Costa Rica: a trip I do not always blog, because we spend about half of our time beaching it up. The blog post for my average day in Tamarindo would read something like this:
Dear Internet, I was woken up by howler monkeys again today. Our pasty posse walked up the beach for breakfast and got sand blasted by the insane ocean winds en route. Ate breakfast. Watched some dudes playing catch-the-machete for 10 minutes, somehow there was no blood. Returned to the hotel pool/the beach and read 600 pages, taking breaks for pipas sometimes. Got some linner-type meal in the town and played card games. Time for bed, honk shuu, honk shuu.
Rinse, repeat. Wow, thrilling stuff.
But half this trip is La Fortuna adventure so we shall adventure, and we shall blog, and we shall complain about how cold we think the jungle is or how hot the evil sun is, when it shines upon our weak winter white skin, with all the intentions of burning us to a crisp like last time. You can and will get sunburned through the clouds. It doesn’t fuck around.
The last time we were in La Fortuna, we were out-canoed by German retirees, my friend nearly lost her phone to Lake Arenal, and it poured rain like 85% of the time because it was May, deep into the rainy season. (You can read about it here, I fixed all the images just in case you do: Costa Rica: 1; us: 0) We also didn’t have a car, which was significantly limiting.
The road from Liberia airport to La Fortuna is most winding road, once you get off the pan-american highway. This makes driving to it in the dark the most fun ever, but at least better than driving to Montezuma in the night, because the road to La Fortuna is paved and smooth and not a cheese grater with pothole booby traps. We are stuck behind a combi-looking van for most of the trip. It goes slowly and all I have to do is follow the car in front of me.
However, this road is also moist tonight because it is raining, from aggressive drizzle to a short-lived downpour. This at least means you get to listen to all the fun night frogs singing in between the rain if you roll the windows down.
It also means that all the rivers that you cross over are extra-noisy. All the bridges are narrow, one-lane bridges. At one point we crossed a very small, narrow bridge where someone had rammed into one of the guardrails, so it was missing on one side. All I could hear was the rushing water below the little bridge. We lived, because I am not a dingus with the car, but only barely.
Rhett’s dad nearly threw up 11 times (he counted), and I almost killed him right in the end because I turned onto our last road and there was a big ol’ pothole waiting to welcome my swiftly-moving car. Now that’s what I expect of you, Costa Rica. I use my shitty Spanish with the gate guard and we somehow bungle our way to our house.
Our lodgings are impressive. There is a pool. The AC in one half the house is cranked down to 17 and this fogs up the windows. I am going to be cold here.
There is only one day I have adventures planned and it is our first day: A coffee and chocolate tour, and a sloth walking tour. I have been here four previous times and have yet to see a real, live sloth. It is honestly shocking I am allowed back.
The coffee chocolate tour is at a nearby small plantation. They don’t produce anything at that particular location, as it is mostly for learning and earning the tourist dollars (which is probably more dollars that farming earns you….). Our guide is funny and super smart, and grew up working on a coffee plantation picking coffee beans as a kid. He also travels to compete internationally in marching bands and barista competitions. Neat.
Fun Facts I learned:
- Chocolate beans are not tasty til they have been fermented, but they are covered in a sweetish white sap that you can eat.
- Climate change is making it harder and harder for coffee and chocolate plants to thrive due to pests, unpredictable weather, and changing conditions
- The organic and fair trade labels on a lot of products like this are mostly decorative marketing labels 🤡
- If your coffee beans are shiny or the coffee looks oily, it has been burned
- Coffee is only ‘fresh’ for 15 minutes after it’s been ground, so don’t grind your own and then save it. Grind it as you need it.
Costa Ricans also usually don’t drink a lot of their coffee, as most is exported from the country. Most of the people who pick coffee or chocolate are undocumented migrants from Nicaragua, who work seasonally picking and then return home.
We sampled a few different coffees, had some snacks, learned about the different flavors of coffee beans, and also sampled lots of chocolates. My favorite was the chocolate tea. Rhett got to churn some sugarcane with a guy in a boot, and they let us try some moonshine.
They also earned a lot of our money in the gift shop, but who’s counting?
For lunch, I happily got my first naturale (fresh local fruit juice) of the trip, pineapple. I’m just going to be one ball of fresh fruit by the time we’re done here and return back to the land of frozen tundra and frozen fruit. These are one of my favorite things to get whenever we come here.
And then, sloth walk! It’s just outside of town, located near Sloffee, which I hoped was made from coffee beans that they fed to sloths and then collected from their poop and roasted. It was neither that nor open, which was a little sad.
The reserve is a small patch of forest that is home to several sloths. Our guide warned us to stay on the path as many poisonous things live off the path. No snakes, but plenty of frogs or insects that will make your life uncomfortable.
Our guide took us around to see many sloths living up in the trees, and two of them were mothers with babies. We also saw a monkey and his balls. We saw two toed sloths and three toed sloths. The two toed variety like to hang on with more limbs and have slightly different faces. He got us some good pictures from his telescope and it was neat to watch them hang out and groom themselves.
Please enjoy sloths now, I know that is what you too are here for. Another thing that makes me sad: remember two Scotland Trips ago when I forgot my walkabout lens and only brought my long wildlife lens? Well guess which one is sitting back home in Minneapolis, while I have two walkabout lenses with me…. that’s great.
Anyway I stole some of Justin’s sloth pics so glory to he who is prepared.
This park was home to a few hanging bridges, which make your legs feel like you are on a woobly ocean when you’re all done crossing them. We could see some monkeys from the bridge, and big blobs of slime hanging from tree leaves over the river. The blobs contained frog eggs. Neat!
After getting slothy, it was definitely time for the pool and a dinner of exciting stuff from the supermarket. Tomorrow, waterfalls await! And maybe we will catch a glimpse of the volcano….
