Costa Rica

Friday 28th October 2016 – Our alarm went off at 3am. We rolled out of bed, packed and walked in the dark to the bus which left at 4:10am sharp. We were taking a less common route from Nicaragua into Costa Rica and had our passports carefully scrutinised by police officers a couple of times along the way. According to our eight year old copy of Lonely Planet at San Carlos we would have to take a boat into Costa Rica. In fact the boats no longer ran; instead a minibus took us the half hour to the border at Las Tabillas. We got our exit stamp from Nicaragua and walked to the Costa Rican arrivals kiosk which was closed (due to a power cut we later found out). While we were waiting we offered a Costa Rican chap called Pedro one of our bread rolls and after that we were firm friends. Two hours later we finally had our entry stamp and could continue our journey to La Fortuna. We took a bus from the border towards Ciudad Quesada with Pedro who told us the best way to La Fortuna was to change at Muelle San Carlos. He even knew the exact time the connecting bus was due to arrive. So with his guidance we hopped off at Muelle San Carlos which is basically a road junction and waited by the side of the road for the bus to La Fortuna which was due any minute. We hadn’t eaten anything all day and Alysa was famished so I ran to grab us some chips and a coke from a nearby cafe just in time for the bus to arrive. Alysa was delighted. We arrived in La Fortuna just as the sun was setting and with clear views of the volcano it was spectacular. Accommodation in La Fortuna was expensive and we weren’t having much luck finding somewhere to stay so I left Alysa in a cafe and walked round to find somewhere. Alysa meanwhile had got talking to a hippy Canadian lady in the cafe who suggested a hostel to stay at. It was a complete dump but Alysa felt obliged to take it and that night we went to sleep in a room with particle board walls that an angry six year old could punch through.

Saturday 29th October 2016 – I was pretty unimpressed with spending the night in a hotel that appeared to have been built by a disillusioned Cell Block H set designer and woke up in a bad mood. Before breakfast I took Alysa to see the places I had found the previous night. The first was Gringo Petes 2 which was cheaper, cleaner and had walls more than a millimetre thick. We immediately changed hostels and agreed to have the rest of the day to ourselves. It was just what we needed and by dinner time we were ready for a good meal. Alysa had found a place called Soda Vaquiez; not only was the food excellent but they also had three cats, one white, one tabby and one tabby and white each with its own strategy for getting scraps from diners.

Sunday 30th October 2016 – We woke feeling energetic and decided it would be nice to take a ride to Laguna Arenal, the lake on the other side of the volcano. The hostel had a tandem and a selection of boneshakers for hire. We thought the tandem would be fun but a test run on the street outside revealed it had virtually no brakes. We eventually found two reasonably roadworthy bikes and set out. We puffed our way up the relentless gradient out of town wondering what we had let ourselves in for. It was good to be in the open air though and before long we were enjoying ourselves in a masochistic sort of way. As we curved around the volcano we could see the large barren scars of recent lava flows on its forested slopes (sensibly La Fortuna sits on the less active side of the dome). Just as we reached the lake the skies opened and rain pelted down. We took refuge under the tarpaulin of a little food stall and refuelled ourselves with crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks. A few Costa Ricans had also taken shelter and we laughed and smiled as the rain thrashed down in more and more powerful bursts. Eventually the deluge let up and we cycled back, a much easier ride as there was a lot more downhill. Back in La Fortuna we had another delicious meal at Soda Vaquiez. Tomorrow we would leave the mountains for the Caribbean coast.

Monday 31st October 2016 – Getting all the way to Cahuita today was going to be a challenge. We took the 7:15am bus to Ciudad Quesada (San Carlos to the locals) where we took a second bus straight to San Jose, arriving just after midday. Our next step was to get a bus to Limon which meant taking a taxi through San Jose to another bus terminal. On the way the taxi driver asked us where we were heading. When we told him we were going to Cahuita he informed us there were buses nearby that go direct; no need to change at Limon. He swung the taxi round and a couple of minutes later we were at a small bus terminal where Cahuita was one of the signed destinations. We heartily thanked our driver who had probably just saved us having to spend a night in the notoriously unsavoury port of Limon and booked ourselves on the next bus to Cahuita. The winding mountain road out of San Jose was familiar to us as the one we had nervously driven down years earlier. The sky brooded a leaden-grey but there was no rain. As we came out of the mountains the road straightened out. We drove past small towns and banana plantations and knew the Caribbean coast was close. Our arrival in Limon was heralded by stacks of shipping containers emblazoned with odd looking names like Maersk and Hanjin. Traffic ground to a standstill as it grew dark – rush hour in Limon. Finally we escaped the clutches of the city and bounced merrily down the coast to arrive in Cahuita just after 7pm. Delighted to have arrived we hurried straight to Spencer’s, the shorefront cabins we had fallen in love with on our honeymoon three years earlier. We showered, put on our best clothes and ate coconut fish at La Fe Bonbata. It was just as good as we remembered and we were happy to be back.