Weekend Roundup

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QUETZAL - Monteverde Costa Rica

Taken through the guide's telescope.

QUEEN'S QUAY subway station Toronto ON

QUARTER

LATIN QUARTER Paris France

Costa Rica 2002

 

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.

Travel Tuesday

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My Corner of the World

December 2002 - Costa Rica

I came across my diary from our trip, pre-blogging days. Photos are a mix of scanned, digital (256 MB megabytes SD cards and priced at $199) and Photoshop.

OVERVIEW

Vacation thoughts – DIVERSITY IN EVERYTHING! Monkeys, crocodiles, sloths, quetzal, vultures, coati, terrible roads full of potholes, fantastic sunsets, superb accommodations, terrible service most times in restaurants, great people, San Jose taxi drivers – never inhibited by traffic rules, climate changes (San Jose vs Manuel Antonio vs Monteverde), good beer, Chilean wine, flowers, views, clouds and as John would say beautiful women.

The country itself, a sliver of land with a prominent spine of mountains, joins Nicaragua on the north and Panama to the south. Washing the length of its shores are the Pacific and Caribbean seas. Once part of Spain’s Central American colonies, Costa Rica was granted independence in 1821 without armed conflict. Most of the 4 million population centers in the Central Valley plateau, where San José, the largest city, is situated. Founded in 1735, the capital and its environs hold ample points of interest for visitors.

Make sure you have change for the public washrooms – will cost from 70-100 colones.

Do not expect third world country prices. Everything is priced in U.S dollars.

DRIVING

We covered 800 km in our travels in Costa Rica. Not a record, by any means for us, but the condition of the roads will slow you down, as evidenced by the driving distances on the chart below.




Actual distances are fairly meaningless in Costa Rica as roads cover mountainous terrain. We therefore work with drive times.

Driving in itself is not much different. Tico drivers are not overly aggressive. The biggest problems you will encounter are a) potholes and b) the lack of signs to get you from one city to another. 

Don't try to swerve around all the potholes, you'll never do it and end up going mad.

Get used to asking for directions. There are signs posted that get you between cities but once you enter one and have to go through it you'll end up lost because they will just vanish. If a sign says turn left to go to "X" then turn immediately. They are mostly posted at intersections, if at all, and sometimes are difficult to see until the last minute.

There are also a few minor problems, like twisty mountain roads, clouds/fog, and mystery speed limits. I highly recommend following the posted speed limits because you do see quite a few police cars on the side of the road with radar guns, especially between Quepos and Jaco and San Jose.

Sunset is between 5:30pm - 6:00 pm year around... in general tourists should not drive long
distances at night... it’s easy to get lost!


NOV 30

Long trip due to 6 hour layover in Houston. But, we solved the boredom by renting a DVD player and 2 movies from INMOTION  Insomnia and Sum of all Fears.

We took the hotel shuttle to the Best Western Irazu, 12 km west of the airport.

DEC 1

Day was dull and overcast.

Lazy morning with breakfast at Denny’s. Then we thought we would take a walk to find the condo. We were booked at TaraNova Villas Palmas for 2 weeks. Based on the address we thought we could find it -300 metres east and 100 meters south of Hotel Irazu Best Western.

So we turned right and walked up the hill from the hotel, this is a residential district, La Uruca. There are very nice homes in the area. At the top of the street we decided we couldn’t find it as we had no idea where south or east were. Then as we looked around we saw the sign for Villas Palmas. www.taranova.com


Checked in and went for groceries. Imagine our horror when we discovered the beer and wine covered and not available for sale. We assumed that they did not allow the sale of alcohol on a Sunday. But then we found we couldn’t get a beer in a bar!

It was the same on Monday so we decided to ask and learned that they had had mayoral elections on Saturday and therefore you couldn’t buy beer, wine or liquor in stores or get a drink in a bar from Saturday until Tuesday.

Closed!

DEC 2

A bright sunny day. We took a cab to the airport to pick up our car. The cab driver was very nice and also worked as a tour guide for Gray Line. We made arrangements to be picked up by him to do a city tour that afternoon at 1 PM.

Our travel agent had confirmed twice with National that we would have a 4X4 automatic.

We were a little early arriving at National as we had booked for noon, so when our car wasn’t ready he offered us a compact!!! Don’t even be tempted if you are driving in Costa Rica. We said no, we’d go for a walk and come back at noon when he promised it would be ready. We walked around and then went into the Hampton Inn and were able to use their internet. Back to National at noon (yes, we are always punctual – a bad habit in some countries!). And yes, he still didn’t have a car. He arranged for us to be driven to Economy across from the Hampton Inn where we were given a Kia Sportage 4X4 at the same price. Service was superb.

Condo and car


Rushed back to the condo and Enrique picked us up for our city tour. The cost was $ 35.00 U.S. He gave us an overview of the different suburbs and downtown San Jose. It provided us with our bearings for touring the city on our own.

Costa Rica is known for its diverse geographic features, which happen to be perfect for growing Arabica coffee beans. With a warm climate, soil enriched by volcanic ash, mountainous areas, and heavy rainfall, it has the superior conditions required for growing the highest quality Arabica coffee beans around.

Selling cell phones.

THE PRESIDENTIAL PALACE was built between 1866 and 1869 during the government of José María Castro Madriz, houses the office of the executive power and the residence of the president and his family.

The neoclassical Telegraph and Post Office building was built by The English Construction Company 1914-1917.

Street in Moravia.

Sunset.

We were surprised that the Vatican had an embassy there.

Went to dinner at Los Fuentes just down the street. It was not bad, I had mahi-mahi and John had shrimp in garlic butter sauce. We had a good bottle of Chilean wine “ Casallero del Diablo”. We were able to get this wine everywhere.

DEC 3

Bright and sunny.
Now we’re ready to get on the road! Got up early to drive to Irazu volcano. All the tour books will tell you to visit the volcanoes early as the cloud cover moves in quickly and we can vouch for that.

The Irazú Volcano is an active volcano in Costa Rica, situated in the Cordillera Central close to the city of Cartago. The name could come from either the combination of "ara" and "tzu" or a corruption of Iztarú, which was the name of an indigenous village on the flanks of the volcano.

 Brought along rain gear just in case. Traffic getting out of San Jose was busy.

The drive up to Irazu is interesting and very green. Clouds were moving in even at 09:21 AM.

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We were lucky to get pictures of the volcano lake (very green) before it all became fogged in. The Crater Principal lake has an unusual greenish yellow coloring caused by rainfall dissolving the minerals along the craters walls.

The last time Volcán Irazú awoke was in the first half of the 1960’s, when, for four years it showered the residents of Cartago and San José with ash, clogged the air with smoke, and sent glowing boulders rolling down its sides.

Driving back down we stopped at Mirador La Canada Restaurant. Omelets were excellent.

Oxcarts may be used all over the world, but the oxcarts in Costa Rica are famous for their bright colors and rich decorations.
The colorfully-painted wooden oxcarts (called carretas in Spanish), their teams of matched oxen, and their oxcart drivers are known around the world. In 2005, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) proclaimed Costa Rica’s vibrantly painted, traditional oxcarts to be an Intangible World Cultural Heritage. Since 1988, the oxcart has been the National Labor Symbol for Costa Rica.
Originally, Spanish colonizers to Costa Rica brought oxcarts to be used for transportation and farm work. But their original European design of spoked wheels kept getting stuck and breaking in the rugged, muddy Costa Rican terrain. So, during the mid-19th century, a new design based on the indigenous Aztec disc was incorporated into a solid wood wheel bound by a metal ring that could cut through mud without getting stuck.
Dating from about 1840, oxcarts were used to transport coffee beans, sugar cane, corn and other goods from Costa Rica’s Central Valley over the mountains to the Pacific Coast port of Puntarenas or the Caribbean port of Limon for export. The journey would take 10 to 20 days crossing jungle-covered mountains, rivers, swamps and beaches. Now you can drive that same route in a little over an hour to the Pacific and in about two hours to the Caribbean.

Then 19km onto Cartago it is known for La Negrita, the Black Madonna shrine at Our Lady of the Angels Basilica.

Plaza Mayor

 
DEC 4, 5

We started out thinking we would be away for 2 days even though we had only reserved for 1 night at Costa Verde. Once on the road we decided it would make more sense to continue touring until Tuesday rather than going back and forth. It takes a long time to travel from place to place. We also discovered that since it is better to visit in the early morning it would be better to spend 2 nights in a spot. This enabled us to check in and then get up early the next morning to visit without having to check out.

MANUEL ANTONIO

Humidity, Jaco, Tarcoles

On the drive there we stopped at the Tarcoles bridge, known as the crocodile bridge.

The White Nosed Coati, also known as Coatimundi or the local term, Pizote, is very well-known in Costa Rica. Coatis are exotic animals that inhabit forested areas in Central America. They are found through most of Costa Rica, especially near the coast.

Quepos, is bustling as this area maintains a commercial fishing fleet, A palm oil harvesting company, and of course a growing tourism business. Sport fishing is obviously a big part of the tourism here, as approximately 40 sport fishing boats operate out of Quepos at different times. There are lots of restaurants, bars, gift shops, and internet cafés. 

One of the American owned restaurants, ‘El Gran Escape’ is favorite among the fisherman and will cook up your catch at the end of the day. We had lunch at this restaurant on the 4th. We had a cheese burger and the Tico meal of curried rice and chicken with black beans on the side. The meal was excellent. 

The Costa Verde resort was on the road to Manuel Antonio National Park, and although most people would agree that the beaches are great, the real reason to go is to try and see endangered monkeys within the interior of the park. 

Hotel Costa Verde ($70-150 US per night (2002)): On the hills above Manuel Antonio Park & beach is one of the closest hotels to the Park. You'll find cliff-side pools & sun-bathing decks, and spacious rooms with balconies all offering a birds-eye view of the park & beach. There are hiking trails on the property; you'll see loads of wildlife here! And 3 restaurants - the Anaconda bar with a fabulous view of the Park for lunchtime snacks & candlelight dining, and La Cantina barbecue restaurant cleverly built around a vintage railway carriage with live music most nights and El Avion just up the street.

 El Avion is actually a C-130 transport plane from the Iran-Contra fiasco in Nicaragua now relocated to a Manuel Antonio hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

El Avion (same name as Quepos) had good food – great pork sandwich!

Breakfast in the Anaconda restaurant was o.k.

Neither service nor food could redeem La Cantina restaurant.

Our room

Our view

The beach

John in the pool before having a nap.

So he missed this!

And soon they were everywhere.

Sitting in the Bar, you can share a drink with the monkeys that descend from the trees. While it's not the most eco-sensitive practice (feeding the monkeys makes them dependent), it's great fun.

Manuel Antonio Park

 There are always a number of guides hanging around the entrance with their telescopes. The guides were selling their services for $35US. We opted against getting one and although we probably missed a lot of stuff we did see bats, monkeys – squirrel and capuchin, sloths, lizards. If you stand near someone with a guide who is focusing his tripod on something then you can probably find it yourself. If you just pay attention and keep an eye open, you can see some interesting stuff, like the small bright red land crabs that you can see just off the main trail. On our way out we noticed some people that had started at the same time as we had (with guides) and they really didn't seem too excited about the whole thing.

We'd both recommend coming to see the park, especially early morning when you'll have enough space to yourself. You can walk the trails with sandals (not flip flops) but would recommend proper walking shoes, and beware the heat and riptides. Because of the humidity, bring water and dress lightly. There was a toilet at one of the beaches, but nothing else of note.

Dec 6, 7
MONTEVERDE

Montverde’s eerie, mossy forests are breathtakingly beautiful & home to the resplendent Quetzal. Only 150 visitors are allowed into the Park at any one time so arrive early to avoid waiting at the entrance. Tues-Sun 7am-4pm, entrance for the 2 of us came to $54 US with a guide. Suggest you take a guide who has a telescope which enables you to get a better view of the wildlife, flora and fauna and you can also take pictures through the telescope with a digital camera (if the guide has a good telescope).

The road from Manuel Antonio to the Monteverde Reserve isn't nearly as bad as you'd think - until the last 30km. The coastal highway up to Jaco and Puntarenas is in pretty good shape and the main North-South Panamerican highway is also pretty good. When you turn off the Panamerican highway the road gets worse the further in you get. Don’t go into Puntarenas unless you want to. We followed Frommer’s instructions to turn just before the Rio Lagarto Bridge for the principle road up to Santa Elena and Monteverde. It took us over an hour and a half to traverse the 30km to Santa Elena (the town next-door to the Reserve).

Nonetheless, we persevered and got to Santa Elena in the mid-afternoon. Our accommodation of choice was the mountain view room at the Monte Verde Lodge.

The lodge is a good family-friendly choice. With spacious rooms, a MAP rate, a lovely garden and trails (one that leads directly to the Ecological Farm), and a gigantic hot tub for soaking sore muscles, you can't go wrong. $90+ night. MAP $40 per person.
Don’t expect any response to e-mail or phone reservations. They are not very customer service oriented!

Meals were overpriced and awful. Caesar salad made with iceberg lettuce and drowned in Thousand Islands dressing, yech! The only choices on the menu the night we ate dinner were chicken, octopus or eggplant. 

On Saturday we rose early and drove to the MonteVerde Cloud Forest. 

SELVATURA WALKWAYS AND BRIDGE SKY WALK

Sunset

Dec 8, 9

ARENAL - by far our favourite!

Monteverde is only 109 km from Arenal as the crow flies BUT the drive takes 3 1/2 hours - we drove from Monteverde using the road to Tilarán.

Our tour around the lake was amazing: beautiful scenery (tropical rain forest meets little Switzerland) and lots of wildlife to be observed from the road. Be careful, you can turn a corner and run into a pack of coati on the road.

The Toad Hall: coffee/art shop with great views on Lake Arenal. Fantastic coffee and macadamia brownies.

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Arenal volcano - (drive time from San Jose: 3 1/2 hrs) is Costa Rica's most active volcano. During the day you'll see steam coming from the crater & hear the rumble of lava rocks tumbling down the slopes. 

Tabacon Hot Springs (a series of swimming pools sculpted from the hot volcanic river, in landscaped gardens) at the base of the volcano are definitely worth a visit or even better, stay over and enjoy the resort. 

Our room - there is a hot tub on the patio and another in the bathroom. Don’t leave your door open, you could have a coati come visiting!

Breakfast buffet is fantastic and included in price of room. We booked a suite for 2 nights and it was great.

The grounds

We spent a day lazing in the hot springs. You will hear the volcano often, which is a little eerie at first.

Then made appointments for pedicures and manicures at the spa. Talk about being spoiled!!! Pina coladas were a great thirst quencher!

Dinner in La Toucanes the first night – I had the sea bass which was smothered in a spinach sauce – looked like a dead octopus on my plate! John had the shrimps in orange jalapeño sauce, which was excellent. The following night I had the shrimp and John had the steak- which was excellent also.

Waiting for us after breakfast.

Dec 10

Drove back to San Jose after a leisurely breakfast. The town of La Fortuna does not have much to do or see. It is mostly cheaper hotels which offer day trips to Tabacon Resort for about $20 U.S. per person. There are some restaurants also but probably not worth the drive from the resort.

We managed to take out a vulture on the highway as he swooped down for lunch; he and the car collided, he lost. Luckily he didn’t do any damage.

Stopped in the town of San Ramon, which is very nice but doesn’t appear in any of the tour books. To use the sanitorios will cost you 70 colones. Nice town.

San Ramon is a city located 27 miles away from the northeast of Alajuela. It is also known as “the poets and presidents’ city” since five different presidents in the history of Costa Rica were born in this picturesque city in the province of Alajuela.

Sculpture outside the church.

We tried to find the town of Sarchi on our way back, but got lost and ended up driving through small suburbs to try and get back to the condo. Traffic was horrendous and direction signs non-existent. But we finally made it back and decided to eat in and veg watching T.V. as the movie selection was excellent.

Dec 11

Determined as always, we set out again to find Sarchi. We took the Panamerican highway to Zarcero and then worked backwards to Sarchi.

Zacero

The entrance to the Iglesia de San Rafael is directly behind Parque Francisco Alvarado, a notorious topiary garden designed by Don Evangelista Blanco in 1964. The gardener and curator of the park, Don Evangelista Blanco turned ordinary shrubs and hedges into figures of animals, people and interesting abstract shapes. After planting cypress tree seeds in the park, Don Evangelista Blanco waited four years until they had grown large enough to be shaped into the creatures he wanted to create.

 This is an incredible drive. Sarchi is famous for the building of “Ox Carts”. Found some souvenirs in Sarchi and then had lunch. La Finca, the restaurant in Sarchi had the best meal of our trip. We ordered the Finca Fiesta for 2.

Dec 12

Le Monastere
Dining with a fabulous view of the city's lights! A splendid evening at Le Monastere, an old restored monastery situated in the hills of Escazu just above San José, makes a perfect beginning or end to any vacation. 
Good food, great view, lousy service.

Dec 12, 13
Sightseeing in San Jose

We decided to drop the car off on Friday. Then we took a cab downtown to wander around and do some shopping. The only decent souvenir shops are near the Holiday Inn. There is not much to purchase, mainly coffee and T-shirts.
Take the city as it is, though — a cross between urban sophistication and a banana republic — and you’re bound to appreciate its varied aspects and have a rewarding visit.

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Who has not noticed the turrets and the castle-type walls that dominate downtown San José to the east. If you look closely, you will see bullet holes carefully maintained as relics of the 1948 civil war that led to the abolishment of the army.