On the Road again...Finally!

Thursday, March 31, 2011...

If you are new to our blogs or if you’ve followed us before the ground-rules are simple, we tell it like we find it. Most important we try to make you feel like you are right there with us. On This two week adventure to Costa Rica we are going to try to get more pictures, links and movies included so you can explore these places on your own. We love comments and sharing your own experiences in these same places. We’re Bob, John and Gary, three friends from Provincetown Massachusetts, John is the radio engineer for WOMR OuterMost Community Radio, Bob is an Innkeeper and Gary’s partner and together they own Four Gables Cottages and Suites. Gary also works as the Construction Coordinator for OpenCape, Corp. It has been a very busy winter for each of us and boy, oh boy, do we need a vacation!

Two weeks in Costa Rica is a vacation to one of our most favorite places on the planet! In San Jose we will meet our friends from Provincetown and together we will drive up to La Fortuna and spend 4 nights enjoying fear on the slopes of the Volcano Arenal. Next we drive around Lake Arenal and up the mountain to Santa Elena to visit our friends at El Sol de Nuestro and the many preserves around Monteverde. At the end of our first week we will head down to Quepos and Manuel Antonio for a few days exploring the rain forests and the beach…especially the beach!

This will be Bob and Gary’s fifth trip to Costa Rica while John’s first and we are excited to see how much Costa Rica has changed since our last trip in 2008. Our other two friends from Provincetown will stay with us for 3 nights in La Fortuna, then they will head East to the Caribbean Coast. Depending on their ability to find connections, we may also have dispatches from the Caribbean coast to include. We’ve packed, repacked, compressed, smashed and otherwise stuffed and checked-off multiple lists till they are unreadable scraps of paper and it looks like we are ready. Now for a good night’s sleep…

Snow in Provincetown the night before our flight to Costa Rica

Is that snow? Nah, can’t be… John’s on the phone… forecast is not good… maybe we should head into Boston tonight?... It’s 11:00pm, we’re on vacation, so why not start with a heart-stopping race with a blizzard?. We’re outta here! 2:00am and we make it to the Holiday Inn Express in Saugus! A clean, warm bed never looked so inviting. ($189 for a room with two queen beds, up to 14 days free parking, free shuttle service to and from Logan and a decent breakfast, Check it out: http://www.hiexpress.com/hotels/us/en/saugus/bossa/hoteldetail, 999 Broadway, Saugus, MA 01906, USA (781) 233-1800)

Friday, April 1, 2011...

Friday morning we’re up at 6:00am it is still snowing! Snow, tired of snow, sick of snow and the slush is ankle deep. The airport van is full and the next one doesn’t run till an hour before our flight… too close for comfort so the Hotel buys us a Taxi! Sweet!

For this first leg, we are flying American Airlines from Boston to Miami then from Miami to San Jose. We have taken this route once before and it is relatively painless. We left Boston at a civilized 9:20am Nope, make that 10:15am and delayed again Miami we should have been in San Jose by 4:51pm, but we finally arrive in San Jose’s Juan Santamaría International at 6:51pm.

Incredible sunset as we start our decent into San Jose.

Passport Control is now in a very spacious clean and bright reception hall. The ICN agents are pleasant, efficient and fast. After a brief stop at a conveniently located ScotiaBank ATM located next to the luggage carousels, our luggage is already waiting.The ATM is located next to the even more convenient Duty Free liquor store. Yep, you can buy duty-free products upon entering the country. The prices for liquor were half the price as in the States.

We grabbed our luggage, and customs paid no attention to us as we made our way to the rental car booth and we were on the rental car shuttle by 7:30pm. (A factoid: Costa Rica is two hours behind Eastern Time. They do not exercise Daylight savings time and San Jose is in the Central Time Zone.)
Dollar rental car in San Jose is superb, they are the best and have always treated us quickly, honestly and courteously. The rates have always been competitive and the extra products (cell phone and GPS) very reasonably priced. We have a Misubishi Montero on this trip (not nearly the SUV as the Nissan Exterra they supplied us with on our last visit) http://www.dollarcostarica.com/ . We highly recommend taking the GPS and a local cell phone. unless you are sure yours will work in Costa Rica. Cell service is getting much better and it is well worth the extra cost (about $80USD for two weeks).

Our new GPS software operating, (For Garmin GPS's http://www.gpstravelmaps.com/costarica.php)  guest house located and we are on our way! 15 minutes later and Hmm, the GPS says it’s right here, but a brief inquiry at the address(s) would indicate otherwise… A search through all of our reservations, a quick phone call (sure am glad we rented the Costa Rican cell phone , even if we can’t read the damn thing!)
Finally, we arrive at our San Jose guest house, Casa 69 (http://www.casa69.com/).  Jim, our host was waiting for us standing in the street waiving us down. We find our friends and an overnight parking lot to stash the Montero. Now, for dinner. Our friend from Provincetown handled the arrangements for Casa 69 and the Innkeeper suggested a restaurant only a few blocks away. We plug the address into the GPS and start walking … There are a couple of very important things to remember about directions in all of Costa Rica, but especially in San Jose 1.) There are no addresses 2.) There are no street signs 3.)Directions are easy to get from any passer-by and highly subjective! so you might as well ask everyone you meet and average the results. In the event you are looking at a map while reading this, re-read 1 &2, above… Without addresses and street signs maps are nothing more than fish-wrap and GPS are just overpriced MP3 players!

The hand painted Ox-Cart wheel, a traditional symbol in Costa Rica

Circling like 747's stacked up over Chicago on a Friday afternoon, we eventually found a magnificent restaurant (Restaurante Mediterraneo AYC Sofia, Bo. Escalante, San Pedro) in the most un-likely of places…Just don’t ask us where since none of us would ever be able to find it again. The restaurant was a very happening on Friday night, the crowd young and either students or young professionals. Clearly NOT on the tourist routes, the staff was not fluent in English so the owner himself handled waiting on us and he presented the menu with the same passion as a father describes his first baby. The place was magic and so was the cuisine. The food was unique, the flavors exciting and his desire to please us boundless. It was indeed the perfect introduction to the mysteries of exploring a new place,  it's people and customs.

Saturday, April 2, 2011...

Breakfast at Casa 69 in San Jose

After a good night’s sleep and a wonderful combination of fresh fruit, breads and perfect eggs we re-grouped to map the road to La Fortuna. With basically 3 routes to choose from and 5 people sharing the Montero we agreed on the route through San Ramon. The trip was about 3 hours from start to finish. And by lunch time we were in La Fortuna. Saturday’s are really the only totally ‘free’ day most Costa Ricans get in their very busy lives and they do not waste it on the trivial and mundane. The roads are full of kids on bikes, village markets and festivals, buses, people walking and tractor trailers appearing from the most unlikely places. Traveling cross-country on a Saturday is a wonderful way to see how the country spends it’s free time, but be careful! Families walking on the narrow shoulders, motorcycles, off-road bikes, tractor trailers Tourismo buses and the intercity buses means constant attention on the road!

Route from San Jose to La Fortuna

If you are looking for good route maps of Costa Rica it is hard to beat Costa Rica Maps Online. From which we extracted all the maps for our Blog. If you need a good paper map (waterproof,  too...) be sure and check out MapCR.Com. These are the only maps we have found which include the new road from San Jose to Orotina (CR route 27) which is the new FAST route to Manuel Antonio.

The trip to La Fortuna was an easy drive through the Costa Rican country side where we acted completely like tourist. Stopping to take pictures of ... well, we're not sure what, but it must have been interesting!

It's got to be a cow or a tree or a Volcano!

Bill, Gary & Bob engage is shameless self promotion

La Fortuna is right on time and we stop in the middle of Town to get the mandatory picture for the Provincetown Banner, and have lunch at Las Brasitas. (Good food, reasonably priced, great atmosphere.).Promoted and fed we saddle up for the 20Km drive on the world's worst road to Linda Vista De Norte which is hard to get to but worth every bruise when you are treated to unbelievable views of Arenal Volcano, like the ones shown here.

Beaten and tired, we decide the most exciting thing to do would be to enjoy the pool, hot tub and the bar... mostly the bar...

As they say on the Television, "stay Tuned for more..."

View from our bedroom deck

Bathing Beauties by the Pool...

Scary...

Lunch at Las Brasitas