On Monday and Tuesday we had our last Spanish sessions with both Profesora Maria and Profesora Ana. Jill and I were a little worried because we’d had a couple of weeks where we were either back in Austin or in the touristy parts of Costa Rica, where it’s harder to get people to speak to us in Spanish.

We needn’t have worried. We hadn’t lost any notable ground and were able to hop right back into Spanish-only conversation with both of our profesoras. Since we’d been out of of class for two weeks we burned up over an hour of class each day recounting (in Spanish) all of the events that had transpired over those two weeks to each of our teachers.

While we learned right up to the least minute with each of our fantastic teachers, both Monday and Tuesday were victory laps that were full of smiles and laughter. We brought coffee ice cream to school on Monday and introduced Profesora Maria (a self-described coffee fanatic) to it at snack time. Profesora Maria gave Jill a nuevo sombrero para la playa (new hat for the beach), will Jill’s name and a heart on it.

Profesora Ana regaled us with all of the things she has made in her new InstantPot 🙂 We wrapped up both days with hugs all around and sad feelings that our time together was coming to an end.

We started packing in earnest on Monday afternoon. We used the guest bedroom as a staging area. Jill did a great job of making the rental house feel homey with pictures and keepsakes from Austin. As soon as those things made their way into a pile on the guest bedroom bed the house started feeling more sterile and the end of our adventure started feeling very real.

Our landlord, Magda, invited us to dinner on Monday night and we had a pleasant meal with her in her restaurant at the bottom of the hill. She is one of the most industrious people I’ve ever met and it was very nice to know that she was at the bottom of the hill during our stay. Now that our stay is over AirBNB has prompted me to leave a review for her, which I will do shortly.

On Tuesday evening, we met our friend Catalina at Pizzeria La Finca for a Thank You dinner. Back in October, Catalina was the manager at the Hotel Villa Toscana, where Jill and I spent a couple of nights on the tail end of our trip. In October, as we were walking out of the hotel to find a place for lunch, we asked Catalina an off-hand question about whether there was a Spanish school in Atenas. By the time we were back from lunch Catalina had typed up a Word doc that we would use as an initial road map for planning our trip.

On Wednesday morning we were up before 5AM, because we were to meet Cesar at the airport at 6AM to drop off the car.

Jill had done a good job of getting us ready to roll in the morning so all we really had to do was pack up our toiletries and load the car. We said goodbye to the house (literally “Goodbye house!”), locked up, and headed down the hill. Magda (who gets up at 4AM) met us at the bottom of the hill and we gave her the keys and the remote for opening the gate. After hugs all around we were off for the airport.

During the drive to the airport, Jill and I reminisced about how intimidated we both were by driving on Ruta 3, the curvy road from Atenas to the airport, when we arrived in Costa Rica. By the end of our 90 days, Ruta 3 felt as familiar as my morning commute to the office in Austin.

Cesar, reliable as ever, met us at 6AM on the upper deck of the airport parking garage. We gave him the keys and a hug and headed into the airport.

Since we’d been back and forth to Austin a couple of times during our 90 day stay, going to the airport didn’t have the air of finality I thought it would have. That was true right up until we checked our bags. Previously when we’d gone back to Austin, I knew in the back of my head that we had a bunch of our stuff still in Costa Rica. Once our bags were tagged and thrown on the conveyor, that’s when it hit me that all of our belongings were now en route back to Austin.

When we leave a country, Jill and I have a ritual where I tell Jill how much local currency we have left over and Jill finds something fun at the airport to buy with that leftover currency. This is different than our standard souvenir Ritual in that Jill knows she is on the clock, whereas in the standard ritual we spend an effectively unlimited amount of time making our decision. We’d discussed for several weeks what thing would symbolize our adventure in Costa Rica to us and we were in agreement that the toucan (Por dicha!) is that something. As luck would have it, Jill found a local artist in the airport who was selling wildlife paintings and she honed in on two paintings of toucans. True to form, Jill wasn’t QUITE ready to pull the trigger and told the nice man we’d be back after I found her a cup of coffee (so in that way this ritual kind of was like the standard ritual because there was an initial visit with no purchase followed by a return visit for the actual purchase). We went off to get breakfast sandwiches and coffee, decided which of the two paintings we wanted, and returned 20 minutes later to seal the deal.

Our subsequent flights home were a little somber, but uneventful. We continued our tradition of celebrating our arrival back on US soil with margaritas and fajitas at Pappasito’s in the Houston airport.

We are home, unpacked, and starting to get settled back in.

Adventure is out there!

Jill and Mia got me a sloth sticker in Playa Santa Teresa and begged me to put it on my laptop. They made this request, knowing full well that one of my pet peeves is people who put stickers on expensive electronics. But, since I love both of them so much I relented.

We lounged around the house on Friday morning, but decided to take the Moshers for pupusas before their flight.

Jill and I saw the Moshers off to the airport with Javier at around 2:30PM Friday and then we set sail right behind them for Playa Potrero, which is a Pacific beach town 3 1/2 hours north of Atenas. The drive was uneventful until it got dark. We’ve mostly avoided driving at night except for a few airport pickups and short trips to restaurants in town.

We got to within an hour of Playa Potrero before it got dark. Once it was dark it was incredibly challenging. There were people riding their bicycles toward us in our lane of travel, people walking in the roadway, big buses riding our bumper, and people on horseback using the road. One time a driver flashed their lights at me and I was thinking there was a Transit Police stop ahead, but it turned out to be a loose cow wandering on the road. So… Pretty much a standard Friday 🙂

We made it to Play Potrero right around 7PM. We picked Playa Potrero for our final field trip because a friend-of-a-friend moved there from Austin about 9 months ago and we thought we’d go click rings with her and see how her Costa Rica experience has compared with ours. Kelle met us at our hotel and she was delightful. We grabbed dinner and a bottle of wine within earshot of the crashing surf and chatted away for a couple of hours. Our take away from that conversation is that our experience is within one standard deviation of normal.

After driving every day in Playa Santa Teresa and then driving from Atenas to Playa Potrero we agreed to just stay put at our hotel in Playa Potrero. It was one of our favorite hotel setups of the trip. The hotel and our room were right on the beach so we could hear the surf at all times. The restaurant had good food and there was a swim-up bar at the pool. We had a super relaxing day yesterday and slept like the dead both nights (my cold has finally subsided to the level where I can sleep well).

We got up this morning and had a leisurely breakfast, packed up, checked out, and got in the car to head back to Atenas.

A funny thing happened on a completely desolate stretch of road between Nicoya and Punta Arenas. We were zipping along at a moderate speed when a transit cop stepped out into the road and waved us down. Jill and I had seen enough of these random stops to know that we needed to keep our passports handy, as the transit police also check that you are not overstaying your 90-day stay. I was all smiles with my drivers license and passport — we were a little excited to have our first random stop.

Turns out it was not so pleasant. It was a tourist shakedown. He asked me to get out of the car and follow him back to his motorcycle, which I did. The officer said I was going “very fast.” I asked how fast. And he said “very fast.” We went back and forth like that for a little while. I could see where we were headed and he finally told me the fine for going “very fast” was $200 (odd that the fine would be in $USD) and I would have to pay my fine and retrieve my license plates at the Banco National in Liberia, two hours back the other direction. But, it being Sunday, the Banco National was closed today. He asked when we were leaving the country and I told him Wednesday. And he said that might be a problem because the system works slowly and I might not be able to get my license plates back in time. It went on like that for what seemed like about 5 minutes.

Now here’s the thing: If you know me, you know how averse I am to rewarding bad behavior. If we had another week in Costa Rica I would have happily called his bluff, just to make sure he didn’t pocket any of my money. But we really are leaving the country on Wednesday and the last thing I wanted to do was saddle Cesar with the chore of picking up his license plates in Liberia.

The officer and I stared at each other for a couple of minutes and he said. “Or I could let you off with a warning for $100.” I forked over $100 and we were on our way, feeling a little less rosy about how great a country Costa Rica is.

When I exited the car, Jill lost sight of me so she got out to see where I’d been whisked off to. We have not seen two mosquitoes in Costa Rica in the entire time we’ve been here. When Jill stepped out of the car she was swarmed by mosquitoes. I didn’t see it but she said she was waving and hopping frantically around like a madwoman. And, of course, we’d left the car windows down. So when I got back into the car it was thick with mosquitoes. We got rolling ASAP and kept the windows down for the next 30 minutes trying to shoo them out. But some of them made it home with us.

It’s sad that one of the last vivid experiences we will have in Costa Rica is a corrupt police officer, because it will definitely tarnish the memory. But we are already both laughing about it and waiting to see how may mosquito bites we have.

Jill waved goodbye to the ocean right after Punta Arenas and we made it home to Atenas with no further drama.

We just got in the car to go get some dinner and there were about 10 mosquitoes lying in wait for us. I won’t be surprised if there are still more when we head to Spanish school tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow is our last day with Profesora Maria. We are excited to see her because we have a present for her. We had her order a pair of shoes on Zappos before we went back to Austin last week and tomorrow we will present them to her. We also stopped at Pop’s (the local ice cream shop) after dinner and bought a pint of coffee ice cream. Profesora Maria LOVES coffee but has never had coffee ice cream. So we will break that out at snack time tomorrow in class.

Jill and I have both done some backsliding on our Spanish. We’ve spent the last two weeks either out of the country speaking English or in a touristy part of Costa Rica where we have to beg people to speak Spanish to us. We’re a little nervous about tomorrow’s class…

On Monday after Meg and Jill’s horseback ride, Jill and I headed into town to get some lunch. You never know what you’re going to see on the roads in Costa Rica. Jill and I were enjoying a delicious lunch at the local bakery when we saw a Mack dump truck and a bus have a standoff on the one lane road that runs in front of the bakery.

Once we got home we were in for the day and floated around the pool until sunset. Jill captured the sunset below.

Then Rich and I went out and got a couple of pizzas for dinner.

We were up early on Tuesday morning because we had a fishing charter lined up. Mia was a little under the weather so Jill, Rich, and I rolled out of the driveway at 6AM to head for the beach in Mal Pais about 30 minutes away where we met Alvaro who runs the charter operation out of Mal Pais, the village down the peninsula from Santa Teresa. Alvaro introduced us to De, who was our captain for the day.

It took about 5 minutes for Alvaro and De to roll our boat and trailer down the beach and into the water and then retrieve the trailer with a winch. It was one of the more ingenious beach launch setups I’ve seen. We were fishing in a 23′ panga-style boat. Panga is the go-to design in Central America and the Caribbean because they are stable, can handle a lot of weight, don’t draw much water and are easy to push with a 80 hp outboard motor. Jill, Rich, and I waded out into the water and climbed aboard via the transom. We left at high tide so there were no rocks to dodge.

De turned out to be a great captain. He’s from Mal Pais and has been fishing all of his life so we were basically fishing in his back yard.

This was Jill’s first ever fishing trip outside of fishing off of her family boat when she was young. She enjoyed being out on the boat and watching me and Rich fish.

One of the more practical drawbacks related to getting older for me is that my equilibrium clearly isn’t what it used to be. The big place that manifests itself is on boats. I’ve been on the water fishing my entire life, but in the last few years I’ve become very susceptible to seasickness. It’s manageable with Dramamine, but I now have to take a Dramamine the night before I get on a boat and another one the morning of. I previewed this with Alvaro (in Spanish 🙂 ) the night before the charter and he assured me that the sea was going to be “muy tranquilo.” I think he passed that along to De as well, because De did a good job of keeping the boat under power and stable at all times while we were out and I had no trouble.

De did a good job of putting us on the fish. We caught 5 tuna between us and ended up keeping a couple of nice fish.

The highlight for Jill came near the end of the charter when De spotted a pod of spinner dolphins off in the distance. He eased up on them and we rode along side them for about 15 minutes. There were several hundred dolphins in the pod and several of them took time to play in the bow wave of our boat. Jill was giddy.

When it came time to head back to the beach, De really earned his pay. We came back in at low tide and what had looked like a sandy beach when we launched was now a minefield of exposed rocks. De found the right channel on the edge of the rocks, waited for a swell to lift us up and over to give us a little more margin for error, and eased us to a soft landing on the beach. It was one of the most impressive pieces of seamanship I’ve ever seen.

Once we were on the beach and boat was back aboard the trailer, De got started cleaning our catch for us. Alvaro asked if we’d like a little sashimi from our catch and we all eagerly said yes. About 2 minutes later Jill, Rich, and I had a bowl of fresh tuna, with soy sauce, lime, and a little dash of tabasco. It was fantastic.

Once the fish were all cleaned we said our goodbyes and headed back to headquarters. Along the way, Jill let Yendry and Geovana know that we had fresh fish to add to the dinner menu for Tuesday night. They stopped by the house a little after lunch to pick up the fish and incorporated it into our dinner for both Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

After the ladies picked up the fish, we went next door to the Yoga resort and sat at the bar drinking adult beverages and sushi.

Mia was still fighting her bug on Wednesday morning so we had a pretty quiet day just lounging by the pool and picking up pizzas for lunch.

We had one last delicious breakfast this morning from Yendry and Geovana and then commenced packing up for the return to Atenas.

Diego, who picked us up at the Tambor airstrip last Thursday, ferried us back today.

Our flight back to San Jose was a little bumpy, but Meg came through like a champ. Our driver, Javier, was ready with the van when we exited the domestic terminal and we were back at headquarters by about 2:15 today.

We are meeting a friend of Mia and Rich’s for dinner at Pizzeria La Finca tonight. He’s driving over from San Jose.

Javier will come pick up the Moshers and take them to the airport tomorrow at 2:30PM. Jill and I will head out in our trusty Honda CR-V for our very last field trip in Costa Rica before we head home for good on May 1. We are headed to Playa Potrero with is in the northern Pacific zone and we will be back on Sunday evening.

It’s hard to believe we have less than a week left in Costa Rica, but we are planning to make the most of it 🙂

Adventure is out there!

We made it back from Austin on Wednesday, no worse for the wear. We got out just ahead of a line of severe storms that was blowing through Texas that was causing Dallas and Houston to preemptively cancel flights starting right after ours. We left our trusty Honda CR-V in the San Jose airport’s parking garage while we were in Austin because the parking fee for 3 days was exactly on par with what it would have cost us to get a driver there and back.

Prior to heading back to Austin, Jill and I went through all of our stuff and culled everything we won’t need for our final two weeks in Costa Rica. We took that back in a suitcase and returned to Costa Rica with no checked bags. It was a bit of an odd feeling getting on a plane in Austin wearing shorts and flip flops with no baggage.

We ended up getting to our house in Atenas at 9PM on Wednesday night and piled into bed knowing that our friend Javier was picking us up at 8:30AM Thursday morning to take us back to the airport to meet the Moshers and climb on a puddle jumper with them to Santa Teresa Beach.

We were up with the sun on Thursday and packed a bag full of swimsuits, shorts, t-shirts, and sunscreen. I met Javier at the bottom of our hill so that I could open the gate for him and he followed me up the hill to our house where Jill was waiting with our suitcases. We always enjoy our rides with Javier. Every time we see him he asks us how our Spanish is coming and gives us feedback.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that Semana Santa (Holy Week) is a big deal in Costa Rica. We’d been told by Profesoras Ana and Maria that Costa Rica basically shuts down Thursday and Friday of Semana Santa and everyone heads for the beach. Fortunately for us they were all heading out of town while we were headed into the airport. Even by Costa Rican standards, the roads were crazy on the way to the airport. Everyone was bumper to bumper leaving town on Ruta 1, the main highway through San Jose.

Because we were headed to one of the more remote areas of Costa Rica and a couple of the members of our party don’t do well on long car trips on winding roads, we ended up chartering a small plane from CarmenAir to get us from San Jose to the remote landing strip in Tambor, about a 45 minute drive from our final destination. Once Javier dropped us at the domestic terminal, Jill and I dropped our bags at the CarmenAir desk so that we could go help the Moshers transit the 200 yards between the international and domestic terminals. CarmenAir is a lean operation. The nice young man who took our bags and collected our payment for the flights turned out to also be our co-pilot.

We then strolled over to the international terminal and had a little snack at the airport cafe while waiting for the Moshers to arrive. Their flight was a little early and they breezed through immigration and customs and popped out of the arrivals hall door looking exactly like three people who’d taken a red-eye from California. We had hugs all around and set off for CarmenAir.

Having already met our co-pilot we gave him the Mosher’s bags. He then escorted us through the security checkpoint where the ramp agent checked all of our passports against the charter manifest. They had a cooler waiting by our airplane, a well-loved Britten Normal Islander, and Jill, Rich, and Mia all opted for an ice-cold Imperial beer. We went through our safety briefing which included the co-pilot saying “There are life vests in the pouch in front of you and if we have to evacuate the aircraft please wait for the propellers to stop spinning” (that’s literally what he said).

A universal truth of island hopping aircraft seems to be that they are piloted by young men in classic RayBans. This was no exception. Both our pilots were probably in their mid-20s and had the requisite RayBans. The fact that they fit the stereotype gave me confidence that we were in good hands.

The distance between San Jose and Tambor is about 150 kilometers as the crow flies. The flight is 30 minutes and the drive would be 6 hours plus a ferry ride on the best of days. Once we were airborne we saw just how stacked up the roads to the coast really were (due to Semana Santa). Flying was hands-down the right call. We had a birds-eye view of the highway to the coast and it was backed up the whole way.

We flew right over Atenas on our way to Tambor. It was super loud in the airplane so we really couldn’t communicate with each other, but I pointed out the window and yelled “Atenas!” and I think everyone got the message.

We had light chop as we cleared the mountains and then smooth sailing all the way into the Tambor landing strip. There are no physical structures other than the runway and a covered waiting area at Tambor. And there are definitely no runway lights.

A family was waiting in the shade to board our airplane for the return trip to San Jose. There was a lady with a clipboard manning the exit gate from the runway. She let everyone in our party through and then stopped me and said I had to pay her a $12 “impuesta” (basically a landing tax) for the 5 people in our party. I found it interesting that she let everyone else through and then stopped me. Not sure what would have happened if I didn’t have any cash.

Our driver, Diego, was waiting for us outside the gate with the ubiquitous diesel minivan. He had the air conditioning cranked up and we were soon rolling toward Santa Teresa Beach. It was about a 50 minute drive. We’d heard the roads were bad in this part of Costa Rica, but we’d also heard that about other places where the roads, in actuality, were quite nice. We were lulled into a false sense of security because there was brand new blacktop for the first 5 kilometers or so. Then we were finally treated to the washed-out rutted roads that we’d heard so much about. It took us about 45 minutes to go 17 km. Credit goes to Diego though. He got us through with a minimum of jolting. I’ve since driven that same stretch of road and I didn’t do nearly as good a job as he did of not thoroughly rattling my passengers.

Since we arrived a little early for check-in time for the house we rented, Diego dropped us off at Florblanca, a resort 100 meters down the beach from our house. Florblanca is a yoga resort and caters to the mind-body crowd. They also have a very nice bar 🙂 The food is good, too. We lingered over a nice lunch and everyone but Meg had an adult beverage or two. By then it was time for check-in and went out front of Florablanca at our pre-ordained pickup time and were shuttled to our house, where we were met by Carmen our concierge for the week.

There’s an interesting bit of the Costa Rican economy in the remote touristic areas where young gringos, typically Canadians, have managed to insinuate themselves into customer-facing concierge positions. I’m not exactly sure how it evolved, but their role is to be the native-english-speaker interface for the typically-english-speaking tourists who rent the houses. The system seems to work pretty well. It gives these young people a viable way to make a living and stay in Costa Rica. And there doesn’t seem to be any friction with the locals because the concierge-role is constantly directing tourist dollars back into the local economy. By way of example, Carmen set us up with a fantastic day of boating yesterday, on-site massages for the girls the day before that, surfing lessons for Meg and Rich, horseback riding on the beach this morning for Meg and Jill. Best of all, Carmen has lined up a delightful mother-daughter team of chefs, Geovana and Yendry, to prepare several meals for us at the house which allows us to have a full day of activities and not have dinner prep looming at the end of a day in the sun. Carmen is delightful. She manages several properties and she makes the rounds each morning to check on us and see if we need her to line anything up.

Carmen gave us a tour of the house and got us connected to the wifi. The house is remote enough that we don’t have cell service here, but all of our phones are set up for wifi calling and texting. Otherwise Meg would have burst into flames by now 😉 The last thing Carmen did before she left was ask us if she could have some groceries delivered (since our rental car wasn’t here yet) so Mia and Jill gave her a list of essentials.

Having flown all night, the Moshers all settled in for a nap.

The groceries were delivered a couple of hours later by a guy who was clearly a surfer doing any odd job he can find to make ends meet. That was mostly unremarkable with one exception. We asked Carmen for a 12-pack of beer and that got interpreted by the surfer as 12 six packs (3 cases) of beer. I find it funny that 3 cases of beer didn’t strike him as odd. More so given that he delivered it on a motorcycle. Fortunately we were able to return the excess beer and get a refund.

Late Thursday afternoon, the guy showed up with the rental car. We ended up with a Toyota HiLux 4-wheel-drive diesel truck with a standard transmission. I hadn’t had a car with a standard transmission since the 20th century, but fortunately muscle memory is a wonderful thing. The driveway of this house is steep enough that I have to engage 4WD to get up it (because there’s not enough weight over the rear wheels). And the steepness makes it impossible to see over the hood of the vehicle to check for cross traffic when it spits you out onto the main road that runs through the town of Santa Teresa. I’ve developed a ritual where I engage 4wd, work my way to the point where my front wheels crest the hill and then stop, because I’m blind to cross traffic. At that point I man the emergency brake so I don’t roll back down the hill when I am re-engaging the clutch to pull out onto the street. After 3 days of that, I’d like to think my neural pathways are burned-in but I’ve learned not to get cocky in Costa Rica.

The house is great. We are 30 meters from the ocean. There’s a 3 meter tidal swing so we get to see tidepools when the tide is out. My favorite part is that we have a resident tiger heron. The first day we were here we got to watch him eat crabs. He would sit motionless within striking distance of their holes and when they would peek out he would snatch them right out of the holes, crack their shells with his beak and then swallow them whole. We also have a troop of howler monkeys in the area and they put in an appearance that first evening.

We stayed in the first night and met Yendry and Geovana for the first time as they cooked us a delicious dinner of pan-seared mahi mahi, rice, and vegetables, finished off with chocolate cake and ice cream. At that point I knew we were in good hands 🙂

We all piled into bed pretty early on Thursday, except Meg. She was up late sitting on the swing under the palapa doing whatever it is that 16-year-old girls do on their phones.

When we checked in, Carmen told us where to acquire baguettes and croissants. I was itching to familiarize myself with the truck before I had the added responsibility of passengers so I left the house at 6:45AM to try and find the bakery. That’s when I learned that 2WD wouldn’t cut it for getting up the driveway. I found the bakery with no trouble and laid in a couple of baguettes and a half dozen croissants. Driving in Santa Teresa is as intense as anyplace else I’ve driven in Costa Rica. There are potholes that will swallow your car, surfers and perros (dogs) walking carefree down the middle of the road, aggressive motorcyclists, and the ever-present buses. But, I made it back in one piece and the baked goods were delicious.

Friday was pretty low-key. Mia and Rich went to Florblanca next-door for a yoga class with Stefano and came back raving about it. They said he’s the real-world version of the yoga teacher in the moving Couples Retreat. Jill and I went for a walk along the beach at low tide.

In the afternoon there was nothing on the docket but a surfing lesson for Meg and Rich. That allowed our California visitors to get rested up from their overnight flight. We spent the rest of the day lounging in the pool and being generally lazy.

When it came time for the surf lesson a guy pulled up to our house on an ATV. He was sitting on two surf boards to secure them for the ride over. He is from New Zealand and showed up in Costa Rica about twelve years ago and never left. We hear that a lot. He told us his name, but his accent was strong enough that none of us could understand what it was.

Side-note: The creativity of surfers transporting surfboards never ceases to amaze me. We saw it for the first time in Jaco and they do it here too. I’ve seen three people with three surf boards on one scooter. I’ve also seen a taxi pull up with the passenger holding the surfboard against the roof. Fascinating.

It was a beautiful afternoon so Mia, Jill, and I all trooped along to watch Rich and Meg. We piled into the HiLux with the surfboards in the bed and followed him to the beach. The lesson took place about a mile down the road at Hermosa Beach which is fantastically beautiful and apparently revered by surfers. There were really big waves about 200 yards off shore and also beginner waves closer in. Meg and Rich both acquitted themselves well and seemed to have a good time.

Knowing in advance that surf lessons make you hungry (and knowing Rich), we had secured reservations at Koji, Santa Teresa’s premiere sushi place. Koji did not disappoint.

Carmen asked if we would like to have a bonfire by the beach one night and we thought that was a great idea. The bonfire was set up when we got back from Koji on Friday night and I went down to start it, but then everyone decided they wanted to go to bed. I thought I’d succeeded in snuffing it out before it got going and I went to bed. It turns out that I did not succeed in snuffing it out so the howler monkeys were treated to a roaring bonfire and I woke up to a perfect circle of ashes.

On Saturday, Yendry and Geovana made us a traditional Costa Rican breakfast of gallo pinto (rice and beans) and huevos (eggs) with the most unbelievably good homemade corn tortillas and sweet plantains.

After breakfast, Jill and Mia headed over to yoga class with Stefano and Rich and I headed into town to see if we could get some $USD out of the ATM (in tourist areas the service providers prefer to be paid in cash and preferably in $USD) and to see if we could score and scopolamine patches (to prevent seasickness) at the pharmacy for our scheduled boat outing. Rich and I struck out on both fronts. Semanta Santa had emptied the one ATM in town that carries $USD and the pharmacy did not have scopolamine patches.

Mia, Jill, and Meg had massages at the house on Saturday afternoon, with Jill and Meg going first and then Mia. Once Meg and Jill were through, Jill, Rich, Meg and I went into town on a search for souvenirs. Meg is already a pro at the souvenir ritual. Rich is still finding his sea legs on that front.

When we parked there was a ruckus going on at one of the touristy surf shops. Two burly guys were manhandling a couple of teenagers into a little shed reminiscent of a phone booth. They proceeded to lock them in. It became apparent that it was the security guard performing a citizen’s arrest on some shop lifters. The entire town came out to watch. The police showed up within about 15 minutes and slapped the cuffs on the alleged offenders, but then they took them off and rounded up a couple of different people. The police seemed to initially take the word of the security guard then maybe the ladrones (thieves) ratted out some of their friends who were the latter group that got attention from la policia. We did not stick around for the conclusion, but it was looking more and more like no one was going to end up in police custody. Santa Teresa is a small enough town that we suspect the parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles of the offenders knew about it within minutes of it happening. Jill has a theory that the shame of the public spectacle will result in family justice being meted out, even if nothing official comes of it.

Meg ended up scoring three t-shirts and a stop at the gelateria, which meant I got a scoop of coffee ice cream 🙂

Saturday’s dinner location was Rocamar, a beachside restaurant that only does dinner service on Saturdays. Carmen directed us there. The most remarkable thing about our dinner at Rocamar was that the “live” entertainment was a surfer who we were pretty sure didn’t know how to play the guitar. It was truly awful. As Rich observed, it was like listening to someone try and fail to tune a guitar for 2 hours.

Carmen set us up for a boat excursion on Sunday morning. We drove the 25 km to the Tambor pier. The road would alternate being paved and being dirt about every kilometer or so. It was a rattling ride that took about an hour.

The good news is that we had a great day on the water. Michel, originally from Italy, was our captain and the mates were Tomas and David, both Argentines. They took us to Tortuga Island, which is a giant preserve, where we frolicked on secluded beaches, snorkeled, and Meg, Jill, and Rich all did discovery dives with SCUBA gear. Plus they fed us quite well. Jill and I both got complimented by captain and crew on our Spanish (that kind of validation makes the struggle to learn a new language worth it).

We were on the water from about 8:30AM until about 2PM. The only casualties were that Mia and Jill both got a little sunburned. While we were on the water, Captain Michel told us about the town of Montezuma, where he lives. Tomas and David also live there. Mostly Michel raved about the gelato in Montezuma. Because Montezuma wasn’t too far out of our way we stopped there on our way back to headquarters. Michel wasn’t wrong about the gelato and the town of Montezuma is a super cute little town of 450 people right on the water. Meg also did some souvenir shopping with the street vendors and came away with a few bracelets.

After all of the driving I did yesterday plus being in the sun, I was pretty wiped out. I think we all were. Fortunately we had the good sense to schedule Yendry and Geovana to cook us dinner last night. Rich and I hopped in the pool when we got home and stayed there for a couple of hours while Jill and Mia worked on a puzzle.

Dinner last night was ceviche de puplo (octopus ceviche), arroz con camarones (rice with shrimp), and for postres (dessert) arroz con leche (rice pudding). All delicious.

This morning Jill and Meg went on a horseback ride the took them along the beach and through the jungle. They saw capuchin monkeys and howler monkeys. Meg seemed to have a good time. Jill was a good aunt and a good sport for going with her, but says that’s the last horseback ride of her life. Jose, who was leading the ride, did not speak any english so Jill did get to spend the entire ride chatting with him in Spanish.

I woke up with a sore throat on Saturday morning. I’m hoping it’s just allergies and not something I picked up at one of the airports last week. I have some cough drops that I got at the farmacia (pharmacy) yesterday that make my whole mouth and throat numb. Hopefully I’m turning the corner.

That brings us up to date on the first half of our adventure in Playa Santa Teresa.

Adventure is out there!

After two and half months of non-stop waterfalls, rainforests, and beaches we finally got around to volcanoes! Jill had a client Thursday after Spanish school and we set out as soon as she wrapped up. Our destination was the town of La Fortuna in the shadow of Volcan Arenal. Arenal is the most famous of Costa Rica’s volcanoes. It sits out by itself and is the perfect cone shaped volcano. On the advice of our landlady, Magda, we booked a room at Tabacon Thermal Resort in La Fortuna. Magda suggested we stay at Tabacon because of their fabulous thermal pool setup. The Arenal volcano supplies the region with a whole bunch of hot springs and there are about a million operations offering tourists an opportunity to soak in the magical healing and rejuvenating waters.

Jill and I have been spoiled over the last two weeks because our excursions took us on routes with nice wide roads at relatively high speeds. The route from Atenas to La Fortuna is old school Costa Rica. The roads are about a car-and-a-half wide and alternate steep uphill curves and steep downhill curves. After a couple of hours driving in that environment I’m pretty wrung out from dodging buses, dogs, and tractors.

Fortunately, we made it to the outskirts of La Fortuna on schedule and without incident. We got our first glimpse of Arenal from about 20 miles out. Thursday was a bit hazy, so we didn’t get much more than the outline of the volcano.

We got checked into Tabacon and were quite impressed with the operation. It is very un-Costa Rican and reminded us of a nice resort in Hawaii. Think manicured grounds and golf carts. We donned our fluffy white robes and headed for the lobby to get transported to the magical healing waters.

The “Tabacon Thermal Experience” is about 400 yards from the hotel. There’s a shuttle bus that runs every 5 minutes. It’s very well done.

After soaking, drinking, dining, and shopping we retired to our room for a good night’s sleep.

In the morning when I opened up the blackout curtains, this guy was nosing around the grass in behind our room. It’s a coatimundi — Costa Rica’s version of a raccoon.

Our destination for Saturday was the Mistico Hanging Bridge park, which advertises a 2 hour trek through the rainforest with 6 hanging bridges. You know Jill likes her some hanging bridges!

We arrived at Mistico without any trouble. When we got there there was a gated entrance and a man approached us with a clipboard. He asked if we had a reservation and we said “Umm…. no?” Fortunately his response was that would not be a problem and he waved us through the checkpoint. The next stop was the parking attendant, but since I’m now a professional at the protocol we had no trouble backing into the spot he assigned us.

We paid the nice lady at the admission booth $26 each and she pointed us to the trail head.

Anyway… On to the hanging bridges!

Hanging bridges are interesting. You would think that the motion would be amplified in the middle of the bridge, but our experience is that the 1/4 way marks on both sides was where the movement tended to be exaggerated. It’s also interesting how quickly the human body adapts. We were both holding on to the side ropes on the first three or four bridges and by the end we were much more confident in our ability to stay upright without holding on.

We grabbed a quick lunch of arroz con pollo (rice with chicken) at the on-site restaurant. This was the view from our table at the restaurant.

We stopped at the restrooms on the way out because we were going to drive up to Lake Arenal. In America every grocery store has scooters available for patrons. This is the first scooter we have seen in Costa Rica.

Lake Arenal was only about 10 minutes from Mistico. It’s hands-down the biggest body of fresh water in Costa Rica. It’s man made and provides hydro-power. We drove about 45 minutes up the shoreline.

When we got back to the hotel this guy was waiting outside our room. It’s one of the Jesus Christ lizards. So-named because they can run across water. He ran across the fountain across from our room 🙂

After a few minutes in our room we donned our robes for another go at the thermal baths. We had a cabana with a great view of the volcano.

We got back to our room a little after dark and took a quick shower and reconvened in the bar where we had gin and tonics and bar food for dinner. We picked the bar because Jill had been craving a cheeseburger and the bar had one on the menu.

I think we would both conclude that Arenal is fantastic, but it’s damn hard to get to. Beautiful scenery and the volcano is pretty stunning, but there just aren’t any full-sized roads in that area.

Because we are headed back to Austin for a couple of days in the morning, we had an early breakfast this morning and beat an orderly retreat back to headquarters. The drive was no less daunting on the return trip.

We will be back in Costa Rica on Wednesday evening and then the Moshers arrive on Thursday and we will head to Playa Santa Teresa. We’ve been warned that Costa Ricans head for the beaches in droves during Semana Santa (Holy Week) so it will be interesting to see what a “crowd” looks like. I will report back.

Adventure is out there!

Yesterday we took the Instant Pot to Spanish school to give to Profesora Ana. She was SOOOO excited! We took it into the kitchen area of the school and I showed her how everything works. We will see her in the morning and I will be surprised if she hasn’t taken it out for a test drive by then. Thanks again to my parents for acquiring it on short notice and getting it through security! Jill and I got a lot of use out of it and hopefully it will bring Profesora Ana joy for a long time to come 🙂

We spent today in class practicing preterito imperfecto (imperfect past-tense), which, we’ve been told is useful for narratives. Think “So, what have you been doing since I saw you last?” It’s the simplests of all. There are only THREE irregular verbos in preterito imperfecto:

• Ser – to be
• Ir – to go
• Ver – to see

I think they made us spend two months on preterito (standard past tense) because they knew if they taught us preterito imperfecto first we’d just use that forever 🙂

Counting tomorrow we only have three more days of classes before we pack up our traveling circus and head home to Austin. It’s hard to believe.

At the end of class today, we learned something fascinating about Profesora Maria. She lives for coffee, but has NEVER had coffee ice cream. Jill and I are going to pick up a pint of coffee ice cream from Pop’s and take it to class on our last day with Profesora Maria. I plan to have my camera ready when her head explodes.

Tomorrow is Dia de Juan Santamaria! It’s a national holiday to celebrate the 17 year old who drove the hated banditos yanquis from Costa Rica in the late 1800’s. We really have no idea what to expect, but it should be interesting. We have class with Profesora Ana and then we will set out for La Fortuna.

We’ve gone two and a half months in a country full of volcanoes without getting up close and personal with a volcano. All that changes tomorrow. La Fortuna is about 2 1/2 hours north of Atenas. We don’t have any firm engagements, but there are three things we hope to do:

• Hanging bridges! – Jill loves hanging bridges and there is an entire park where the trail is full of hanging bridges
• Hot springs! – The La Fortuna is full of volcano-fueled hot springs. We plan to soak in them
• Volcanoes! – Arenal is the grandaddy of all of Costa Rica’s volcanoes and La Fortuna is at the foot of Arenal.

I will report back on how we did…

Adventure is out there!

On Thursday at 8AM, we met Profesora Ana in front of the church in Atenas to prepare for our interview (Diego who runs the school had set us up to interview someone from the Atenas ministry of tourism at 9AM on Thursday). We sat at a table in the park and chatted in Spanish for a while. Then Profesora Maria showed up with RICE PUDDING! It turns out that cooking is one of Profesora Maria’s favorite pastimes. So much so that she gets up at 3AM every day and makes sandwiches and burritos that are sold at La Coope. She’s apparently somewhat famous in Atenas 🙂 It was a lovely gesture that she made a batch of rice pudding for us on top of her normally busy schedule.

Our interview was set for 9AM. Jill and I managed to get pretty worked up over it beforehand, but our interview subject was as friendly as she could possibly be. Her name was Lemory and she’s fresh out of tourism school and works as the PR person for Atenas. We asked her all of our canned questions and then had some follow-ups. Jill and I surprised ourselves by spending 30 minutes chatting away with her in Spanish. We learned about Cataratas Los Angeles, a waterfall near Atenas that we haven’t been to yet, and also about an overlook called El Mirador, above Atenas where you can see the Pacific Ocean.

We then met Profesora Ana back at the table in the park and trooped on to school, where she debriefed us on our interview and what we learned. I’ll be surprised if Diego doesn’t check up on us with Lemory.

When we finished Spanish school we trundled back home to load up the car and head for Ojochal. We also scarfed down the Profesora Maria’s rice pudding as a pre-roadtrip snack.

It was fantastic. She uses cloves and cinnamon. We piled in the car and proceeded to La Coope, where we got cash, filled up the car, and bought two of Profesora Maria’s sandwiches for the road. We got one “Italiano” and one “Pollo en Mostazza-Miel” (chicken with honey mustard). We proudly told the cashier at La Coope that Profesora Maria is our maestra (teacher) and of course she knew who Maria was. We ate the sandwiches on one of the straighter stretches of Ruta 32 on our way down to Ojochal. They were also delicious!

It would’t be a road trip in Costa Rica if you didn’t end up behind a tractor.

We also passed an overturned 18 wheeler where they had backed another 18 wheeler up to it and had a bucket brigade of guys passing cargo from the overturned truck to the upright one.

You see all kinds of roadside attractions in Costa Rica. It’s not uncommon for people to be selling furniture, or carved and painted pillors, or wooden macaws, or random statues. This is one of the more interesting statuary inventories.

After three and a half hours of driving we saw four toucans fly across the road (Por dicha!) and we made it without incident to the lovely village of Ojochal. We picked this location because there’s about a 60 mile stretch of the Pacific coast where the mountains come down almost to the water, which makes for some beautiful scenery and also lots of wildlife. We had no trouble finding our hotel, the Hotel El Mono Feliz (The Happy Monkey Hotel) and Sofia got us all checked in.

Because we had a couple of hours of daylight left we asked Sofia what spots we should hit before dark. She directed us to Playas Las Ventanas (Windows Beach). That turned out to be a good call.

Playas Las Ventanas is so named because there are a couple of caves that you can see through from the beach to the ocean at low tide. And when the tide is up the waves come surging through the caves making fantastic booming sounds like thunder and filling the whole beach with mist.

After Playa Las Ventantas we did a drive by of Playa Tortuga. Sofia told us it was more rugged that Playa Las Ventanas. She was right, but we did have a troop of 30 white-faced Capuchin monkeys meander through the treetops above our car.

Ojochal is kind of out in the sticks so we backtracked to Uvita where they have a proper super market (BM Supermarket – For Ticos by Ticos). We bought some snacks for the room and a few bottles of San Pellegrino for JillyP and then went to Heliconia for a lovely dinner. Another reason for picking Ojochal is that Ojochal bills itself as the foodie capital of Costa Rica. We concur. Unfortunately we didn’t take any pictures of dinner at Heliconia so you’ll have to wait until we go back.

Driving in Costa Rica for several hours will wipe you out. So we finished our dinner at Heliconia and headed back to the hotel and collapsed into bed.

The Hotel El Mono Feliz has a free breakfast for all of its guests. Because we had an 8:30AM booking Friday morning for a guided tour of the mangroves in the town of Sierpe about 45 minutes south of Ojochal, we were front and center for breakfast at 7AM. Our host Rhonda told us that Friday’s special was “Tropical French Toast”. I consider myself to be somewhat of a French toast connoisseur. This was the best I’ve ever had. Another feather in the cap of Ojochal as the foodie mecca of Costa Rica.

Because we were on the clock we didn’t tarry over breakfast. We thanked Rhonda and we were off! The Sierpe area south of Ojochal is an estuary brimming with some of the most amazing wildlife I’ve ever seen. This particular outing was my pick. I love flowing water and all of the life forms it gives rise to. The Waze lady got us to Kokopelli Tours at 8:30 on the dot. We got lucky in that there were 6 patrons signed up for the 8:30 tour but it’s 4 people plus the guide to a boat. So Jill and I got our own private tour. Our guide was named Jonathan and he was awesome. We told Jonathan when we got in the boat that we wanted the Spanish immersion experience so he only spoke to us in Spanish (although we asked him a few questions in English).

For the next four hours I was in heaven.

In addition to seeing tons of wildlife, we got a master class in mangrove ecosystems. They really are fantastic trees. Costa Rica has designated it’s mangrove forests near Sierpe as protected habitat.

A unique side-benefit of the mangrove tour is that being outside learning stuff makes me giddy with happiness. We capitalized on that by heading back from Sierpe to Ojochal to grab lunch at Citrus. Citrus is a gem in Ojochal and would be at home as in any serious food destination. We had gyoza as a starter and for lunch Jill had a shrimp pad thai that she said was the best ever. I had a chef’s take on my favorite vietnamese-style noodle bowl with super tender marinated beef and crispy eggrolls over rice noodles. Then we lingered over a couple of cappuccinos. They have a different menu for lunch and dinner so we made a plan to return for dinner before the end of our visit.

After an adventurous morning and satisfying lunch we retired to our cabana for a well earned nap. The Hotel El Mono Feliz has some central rooms, but we opted for one of their cottages that’s set back on the property in the wildlife. Our cottage was under a massive rainforest hardwood of some sort. In the middle of the night the first night we could hear things dropping in the forest around us. About three or four times whatever it was scored a direct hit on our roof with a bang that jolted us both out of sleep. We now know that was the ripe fruit of the tree dropping from great height and to great effect. We talked to Rhonda about it and she said that the gardener had just that morning alerted her to the fact that the tree was dropping fruit and would likely be doing so for the next week. Once we knew what it was it didn’t even occur to us to want to switch rooms and we got the giggles each time one scored a hit on us.

After our nap we headed back to Playa Las Ventanas to watch the waves crash through the tunnels and then on to our selected dinner location for the evening, The Bamboo Room.

We picked The Bamboo Room because it was reputed to be the best sunset dining spot in Ojochal. It definitely came through on that front, but as a totally unexpected bonus we happened into a live band, made up of expats, that did two fantastic sets of 80’s covers. We got to the The Bamboo Room at 5:00 and left at 9:30. The Bamboo Room is the kind of place that we would gladly make a part of our weekly staples. Super fun night!

Parque Nacional Marino Ballena is the headline national park for this part of Costa Rica is in Uvita – about 15 minutes north of Ojochal. Ballena means whale and the name comes from the fact that there’s a beach in the form of a whale tale that’s only available at low tide. The path to the beach is called “The Path of Moses” because the waters part to make the beach accessible at low tide.

After we left the national park we headed to Villa Leonor, which is a nice restaurant that has a “private” beach behind it. All beaches in Costa Rica are public, but Villa Leonor owns the only path to this part of the beach and there’s kind of an unwritten rule that if you come to use their path you will spend some money at their establishment. Fortunately the food is really good. Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures at Villa Leonor. Except this one…

After a super taxing morning of swimming at the national park and then swimming at the private beach at Villa Leonor, we were worn out and ready to relax by the pool.

We lounged by the pool until it was time for dinner at Citrus. Citrus killed it again! We had a salmon spring roll as a starter. Jill had fish two ways and I had a sushi bowl. Instead of cappuccino we got a sublime dessert that involved some sort of fluffy chocolate and orange pastry and vanilla ice cream. Once again we forgot to take pictures of the food.

We waddled out of Citrus and trundled back to our hotel and climbed into bed.

This morning I noticed there was no breeze but there was still a fair amount of fruit falling off the tree above our cottage. So I stood outside of our cottage staring up at the tree looking for movement. Sure enough, I spotted an iguana on one of the branches. I’m guessing the iguanas, which are vegetarians, had been noshing on the fruit all weekend and knocking some off along the way. You think of animals as being super coordinated and good at what they do, but I learned this morning that iguanas are not particularly graceful. I was watching the iguana about 100 feet up in the tree and as he went to move from one limb to another he lost his footing and was hanging on by a back foot. He almost managed to save it, but he ultimately lost his grip and came crashing all the way down through the branches and hit the ground with a HUGE thud. It made the same sound as a bowling ball would have. I’d like to think that there’s enough spongy leaf matter on the ground that he survived the fall, like Wile E. Coyote.

We had a reprise of the Tropical French Toast this morning before we started our trip home. It was just as good the second time.

Shortly after getting on the road, we found ourselves behind this motorcycle with sidecar. It was two adults on the motorcycle and a child in the sidecar. I don’t know if the cant of the wheel on the sidecar is normal, but it kind of freaked me out.

We stopped to get gas in Uvita and spotted this BBQ place. If they’d been open we would have totally taken one for the team and tried their wares.

The whole concept of electrical service delivery in Costa Rica is a little bit disorderly to this particular electrical engineer.

We had a very uneventful drive home to Atenas. We stopped for pupusas once we hit town then picked up a few necessities at La Coope and walked in the door just after noon.

We had so much fun, but there are things we have exactly zero pictures of. I’ve been reflecting on why we don’t have more pictures of some of the things we did during our weekend in Ojochal and I think the answer is that we were having so much fun that we forgot to take pictures. This is the first place we’ve been in Costa Rica that we were sad to leave when it was time to come home. As I’ve previously mentioned the food in Costa Rica is perfectly adequate, but the food in Ojochal is outstanding. The scenery where the mountains meet the ocean is visually stunning and weaving through the mangroves in a boat is a pretty happy place for me.

The consensus is the the southern Pacific coast is our new lugar favorito (favorite place) in Costa Rica!

More evidence that we had a ton of fun is that Jill completely forgot our souvenir protocol and came home empty handed.

We are busy with Spanish in the mornings and Jill is working in the afternoons. So there’s not much to report.

Today Profesora Ana told us that we are to meet her in front of the iglesia (church) in Atenas at 8AM Thursday morning. Diego, the director of the school, has arranged for us to interview a friendly who works in the municipal government in some post related to tourism. The goal is to give us practice asking questions and then formulating followup questions on the fly. Should be interesting.

To that end, Jill and I spent time at the end of class with Profesora Ana today formulating starter questions for Thursday morning.

Atenas bills itself has having the best climate in the world. That’s pretty much the tagline on everything official and even on some of the businesses. After two months here Jill and I are hardcore fans of Atenas, but we now know enough about the climate to understand that the marketing message around the climate is a mentira blanca (little white lie) designed to attract expats looking for a place to land in Costa Rica. On days when the weather it good it is indeed fantastic, but if there’s no breeze it gets Texas HOT in the afternoons as we approach the end of the dry season. And there are days when the winds blow at gale force. We have been told that the tres meses (three months) we picked to come learn Spanish in Atenas are the dryest, hottest, and windiest months of the year. Supposedly the rains will come toward the end of April – but that may also be a marketing message.

To that end, one of the questions I formulated for the interview on Thursday is who was the Marketing genius behind Atenas’ PR campaign around the climate 🙂

We continue to see cool stuff every single day. Today on the driveway between our house and the street we flushed a tucan (toucan) from a tree. We’ve seen tucanes multiple times now and it always gets my heart racing because they’re so cool. Por dicha!

We also noticed for the first time that there are aquacate (avocado) trees at school. I just happened to look up and saw an avocado hanging off of a tree.

On a more sobering note, this weekend while we were Puerto Viejo, Jill read that Costa Rica uses more kilograms of pesticides per acre under cultivation than any other country. She’s been digging into that topic since we got back and has learned that Costa Rica uses about 35 pounds of pesticide per year on every acre under cultivation, which does indeed put it at the top of the list. It appears that the main crop that the pesticides are used on is coffee. Jill also read that Costa Rica has a high incidence of occupational stomach and bladder cancers in agricultural workers. We are not sure what to do with that information, other than to be more diligent about washing the beautiful produce we buy here before consuming it. It’s a troubling data point for sure.

On Thursday after Spanish we will head to Ojochal on the southern Pacific coast for a three night stay. We chose the Hotel Mono Feliz (Happy Monkey Hotel) instead of an AirBNB because it’s a fairly sparse area and it will be nice to have a restaurant handy. We’ve experienced the heat of the Pacific coast at Jaco and Tamarindo and one of the reasons we picked Ojochal as base camp for this field trip is that it’s a few kilometers off the coast and about halfway up the mountain. We’ve heard that just a little bit of added altitude keeps the temperatures quite pleasant through the day. We will report back on that subject.

It’s hard to believe, but less than a month remains for our adventure in Costa Rica. We head home on May 1. Jill did the math earlier today and with all of the field trips we have planned in April, we only have 8 more Spanish classes left. We have become very attached to our profesoras and it’s going to be hard to say goodbye.

That’s all for now. I’m making Morroccan chicken stew for dinner and I need to get it started so that it will be ready for when Jill wraps up with her clients at 6!

When we set out on this adventure our top priority was learning Spanish, but a close second was seeing as much of Costa Rica as we can on weekends. Even on a three month trip there aren’t enough weekends to see all of the highlights of this beautiful country. This weekend’s destination was the region of Talamanca in the southern Caribbean zone. Our base of operations for this adventure was a cute apartment above a fantastic Italian bakery in Puerto Viejo.

A thing we are learning is that you really can’t take anyone’s word for anything. Everyone thinks that their corner of Costa Rica is the absolute best (with good reason) and, without in any way trash-talking other parts of the country, they sort of tacitly warn you about things you might find disappointing about other areas.

When we’ve told locals that we were planning to visit Puerto Viejo the first thing they always say is “It’s beautiful, but don’t walk on the beach after dark!” We’d heard that enough times that we were starting to wonder if we were headed for some sort of hot zone of crime. While we did not walk on the beach at 3AM, I’m pleased to report that it feels completely safe at all reasonable hours. In fact, Talamanca seems to be the least “fortified” area of Costa Rica that we’ve been to. Of course, the general rule of don’t leave anything valuable laying around still applies.

The other thing one hears about Puerto Viejo and points south is that there is a “Rasta vibe” which is code for “lots of pot smoking going on.” That does appear to be true. However the purveyors of marijuana are not at all aggressive. They say “Hola! Smoke?” and you either say “No, gracias.” or you say “Si…” I can report they are still pleasant after you say “No, gracias.” I don’t actually know what happens if you answer in the affirmative. We did encounter one enterprising young man who offered us a “sample” that he had readily burning by his side 🙂

We’ve also heard that Puerto Viejo is hot and humid and that there are tons of mosquitos. We can report that was NOT our experience! Puerto Viejo seems to be in the Goldilocks zone for climate. The highs when we were there were about 82 degrees Fahrenheit and the lows were around 72 degrees. We got a little rain Saturday and Sunday mornings, but it burned off by afternoon. We asked every local we met if this was normal weather or if we’d just gotten lucky. They all said it was normal. One person did say that in September the trade-winds die down and it can feel a “little warm”, but she immediately followed that up with “You have to see the ocean in September to believe it. It’s like a crystal clear swimming pool.”

Anyway… For a variety of reasons Puerto Viejo and the entire Talamanca region of Costa Rica have rocketed to the top spot of our favorites list. I will try to recount the good with the bad in chronological order (Spoiler alert: There’s nothing REALLY bad).

We set off directly from Spanish school on Thursday at 11AM. We felt like we were killing it. The Waze lady said we could expect a 4 hour and 30 minute drive.

And then we were at a dead stop!

We got through San Jose about 45 minutes behind schedule. The gridlock in San Jose was world class. It was truly a free-for-all. Because there are no traffic lanes everything is very tenuous and it’s pretty stressful.

Fortunately about 20 minutes after we exited San Jose we found ourselves entering the Braulio Carillo National Park. Braulio Carillo is a full on rain forest in the mountains southeast of San Jose. The trees are massive and every surface has something green growing on it.

Jill gave me the play-by-play because we were sharing the road with lots of buses and semis. The road sign below was one of the first we saw upon entering the park is an example of why driving here is not for the faint of heart.

As a bonus, apparently slides are not uncommon 🙂

I admit that I was fairly white-knuckled and ready to be out of the rainy mountains when we came upon what I can only describe as the Boss-Level. We came around the corner and were confronted with a tunnel and a semi coming out of it. Fortunately the tunnel was both well lit and appropriately striped.

We made it through the national park at about 1:30PM and were both famished. We stopped at a big open-air restaurant just outside the park. Much to our surprise it was a cafeteria-style establishment.

On the other side of Braulio Carillo National Park there is a road improvement project to add two more lanes to Ruta 32 all the way to the port city of Limon. Ruta 32 is the only route from Limon, Costa Rica’s major port city, to San Jose. That will bring the total number of lanes to… 4. Hard to tell when it will be done, but we did note on the way home today that they appear to be working 7 days per week

As we exited the mountains and the national park we entered Banano (yes they really call bananas bananos) Country.

We passed through several little towns on our way to Limon on Ruta 32 and after a while the banana mono-culture gave way to giant pineapple plantations. We happened to pass through this little town on the afternoon of the 28th. Look at the line at the ATM. Apparently the 28th is payday…

Costa Rica has quietly become the worlds largest exporter of pineapples. If you eat pineapple, there’s a better than even chance your pineapples have passed through the port city of Limon.

We finally arrived in Puerto Viejo at around 5PM, six hours after we left Spanish school. We had no trouble finding our AirBnB apartment above the De Gustibus Bakery. Luciano, the owner of the bakery, and his wife were our hosts. They were lovely. And their bakery is one of the best spots in Puerto Viejo to start your day with coffee and pastries.

Our apartment was great. The bedroom was air-conditioned, which is how people commonly do it here. The only hot water in the apartment was an on-demand hot water heater on the shower head. Very practical and comfortable!

We had about an hour before dark so we headed off on a stroll around town. Puerto Viejo stretches along about a mile of water front, but most of the town is in about a 5 block area.

We consulted Trip Advisor and found our way to Koki, a lovely restaurant with a great open-air beach view. We caught a one-of-a-kind purple sunset and had a great dinner.

We made our way back to our apartment and fell into bed, both exhausted from the journey.

We were up with the sun on Friday. One of the upsides of staying above a bakery is that your first sensory experience each morning is the smell of baking bread. The downside is that they start baking well before they open the doors. We checked the clock and realized we had 45 minutes before they opened so we set out on foot to find Play Cocles, which is just south of the town.

In true Caribbean fashion, everything is decorated. Even foot paths over the gutters.

There were chickens roaming around the rental car inventory.

Here’s the only real knock on Puerto Viejo and Talamanca. They’re maybe 20 years behind the rest of the country in terms of infrastructure. They only got electricity 20 years ago. Our opinion is that generally increases the charm, but with one exception: the rubbish situation. It’s not that there’s trash “everywhere”, but it does appear that trash gets dumped on vacant lots. We talked to several locals and learned that the issue has two main causes:

• There’s been a shift from organic waste and recycled glass bottles to inorganic waste and plastic bottles. Not too long ago, residents would take their lunch to work wrapped in a banana leaf and any store-bought drinks came in re-fillable glass bottles.
• The growth in tourism has led to an explosion of trash.

The province of Limon, which encompasses Talamanca is playing catch up. There is now weekly trash pickup. It wasn’t enough to sour us on Talamanca, but it really puts the problem of inorganic waste front and center. Residents are trying to become part of the solution. We ate at a restaurant last night that only uses returnable/re-fillable bottles. And all but one of the restaurants where we had straws had already switched to paper straws.

After a short walk through a rainforest trail we arrived at Playa Cocles!

We made it back to the bakery for cappuccinos and big-as-your-head breakfast sandwiches on freshly baked bread, then we headed for the Jaguar Rescue Center, which is a local non-profit operation that rehabilitates orphaned animals and re-introduces them into the wild.

The rescue center was south of town so after we were done we took the coast road down to the town of Manzanillo, where we stopped for lunch at a great little place called the Cool and Calm Cafe, where we listened to reggae music and drank Imperial beer. I had Pollo Caribe (basically Jerk Chicken) and Jill had fish tacos. My favorite juxtaposition of the trip was speaking Spanish to the full-on Rasta proprietor of the cafe and having him compliment me on my Spanish 🙂

Then we walked across the street. Literally across the street. To this!

Continuing with the beach theme, when we got back to Puerto Viejo we posted up at Johnny’s Beach Bar.

After Johnny’s we went back the apartment and got a quick nap in and showered for dinner. After making the obligatory first stop at the souvenir establishments, we dined at Cafe Viejo, based on a recommendation from Luciano, who knows all of the Italians in Puerto Viejo. Cafe Viejo serves up delicious pasta and pizza. Apparently neither of us thought to take any blog-worthy pictures there.

Saturday morning we awoke to the soothing sound of rain on the roof of our apartment. We lounged in bed until the bakery opened and then claimed a table with a nice view of the people bustling by in the rain. We indulged in the cappuccino habit that we picked up in Florence while traveling with my parents a while back. For about a half an hour it felt like we were in Italy instead of Costa Rica.

As mentioned in previous posts, we’ve been grinding hard on Spanish so I decided I was up for ordering a ham and cheese omelette for the two of us to split. I mustered up my courage and said “Quisieramos un omelette de jabon y queso para compartir” (We would like a ham and cheese omelette to split). I got a “Claro!” and was instantly overly-pleased with myself. Poco a poco.

You see neat stuff in Costa Rica. This guy was right outside the bakery in the rain.

Puerto Viejo has a healthy population of globe-hopping youths from lots of countries. They mostly stay at hostels. There are certain times of day where the hostels must tell them they all have to get out. They showed up in a gaggle at the bakery yesterday morning.

As the rain let up we went for a walk around town. The scene below plays itself out all over Costa Rica daily. There must be a class where these linemen learn to lean their ladders up against live wires. I watched one of the guys on the ground climb halfway up the ladder to hand the guy at the top something. It just makes my stomach hurt.

After I couldn’t watch the linemen anymore, we walked a little further and found what must be the cutest parada de autobus (bus stop) in the whole of Costa Rica. This bus stop pretty much epitomizes Puerto Viejo (and why we love it).

In case you have any questions about the bus schedule:

On the way back to our apartment we stopped for a little swinging.

Once back at the apartment we loaded up the day pack with bug spray, sunscreen, water bottles, and snacks and set off for Cahuita National Park, which is about 20 minute drive north of Puerto Viejo. We stopped and had a nice lunch at a restaurant outside the gates of the park and then set off for what was my favorite day-adventure of the trip.

This is the entrance to Cahuita National Park. There’s no required fee for entry, they request a voluntary donation.

Below is a map of the park. We entered at about 12:30PM and the park closes at 4PM so we walked from the big red dot by Cahuita to Punto Cahuita and back (about 7 km round-trip).

Even in a country as beautiful as this one, Cahuita is a gem. Super accessible.

We walked the trail in.

Then we walked the shoreline back.

We saw Capuchin monkeys and howler monkeys and fantastic large-beaked birds. Full disclosure, we also each got a couple of mosquito bites. But those were the only mosquitoes we encountered on the trip.

We made it back to our apartment and got cleaned up for dinner and walked to Koki’s for a reprise happy hour from our first night before we headed to a second location for dinner.

Another reason we wanted to head to Puerto Viejo is the food. As I’ve said before, the food in Costa Rica is generally perfectly adequate but by no means the main draw of coming here.

Puerto Viejo has a reputation for comida mas interesante (more interesting food). We’d also heard from Profesora Maria that Puerto Viejo has a unique kind of empanada called Pati that we absolutely must try.

So on the way to happy hour at Koki, we made it a point to track down a Pati (Editorial note: the creole spelling is apparently Patty).

I was a little skeptical. I mean an empanada is an empanada, right? Nope. Pati is a curry empanada that is out of this world. It’s kind of like a super juicy samosa. Jill and I split a Pati de Carne and it was so good. As is my lot in life, I managed to burn my tongue on the hot filling, but I’d do it again.

Seemed like a lot of work just to get to happy hour, but when we finally got our mojitos it felt like they were well-earned.

After a mojito at Koki we trundled down to Stashus Con Fusion for some Thai fusion food.

As Meghan our server rattled off the specials we didn’t let her get past the drink specials… Wait? Your special drink is a ginger pear martini? Why, yes, two of those please.

I had a coconut tandoori chicken that was to die for and Jill had curry that she loved as well. We finished with a passion fruit cheese cake. You may recall that we are smitten with the passion fruit tres leches cake at Pizzeria la Finca in Atenas. We are now two-for-two on passion fruit desserts.

We woke up to a light rain again this morning and had a leisurely breakfast at the bakery and then turned in our keys to Luciano’s wife and started the trek home. Within the first 15 minutes of our drive we saw toucans fly across the road three times. As we say in Costa Rica: Por dicha!

Shortly after we entered Braulio Carillo National Park we were at a dead stop.

After about 15 minutes we were rolling again and had smooth sailing all the way home from there.

Final thoughts on Puerto Viejo and Talamanca:

We went into this weekend slightly negatively biased, just based on what we’d heard. None of the drawbacks we’d heard about put in an appearance. Talamanca appears to be the most diverse area of Costa Rica that we’ve seen. The Rasta folks seem to get along well with the more traditional Ticos and they both get along with visitors. Plus there’s an international flavor we haven’t experienced elsewhere (Americans plus Canadians doesn’t rise to the level of “international”). We were at the Jaguar rescue with Italian, German, French, and Swiss travelers and we heard lots of German being spoke on the streets.

The scenery is jaw dropping. The beaches are pristine and sparsely populated. Plus having Cahuita and other National Parks nearby has David Attenborough narrating the soundtrack in my head.

And the weather… If what we experienced really is typical weather then someone is just telling lies about how hot it is to keep people away.

Internet speeds are perfectly adequate (20 mb down and 12 mb up with 150ms latency over LTE).

The only two drawbacks are the rubbish situation and the fact that it’s a HIKE from San Jose. The drive will get better as the road project reaches completion. There’s also a domestic airport in Limon which is only an hour by car from Puerto Viejo.

At this point Puerto Viejo is the leader in the clubhouse. Ojochal, La Fortuna, Playa Santa Teresa, and Playa Potrero are still out on the course and it will be interesting to experience each of them.

One final plus for Puerto Viejo is that our ritual search for a keepsake skipped the traditional step of me sweltering. The climate in Puerto Viejo really does appear to be magical! At any rate, I present to you the Blue-Crowned Motmot of Puerto Viejo. The blue-crowned motmot is our favorite bird that we see on a regular basis in the wild. We will find a place to hang it when we head home to Austin and every time we see it we will think of Puerto Viejo 🙂

Today we ran into a lot of traffic getting to school. First we followed a trash truck up our street as it made its pickups. For those of you who’ve visited you know why its hard to pass a trash truck on our street. Then we were behind a tractor on Ruta 3 going through Atena. Finally, we followed a bicycle that was pulling a trailer up the dirt road to our Spanish school.

Fortunately we left the house early and these impediments did not make us late to school.

Our plan to buckle down and focus hard on Spanish is paying off. I have mastered my fear of reflexive verbs. Each day in class we cover lots of new ground and are flying through Libro Dos (the intermediate book). Each day in the afternoon, when Jill is finished with her clients we sit down and quiz each other with the 501 Spanish Verbs book. We have also been leaving the house earlier in the morning so that we can review before la profesora arrives.

All of this studying doesn’t make for very interesting blog posts, but we should have lots of adventures to report from our field trip to the Caribbean this weekend.

Tomorrow we will leave for Puerto Viejo de Talamanca straight from Spanish school. If we get a good start hopefully we will be there by 4PM. Today Profesora Maria told us that Puerto Viejo is her favorite place in Costa Rica. She did warn us that on the drive through el bosque lluvioso (the rainforest) if you are too late in the day the fog can descend and make driving hazardous.

We look forward to beach hopping, enjoying Caribbean music, and taking lots of pictures to make the next blog post more entertaining.

Adventure is out there!