov’t REQUIRES a $28/day liability insurance on rental cars that WILL NOT be included in your rental car quote, and it’s not included in any extra collision insurance you may purchase either.
2. Seasonal roads = We did not take these but presume they are acceptable to take during dry season and should be avoided at all costs during wet season. Granted we did all of this in dry season, so I cannot speak to the road conditions in wet season, where I presume potholes and landslides are much more common even on paved roads.
3. Permits for hiking Cerro Chirripo = The ranger station is open from 6:30am – 4:00pm. You have to go the DAY BEFORE you want to hike (camp at the hut). The ranger only speaks spanish, so know the simple phrases in Spanish and be familiar with the Spanish names for days & numbers. There are 40 spaces at the hut, 30 are for reservations (which you CAN make a reservation in advance if you call the ranger or email, again in Spanish only) or you can try for the 10 permits a day that are FIRST COME FIRST SERVE basis.
4. Pura Vida! = I mentioned Costa Rica is laid back, it’s pretty much like you’d imagine a surf-town but it’s a country. The common phrase here is Pura Vida! and there’s a reason why it’s #1 on the wiki page for Costa Rica which simply means the “Life is Good!” Everyone we ran into was super nice, whether it was in the urban areas, touristy areas, or rural areas, everyone was pleasant and would really try to be helpful even if your Spanish sucked, ha! Though I’d say 50% of people spoke Spanglish pretty darn well.
5. Safety = We felt save 99% of the time we were in Costa Rica. We kept all our belongings in trash bags to cover up any tempting items passer-byers may see in our rental car (rental cars are pretty obvious in Costa Rica because Ticos don’t drive SUVs) and made SURE to LOCK our passports, money & camera in the glove box of our vehicle to ensure we didn’t lose everything if the rental car was ever broken into. You still need to be careful though as we have had friends have stuff stolen while in CR.
Day 6 – Cerro Chirripo – We woke up early at about 4:45am to leave by 5:00am to get to the ranger station by 5:15am so we could be 2 of the first 10 people in line to get our permit. Opened at 6:30am and we got our permit from the ranger loosely conversing in Spanish but somehow missed the “hoy” vs. “manana” part (today or tomorrow) and apparently you can’t get the permit to hike the same day (wasn’t made clear in anything we read about getting the permit) but we didn’t know this til we got back to the hostel after our hike. So we got our permit and started hiking the 12,533 foot peak.
Taken from some other climing notes about Chirripo so you get an idea of how steep this is:
The trailhead is marked by a large sign and is a short distance past the Albergue Uran. It is 14.5 km (8.7 miles) from this point to the Crestones hut (official name is Centro Ambientalista el Paramo) and the net elevation gain is about 2100 meters (6900 ft.) If you are starting from the Roca Dura lodge it will be about 16 km (9.6 miles) and 2225 meters (7300 ft.) This is a long climb and takes most people from 7 to 9 hours. I made it in 8 hours 10 minutes. Two young fellows we met did it in five hours, but this is unusually fast. Be sure to get an early start, 8:00 a.m. at the latest. Start with two liters of water since there is no water until the first hut at 7.5 km. The trail is wide and easy to follow with signs every kilometer showing the elevation. At 4 km you will reach the park boundary and at about 7.5 km there is the Llano Bonito shelter that has potable water. The trail can be very muddy and slippery so I suggest trekking poles.
FYI, it only took us 6 hours 15 minutes but I have to admit we were pretty rusty as 6900 vertical feet in one day. For the record the only other hike this challenging that we’ve done was Mount Harvard which was 8.5 miles and only 5400 vertical feet we did in 5:30 hours but 2,000 feet higher (less oxygen)… anyhow this was a HARD hike, but beautiful one. You start out in the warm climate, hike through the cloud forest (which reminded me of hiking near Linville Gorge, both humid and green), then once above 10,000 feet you hike the more arid & rocky part of the mountain (which seemed a lot more like Colorado hiking). Oddly we didn’t see much wildlife on this hike, not nearly as much as other National Parks, but scenic none-the-less. As for trekking poles, it’s very common in Costa Rica to use bamboo which is awesome and helps IMMENSELY when it rains and to save your knees coming down. This hike was about 90% incline (I’ll post the GPS coordinates later). You can see it in this picture here which shows the only flat is from 8km to 9km. So we got on the trail around 8:30am and made it to the hut at around 3:00pm. Once we arrived at the hut and showed them our permit, it was then we almost freaked out as the dates were for the following night, not that night. This was the first indication that the permit process wasn’t as clear as we thought, but they had room for us so luckily we didn’t have to hike back down, ha! We ate dinner (our MRE’s that we brought from the U.S.) except we had to eat them cold because the heating pouch didn’t come with our MRE (stupid Mike) and ended up eating more Clif bars, dried fruit and peanuts since the food was so bad cold. Anyhow it was cold probably somewhere around 40′F and got rinsed off with even colder water before calling it a night at 5:30pm.
Day 7 – So we went to bed early so we could get up early. 2:45am to be exact. Out the door of our hut at 3:00am sharp and luckily were able to leave our packs in the hut while we climbed the rest of the way to the summit to see the sunrise. The summit is about 5.1km (3.1 miles) further past the hut and about another 500m (1500 ft.) vertical. We met up with some friends we met at the ranger station earlier the day before that made the same mistake we did (hiking/staying the same day of getting the permit) and hiked to the summit together making it in roughly 2 hours, JUST in time for the sunrise. We were the first to reach the summit that day. Incredible views and while there were clouds below us that morning, on clear days (really rare) you can supposedly see both the Caribbean and the Pacific from this peak (as it’s the highest peak in Costa Rica). Laura was feeling a bit nauseas for some reason (she attributes it to the MRE) and so we only stayed at the summit for about 30-40 minutes as it was really cold as well (~35′F) and we didn’t have much other than a couple layers of clothing. So we began our descent, stopped by the hut and continued down. Unfortunately at about 10km is started raining so the last 10km was in rain and mud, LOTS of mud, and because it was steep took quite a bit of time to maneuver without falling. All-in-all, we hiked 25km (15.5 miles) and somewhere near 7500 ft. vertical… tough on the knees even with bamboo. So after 2 hours to the summit, 2 hours back down to the hut, and 5.5 hours down to the trail head, we got outta there around 1:30pm spent some time changing cloths and getting dry in our SUV since it was still raining, then drove down the mountain towards Manuel Antonio. Somewhat starving we stopped in San Isidro for lunch and made it to Manuel Antonio in about 2 hours, not that bad of a drive at all. Got to see the beautiful countryside along the Pacific coast along the way. Checked into the La Mariposa and sat on the balcony watching the sunset, took a quick dip in the pool and headed into town for dinner. Ate at the El Avion which was a restaurant/bar made from an old C-123 that was part of the Iran-Contra controversy in the mid-80′s during the Reagan administration. Had a pretty good meal, but nothing that stood out. I had a Paraguayan-style Green Peppercorn Steak and while it was good, it was just a bit too peppery for me, Laura had the Mahi-Mahi and she too thought it had a bit much pepper, but great atmosphere.
Day 8 – Started off the day with a quick breakfast at the hotel overlooking the ocean, then at 8:00am got on a shuttle that took us to the Catamaran in Quepos marina just north of Manuel Antonio. The catamaran was huge, I think it held 140 people but there were only 12 of us that day on the tour, so it was nice to have the boat to ourselves and plenty of room to move around. We went out for a sail around the coast and peninsulas scoping out the water for dolphins and the forests for monkeys, unfortunately we only saw birds, but it was a very tranquil and peaceful boat ride. We stopped to go snorkeling around a shallow area in a cove just by one of the peninsulas. The water was pleasant but murky, though we got to see plenty of fish. After which we got to use the catamarans slide called “Tsunami” a very fast and steep water slide on the back of the boat. On our way back they served us chicken kabobs, pasta and fresh fruit along with drinks, then a little sunbathing on the front nets over the water. We got back to the hotel at around 1:00pm and from there went to get a couple’s massage at one of the spas in Manuel Antonio. It was very relaxing and felt great (albeit somewhat painful) after all the hiking from the previous two days. Afterwards we went downtown Manuel Antonio to scope out the town and then headed back to hang out at our pool for awhile. Then headed to dinner at a restaurant called Kapi Kapi and had the best meal of the trip. I asked the waiter what he’d recommend and he gave us suggestions… “for the lady, i’d recommend the Macadamia Nut Crusted Mahi Mahi with Sweet Chili Plum Sauce and Jasmine Rice with Stir Fried Vegetables … and for the man, I’d recommend the Churrasco Establado with Red Wine Hoisin Demi Glaze and Two Potato Yucca Cake”. The food was so ridiculously good I’d almost contemplate travelling to Costa Rica just to eat there again. Then I remembered I have Elway’s in Denver Perfect way to end our trip.
Day 9 – Woke up late again, had breakfast at the hotel and then packed all our gear up to check-out. Then we headed downtown Manuel Antonio on a beautifully clear sunny day and found parking to be a challenge at the beach. It seemed everyone else had the same idea we did. We parked in some random grass lot next to the National Park and paid someone $6 to be able to park there. Due to all the supposed crime and such, I actually felt better paying someone who at least pretended to monitor the cars in the lot while we went for our excursion. Got our tickets into the National Park and started our trek to the beaches. There is a public beach right next to the park downtown, but was very crowded and filled with people which made leaving our stuff out a little precarious. Also since we read the beaches in the park were the most beautiful and we like hiking, we didn’t mind paying the entrance fee to see some wildlife along the way. At the Manuel Antonio beach (~20 min. walk) we found it too to be crowded but the beach through the trees (Espadilla Sur Beach) on the north side of the peninsula much more appealing and less-crowded. So we found a spot under some low trees (the sun is scorching hot) and enjoyed a couple hours swimming in the Pacific while watching monkeys, iguanas and racoons scour around in the sand. Quite amazing place. After getting some sun, we went back into town and ate at Cafe Milagro a local coffee shop and restaurant, again the food didn’t disappoint and their milkshakes were wonderful. We opted to bring home some coffee from here since it was local versus the Costa Rican brand Cafe Britt (which is also good). From here we left around 4:30pm I think and headed towards San Jose before our 6am flight the next morning. This drive was interesting as Laura was navigating and considering there were no road signs (only the city of which you’re headed towards) we managed to find ourselves on roads that weren’t on the map and just had to go with our instincts which I’m glad to say didn’t fail us, we managed to not make any wrong turns and ended up at the hotel at 9pm.
Day 10 – Got up early, took the shuttle to the airport, paid their stupid “departure tax” apparently you have to pay a tax to leave the country (another $26/person) and headed home back to Denver.
