We arrived in Costa Rica on Saturday night. Once we got through customs, we went to the desk to pick up our rental car. This I put in my name, something which I might not have been able to do in the US seeing as I don’t turn 25 until Sunday the 26th. But after going through all the rigamarole, we had our car. Turns out, it’s a stickshift.
We had arrived pretty late, but we still wanted to get some way toward La Fortuna before Sunday. So we drove up to San Ramón. (Gregg drove, since I had never driven stick before.) This was tough, because it was dark and there were very few lights on the road. We almost drove off the road once, and ended up stopping in this triangular area separating an exit from the continuing road. It came up out of nowhere! But we got to San Ramón all right. We found a hotel which was supposed to be $4/night but which ended up costing us nearly double that. We also had to lock our car up, which we ended up getting for $3.
This town was hopping. We weren’t quite sure why, but there were tons of college-aged kids around drinking at the bars on this one street, and just generally milling around. There was a nice vibe. We ate in this restaurant were Gregg got some pasta with a savory sauce. They were playing U2 and Led Zeppelin videos while we were there, but when we walked past later they had switched back to something more befitting a little out-of-the-way Costa Rican restaurant. Perhaps the music was for our benefit.
We went back to the Hotel Gran and pretty much went right to bed, though it was after 12 by this time.
The next day we woke up at 12:30, which was mostly my fault: I had mis-set my little travel alarm clock. We got on our way after figuring out how to use the shower with the scary-looking electric wiring hanging out in the tiled area. (Turns out it was heated at the shower head, and it took some fiddling.) We went and got our car, which was fine. Gregg asked me if I wanted to drive. I was a little apprehensive, since, as I said before, apart from driving around a parking lot with my sister once a few years ago, I have never driven stick. I said OK, I’d give it a try, and we set off. Yes, there were some start-stop-start moments, but I did all right. :-)
We headed up to La Fortuna, stopping for lunch in the little town of Zarcero. There was a neat garden area in the center of the town (in front of the church) where there were tons of sculptures made out of some sort of juniper-like plant. Helicopters and dancing people and whatnot. It was neat. We had lunch and continued on, stopping once to buy some cheese from a roadside vendor.
When we got to Ciudad Quesada, we took a right and went in search of the Tucanito, a public park/hot springs area. We got there after closing time, but they let us in and didn’t even charge us. At first we couldn’t find the hot springs, but then we realized they must be down by the river, a nearly 1km walk. We started down the trail but changed our mind when we realized we’d likely be down by some standing water (meaning mosquitos), and it was getting late. We thanked the proprietors and left, being at first misdirected. But we eventually found our way. Gregg did the night driving.
We arrived in La Fortuna late, after the sun had set, and set about finding a place to stay. Gringo Pete’s was full up, which was too bad. They were the cheapest in town. Instead we opted for Cabinas Jerry. The guy offered it to us for $6 each, but through some graft on his part and some bad math on ours, he charged us $7 each. :-( After we got situated, we went off to see the town and had a nice meal. La Fortuna was way more touristy than San Ramón was, so there were nicer restaurants all over the place, as well as outfitters. We went back to the cabina and hit the hay.
(*UPDATE:* I forgot one of the most important things that happened to us all trip! We took the car out to Arenal, the active volcano in the Arenal National Park right next to Fortuna and watched as magma trickled out of it. This was at about 11 pm; apparently there was a great big eruption roundabout 3:10, but we were long asleep by that time. There were a couple big explosions while we were watching it, but perhaps we were on the wrong side of the mountain: we only heard these, and didn’t see much in the way of lava being tossed into the sky. Still, a fantastic experience.)
The next morning we got up at the much more reasonable time of 10:00. We left our loding and took the car up to a waterfall that Lonely Planet (our bible) recommended. We picked up two Argintinian women who were clearly walking the 7km up to the falls. I don’t recall their names (they were tough...), but they were very nice and were thankful for the ride. We saw the falls (very impressive) and posed for some silly pictures, which I will post later. We skipped swimming in the pond below the falls, as it appeared to be VERY cold. The Argintines were underwhelmed with the waterfall, since apparently they have tons of much more spectacular ones in their country. The falls were shorter than Yosemite Falls, but still pretty impressive. And it’s the end of the dry season here, so it would probably be much better come August.
We brought the girls back to town with us and dropped them off. Then it was off to Juntas. We first rounded a man-made lake. There were some bad roads, some stunning views and several coatis which begged us for food when we stopped to take a picture of them. We stopped for a juice drink at a convenient soda and talked about Juntas. It was originally a mining town set up by Minor Keith, the head of the United Fruit Company. We drove a good long way to get there, showing up in Juntas after dark. We wandered around looking for food and internet, finding a little of both. We also found an arena football competition between at least four local grade school teams. That was cheap, and good fun. Gregg bought and drank some Coca-Cola in a bag. We were the only gringos in town and certainly the only ones at the game. We got stared at quite a bit, especially by the kids under 5 who didn’t know better.
We got a pretty good deal on the place we stayed that night. There was a hot tub and a pool, both of which had the perfect temperature. We soaked that evening (hot, cold, hot) and went back to the room. We had a very fine discussion about finances and the wonders of owning property and then decided what we would do the next day (Tuesday).
I’m once again out of time, so I’m going to stop now. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some time to write again tomorrow so I can be caught up!
