ATVs are the new black – Costa Rica, days 8 & 9 – the finale.

So, I’ve discovered I like going fast and I drive like a madwoman.   Plus, I’m capable of doing them both at the same time.  On roads that are little more than goat paths and have ever expanding water features as the rivers roll over them.  All the while giggling like a mental patient and hoping my thighs don’t stick to the seat.  I’m totally okay with all of the above.

Got up bright and early and were picked up by Chino, our super sweet guide (who tried to broker a deal to have me as his fourth wife.  I passed, but I did promise to hang out with him next time I’m in Quepos, although something tells me I’m going to “forget” this) and driven out to London, Costa Rica, population, like, 80.  It was tiny, but cute, with chickens and dogs wandering the street more than people.  We pulled into someone’s driveway (this seemed a little weird until we saw the fifteen ATVs parked there) and, after a quick training course in the fine art of not killing yourself on an ATV, we were off.

It was fantastic.  The path was steep and rocky and wet in places, but that just let you really enjoy what an ATV could do.  This was supposed to be off-roading, and it satisfied. I thought it had been purpose-built for the psycho tourists like us, but after the fact we learned that this actually was the public road in the area.  Fourteen families had no other way in or out of their little isolated village.  Wow.  We had also brought a change of clothes in case we got muddy and messy as the website had warned, but I discovered quickly that if you went faster (and cheered, that was an important part) then teh water sprayed outwards and kept me all dry.

Midway through we stopped and had an hour walk through a beautiful forest and across a suspension bridge that was nothing more than a bunch of metal ladders trussed together a hundred feet up in the air to a waterfall.  This is a perfect place to play and swim, but as it was just the two of us, we opted to just take lots of pictures and dip our feet instead of making the poor guide stand around awkwardly as we splashed in the falls.  Then it was back onto the ATVs and retracing our route back to the start.  On the way back he knew we were capable drivers, so the speeds were much higher, topping out about 50mph.  Sweet.  Only once, when I was trying to avoid some horseback tourists, did I confuse the break and the gas and nearly go shooting off into the jungle.  Leave it to me to only make a mistake when there’s a crowd of people to see it!

Did not want to give that ATV back.  I tried to just drive off, but it just would have taken me too long to drive it all the way back home, and it’s hard to find a good parking space for your ATV in downtown Vancouver, so I left it.

Spent the rest of the day hanging out at the hotel to escape the heat and avoid the torrential downpour that left me epically soaked even under my umbrella when I walked down to the local bodega for supplies.  After that, we deserved a nice dinner, so we cabbed it to El Avion and we got to watch the lightning illuminate the sky from our table under  a plane.

The last full day in Quepos started early, as we had a 6am pickup for our mangrove tour.  They have to start super early to hit the tides at the right times.  Luckily, since the sun rises and sets at 5:00 here, your body clock gets you up early anyway to greet the sun and puts you to sleep early, so that wake up call was not too bad.  The tour group was us and a French family that spoke almost no English, and on our two and a half hour boat tour we saw a few monkeys, some vultures and a couple of skinny raccoons, but that was pretty much it.  Three years ago I had taken the same tour and seen so many animals it was incredible, but today everyone was playing hide and seek from us and they won.  It honestly felt like a colossal waste of time.  And it finished at 9am, so we still had the whole day to fill.

Like every woman, we went shopping.  We got a great deal on a taxi and headed right down to Playa Manuel Antonio, the beach paradise.  I’m far too pale to be a beach bunny, and the sun here fries skin in the blink of an eye (half the people walking around are a painful red colour, and that had already happened to me once this trip, so there was no way I was going through that again), but there’s a few cute souvenir shops and a street market where you can get some good tacky tourist shit (I love this stuff!) as long as you barter for it.  We got a great carved vase for half the price we would have paid in the stores in Quepos.  Of course, today had to be the day it decided not to rain in the afternoon and we tried not to melt as we shopped, took the incredibly cheap public bus back to Quepos, shopped more, and then got all packed up and ready to depart the next morning.

The drive to San Jose was kind of anticlimactic compared to all our other Interbus transfers, as the roads were, well, actual roads the whole way, including an extended stint on a brand new highway.    Our driver took advantage of this by driving super fast, which actually didn’t scare me as much as it should have, I loved the speed.  Clearly the ATV ride has broken my common sense when it came to speeding in this country.  Soon we were back at the Casa Conde, where we discovered our pickup time the next morning for our 10am flight was 515am.  Great.  So we dropped our bags, had some dinner, watched a tiny bit of TV and went to bed early to prep for our 430am wake up call.

Our airport transfer the next day was even early.  He showed up at 5.  Luckily, we were ready anyway, but that got us to the airport at 545.   Cranky and tired and hungry we checked in for our flight, cleared security and hit the food court for a giant cinnabon breakfast.  Normally I wouldn’t  eat 1500 calories of sugary goodness for breakfast, but it just seemed to be a fitting send off for our time in Costa Rica.  It had been a hot, sweet and sticky(with both sweat and rain) trip, and was thoroughly enjoyable.

Pura Vida!

Tags: ATV, beach, BlogSherpa, Costa Rica, crazy speed, hot, mangrove tour, Manuel Antonio, Quepos, sunny

I totally just ate under a plane! – Costa Rica days 6 & 7

I totally just ate under a plane.  I know I said that in the title, but that doesn’t take away from the awesomeness of it.   El Avion, a plane turned restaurant in Quepos/Manuel Antonio, is quite possibly my favorite place to eat on the planet, right up there with the seafood restaurant in the middle of Temple Street night market in Hong Kong.  What can I say, I’m a sucker for ambiance.  And this place has it in spades, because IT HAS A FRIGGIN PLANE in it! 

The plane itself is perched on the cliffside so that your table along the railing looks out over nothing but lush trees far below and the uninterrupted Pacific ocean.  We were even lucky enough to have a pair of Spider monkeys dine parallel to us on a tall tree limb, but that’s just de rigeur in Costa Rica   The building (if you can call it that, it has no walls, so it’s technically more of a roof) is constructed over the fuselage itself, complete with a little bump up for the tail fin, and you eat at tables around the engines and cargo hold.  Inside you’ll find the bar (I can just imagine the conversations that occur when people wake up the next morning: ”Dude, I was so wasted last night I thought I was drinking in a plane in the jungle” – “You were drinking in a plane in the jungle, Steve” – “Woah”), and the kitchen is downstairs.  In what I think is an ingenious space-saving technique, the kitchen is downstairs, and all the orders are lifted to dining level in a giant dumbwaiter constructed from parts of old, much smaller private planes.  Now you’re getting why I love this place, right?  The food is good, and not any more expensive than your standard meal at Applebees, but I’m honestly not paying any attention to the food when I’m here.  And I have a sneaking suspicion I may be back here again to eat before leaving Quepos.

Were picked up by Interbus for another life-altering drive down the “holy crap I’m going to die” roads from Monteverde to… well, pretty much everywhere from there, but we ended up in Quepos.  This is our longest stay of the trip, 4 nights instead of the 2 in the other cities.  It’s also the largest city we’re spending any amount of time in, although when we drove in I found myself thinking, “this is it?  Isn’t it supposed to be bigger than this?”  The other cities had grown up so much in the past three years, but Quepos really hadn’t.  It, as I discovered later, had grown out, so that the suburbs were larger and more developed, but the city center was the same two-hundred-foot square of shops and services as before. 

Our hotel, the adorable and friendly Hotel California, is nestled up in the trees, and, since it was low season and there was tons of space available, we got upgraded to an oceanview room.  That was pretty damn sweet.  I may be a travel agent, but I’m still too cheap to pay for something as trivial as a view, although getting one free rocks.   

OMG, it’s hot here.  After the chill and dampness of Monteverde, this heat is oppressive.  Came back into our room this afternoon and it felt freezing – we thought we’d left the AC on too cold until we checked it and discovered it was a chilly 27 celsius in our room!  It had to be at least 40-45 outside for 27 to feel that cold.

Spent the first afternoon wandering town, shopping and trying to get aclimated to this heat again.  This morning it was a very early wake up call for our Manuel Antonio National Park walk.  When in Manuel Antonio, this is a must - it’s called the most-photographed place in Costa Rica for good reason, it’s stunning.  Plus, there are so many animals that no two hikes are the same, and you never know what’s going to pop up.  The guides carry a big-ass telescope, and when they spot something (god knows how they do it, some of the frogs and lizards are so small you can barely see them after you’ve stepped on them, but the guides can do it at a hundred feet) they focus in and get you a great view.  Plus, digital cameras take pretty sweet pics through the telescope lens, so  you can get your pics home and tell everyone you really were that close to a sloth, eventhough it was sleeping forty feet over your heads!

Immediately following the tour and a quick lunch, it was on to tour number 2 – the Villa Vanilla spice plantation.  Cannot recommend this place highly enough (www.rainforestspices.com) the guide explained to us all about vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, chillies, turmeric, oregano, and whatever I’m forgetting – holy crap these things are super labour intensive to produce.  It’s no wonder they’re so expensive.  And who would have thought that the second layer of bark on a tree would taste so good (cinnamon)?  Did they just decide one day to start gnawing logs?  After walking through the fields we were taken to a hut with another great view and given samples of all sorts of decadent desserts prepared with their spices by their own pastry chef.  Heaven.  I then proceeded to spend USD$40.00 in their gift shop and it was so totally worth it! 

Tonight we’re going to recover from all the walking today, because tomorrow we’re ATV-ing!!  I’m the girl who gets in trouble for her driving on Disneyland’s Autopia, so this is going to be interesting.  And awesome!

Tags: awesome, BlogSherpa, El Avion, Food, Manuel Antonio, national park, Quepos, Villa Vanilla

The land of the weed-whacker: Costa Rica Days 3, 4, 5

Because of the terrain here being so vertical and rocky, conventional lawn mowers aren’t even sold in stores.  But everywhere you turn there’s a guy with a giant weed-whacker showing all that rapid-growing grass who’s boss.  With that little hand mower, if you will, the Ticos will tackle any area, no matter how big.  We were 2km from pretty much anything on the way to La Fortuna and there were two guys on the side of the road just weed-whacking away.  They were doing the entire shoulder of the whole road by hand.  Damn, that’s a long job.

So today we ziplined.  One of my favorite things to do, the incredible feeling of flying without the fear of falling, as your harness really holds you securely up there.  Costa Rica is probably the best place on the planet to do this, and the company I recommend more than any other I’ve experienced is Sky Adventures.  Conveniently they have a great setup in La Fortuna,  with incredible views of the (still clear and erupting) Arenal  Volcano and Arenal Lake.  We were picked up early and driven up into the hills at the base of the Volcano, where they harnessed us up (there is nothing more glamourous than a climbing harness and a helmet, really) and loaded us onto the Sky Tram.  They have such a beautiful set up here, so clean, so professional and the platforms, guides and equipment are all top notch.  You never feel like you’re in danger or could fall off the flimsy platforms like some other operators, so if anyone’s at all nervous, this is a good place to start.

The tram takes you 20 minutes up above the dense forests (monkey-eye level) and deposits you at the first platform.  There’s always a great rush of adrenaline looking out at that first line, 200ft up in the air, and from the platform all you can see is the cable going off into infinity.  All the while you’re thinking, “I’m going there?!!!”  Love it.  There are eight lines total here, with the longest being 3/4 of a mile long, and they are high.  I don’t particularly like heights (I know, I know, but I love ziplining, get over it) so I focused on looking out over the unparalleled views of Costa Rica and Arenal more than looking down as I flew past at a top speed of  75kph.  There were a handful of very scared people in our group, with one girl getting off one line in tears, but once you cross that first line, there actually is no other way back to the entrance except to keep zipping.  The guides were really good with them, crossing with them if they needed the support, but we all tried not to get too over-excited to freak them out more.

Back at the hotel after the zipping we discovered I was sun burned.  Like, crispy critter burned.  I hadn’t been wearing sunscreen because all the platforms are completely in the shade, so the only time you’re exposed to the sun is while you’re zipping across, for a grand total of about 4 minutes in the whole 2 hours, but it was all it took.  I don’t get it, I go to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore where it’s equally (if not more) hot and humid, never were sunscreen once and I don’t even get a tan.  But here, all it takes is 4 minutes and I’m stick-a-fork-in-me-done.  Couldn’t wear my purse on my shoulder for the next three days. All boils down to the positioning of the sun I guess.  Needless to say, I didn’t step out of the shade without a thick coating for the rest of the trip.

After a relaxing afternoon and night in La Fortuna, Interbus came the next morning and collected us to head up to Santa Elena and the Monteverde cloud forest.  This is where you really notice the biodiversity of Costa Rica, as you leave the tropical, semi-arid farming plains to enter the dense, steamy and dramatically cooler jungle.  The roads to get up here are mainly paved for the first half, and, despite being incredibly winding, don’t have you gripping the edge of your seat.  This changes after the mandatory bathroom and souvenirs break in Tillaran.  From there you’re essentially on what we would here call cattle paths, insanely bumpy, unpaved dirt tracks scaling nearly vertical hills with blind turns that leave you practically hanging over 400-foot cliffs.  They call it a Costa Rican massage, going over the bumps like that for two hours.  By the time you get out you’re vibrating.  And thankful you’re not dead.

Santa Elena is dramatically larger than last time I was here three years ago.  The downtown (if you can call it that) is still the same size, with like ten shops, restaurants, a grocery store, a church, a giant cement armadillo and a good ice cream parlour, but this time it’s paved, which was a pleasant surprise.  The biggest difference though is the number of hotels, which has at least tripled.  For such a small, remote place, Monteverde has a wealth of activities, from hiking, rappelling, sky bridges, butterfly gardens, bat forests, bird watching, to ATVs, horseback riding and whitewater rafting.  Our hotel was one of the new ones, the El Sapo Dorado (Golden Toad), and each room was it’s own private cabin set back amongst it’s own personal patch of garden that glows with thousands of fireflies at night.  I had never seen real fireflies before, only the fake ones in Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, so that was super cool.  The rooms are really nice, though they don’t have a lot of the amenities you normally expect from a hotel, like any electronic devices and heat.  Yep, I said heat.  You get a fireplace and a box full of wood and the rest is up to you.

We spent the day exploring Santa Elena (we saw it all and had to go back to some places twice to fill the time) and had a cool dinner in the treehouse restaurant, which, as the name implies, has a giant tree growing through it.  You eat on the second level amongst the branches, and your tables and chairs are all random-shaped logs fashioned into dining furniture. I’m a sucker for cheesy ambiance, so naturally I loved this.  Took lots of pictures.

About now I was freezing.  I’m a really cold person on a regular day, and it rains every afternoon here, so after the tropics of La Fortuna, my system was not liking this.  You can see the weather coming in here, it moves in fast and just takes over, the clouds literally rolling down the main streets and in minutes you’re lost in the fog.  On the upside, I love fireplaces, though, and can sit and poke at one for hours, so you can guess how I spent my evening.  Had a slight problem with the smoke and kinda filled the room – my clothes are going to smell like fireplace for the rest of the trip – but the warmth was totally worth it.  Actually, all night it wasn’t as cold as I expected it to be and I woke up with warm toes.

Day 5 brought us more ziplining.  Skytrek has a course that I missed out on doing last time I was here, and, as the lines are supposed to be some of the highest out there, straddling the continental divide, it was actually the whole reason for trekking up here at all.  The setup is even more impressive then La Fortuna’s, and although the tram system is much the same, the view is dramatically different up here.  You’re very exposed, up on the spine of the mountain that, on a clear day, would allow us to see both the Caribbean and Pacific oceans at the same time.  We weren’t so lucky, as the grey clouds blocked out the water, but stayed high enough for us to still have an insane view of the jungle as we flew over it.  This was the only time I felt the altitude, as there were a lot of tall towers to climb to reach the ziplines, and by the time I reached the top my heart was hammering in my chest.  The zipping itself was great, although because of really high winds we had to go across in tandem for all the longer cables, just to have enough combined weight to make it to the other side.  This was a new experience for me, but it did allow me to get some pretty sweet video as my co-zipper did the breaking while I played videographer.

We could see the ominous clouds bearing down on us as we finished up, but miraculously we made it back into the van before the skies opened up.  And did they ever.  As soon as the rain started, it became pretty obvious that this was not a small passing shower and that our plans to visit a local orchid garden were going down the drain.  So instead we picked up dinner fixings at the supermercado and tucked into our cabin for the day, where we could at least stay dry.  Normally spending nine hours in a small room with no TV and radio in the middle of nowhere would be my definition of hell, but here it isn’t so bad.  I’m enjoying a couple of Spanish magazines, and have discovered that poking at a fireplace really can keep me occupied for hours on end.

Tomorrow it’s onwards to the sea again, and it’s going to be hot, hot, hot!

Tags: adrenaline, altitude, Arenal, BlogSherpa, Costa Rica, fireplace, Interbus, La Fortuna, rain, Sky Trek

Finding Pura Vida in Costa Rica – Days 1&2

I’m here!  The land of verdant forests, howler-monkey wake up calls and one sweet active volcano in my back yard.  Costa Rica is such a great destination, about the same price as a quick beach vacation in Hawaii, but the diversity of climates, wildlife and crazy adventure activities is so much better.  All you have to do is deal with the eight hour flight time from Vancouver, but it’ s so worth it.

Flew into the Rich Coast with a three hour connection in Dallas on the way.  The Dallas airport is really nice, super modern and clean with some nice artwork (nothing compares to Vancouver international, BTW, but this was pleasant). You can find a hundred different things to eat, but there is pitiful shopping.  Only a small hand full of stores, and they’re mainly convenience stores, so I had to make do with only an armadillo floaty pen and a cow-wearing-a-stetson fridge magnet.  Total shopping fail.

By the time we arrived in San Jose it was late, and we crashed at the Casa Conde Aparthotel and Suites just long enough to wash the flight off, begin adjusting to the crazy humidity and watch some food network subtitled in Spanish.  This property really impressed me, it’s a beautiful Spanish hacienda with attractive stained glass and murals and the condos were fully equipped – I had my own bedroom!  The only downside was that it’s in the middle of nowhere.  You couldn’t just walk down the road, you’d find nothing but small houses, and it wasn’t  particularly the best part of town, either.

For us, it didn’t matter, though, as we were picked up by the ever-prompt and comfortable Interbus for our four-hour transfer to La Fortuna.  This is the only way to travel in Costa Rica, as everything is approximately four hours from the next major center, the roads are hilly, winding, sometimes unpaved, sometimes balanced delicately on the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff and sometimes completely washed out and consisting of nothing but a couple planks of wood and some caution tape.  I’ve been here twice now and wouldn’t drive here if you paid me.  Interbus is cheap, easy, professional and the person behind the wheel actually knows what they’re doing at all times.  You just have to put up with the sales-targeted souvenir and bathroom break halfway through.  Oh, and the speeds.  Costa Rica does fast.  Carsickness-inducing, swinging from one side to the other fast.  It was awesome.

Later we were deposited at the Volcano Lodge, our haven for the next two nights. Love this property.  Each room is in it’s own little three-room casita, and all have a private veranda with two adorable rocking chairs that looks out to the impressive gardens and the active Arenal volcano.  I can’t get past the irony of my life being total hell at work for the past week with all the canceled flights due to the Iceland volcanic eruption, and here I come on personal vacation to another active volcano.  But it’s worth it, as the clouds have lifted, revealing it’s perfect smoking top, something that happens only like 9 days every year.   We lucked out.  And consequently took ten thousand photos of it to prove it.

The town of La Fortuna is small, cute, and has really good souvenir shopping.  It’s also incredibly hot here.  After the clouds and coats of Vancouver, this 99% humidity and 30-degree sunshine is a real shock to the system.  It really zaps your energy and gives you that wonderful red, damp and glowing complexion all the time.  I’m having to be super careful already, as I’m arctic white and can burn in minutes out here, but really hate the feel of sunscreen on when I’m already sweating my ass off.

So far we’ve essentially been on the road for two days straight, so it’ll be nice to be able to actually rest a bit tomorrow.  That is, after the freaking awesome ziplining!!!!!

Tags: Arenal, BlogSherpa, car sickness, Casa Conde, Costa Rica, Dallas, Interbus, San Jose, shopping, Volcano Lodge