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

holly — Sat, 22 May 2010 03:56:13 +0000

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!

Finding Pura Vida in Costa Rica

holly — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:11:09 +0000

I admit it, I’m a city traveler. London, Paris, Los Angeles, I love the hustle and bustle, and as long as there’s a gift shop I’m happy. So, for me a twelve day vacation to Costa Rica was my test, to see if I could break free of my department store box and truly embrace what the local Ticos call Pura Vida, the Pure Life.

Within hours of landing in the capital of San Jose I was whisked off by minibus to the small but charming city of La Fortuna, at the foot of the active Arenal Volcano, four hours away. The entire country feels vertical, and my ears popped every half hour as we drove up, down and up again the tiny one lane roads that cling to the hillsides like mountain goats. From here day-long canyoning, hiking and ATV tours are all at your disposal, but I selected a SkyTrek zipline canopy tour. During a torrential rainstorm I flew along quarter-round steel cables as much as 660ft above the jungle below, suspended by nothing but my harness, while trading grunts with a troupe of howler monkeys. It was incredible! I couldn’t get the smile off my face for days.

After a few days there, it was time to move on to the Monteverde cloud forest. Here the roads are not only vertical, but unpaved, and a drive that looks tiny on a map can take hours. It gives you a bit of an Indiana Jones complex, and only serves to add to the adventure. Rain here sneaks up on you, and in a matter of seconds a flawless sunny day can become a downpour, turning all the roads into muddy slip-n-slides with potholes the size of VW beetles. The hanging bridges are not to be missed, and the hummingbird garden at the Selvatura park has dozens of species buzzing past only inches from your head.

The town of Quepos and the famed Manuel Antonio national park were my third stop, with postcard-perfect views and a relaxed beachy atmosphere. By far the hottest and most touristy of all the cities, the park is the whole reason to stop here and is well worth it. Our guide hauled a four-foot telescope the entire hike just to give us the best views of the two-and-three toed sloths, monkeys, birds and even a banded anteater that his well-trained eyes could (unbelievably) spot. The Rainmaker adventure forest, with it’s 190 ft high suspension bridges, is so much more fun than it looked on the Amazing Race: Family Edition, and a mangrove tour got us so close to a troupe of wild whitefaced capuchin monkeys that at one point they even jumped on the roof of our boat! Leaving there was hard, and after a few final days in San Jose to see the stunning Teatro National and the Gold Museum (and shop), it was back to reality.

Costa Rica surprised me in many ways, from the diverse climates to the awesome animals, but most of all the incredibly welcoming people. It leaves you with the warm glow of adrenaline-and-sun fueled enjoyment, combined with the faint scent of coffee. Pura Vida.

- As originally published in the Vancouver Province

Another Pin » national park

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

Finding Pura Vida in Costa Rica