Costa Rica News

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Friendly Costa Rica
San Jose starting-off point for country's adventures

By Doug Pardue
The Post and Courier
Sunday, December 28, 200

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San Jose, Costa Rica — You can tell a lot about a country by the people you meet. Gerardo "Jerry" Segura speaks reams about Costa Rica.
The two of us struck up a conversation on the flight from Atlanta to San Jose. Jerry, as he asked to be called, quickly learned this was my first trip to his country, and he became an instant travel guide.
I had heard stories that Costa Ricans can be so friendly to visiting Americans (it's nice to be liked for a change) that if you ask directions, they won't just give them to you, they will lead you there.
Well, Jerry offered to show me and my wife, Judy, around his city and, on a map of the country, traced with his fingers the most scenic routes for us to drive in the four-wheel-drive Toyota we had arranged to rent.
On arrival at San Jose's international airport, Jerry told us to stick with him and we could slip through the fast and very short customs line for Costa Ricans. Initially, we hesitated to do so, fearful we might commit some grave crime and end up in a Costa Rican jail as illegal immigrants. But as we walked up to the long, snaking line of foreign tourists waiting to pass immigration, we decided to go along with Jerry. He simply told the customs official that we were with him, which was, in a way, true. The official stamped our passports, welcomed us to the country, and we were out on the sidewalk accosted by gaggles of taxi drivers urging us to go with them.
We had been cautioned to take only licensed cabs that have a special marking in the shape of a diamond, but in the throng of would-be drivers, picking out a licensed cabbie was a bit difficult, especially with my virtually nonexistent Spanish. Before I had to think about it anymore, Jerry motioned to me. He said his wife would be meeting him and they would take us to our hotel.
Again we hesitated, slightly concerned we might be a bit too trusting in a foreign country. But soon, up rushed Jerry's bride, dressed as if welcoming a soldier back from war. She beamed a loving smile and hugged him. He then introduced us and told his slightly puzzled wife that we had become acquainted on the airplane and that they were going to take us to our hotel.
As it turned out, she did not arrive in a car. She had taken a bus to greet her husband. Jerry arranged for us to get a licensed taxi van and said we would split the $30 ride to our hotel, saving us $10 on what it would have cost us to take a cab by ourselves.

The best of San Jose
When we arrived at the Hotel Le Bergerac, Jerry hurried in, came back out and announced that we had selected a very nice place.
We exchanged phone numbers and I promised to call him if we ended up staying longer in San Jose than the two nights we had planned.
The Hotel Bergerac is a boutique hotel with just 26 rooms. It is recommended by Fodor's as a lovely place to experience the best of San Jose while avoiding the sameness of the chain hotels that dominate the States.
The Bergerac lived up to its billing. Our second-floor room, at $126 a night, was well-appointed with a king bed, large bathroom and balcony overlooking a tropical garden. The only drawback was the shower, which we affectionately called a mister because of the fine spray it emitted. Later, after staying in three different hotels in three different parts of Costa Rica, we concluded the country is shower challenged.
The tour books were not kind to the capital city: It lacks the colonial legacy of some other Central American countries, and many of the older buildings did not survive urban renewal. Nevertheless, we decided to give the town a couple of days to get a feel for the home of 1.6 million, about one in three Costa Ricans. We wanted to sample its restaurants, characterized as the most cosmopolitan in the country, and wanted to check out a few historic sites and museums, such as the Gold Museum and its extensive collection of pre-Columbian gold ornamentation.
Violent crime is not considered prevalent in Costa Rica, but tour books warn of rampant thievery. This likely explains why San Jose comes wrapped in barbed wire. It covers virtually every building.
Still, we wandered the city by foot for most of a Saturday and didn't encounter the slightest hint of a problem. People everywhere showed nothing but politeness and a genuine desire to help and show off their city and country. And because of its central location, San Jose can serve as a convenient base to explore the country. Many major sites are within a two-hour drive.
One advantage of staying at the Bergerac is the restaurant on-site: L'Ile de France is one of the best French restaurants in the country, and the prices are reasonable. A salad, appetizer of pate, grouper main course and bottle of cabernet sauvignon cost just $53 not counting taxes or tip.
But our most enjoyable meal in San Jose was at a little out-of-the-way Italian restaurant called La Toscana. We had just checked into our hotel and were starved when we stepped into this unassuming family restaurant. It satisfied our need for comfort food, wine and a place to unwind from the flight and the hectic feel of arrival in a new country.
Our walking tour of downtown proved the tour books correct — there's not much to see — but we enjoyed the daylong stroll, a leisurely lunch at an outdoor cafe and window shopping.
One nice thing about walking downtown is that the city has turned a couple of its narrow streets into pedestrian malls. On most other streets downtown, pedestrians risk their lives to the steering of Costa Rica's notorious drivers.

To the beach
After two nights in San Jose, Judy and I picked up the four-wheel-drive Toyota we had reserved at the airport and headed north on the Pan American Highway to Ecoplaya, the beachside resort where we planned to spend the bulk of our vacation.
We rented a GPS, which provided a welcome comfort in a country not known for roads, much less road signs. But the mostly two-lane Pan American Highway turned out to be a relatively easy drive, kind of like the Blue Ridge Parkway with traffic. The views of the deep green mountains and countryside proved eye-popping. The only hitch we encountered was a gang of about two dozen motorcyclists crawling along in front of us at 25 mph on the curvy, mountainous highway. Passing on blind curves would have been a game of Russian roulette. One car from behind us took the risk on a sharp curve, barely avoiding an oncoming truck and nearly sending a few motorcyclists sprawling. Just when we had accepted the fact that our drive to Ecoplaya might end up longer than the six hours we planned, the legion of bikers suddenly formed a single line on the right side of the narrow highway and one biker motioned for me to follow him as he drove, point guard ahead of us in the on-coming lane to lead us passed the bikes.
The mountains flattened to rolling grasslands as we neared the city of Liberia, the capital of the cattle ranching northwestern section of the country that has the look of east Texas with volcanoes.
From Liberia, we drove north to La Cruz, a dingy hamlet that sits on a high bluff with a million-dollar view of the bay below and the Pacific Ocean. The town is the last in Costa Rica before the Pan American Highway runs north into Nicaragua.
We drove down the bluff from La Cruz onto a dirt road more suited to the many cows grazing on and along it. The four-wheel-drive couldn't smooth the washboard and potholes that threatened us with kidney damage for the 11 miles to Ecoplaya.
We arrived during the rainy offseason, so the resort was not at capacity. We had two of the nearby beaches, considered among the most beautiful in Costa Rica, all to ourselves. The rainy season wasn't as rainy as one might expect, at least in the drier northwestern portion of the country. On several days, we experienced sunny skies and not a drop of rain. The other days, the rain came like clockwork in the early afternoon.
The major drawback to Ecoplaya is its isolation. Traveling to almost any other part of Costa Rica's natural beauty requires a minimum two-hour drive. Other than the nearby Santa Rosa National Park, which is a hiker's paradise because few roads enter the new park, the closest major attraction is Rincon de la Vieja National Park, a preserved area of forests surrounding a 5,700-foot-tall volcano. We paid $150 each for a guided daytrip to the park, where we planned to accomplish two of our major touristy goals: a zipline canopy tour and tube rides on rapids down steep mountain gorges.
The zipline was a trip, especially for Judy, who has some issues with heights. She dug deep to allow herself to dangle from a steel cable 60, 70, 80 feet above a river rampaging through a deep gorge as she zipped from platform to platform high in trees. My only regret was that the zipping went so fast that I didn't have time to enjoy the incredible scenery.
After zipping, we went galloping on horses to a waterfall on the Rio Blanco. Unfortunately, our afternoon rapids-riding adventure was canceled because of unusually high water due to heavy rains.

Geothermal baths
That evening back at Ecoplaya, we decided to cut our stay at the resort a couple of days short so we could head to the north-central mountains and Arenal Volcano National Park. For centuries, residents thought the volcano was inactive. That changed in 1968 when it blew, burying three villages and killing 87 people. It's remained active since, killing two people who got too close to a 2000 eruption.
As a base in Arenal, we picked Tabacon Grand Spa Thermal Resort, a five-star resort we had written off as too pricey before we went to Costa Rica. But now, we decided to see if the resort offered any rainy season special deals. Sure enough, when we called from Ecoplaya, the reservationist at Tabacon said the resort offered some "superior" rooms with views of the active Arenal Volcano at half-price, $175 a night. That was still at the upper end of our comfort range, but we took it. We justified the expense because it came with complimentary use of the spa's open-air thermal springs, where we could soak in our pick of seven hot pools heated by the volcano's geothermal action.
Tabacon's Los Tucanos Restaurant surely ranks as one of the best in Costa Rica with top-notch service, attentive but out of sight. That night, we dined on roasted sea bass on a bed of leeks and parsley potatoes, with an essence of ratatouille. The bass came perfectly cooked, moist, yet flaky.
On our second day at Tabacon, we decided to get to the reason we came, a canopy tour during which we might actually see some of Costa Rica's jungle inhabitants. For $55 each, we took a tour with two well-trained guides, one for the Spanish-speaking quests and one for the English. The groups contained about six people each, so the tours remained intimate. The guides possessed keen eyes and ears. One spotted a toucan perched in a tree about 75 yards away as we drove to the canopy tour trail. The guides quickly set up tripod-mounted telescopes for us to get a close-up look at the beautiful bird.
For Judy, the canopy tour through a jungle hillside below Arenal Volcano began with an unnerving walk across a suspended steel bridge some 80 feet above a stream. This would be the first of six such bridges, one swaying about 100 feet above a stream.
The guide made the walk over the bridge a bit easier for Judy when he spied a troupe of howler monkeys dining on leaves in a nearby tree. Along the hike, we would see several poisonous snakes clinging to trees, coiled like pretzels ready to strike an unwary bird. We also saw a tiny black-and-red poisonous frog, foraging insects, beautiful birds and, at the end, as if choreographed for us, a troupe of acrobatic spider monkeys dangling from their long, powerful tails in their search for fruit, their favorite meal.
Departure time arrived the next day. We had arranged to leave from the international airport in Liberia, which is much closer than the airport at San Jose to the most popular beaches in the Guanacasta region. On the way, we stopped in the town of Tilaran and brunched at a restaurant that serves up inexpensive, tasty and generous helpings of the country's favorite meal, carnitas: generally a combination of beans, rice and pork or some other type of meat.
We needed the hearty meal before boarding the airplane and resigning ourselves to an afternoon and evening of pretzels and nuts.

Reach Doug Pardue