We flew in to San Jose from Atlanta on Friday, April 2nd to begin our vacation. After picking up a rental car on Saturday morning, we took off and headed from San Jose up to La Fortuna for a couple of days. As we were renting the car, the guy at Budget mentioned that we should probably opt for the GPS unit since Costa Rica can be tricky to get around for the uninitiated. It turns out that Costa Rica uses a set of reference points instead of street addresses like there are in the US. So, if you're looking for a hotel, the reference point is something like "200 Meters West from the Parque Mazapan entrance". The GPS saved us from getting lost on a few different occasions and is something I'd recommend if you're planning on driving around the country. One other note about renting a car, the rental fleet in Costa Rica is almost exclusively stick shift. They don't have many automatics and you can see why after driving around the country for a few days. Many of the roads that lead into some of the tourist areas are unpaved and, in some cases, four-wheel drive is a necessity.
Once we got outside of San Jose, we started seeing small restaurants and fruit stands all along the roadside. There are actually very few fast food restaurants in the country outside of San Jose. These roadside "sodas" are where folks who are traveling stop for a typical Costa Rican meal or snack. You won't have any trouble finding one anywhere in the country. We passed many sodas even in some of the most remote areas we visited. After driving for an hour or so, we stopped out of curiosity to buy some snacks. The soda we pulled into had a wide variety of food ranging from fresh fruit to homemade pastries to candy and some more typical Costa Rican snacks. We couldn't resist and bought a little of everything.
Driving in Costa Rica is part skill and part luck. Native Costa Ricans have no problem stopping their cars in the road, even on the most blind downhill curve, to talk with a friend or pick someone up. The country is mostly made up of two lane roads that twist through the mountainous terrain and there's only a loose sense of lane markers and right of way. Thankfully, most cars in the country are small four cylinders (like the Daihatsu that we were driving) and folks don't drive particularly fast. There are also many folks on foot in the country and they all walk along the road to get where they're going so you might be going down a curvy switchback mountain road and suddenly come around a corner to see a family walking along the same road down the mountain. It makes paying attention to your driving an absolute necessity. In the evenings, folks use the roadsides as the equivalent of front porches. There were often folks who were sitting on the edge of the pavement in groups talking and relaxing. They didn't seem worried about any of the cars passing by and, in fact, looked like they were enjoying the evening.
The trip from San Jose to La Fortuna took us about 3 hours and turned out to be a super nice drive. We went up through the clouds over the mountains to the North of San Jose and then back down into the valley where La Fortuna is situated. We pulled in to town and stopped for lunch since we were early. There are many great restaurants in La Fortuna and we just picked one that was convenient. As we were driving along the road, we kept seeing signs advertising "Typical Costa Rican Food", which sounded a little strange at first. When we sat down for lunch, it all made sense. Costa Ricans almost universally eat a dish called Casado. It's a dish consisting of rice and beans, fried bananas, salad and, usually, an entree of some kind of meat; either chicken, pork, fish or beef. If you spend any time in the country, you'll become familiar with the many different Casados that dominate the menus of restaurants.
Almost everyone in Costa Rica is either a tour guide or can point you in the direction of someone who can help you. Adventure tourism is huge and there is advertising throughout the country showing all of the activities you can take part in. There are so many choices and different options for packages that I wouldn't recommend making any reservations ahead of time unless you're on a very tight schedule. As you drive around the country, you can always find things to do without having to worry too much about any advance planning. In our case, there was a small building next door to the restaurant advertising a variety of activities so we walked over, had a short chat with the guy behind the desk and, like that, had a zip-line tour booked for the afternoon and a rafting trip scheduled for the following day. The tour operators in the country are all Costa Rican and are very well organized. They will happily pick you up wherever you are staying and deliver you back there when the trip is complete. Most of the activities we took part in were in the $40 to $50 per person range USD. In many cases, you can just charge the trip to the room at your hotel but you may get a better price going directly to the tour operator to make your reservation. Marcela's fluency in Spanish helped us out on a few different occasions especially when negotiating for prices.
We had a little time before our zip-line tour so we checked in to our hotel, Lomas del Volcan. The property is just north of La Fortuna and about a 1km drive up a dirt road from the main loop road that goes around the volcano. The place was fantastic. Our room was on top of the hill and looked directly out on to the jungle at the foot of Arenal. The landscaping on the property was beautiful, the staff were all very friendly, the place had a small bar and a very nice pool as well.
The zip-line company we went out with was Eco-Glide. It turned out to be a total blast. The guides were all super fun and made sure that everyone enjoyed themselves. They started by getting everyone geared up in web harnesses, gloves and helmets and then we went through a short safety demonstration. At the end of this, we climbed in to the back of a four wheel drive truck with bench seats along the sides and set off up the mountainside. After about a 10 minute drive, we got to the first platform and started our adventure. The guides clip you to the cable, position your hands, tell you whether or not you need to slow down or stop and the other end and then give you a push. The first step off the platform is definitely a leap of faith but once you get going, it's fantastic. You get a birds-eye view of the jungle and the valley below. The cables at Eco-Glide run anywhere from 50 meters to the longest one which is 430 meters. Their main attraction is called the Tarzan Swing. They suspend a rope from a tree out ahead of a platform, clip you in and push you over the edge where you fall straight down before the rope comes tight and swings you out over the jungle.
There were 14 zip lines total from the top to the bottom. The last one drops you off back at the beginning where you can relax with some juice or a cold Imperial.
Once we were done with zip-lining, they dropped us back at the Lomas del Volcan property and we went for a swim. The weather was nice and we all relaxed for a while before heading back into town for dinner. After eating another typical Costa Rican meal, we drove up to see the Volcano Arenal erupt. It's about a 20 minute drive from the town around to the entrance to the viewing area. From there, you turn on to a dirt road and drive for about another half hour up the side of the mountain. There are a couple of spots where there is a clearing and you can stop to watch for the lava flow. The main observatory is at the end of the road which is about 14 kilometers from the beginning. We stopped where we saw some other folks and got out to see if we could catch anything good. Unfortunately, the cloud cover was too thick so we only saw one tiny orange blip up in the clouds. The locals say you get about one night a week where the weather is clear and the clouds don't obscure the view at the top.
Here's a slideshow of photos from Day One.
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