Day 1 – December 14th, 2018

Joseph & I started our journey to Costa Rica at John Wayne airport around 7:30AM. We met with my parents on our layover in Houston, and we landed around 9:30pm in San Jose, Costa Rica. We picked up our rental car and had a crazy ride to Alajuela to get to our Airbnb. Melanie & Alex were already at the Airbnb and had some food ready for us, including yummy Gallo Pinto which is a popular Costa Rican dish.

Day 2 – December 15th, 2018

I had a quick breakfast, with a piece of toast and banana. We packed up and started out drive to Zarcero. There are two main routes to get to La Fortuna, but we decided on the route through Zarcero since we wanted to check out that cool little town. I was worried about driving around in Costa Rica after what I read on various forums, but this drive was similar to driving in Squaw Valley which is something Joseph is very experienced with. I also read online about the many car thefts in Costa Rica, so we took turns to see the main attraction in Zarcero–the church and topiaries. This was a nice little pit stop, and a beautiful photo opportunity. We grabbed a delicious muffin from a panaderia across the street from this town square, and next door I paid 50 cents to use a bathroom.  

After our quick stop, we drove to La Fortuna, our Airbnb was called La casa de la Montana. This Airbnb was like our treehouse, and only about 15 minutes from town. It had a beautiful view of the Arenal Volcano, and had some nice hammocks. I wasn’t a big fan of there still being bugs inside, along with the heat, but we got used to it. Overall we did enjoy the scenery here.

That night, we took a sloth tour that we booked through Airbnb. Flash, the sloth, was very apprehensive about leaving his tree, but after getting pushed out he went. Flash was very slow, he slowly inched along a rope. While waiting we drank yummy coffee, the 1820 brand. They also served us a delicious picadillo taco with papaya and meat. We went to look at frogs while we were waiting for him to get across the rope, and when we got back he had made it to the end. We got some photos with him and watched him inch back in to his tree.

Day 3 – December 16th, 2018

We started the day early, leaving the Airbnb around 6:30AM, and arriving to Rio Catarata La Fortuna waterfall around 7am. Sadly one small bus arrived before us but it wasn’t bad. We were glad to get there early so we could take time with our pictures. We descended the 480 steps–going down that many steps had my legs shaking. The water was very cold. We went into the water at the base of the waterfall and it was very strong, either pushing us against rock or trying to pull us away. We ended up being sore for days after handling the journey down and up the steps here.

Next up, we went on a hike in the Arenal National Park. I think the hike was called Las Colobas; it felt like it went on forever. We did see some monkeys, toucans, and wild boar. Mel and Alex heard a roar and took out pepper spray in case a jaguar emerged. The hike within the loop to an outlook of the volcano was very hard to climb with many many rocks. The view at the end of this was nice, but clouds obscured the volcano.

Lastly, we went to the Don Juan coffee and chocolate tour. We even made our own chocolate with cacao, milk powder, vanilla, cinnamon, sugar, and salt. Cacao by itself was bitter, chocolate needs sugar to taste good. But, the fruit coating of the cacao was tasty. The brewed coffee was yummy, I even liked the dark roast black. The chorreador was the device used to make the coffee. We bought a chorreador from the gift shop. I ended the night hanging out with my mom on the bed that was surrounded by windows and sounds of insects from outside.

Day 4 – December 17th, 2018

We had breakfast at Cafe Chill Out and it was very good. Joseph loved his banana pancakes, and I had a good American breakfast with a banana milkshake. My mom had a chicken empanada and it was so good. This was my favorite breakfast place for the whole trip. After, we went to Power Wheels Adventures for our Jungle Farm and river ATV tour. Pablo and Fernando were our guides. Pablo talked to us about his culture along with the many animals and insects he has seen here, and even spotted a Toucan for us. Fernando showed us the rubber tree, held a poisonous red frog to show us, and even grabbed a leaf cutter soldier ant and had it hold a giant leaf. They also were great at taking photos. A 2.5 hour tour was perfect, and we enjoyed the scenery, just wish it hadn’t been so cloudy so that we could see the volcano too.

After lunch, we shopped for souvenirs around town. One of our favorites was the store across from Power Wheels, called Galeria Agues Verdes. We rested for the rest of the day at our Airbnb, until dinner time. We ate some Chinese food for dinner