A cooky trip to Costa Rica

View of Costa Rica from the Cesna we rode from San Jose to Tamarindo.

I am back from a lovely two-week trip to the Central American country of Costa Rica. It was grand. It was a vacation in true cooky style - lots of activity tempered by plenty of eating, sleeping, drinking, and smoking (hooray duty free!). Here's my recap of our tour of the Playa Tamarindo, Arenal, and Monteverde regions of the country.

Playa Tamarindo is all about surf and sun. We stayed at the La Laguna Del Cocodorilio hotel, which is, we learned, owned and operated by French surfers.

Front desk at La Laguna del Cocodorilio and its crack team of surfer staff. Seriously though, they were great.

I highly recommend this spot as long as you stay away from the lower-end "street side" rooms. Though less expensive, these rooms were noisy, basically had no bathroom door, and came equipt with a ceiling fan that threatened to decapitate if turned on. More like the lodging of choice for transients with questionable motives. It was a stitch in the tapestry of our adventure, but I was pleased to move on to one of the "garden view" rooms.

Perks of the French hotel: attached French bakery and daily breakfast of coffee and pastry surrounded by blue sky and tropical fauna. Picture taken from the patio of our garden view room.

Availing ourselves of local activities, we surfed, took yoga classes, and bummed around town. It didn't take us too long to target some key eateries.

The sign for Frutas Tropicales. The establishment also offers a lodging.

Frutas Tropicales was a standout restaurant for providing the best comidas typica - typical local food, usually black beans and rice, some protein, and maybe a little salad - at a moderate price.

Casados pollo, not actually from Fruitas Tropicales, but still pretty alright.

Surprisingly, most restaurants and cafes only sell coffee per cup. As much as I crushed on my beloved French bakery, I was hemorraging currency to feed my morning arabica habit. Fortunately, we found Nogui's, a delicious but notorious "gringo eatery" that offered bottomless cups of coffee. Ahhhhhhh.....


I should also mention that Tamarindo is a partying kind of place as well. If you have the inclination, there are all sorts of opportunities to inebriate. Just talk to the the front desk attendant or the guy on the corner whispering, "You doing ok?" as you walk by. Rumor has it the people hanging out below sneakers dangling from trees or electrical lines can also facilitate a transaction, but that information has yet to be confirmed. My group consisted of overworked ladies looking for relaxation, not so much glow sticks and grinding teeth, so we stuck to the occassional happy hour.

Many coconut-based cocktails were had, but the best was the Miguelito shot served at Nibbana. Sweet and very coconut-y....

The next leg of our trip was to the Arenal Volcano. We stayed at the Tabacon Grand Spa Thermal Resort and enjoyed daily dips in the most extensive complex of thermal springs I've ever seen or even heard about. Apparently it's among the top 10 hot springs resorts in the world. The springs consist of rainwater that has trickled into the base of the volcano where it's heated by magma and enriched with minerals.

Who knew really hard, hot water was so blissful?

Although we were able to make out the volcano in the daytime, we didn't get a chance to catch a glimpse of the lavaflow at night. Oh well.

Arenal is the nearest township to the volcano and resort. Honestly, it wasn't worth the taxi fare from the resort except to go to the supermercado for a change, well downgrade actually, in scenery. We scored awesome, kitschy sourvenier gifts there though.

On the next leg of our journey, we took the "Jeep-Boat-Jeep" travel service to get from Arenal to Monteverde. It was far more comfortable, inexpensive, and picturesque than making the entire trip strictly by road. Oddly, no jeep was ever used in the commute, but it was pretty cool taking a boat across the lake.

A view of Arenal Volcano from the lake.

Monteverde, I'm thinking, is kind of like the Vermont of Costa Rica. Lots of rolling green, organic this and that, dairies, farms and the like. Plus, there's fun jungle all around you. Monteverde held the most interesting food experience, as there are a lot of local products - cheeses, coffee, fruits, etc. - used in town.

Whole coffee beans picked on the way up to Monteverde. Eaten raw they taste kind of like a not-so-tart cranberry with a large soft seed in the center (the coffee bean itself). It was good.

We stayed in Santa Elena, the twin township of Monteverde. For those familiar with central Illinois, Santa Elena is the Champaign to Monteverde's Urbana - it's the more commerical, less hippie side. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure it would also be the Minneapolis side of the twin cities. Our hotel, the Arco Iris Lodge, featured a breakfast buffet of local coffee (bottomless, by the way), eggs laid from the hotel owner's own hens, among many other locally produced yummies. Even the biodegradeable soap provided in the rooms was made of glycerine and local honey.

A view of the verdant Arco Iris compound from our terrace.

A selection of fresh beverages at the breakfast buffet: guava juice, water, and fresh milk.

The only disappointment of the hotel were shoddy shower doors.

In town we came upon a pleasant handful of inexpensive eateries. The most notable, Donde Henry, is a one room canteen of comidas typica. Had we found it earlier, I'm sure we would eaten at Donde Henry daily.

Donde Henry, located in the Supermercado Vargas building, next to Super Licores. If their patrons' rides are any indication, the complex's patrons enjoy a rugged, rustic lifestyle.

The entire interior of Donde Henry - a true cooky eatery.

We ate fantastic pork tamales steamed in banana leaf. They were not blurry in real life.

Another delicious discovery were the local bakeries, where you can have a small inexpensive meal of empanada along with coffee.

There were empanadas stuffed with beef, chicken, or vegetables.

As I mentioned earlier, the coffee consumption experience in Costa Rica was surprising. First, coffee was not sold every 10 feet and in varied permutations as I had hoped it to be. Second, it wasn't tremendously cheap either. A small cup of coffee in Tamarindo and Arenal was usually a little over $1 - about the same price as those from streetcarts in NYC. In Monteverde though the coffee was excellent and less expensive, I reckon because of the ready supply of local beans. Third, the majority of coffee makers were the same brand - a very high-tech contraption, with a built-in grinder, and settings to make all sorts of fancy drinks. It was pretty curious.

The multi-purpose coffee machine ubiquitous in Costa Rica.

So that was my cooky holiday. We spent a couple days in San Jose, which I'm sure has all sorts of interesting Chefty-worthy things going on, but we really just hung out long enough to catch our flight.

Some people think Costa Rica's "over", and, indeed, it's not quite as bohemian and no longer as dirt cheap as it used to be, but the country remains very conscious of over-development and maintaining its environmental integrity. As long as its world-class surf remains though, Costa Rica will probably keep a strong backpacker vibe and cheaper food and lodging options catering to that market. It has mountains and jungles, monkeys and dogs (jesus, the dogs...), partying and yoga. Tickets from the U.S. are pretty affordable too. I say go.

Yo heart Costa Rica.