Sneha had gone to Chicago to attend a classmate's engagement/wedding, so Sahana and I thought we could use the opportunity to do some travel ourselves. We had a Delta SkyMiles "Free Companion Ticket" voucher that was due to expire by the end of the month, so we decided to visit Costa Rica. There was a lot of hasty planning to be done but Claude came to the rescue and put together a clean plan for us, prioritizing the sequence in which we had to do our booking/reservations. We targeted a visit to two main places for this visit because it was only going to be 5-6 days long.
Bright and early in the morning on April 24, we headed to San Jose, Costa Rica. Our flight consisted of two legs: DCA to ATL and ATL to SJO with a 2-hour layover in ATL. Our flight from DCA to ATL departed at 6am, so we had to be at the airport no later than 4:30am. We had pre-booked an Uber and the driver arrived promptly to take us to the airport. We were through security very quickly, thanks to TSA Pre. Before long, we were up in the air and on our way to ATL. Short flight and after getting off from the aircraft, we headed to the terminal for our next flight and looked for a place to grab some breakfast. Almost every place had a really long line. We headed to Caribou Coffee and ordered a couple of bagels and some coffee/tea.
The next flight started boarding just as we finished eating. It was a longer flight (~4 hrs) and largely uneventful. We landed on time at San Jose (just before noon local time) and headed towards the immigration/customs area. There, we found that there were a million people (or at least it seemed like there were that many) in the line, probably because several flights had landed around the same time. The initial going was very slow but I guess they opened up a few more kiosks soon because we started moving up at a more reasonable pace. Still, it took us an hour to get to the baggage carousel. Thanks to the long immigration line, the wait for our baggage was very short and we were soon headed out of the terminal towards our rental car shuttle. There was no counter in the terminal for our rental car company so we had to walk outside and look for a guy holding up a sign with the company's name on it. He directed us to another guy holding up a similar sign further ahead so we made our way there and were asked to wait because the shuttle would be around to pick us up in about 15 min. Finally, the shuttle arrived and took us to the rental car office where we signed a bunch of documents and were shown to our car. It was a Suzuki Vitara 4x4.
Two important points to note about driving in Costa Rica:
- Waze is the only maps/directions app that works in Costa Rica. Don't risk it by using any other app.
- Rent a 4x4 and get the maximum insurance coverage. Road conditions can get very, very, very bad and you just can't predict what the car will have to endure, especially if it starts raining.
Our first port of call was going to be a lodge/resort near La Fortuna. La Fortuna is the base for sights and treks in the Arenal Volcano area. The name of the lodge was Finca Luna Nueva Lodge. I set Waze with that destination and we headed out of the rental car office. The first thing we did was get lost! I'm not sure what happened but Waze had difficulty figuring out where we were and what direction we were headed and I'm so used to the Google Maps (or Apple Maps) UI that I (and Sahana) had difficulty figuring out which way Waze wanted us to go. Finally, Waze gave us trying to make us go on the optimal route and instead rerouted us via some narrow lanes back to the way were supposed to go (which was in the opposite direction of where we were initially headed).
Driving in Costa Rica took some getting used to for me. There are a lot of ups and downs in Costa Rica, so they've created passing lanes very frequently, so slower traffic can move to the right and let others pass. The problem is that the lanes merge back rather abruptly after a distance. It took me a while to realize that because I kept moving to the slow lane to let others pass and then I would suddenly find my lane being asked to merge back to the left. Traffic was also quite heavy even though it was around 2:30pm on a Friday.
As we left the city behind, the roads became a bit emptier but also a bit curvier and narrower. We passed through some small towns/villages. Many of the bridges can accommodate vehicles in one direction only so you'll see a lot of 'CEDA' signs which means that you have to yield to oncoming traffic. If you don't see a 'CEDA' sign in your side of a bridge, that means that you have the right of way.
About 45 min before we reached our lodge, we got our first glimpse of Arenal Volcano, towering 5000ft up from the ground, perfectly conical in shape, just like we imagine volcanoes to be. By then, the roads were extremely winding and went through significant inclines up and down. You have to concentrate very hard and it can tire you out mentally, if not physically.
As we were motoring along, we started seeing signs for a resort/restaurant (called Lands in Love) that was advertising vegan food. We had been debating if we should have dinner at the lodge after checking in or have a light snack somewhere else. This resort/restaurant seemed to be calling out our name, so we kept following the signs until there was an abrupt turn off the highway into a narrow, barely paved lane into the woods. We followed this road for a mile or more, feeling more and more apprehensive about the remoteness of the location. Finally, we reached the place and parked the car. We headed to the restaurant and ordered a hummus pita and an avocado toast plus a mixed fruit juice. The food was delicious and the portion sizes were too much for us, so we had some of it packed and headed back on our way to the lodge.
Waze was rock solid the rest of the way and we arrived at the lodge at around 5:30pm. We checked in and got the keys to our lodge/cabin. We had a large cabin to ourselves and there was enough vegetation all around that we couldn't even see our neighboring cabins. There are no TVs in the cabin but you do get WiFi. It's super silent and the only things you can hear, depending on the time of day and weather, are birds, insects, amphibians or rain/thunder. The cabin had huge windows and we chose to keep all of them open, so we could see nature surrounding us.
The lodge/resort advertises themselves as being "Farm to table". That means that they produce everything they need to run the property on the property. Like most of Costa Rica, they are very environmentally conscious.
We didn't have any activity planned for the day and the change in time zone (CR is two hours behind Eastern) plus the early start to our day meant that we were ready to hit the sack by about 9pm local time. We had a busy day ahead of us, so we had to be fresh for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment