Costa Rica Part I - First Days

Sun 12/23

Valerie likes to get to the airport really early. While I understand her desire not to stress about making the flight, sometimes I roll my eyes a little at how early she wants to get to the airport. This trip, though, getting to the airport super early paid off. Even on Christmas weekend there are no crowds at 5:30 AM. As a result we got through everything quickly - even after checking a bag, passing through security and eating a leisurely breakfast we were at the gate 30 minutes early. The flight was smooth, and I got to watch as much of Crazy Rich Asians as I need to (I enjoyed the book but don’t really need to see the whole movie). At the San Jose airport we were met by a driver holding a sign with our names (exciting in and of itself!), who transferred us to the airport Hilton Doubletree. Yeah, it’s a little weird to stay at an American brand hotel in another country (the hotel is so American I even connected automatically to the Hilton Honors guest WiFi), but it was reassuring on our first night to go with a brand that assured us of some level of quality standard. Not that the hotel was even our choice - it was part of the package.

The Doubletree Cariari was a nice enough place, with a definite Spanish Colonial style. Lots of dark wood. It was also our first experience with the open architecture of a country with no winter. The lobby area of the hotel flowed into a restaurant which was open to the pool deck, so everything was partially open air. Exploring the hotel took all of ten minutes - the room, the lobby, the restaurant, the pool. Like most airport hotels, this one is pretty isolated from anything and so we really had no choice other than the hotel restaurant for lunch (actually, there were other choices within walking distance, but we didn't realize it at the time). I had salmon casado (casado is a Costa Rican national dish with rice, beans, a fried plantain patty and some pickled veggies), while Valerie had a more gringo-ish club sandwich. The setting, looking out over the pool and lots of palm trees, was very nice, but the food was ... just OK.

 

By the pool at the Doubletree Cariari

Later in the afternoon we returned to pool deck to relax and read. It surprised me was how cold it was! It was quite breezy and the temperature was only in the sixties. Since I get cold easily and really hate being cold I immediately started fretting that I hadn’t brought warm enough clothing. This was not a worry I expected to have in Central America. Rather than focusing on my book I spent my poolside time obsessively checking the weather forecasts for the places we were going to be visiting on the land tour. To my relief, they looked to be considerably warmer. Apparently the mountains down the middle of the country separate the climate into Atlantic and Pacific zones. San Jose is in the cooler Pacific climate plus sits at a considerable elevation, while we would be spending our land tour on the Atlantic side.

We were starting our trip with a pre-cruise land extension to see the typical Costa Rican sights - Arenal, Monte Verde, etc. Not everyone who goes on the cruise takes the pre-trip, and when we all met up for dinner we discovered it was just ten of us. We met our guide Erick, a twenty-something Costa Rican, and the rest of our group: besides us there was a multi-generation family of six from California/Colorado (two grandparents, two parents, two early teenage children), and a 70-something couple from Chicago. The group met over dinner in the hotel’s restaurant (which was once again ... just OK) we coordinated plans for an early start the next morning.

Mon 12/24

Our first full day in Costa Rica started with chocolate oatmeal. No, that’s not a traditional Tico dish; rather, it’s the kind of mistake one makes navigating the breakfast buffet in a foreign country. I often like to add a little crunch to my oatmeal - at home accomplished via slivered almonds and sometimes a sprinkling of Grape Nuts cereal. Here I sprinkled on something I mistook to be multigrain dry cereal but which turned out to be some sweetened chocolatey kids’ cereal. Well, nothing chocolate is totally bad and so I ate the whole chocolatey mess all up.

Another meal challenge for me in Costa Rica is that there’s an abundance of delicious, locally grown regular coffee at every meal, but not a drop of descafeinado - decaf, that is. I have studiously been avoiding caffeine since the disaster of March 2017, but I may wind up full recidivist by the end of this trip. I will say as an aside that the Ticos drink their coffee brewed strong, and drink it black - my kind of people! At breakfast I asked the server if they had decaf. He said “only regular” and I said that I'd have a cup (I report on this level of detail only because I'm proud to be able to report that this conversation was entirely in Spanish) and so, with a sigh I accepted his offer of a hot, delicious cup of regular coffee.

The challenges of breakfast having been surmounted, the group headed out for a whitewater rafting trip on the Pozo Azul river. “Good news!” announced Erick, our guide. Since there was construction on our planned route we were going to get to take an alternate route that would give us an opportunity to see several waterfalls. What he didn’t mention is that the route was on a series of seriously twisty mountain roads. The ride was in fact, interesting, and expertly navigated by our driver, Marco.

We spent a lot of time on the bus

La Paz waterfall

San Fernando waterfall

In addition to the waterfalls, which were pretty, we got to see a number of small towns and agricultural areas, including Starbucks’ Costa Rica processing plant as well as plantations growing any number of tropical plants, including pineapple, cassava, manioc, and ornamental ferns (which are apparently a significant export). The most peculiar thing I saw along the way was a house flying the Israeli flag. When I spotted it I thought it must be some similar looking Central American flag, particularly since it was breezy, making the flag hard to see but look at the picture; it’s an Israeli flag.

Not the Costa Rican flag

And yes there are Jews in Costa Rica, our guide was telling us during the ride about the country’s colonial history, which include missionaries as well as conquistadors. Valerie (who asks a lot of questions) asked whether Catholicism is still dominant in the country (yes) and what other religions there were in the country. The first thing the guide mentioned in response was that San Jose has a significant Jewish population. And later Googling about Jewish Costa Rica turned up the fact that a major local coffee brand (sort of the Starbucks of Costa Rica), Cafe Britt, was founded by a Bronx-born Jewish guy named Steven Aronson. Go figure. Those people are everywhere.

During the ride we got our first taste of Marco’s amazing ability to keep one eye on the road and the other scanning for wildlife. Every once in a while he would pull the bus over, having spotted some wildlife for us to see. The first time it was a white hawk, spotted way in the distance in a tree. Other sightings on those first days included a sloth, a howler monkey and a toucan.

Spotted along the road: three-toed sloth

 

Spotted along the road: howler monkey

Even with stops for waterfalls and wildlife we made it to our rafting put-in close to the target time of 10 AM, at which point many of us were a little green around the gills from several hours of uninterrupted mountain switchbacks. Fortunately, we were all able to shake it off pretty quickly and after changing into our water clothes were ready to go whitewater rafting.

Any day I’m able to slip on a PFD and hit the water is a good day, and it was nice to be doing it with Valerie for a change. The trip promised class 2 & 3 rapids. It was a nice mix of tame class 2’s and some rapids big enough to be exciting - one rapid knocked Dick, the husband of the 70-something couple, out of our boat, and I splatted onto the floor of the raft at one point - but nothing really scary.

Getting ready to hit the rapids

 When Dick fell out, he and I were in the front positions on the raft, and so when the guide maneuvered the bow of the raft near the swimmer I was the closest person to him. I just kind of instinctively grabbed the shoulder straps of his PFD and held onto him. I was ready to haul him back into the boat, but then the raft guide and our tour guide took over at which point I backed off from the rescue.

Valerie with Alberto, our raft guide

 It was a really nice trip. The water was chilly but the air was warm enough that getting splashed by a little old water didn’t matter. As we went downriver the guide pointed out birds, which were of course many of the same species I see all the time on the water - cormorants, kingfishers, egrets, and herons. But of course, there were also animals you wouldn’t see on the Potomac. Monkeys, three-toed sloths, and iguanas basking on tree branches are not things I run into on the waters of the mid-Atlantic. After every rapid our guide, Alberto, would have us raise our paddles together and say “Pura Vida!”, which is the Costa Rican saying for the good life. I will say, the Costa Rican’s do seem to have a positive attitude about life (or at least the ones in the hospitality industry do). 

 

Sliced pineapple snack

About halfway through the trip we pulled over onto a sandy beach for a break. As we munched on fresh pineapple, I said to Valerie, “Nice morning, huh? Floating down a river, checking out the birds and other wildlife, chilling out on the river bank ...”

“This is the life,” she agreed.

I smiled, knowing that experiences not all that different from this one are a routine part of my life and not something limited to the rare active adventure vacation. “Now you know why I spend my weekends the way that I do,” I said.

At the end of the rafting trip we boarded a dilapidated van for the shuttle back to the put-in (I suspect there is a secret international standard mandating a certain lack of roadworthiness for post-padding shuttles - they’re all clunkers). At the start of the trip I had changed into rafting clothes in an exceptionally  grungy changing room out back (at least I found the changing room - others changed in the even grungier bathroom), but after the trip I realized there was a much, much nicer changing room right in the main building. But I guess not everyone figured that out, as Erick and I were the only ones in there. As we changed he got to see my scar and I got a gander at his extensive set of tattoos - though of course, neither of us commented on the other’s modified torsos.

We ate lunch at the rafting place, which had a pleasant dining room overlooking the river. The main courses were a leathery pork (perhaps actually tapir? coati mundi?) and tilapia, but I was ready for a meatless meal and so had rice and beans (called gallo pinto here and seemingly available at every meal at every restaurant in Costa Rica!), plantains and vegetables. Once again I couldn’t resist and indulged in a cup of regular coffee.

 

Lunch spot view

After lunch we continued on to Hotel Los Lagos, gorgeously sited at the base of the Arenal volcano. This place was a resort with grounds so big it has a shuttle bus to ferry people around - and those grounds are quite pretty and exotically tropical. I kept expecting to run into Herve Villachaize. Valerie and I hung up our wet stuff and rested for a bit. As usual, my nap was short and so I went for a stroll around the hotel. I didn’t see the wild peccaries others had seen earlier, but I got up close and personal with some crested guans (large birds). I considered hiking the 2 km trail up to a viewpoint of the volcano but by this point it was cloudy and threatening (too cloudy for there to be much of a view) and so I just walked around and when it started to drizzle I headed back to the room.

Crested guan

Christmas Eve dinner was at the hotel - a very good buffet. I had creamy squash soup, a made to order pasta dish, and an assortment of veggies, breads and other stuff. I was disciplined and had only fruit for dessert, despite an abundance of pretty little desserts, including some traditional Costa Rican Christmas cake. And I skipped having coffee :(