Pictures to accompany itinerary below :)
Warning, my review is packed full of boring details in case the information is helpful for others to put together their itineraries :)
I'll start with our Flight tickets... we got a 1-stop (texas) flight on American Airlines from Los Angeles. my ticket was $625 and brentt's was $325 (he had a $300 off voucher from another time he agreed to delay his flight).
So we arrived in San Jose Airport (Costa Rica) around 8pm and were soon found by the Tri-Color car rental people when we arrived. Similar to other S. American countries I've been to, the arrival is somewhat chaotic because there are taxi drivers and other solicitors are trying to grab your attention. One of the first thing out of the Tri-color staff's mouth is "I've got good news and bad new" (That's always the setup for scam right?!) and then explains that he doesn't have the car we reserved, but has the next upgrade up. Sounds more like good news right?... well when we arrive to the rental place, he then tells us that they don't accept Visa payments anymore unless we pay $140 more for coverage. (and then later also adds 'well with the upgrade it all evens out).. at first we just said 'f that' and said we'd find another company in the morning and were going to take a taxi to the hotel, but with everything that we have squished into a 7/8 day itinerary, i wasn't sure i wanted to add that stress... so ultimately we decided to go with Tri-color. Oh, I should add that I asked him when they knew of this policy change and he said 2 days ago and i gave him my piece of mind about how i thought it was quite convenient of them to NOT email me about the change seeing that I could have remedied the situation before I came to the country. Assholes... (btw it cost something like $470 for the week, which isn't horrible, but it was originally supposed to be $330). If I could do it again, I'd go with either Service Car Rental www.servicecarrental.com).
Anyway... so we get situated with the car and thank goodness my GPS is working!!! (paid $49 for Costa Rica map--10 days-- through www.navsatcr.com --also available through ebay from the company--, which is a must-do if you're driving around).. we find our way to the hotel (Hotel Casa Tago, www.hotelcasatago.com). Very nice hostal. Conveniently about a mile from the airport and from Tri-Color (the rental place was not at the airport, but they shuttled us from there). I highly recommend this place... I've been to a number of hostels and this is a great example of what a hostel should be. You can't beat the value with the quality. The owners and other staff are very kind and helpful. The other guests who stayed there seemed to be like minded travelers.
There is a nice little town nearby "Municipal de Alajuela". Conveniently located walking distance to stores, center of Alajuela (central park), banks, restaurants, stores. There's a souvenir shop in town if you need any last minute gifts. The restaurant that the owners recommend is pretty decent, Cafe Dream. Casados for lunch or dinner and not too expensive.
The staff speak both spanish and english and were happy to speak spanish with me even though their english was much better than my spanish. :)
Breakfast was included... lots of fruit, eggs w/ ham, bread/butter/jam, juice and coffee (i dont drink coffee and they made me hot chocolate!). Ensuite bathroom, Showers had hot water. white towels, fan (you don't need the a/c), clean. comfortable beds.
($35/night for room with private bath and fan)
And then we were off for a 3 hour drive to La Fortuna where Arenal Volcano is. We got to La Fortuna and ate at a "soda" named Soda Mimis. Each lunch was about $5. Food was good. Owner was super nice, explaining some of the fruit to us that we hadn't had before. Chan (slightly sweet, slimy) and Cas (apple/pear-like; we liked this much more).
We then found our hotel, Leaves and Lizards:
I'll start with the negatives and end with the positives because this nearly perfect place only had one negative and an amazing list of positives... Though I'll start by saying that I'm used to traveling from hostel to hostel.. sharing dorms, sharing bathrooms, etc.. staying at L&L was the luxury part of our trip.
The negative: This has already been commented on in other reviews and you'd think they'd consider the feedback and adjust accordingly. From the very beginning we were barraged with pressure to sign up for their tours. Despite letting them know that we had already put together our schedule... it was a daily "people who don't do our tours don't have as good of a time here"... and "i'd hate for you guys to leave and feel you missed out"... "read the guestbook, people love our tours".. etc. etc. etc... he'd even preempt it each time with "i hope i'm not coming off as pushy" heh... I'm guessing he doesn't realize how obnoxious this comes off as. Oh and even on the last day as we're checking out, he gave this sort of surprised response when we told him that we had an amazing stay there again stating "oh usually people don't have as good of a time when they don't do the tours." I'm generally tolerant of this sort of behavior, seeing that we're in a touristy town, guess they feel compelled to do what they can to sell and promote themselves to the tourists, but it was a real turn off. It's enough for me not to consider returning there. It was a beautiful location and amazing accommodations, which i'll describe next, but despite this (as there are other locations that I imagine are equally breathtaking locations), I'll consider another place to stay next time i return.
That said, if you can tolerate the above, it's an amazing place to stay.
The positive: The cabins are spacious. There's so much attention to detail. Minifridge with fresh cow milk, couple beers, sodas (all complementary)... Fresh coffee. Tea. Coffee maker. Glasses (even wine glasses)... A safe. Even a basket with women's sanitary needs. Plenty of fluffy towels and robes. Beautiful fresh flowers throughout the cabin. A tupperware of cutlery and plates. Alarm clock/ipod doc. One of the beds had a cute swan/heart towel art on it that was very cute. The facilities are just really nice. The showers had stone walls and hot water; with shampoo/conditioner/soap dispensers. Beds were super comfortable. An entire glass wall facing the volcano. The very roomy spacious patio had 3 hammocks and a couple chairs. A place to hang clothes (which really came in hand with all the rain). Every morning there were beautiful hummingbirds; every night (when it wasn't raining) there were fireflies. Breakfast ($3) was yummy. The grounds are just beautiful.. away from everything...lots of privacy... good place to just get away and it's just you, your loved one(s) and nature. A vacation from our vacation. I generally travel in budget hostels, so this was absolute decadence.
It was $135/night. Oh, and it was a good idea to have a 4x4 car when staying at that location.
We stayed here for 3 nights.
While in the Arenal area... during the day we did several activities that we highly recommend: the Ecoglide ziplining (they have a great Tarzan Swing that really sells it; $45 each www.arenalecoglide.com/), hiking around Observatory lodge (you can walk on a suspension bridge, visit the museum, we did a super easy walk to waterfalls and we also did cerro chato hike; $4 entrance), "taboncito" free hot springs (they are the most beautiful hot springs i've ever been to; they're across the street from the tabacon hot springs resort), and we ate at Las Tablitas (which we highly recommend) in Monterey (the closest town on the other side of the lodge) a few times; $5 casados/dinners and lunches).
From there we went on our 6 hour drive to Manual Antonio. I believe we ate at Soda Viquez at one point (it was in the guide book).
We stayed at National Park Backpackers (www.nationalparkbackpackers.com; $25+/night)
I'll start with the redeeming qualities because it wasn't all bad... It's location is incredibly convenient. Right next to Manuel Antonio National Park. Walking distance to the beach and restaurants. Secure parking. Pool clean. Wifi (that is mostly reliable, but slow). And for the most part the rooms were clean. Movie projected on wall at 8pm every night. Showers are not warm, but don't need to be. Just your bare bones hostel. Bed in square room. Not bad... it's all you can really ask for right?...
Well, what left a slight bad taste in my mouth was the initial interaction and a few other things. I had emailed and received confirmation of my reservation about 3 weeks prior. Upon getting there, the front desk guy tells me it's $5 more a night than originally quoted. I informed him that I had confirmed with someone that it was $25 (not $30 as he was charging me). He just said "sorry, cant' do anything about it"... (i know $5 isn't much, but this was not the first time that week that the price had changed on me and I was NOT going to let it happen again). Fortunately I had my iTouch with the email and told him I had the email that had the original quote in it and he asks me to go get it. I pull up the email and as i'm about to show him, he says he doesn't need to see it as he has the email on his screen. (umm ok). He then says that he'll give me the originally quoted cost and he's doing me a big favor by doing so. (wow, thanks for giving me the cost that was originally quoted.. ). Thank goodness we were only staying for 2 nights because after that awkward interaction, i didn't quite feel comfortable staying there after that. Not sure if they did this on purpose, but we were placed in the room that was right in front of the pool pump that would start at 7am. The walls are incredibly thin and we were able to hear the talking, moaning, breathing and bed creaking in the room next to us at 10pm and 3am. As I'm sure they could hear ours. The women's bathroom was a little disturbing... the wood doors have blood/finger stains on them... I'm guessing menstrual in nature. The toilets would get stopped up often and run out of toilet paper. There are bad music videos until 8pm when the movie starts.
I would not return. There are a few hostels on this same street with the same perks of locality and pool. It looked like there are parking lots available for 1.5k colon ($3) so if the parking lot was a must, you can still go someone else with the parking lot option nearby.
There was pretty good breakfast at a hostel (Costa Linda, www.costalindabackpackers.com) a little bit down the road. $4ea for a decent breakfast. We had our first dinner at a restaurant that ended up being a bit on the more expensive side seeing that we only had drinks (pina coladas, yum!!) and some bar type food ($33 total)... We found later at Costa Linda the drinks were much better and cheaper. During the day we went to the National Park, which is $10 entrance per person and a hefty $20 per person for the guide. As money frugal as I am, the extra $20 per person was well worth it. Our guide (Nicolas Abarca; slothtours2009@hotmail.com; niabarcanu@gmail.com) must have had some sort of honing system implanted in his brain. He had a really nice telescope with him and he'd spot something super far away and show it to us. He also found small insects and crabs that i wouldn't have otherwise seen and many sloths (see our flickr pictures!). We spent alot of time in the water, which was soooo warm. Musta been around 85 degrees or something.
other random thoughts:
Pura Vida: i have to say.. despite this saying "Pura vida" being all over the guide books and kitchy souvenier stuff, we only heard someone say it once.
So Costa Rica is absolutely beautiful.... and rainy... rained pretty much every day we were there, but it also let up long enough for us to enjoy everything we had planned.
Here's a run down of how much we spent.... it came out to $2954... looks like i made it just under $3000 for 2 people 8 days--2 travel days; 6 days in country).
Cost includes: lodging + tips, entrance fees, guides + tips, food + tips, ziplining, rental, gas ($136), plane tickets, travel emergency insurance ($148 total), GPD CR map, airport tax ($26x2), pet sitting + tip($72), airport parking ($62), hostel parking ($4), and $6 cab back to airport from hostel...
