Prologue
Something happened for the first time ever this year and I found myself with an extra week of vacation and no plans to use it. I wanted someplace warm. I'd already been to Europe this year, and Asia is too far for a one week trip, so I focused on Central and South America. I'd read and heard a lot about how Costa Rica was a pioneer in promoting ecological tourism, so that's where my mental dart landed. Costa Rica has set aside 25% of their land area for parks and protected areas and really seems to be trying hard to preserve the rainforests and the plants and animals that live in them.

Once I started planning the trip, I came across at least half a dozen friends and family who'd been to Costa Rica recently, and not one of them had a single bad thing to say about the country. I figured that was a good sign and this would be a good trip.
Accompanying me on this adventure would be my friend Brian, his brother Bruce, and his girlfriend Ann.

Sunday - Ugh
The trip started at the ungodly hour of 4am, since our first flight left at 6am. Fortunately, that meant no traffic and no lines at the airport. Unfortunately, Flight #1 was delayed because there was no plane. So much for trying to beat the O’Hare delays by taking the first flight in the morning.

A little over an hour late, we were finally on our way to sunny Miami, where we were planning to brush up on our non-existent Spanish before hopping on a plane to Costa Rica. Due to the delay, though, we only had about 20 minutes to make our connection. We asked the gate agent on the way out if she could call over to the gate to let them know we were coming, but she said they had a policy of never holding planes, no matter how many people were on a late connection. After a 10 minute run across terminals, though, we made the connection towards the end of boarding. And then we sat on the plane for an hour because there was no pilot. Yes, they knew the pilot would be an hour late, but thought it would be best for us to run to sit on a 90+ degree plane for an hour waiting for him, rather than wait in the terminal.

Finally, though, we took off and roughly 3 hours later were at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport in Costa Rica. The first thing we saw after getting off the plane? Schlotzsky’s Deli. Glad to see we were in a foreign country. After getting our bags, we made our way over to Thrifty for our rental car and by about 3 or 3:30, we were on our way to our first hotel, the Los Sueños Marriott resort in Playa Herradura on the Pacific coast. I’d heard that the roads in Costa Rica gave a new name to potholes, but they weren’t actually that bad. Navigating, on the other hand, was another story. The roads were not numbered and about half the intersections had no signs at all. After the first few wrong turns, though, we discovered two easy ways to navigate in Costa Rica.

1. If you’re trying to take the main road/highway, just stay on the road with less potholes.
   
2. If you’re unsure, just pull over and ask someone to point to the city you are heading towards. There are ticos (Costa Ricans) walking everywhere and pretty much any intersection has at least half a dozen people standing around to ask.
   

An hour into our drive came the scariest point of the trip. Coming down a hill towards a one-lane bridge, there were a coach bus and two cars stopped while opposing traffic came through. I tried to slow down, but there were no brakes. None at all. I don’t remember all the details since it happened so fast, but I threw on the parking brake which slowed us down a little, then swerved out to the left of opposing traffic and then back to the right just as we got to the bridge. There wasn’t quite enough time to make it on to the bridge after the oncoming cars came, so our left side crashed into the cement rail at the start of the bridge. We bounced off that and then the right side of the car hit the back of the coach bus, which had started to go across the bridge. Miraculously, nobody was hurt and the driver of the bus (which was a public bus) was quite understanding once we looked up the Spanish word for brakes (frenos) and were able to communicate that our car had none of those.

I called 911 (yes, they have 911 there), but I couldn’t be much help, since we didn’t really have any clue which towns we were near. The bus driver also called the police, though, and after an hour, they showed up. Of course, the police didn’t speak English either, but with the combined English of the 40 or so ticos standing around and my mini Spanish-English book, we were able to tell them what they needed to know. After 20 minute of filling out paperwork and measuring the road with a tape measure, the police and the coach bus headed on their way and we were left sitting in the middle of nowhere in an undrivable car with no brakes.

Just after I called 911, I also called Thrifty, who said they would bring us another car in about an hour. We didn’t know it then, but Costa Ricans have their own system of measuring time, which involves dividing all actual times by 3. By that system, the new car showed up right on time, 3 hours after the accident and after a lot of boring standing around by us. The two guys who brought the car also spoke no English and also didn’t bring a second car for themselves, just a toolbox. I think their plan was to fix the car we crashed and then drive it back… hopefully they are still alive!

Finally, by about 9pm, we made it to the Marriott after that very long and exciting day. The hotel was very nice – one of those ones with a lagoon-like series of pools all connected together complete with waterfall and swim-up bar. Rumor has it, our room would have run us about $400 a night but thanks to Bruce’s employee discount, we stayed for much, much less than that.

For dinner that night, we ate at a restaurant right on the beach, where we could watch and hear the waves crashing onto the shore. Our bad luck wasn’t quite over yet, though. If you’ve read this far then you know that after this day, all four of us really needed a stiff drink. Several, in fact. Unbeknownst to us, today was a local election day and in Costa Rica, no alcohol can be sold on the day before, of, and after the election. I tried to get drunk on mango juice instead, but it didn’t work.

Monday – Zip Lines
We woke up fairly early and had breakfast at the Los Sueños buffet, which included loads of fresh fruit and a few kinds of fresh-squeezed juice every morning. The fruit and juice was soooooo good in Costa Rica. Over the course of the trip, I had, in descending order of tastiness: mango juice, pineapple juice, cas (guava) juice, guanabana juice, orange juice, strawberry juice, and blackberry juice.

After breakfast, we hung around at the hotel for a few hours and had lunch on the poolside. Ann and I got massages also – since there was no alcohol, this was the next best thing.

We’d signed up through the hotel for an afternoon zip line trip through the canopy of a rainforest. I was a bit scared of this since I tend not to like heights, but for whatever reason, soaring from treetop to treetop on thin metal cables was just a whole lot of fun and not scary at all. There were only nine zip lines total, though we were all hoping for more. Once everyone finished, they took us to a beach to swim in the ocean for an hour and watch an unbelievable sunset.

For dinner that night, we drove to the nearby surfing town of Jaco and just picked a random restaurant. In theory, Jaco has decent nightlife, but through some combination of the alcohol ban and it not quite being tourist season yet, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. The food at this place (I think called Mar Restaurante or something like that) was quite tasty though, and I had chicken soup and a “Typical Plate" with chicken. The “typical plate" is a goofy translation for food that’s supposed to represent what ticos eat every day. It consists of rice, black beans, some vegetables (usually broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, either steamed or boiled to death), and plantains. Tonight, the plate also includes some scary florescent pink cubes of something that turned out to be beets.

Tuesday – Horses, Rainforests, Waterfalls, Parrots, and Monkeys
We went to bed fairly early on Monday since we’d booked a 7:30am horseback ride and hike through the rainforest that came highly recommended by the hotel. After about a half hour drive to a private reserve, I think called Pura Vida, where the 15 of us hopped on horses and galloped off into the rainforest. After riding for a little under an hour, we left the horses behind and walked into the rainforest for about an hour hike down to a waterfall. On the way, our phenomenal guide Walter told us all about the rainforest plants and Costa Rica. The waterfall itself was a good one – quite tall with tons of water coming over it thanks to the recent end of the rainy season. On the hike back up, our guides managed to spot a pair of white-faced monkeys leaping in the trees nearby, followed by a small flock of at least 7 scarlet macaw parrots. Apparently the parrots were a rare find – they often see one or two, but 7 of them together was very unusual. They are very beautiful birds, too.

After the hike, we got back on our horses for a short ride to a river area, where we could swim and jump into a small pool that had formed in the rapids. This was quite refreshing after the long hike up and in my opinion, even more fun than the zip lines! Once we dried off, we galloped back to where we started, they fed us some homemade cheese and guava marmalade sandwiches (surprisingly good), and drove us back to the hotel.

We hung around the hotel for the rest of the afternoon/evening, leaving only for dinner, where we headed back to the beach we were at Sunday night and tried one of the other restaurants along there. Excellent food once again and the ambiance can’t be beaten.

Wednesday – More Car Trouble, More Waterfalls, and the EcoLodge
We left the Marriot right after breakfast for a drive up to Monteverde, home of perhaps Costa Rica’s most famous “Cloud Forest". This was a drive none of us were looking forward to, given our recent near-death experience and all the tales we’d heard about this road over the past few days. Everything from “they need to invent a new word because ‘pothole’ just isn’t sufficient" from others at our hotel to “I called the road to Pura Vida today the ‘free massage road’, but it’s nothing compared to the road to Monteverde" from Water, our guide yesterday.

What we’d heard was not wrong. The road was bad… and this was when it was relatively dry – I can only imagine what it must be like in the rainy season. I neglected to take any road pictures, but here’s one I found on Google. To compound the problems with the “road", about halfway along our drive, the “TRANS TEMP" light came on in our Jeep. Since Thifty didn’t see fit to include an owner’s manual with the vehicle, we weren’t sure if this was just a friendly warning or meant that we better turn off the car ASAP before the transmission fried. Not wanting to be stranded, we opted to let the car cool down for about a half hour before continuing. Despite this, it overheated about 3 more times on the drive up the mountain, making for a long morning.

By 1pm, the four of us and our piece-of-junk rental car made it to our lodging for the next two nights, the Ecolodge San Luis and Research Station. Since I'd heard/read so much about Costa Rica's eco-tourism, I wanted to try out an ecolodge, though I had no clue what to expect from it.

Ecolodge San Luis was truly in the middle of nowhere, a 10-15 minute walk from what the residents called "downtown" San Luis, a town that as far as I could tell consisted of a general store, a school, a small restaurant, and maybe 10 houses. Our rooms were simple cabinas out in the middle of the forest, and the four of us plus two other people were the only guests for the moment.

The way ecolodges work (or this ecolodge, at least), naturalists or students studying to be naturalists could stay there for free or close to free. In exchange, they did nature research, learned about the surroundings, and helped out by leading walks or tours. There weren't any professors or big academic groups there when we were, but there were maybe 8 of these naturalists, from the US, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England. As guests, our rooms weren't all that cheap - $90/person/night, but that included 3 meals a day and as many free hikes/activities with the naturalists.

After checking in, we walked down a muddy road to the faculty house, where they were holding lunch for us. Lunch (and pretty much every meal we would have at the ecolodge) consisted of white rice, black beans, rice mixed with some vegetables and chicken, vegetables Costa Rican-style (see Monday), and a tasty dessert.

After lunch, the four of us went with an American naturalist named Ali on what she said was he favorite hike, through the rainforest to a hidden waterfall. The hike was a lot of fun, involving a lot of slogging through mud, river crossing on planks or rocks, and even climbing up/down a small rock wall. At the end was a beautiful waterfall that seemed to me to be right out of the movie Jurassic Park.

After we got back from dinner, we pretty much just hung out at the ecolodge relaxing. The drive up and the hike took a lot out of us and even if there was nightlife around, we had no desire to drive those Monteverde roads in the dark.

Thursday - Birds and Butterflies
Thursday morning, we ate an early breakfast at the lodge so we could make it up to Monteverde preserve before the 7:30am tours started. Ann's ankle was bothering her, so she opted to hang out at the ecolodge with the naturalists instead.

At Monteverde, we ended up in a tour group of 8 people plus our guide, Jorge, actually one of the bigger groups. Each of the 10-or-so guides had their own telescopes, ranging from new and very fancy looking to rather old. Jorge's was of the old variety, which actually worked to our advantage. His telescope was old because he'd been guiding tours at Monteverde for the past 14 years. His knowledge of birds, bird calls, flora, and fauna was absolutely amazing. During our 2 hour tour, he must have made 30-40 different bird calls, usually so accurate that the birds would answer back. Apparently he was so good at it that he often fooled the younger guides who couldn't yet tell human calls apart from bird ones.

Unbeknownst to us before we got there, the goal of our tour was to locate the elusive quetzal, one of two birds Costa Rica is famous for (the other being the macaw parrots). Although it wasn't yet mating season, Jorge managed to spot a quetzal fairly quickly in a far-away avocado tree and got us a great look at it through his telescope, even shooting a picture of it on my camera.

Having gotten the quetzal out of the way early allowed Jorge to spend most of the remaining time on the hike pointing out other more common birds and teaching us across the rainforest. I have no idea how he does it, but the man can pick birds out of thin air. He's be talking and suddenly pause, then quietly say something like "did you hear that? That was the call of the yellow-bellied flycatcher", immediately pointing at a yellow dot nobody else could make out with their bare eyes halfway across the forest. Then he's say "while I was turning my head, I noticed there's also a black-breasted wood quail on the tree in front of us, and a gray-breasted wood-wren two trees over." The man was like a bird superhero.

After the tour was over, we ate at the Monteverde snack shop, where I had perhaps the best Panini and slice of chocolate cake I've ever had - odd for a private rainforest reserve in the middle of nowhere. After lunch, we drove down into the town of Santa Elena to look at their Butterfly Garden. The garden was nice and we did see some butterflies, but unfortunately, the sun wasn't out so it wasn't as great as it could have been.

That afternoon, Brian and Bruce rested while I found Ann for a Tico cooking class, another free benefit of the ecolodge. We made what would be our dinner (along with the rice, beans, and overcooked broccoli), empanadas. It was fun, but I don't envision making them again without a really good recipe or some assistance. After dinner, a few of the guides let Brian and I on a night hike, where we got a chance to hear, hear, and feel the rainforest at night - very different from what is was like during the day.

Friday - More Driving and Hot Springs
After breakfast on Friday, it was time to depart the ecolodge. I would have loved to spend more time there, but we wanted to make it over to Arenal Volcano, which we'd heard many good things about. That and I think Bruce was really looking forward to sleeping in a room with more than two not-all-that comfortable beds, a single light bulb, and a toilet you weren't allowed to flush toilet paper into. The drive was long, about 3 hours more along the "free massage road" before we finally returned to that wonderful invention called pavement.

We drove around the scenic Lake Arenal to Tabacon Grand Spa and Thermal Resort. After two days roughing it at the ecolodge, the hot springs were just what we needed. Not only that, but Arenal Volcano actually decided to show itself through the clouds, something that apparently hadn't happened for the past two weeks.

Saturday - A Volcano
Satruday morning, we headed off for a hiking tour of Arenal Volcano. It was kind of rainy and while the volcano never did show itself, we'd seen it yesterday and did get to hear it "erupting" several times along the walk. We learned a lot from our guide and he even found a toucan with his telescope for us to see. It wasn't the Fruit Loops kind, but was very cool nonetheless. On the way back, he and the driver managed to find some white-faced capuchin monkeys and howler monkeys out in the wild.

After the tour, we checked out of the hotel and drove towards the capital of San Jose, planning to sleep near the airport. Along the way, we stopped in the town of Ciudad Quesada for lunch. Bruce and Ann had had enough of rice and beans for the time being and dined at Pizza Hut while Brian and I seeked out a soda - the Costa Rican equivalent of a roadside diner. This was our first restaurant where nobody spoke English, but we managed to order some cheap, tasty food, including a delicious purple shake, the ingredients of which still elude me.

After lunch, we found a cheap hotel on the road just outside Alajuela where the airport was (contrary to popular belief, it's not actually in San Jose). For dinner, Bruce, Ann, and Brian dined at the hotel restaurant while I headed across the street where it sounded like a party was going on. As it turned out, the locals we playing bingo to raise funds for their school, so I managed to pick up two huge tamales for dinner for about $1.10.

Sunday - The End
Sunday morning we headed to the airport, which was only about 10 minutes away. Thifty couldn't tell me whether or not we'd be responsible for paying the insurance deductible on the car we crashed, although they were unapologetic about giving us a car with no brakes and even tried to charge me for the gas we'd used in the totaled car.

We then took the shuttle to the airport, boarded our plane, and flew off into the sunset (a metaphorical sunset, it was 11:00 in the morning after all).

All in all, it was an excellent trip (despite the near-death experience) and the four of us all hope to make it back soon. Hopefully I can find a way to make it back to Costa Rica regularly before it gets too built up. Throughout the trip, we could see real estate for sale everywhere and even US-style cookie-cutter home retirement communities being built all over the place. Given all the tourist dollars flowing in, I'm sure soon the potholes will be gone and the road to Monteverde will be paved. I think the country has more charm as it is, though - and with luck I can make it back before that happens.