March 19-26, 2022
Our first trip outside the United States in over two years! And what a wonderful trip it was. After all the chaos of planning a wedding during a pandemic, on top of the usual anxiety that the pandemic caused around the world, our trip to Costa Rica came as a welcomed reprieve. Our stay in Costa Rica was short and quick, but just enough time to feel away from the stresses of everyday life. We spent one week in Costa Rica with the plan of flying into San Jose, driving to Arenal for three days, then driving to Manuel Antonio for two days, followed by our return to San Jose for our departure flight. Although driving in another country is always stressful, our trip was well paced with relaxation and activities. So let’s start with Arenal and La Fortuna!
Arenal Volcano National Park and La Fortuna
We arrived in San Jose (technically Alajuela) in the evening. We didn’t have any time to explore San Jose, since we had to prep for our drive out to La Fortuna the next day. The drive to La Fortuna took roughly three to four hours and it was a pretty smooth drive. We arrived mid-day in La Fortuna, just in time to get some lunch at Rainforest Cafe & Restaurant in downtown La Fortuna. I ordered the plato típico with a fresh strawberry juice blended with milk. E ordered a frozen coffee drink, I don’t recall his meal. Either way, the food at Rainforest Cafe, like all the food we ate in Costa Rica, was absolutely delicious! After filling up our stomachs, our first stop in the area was the Catarata Río Fortuna (La Fortuna Waterfall). Although a bit rainy, the small hike to reach La Fortuna Waterfall counteracted the stiff legs from a long car ride. We could see a number people swimming in the pools just next to the waterfall and in the streams leading to the waterfall, although we chose not to swim.
After La Fortuna Waterfall, we were ready to locate our AirBnB. I chose an AirBnB, Niru Rainforest Suites, with a wonderful view of Arenal Volcano and at the recommendation of my neighbors. The photos of the AirBnB seemed like the suites were based in secluded, quiet area. However, we did not realize how secluded the AirBnB was. When planning our trip, we rented a small, compact car with the expectation that, although many roads would not be well maintained in Costa Rica, we were visiting high tourist areas, and therefore, our rental would do fine. With the location of this AirBnB a bit off the beaten path, we were quite grateful that we did not experience a lot of rain while we planned to drive, even if we received downpours in the middle of the night. Despite our surprise in its location, I would highly recommend this AirBnB to anyone visiting the area. The view of the volcano during the day and at night, the seclusion of its location, and even the sound of a downpour in the middle of the night led to a wonderful experience.
After enjoying a small breakfast the next morning, E and I made our plans for the day. Even though we visited during the dry season, we experienced so much rain, mostly at night. Either way, we wanted to take the rain into account as we planned our activities. Since our AirBnB was located right next to Mistico Hanging Bridges, we decided to start our exploration of Arenal Volcano at Mistico! Here, we crossed a number of hanging bridges high above the trees. Even though we opted to not do a tour, we saw a plethora of animals, including numerous poison dart frogs, lizards, and even an anteater. One thing I regret about La Fortuna, is that I did not plan ahead of time to do a night tour of Mistico because we would be high up enough to see kinkajous! Ever since my childhood best friend showed me this picture of a kinkajou, I have always wanted to see them. When I visited Panama a few years back, I had learned that Costa Rica had kinkajous. Only problem is that I forgot. Oh well, that just means I have to plan another trip to Costa Rica sometime in the future.
Our next stop was Arenal Volcano National Park. Since it is unsafe and there are no trails up the volcano, we took on some small hikes around the base of the volcano. Even these hikes were strenuous, mostly because we hadn’t eaten a real lunch (just snacks) and we were quite tired. The views were nice, but honestly, the view of the volcano from our AirBnB was better. After we got our fill of hiking, we ate at Restaurante Tiquicia where I ordered a vegetarian dish (vegetariano de mi tierra) since E ordered a meat-based dish and I assume he would want some more veggies. I also ordered a passionfruit margarita. Like all of our meals, the food served a Restaurante Tiquicia was completely delicious. Since we wanted to avoid late night driving as much as possible given the curvy roads of Arenal, we headed back to our AirBnb to rest, during which I pulled out my night photography skills to get some beautiful shots of the volcano at night.
Day two at Arenal volcano consisted of sloths, chocolate, and hot springs. We took our time with breakfast in the morning, then headed down to La Fortuna to visit the sloths at Bogarin Trail. Even though we did not take a tour, we saw several sloths, including a mama and baby sloth. We also saw a toucan, some more poison dart frogs and lizards. We probably would not have seen some of these animals if it weren’t for all the other people at Bogarin Trail, stopping and pointing them out to us. Afterwards, we ate lunch at Red Frog Coffee Roaster, where E heard they had delicious coffee. Although I am not much of a coffee drinker, I have to try Costa Rican coffee at least once while in Costa Rica. I ordered an iced coffee drink and some empanadas. Coffee tasted like coffee, and as usual, the empanadas were delicious.
Our next activity consisted of a chocolate tour and eating lots of chocolate. La Fortuna, and Costa Rica in general, has lots of companies that teach tourists about coffee and chocolate in the country. We went with Rainforest Chocolate Tour. Our tour guide was quite knowledgeable on the history and process of making chocolate. We learned a lot and we even made our own chocolate. E even took a silly video of me dancing as I grind up cocoa beans. Our final stop of the day was at Eco Termales Hot Spring. One thing I would recommend to any visitors to Arenal, book your hot spring reservation. We, unfortunately, had not. Initially E wanted to go to Tabacon Hot Springs; however, Tabacon and no availability by the time I decided to reserve. Eco Termales was our second choice in hot springs. Even still, we both found Eco Termales quite relaxing. We didn’t stay for the whole time frame of our booking, since we did not want to drive too late at night. All in all, Eco Termales provided a great experience to ending our day.
Manuel Antonio
After a leisurely breakfast at the AirBnB, we packed up the car to make our way down to Manuel Antonio. The journey to Manuel Antonio was quite an adventure to say the least. E drove the whole time in Costa Rica (I offered multiple times), but the drive to Manuel Antonio was the most stressful for him. As in charge of navigation, I did not realize that I still had the ‘no toll roads’ setting enabled in Google Maps. Therefore, Google Maps took us the ‘scenic’ route to get to Manuel Antonio, where a couple of times, the hills were so steep that E thought our car would not be able to climb it. Ultimately, the drive took longer than expected. By the time we got to Jaco, we both just needed a break and to get some food. We stopped at The Green Room for wonderful fish tacos and headed off to find our AirBnB in Manuel Antonio and to catch the sunset at Playa Espadilla.
Manuel Antonio has quite a unique layout for a town on a hill. Our AirBnB would be somewhat located at the top of the hill leading to the other side of hill leading to the beach. I would highly recommend our AirBnB in Manuel Antonio! The owners were some of the most hospitable AirBnB hosts that we have met. They suggested a small hiking trail for us to visit that was located right behind their property. Usually, this hiking trail has several waterfalls, but it seems it hadn’t rained a lot recently, so there wasn’t much of a waterfall. Either way, the hike was still enjoyable before we spent the day on the beach.
Since we spent most of the day on the beach for our first day, there isn’t much to comment on. We just relaxed. Playa Espadilla was not too crowded, but still was busy. We saw a number of capuchins in the trees and we ended our beach day by going parasailing. First time both of us have gone parasailing, and we both loved it. After a long day on the beach, eating dinner at El Avion Restaurante, we headed back home to rest up for the next day.
We had a packed schedule for our final day in Manuel Antonio, since we were planning to drive back to San Jose for an early flight the next day. Since the US requires a negative COVID-19 administered 24 hours prior to traveling, we started our morning anxiously waiting a negative result. Once the 15 minutes had passed with a negative result, all my anxiety released and I could go back to enjoying my vacation. We checked out early in the morning and then made our way to Manuel Antonio National Park. Our initial plan was to visit Manuel Antonio National Park the day before; however, given we didn’t reserve a spot (reserve early!), we reserved our entrance for the day we planned to leave. Even still, we had enough time to walk all around the park, do a small hike, and spend some time on Playa Manuel Antonio. Once we had our fill, we left Manuel Antonio National Park, stopped at El Patio de Café Milagro for our final meal and then made our way back to San Jose. Since we had an early flight the next morning, we dropped off our car, ate dinner at La Calle and then went back to our AirBnB in Alajuela to rest up for our return flight home. After a stressful flight home, with almost missing our flight and delays in our Uber, we arrived safely back in DC to cuddle with Shirie for the night.
Until next time,
ㅅ_ㅅ