cherise

This is part of the McMenamins bars. This place used to be a brothel, and you can rent hotel rooms there now.

Downstairs there is a bar and restaurant and live music shows. When we went there the cover was $7 so we didn’t stay.

The house Ruby beer is delicious, and I haven’t had any of the food.

Check out the military museum…

It’s a cute little place.

We stopped at the Goonies house and that’s about it, though.

The location is on the map at the Astoria visitors center. It’s near the main road and easy to get to.

Drive to the dead end and you will see the gravel driveway to your left. Park there (don’t drive up the gravel) and walk up to the Goonies house. It’s changed owners and they’re really nice about people who walk up.

It’s cream with lots of flowers now.

Check out the boardwalk. Cute shops, saltwater taffy, and a statue commerating the end of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The ocean is beautiful, too.

I had the vegetarian sushi platter. It was huge and came with inari, 4 pieces of nigiri (including tempura nigiri), 5 pieces of yasai futomaki, 6 kappamaki, and 6 avocado maki. And at only $15.50 it was a good deal.

The service was quick and friendly. This place is awesome.

We stayed at the Inn at Spanish Head (http://www.spanishhead.com/).

The coast was windy and too cold to swim on the beach, but the hotel had a sauna, Jacuzzi, and heated pool so we were satisfied. They also have fantastic internet deals so it wasn’t expensive.

Basically, my sister and I flew into the airport here and stayed 2 half-days/nights and didn’t do much in the city.

San Jose is pretty junky, but I suppose it has its charms in places.

I saw a lot of American things in San Jose like Payless Shoesource, Converse, Levi’s store, KFC, McDonalds, Burger Kind, Subway, and Wendy’s. Nowhere else in Costa Rica did I notice these things.

We stayed at Hotel Aranjuez in the Barrio Amon neighborhood both nights we were there, which is a little up from downtown and fulls of hospitals. The hotel was nice, and cheap.

The last night we stayed in San Jose we got there in the evening and we went and had dinner at Tin Jo, which serves pan-Asian food. I had some stir-fry bok choi, shiitake mushrooms, and hearts of palm and spicy ma po tofu. We also had spring rolls as a starter which were pretty good, and for dessert I had an exotic sample of fruit sorbets. The sample included lemongrass and mint, passion fruit, orange with basil, papaya colada, and blackberry with anise. Yum! Tin Jo was a pretty fancy place with tablecloths and table candles and whatnot, but it wasn’t super expensive.

It’s a hassle to have to get transportation to the airport, but I suppose it’s nice that our taxi only cost 7,000 colones (or about $14). There’s also public buses, but they drop you off downtown at a bus station, and then you have to fend on your own. Also the public buses run sort of far from the airport terminals. I took a public bus when we first got there, but the taxi was definitely easier.

Taxis within the city are relatively cheap and very easy. Hotels, shops, and restaurants will call taxis for you. It’s the simpliest way to get around since there aren’t really any labeled street addresses in the city.

Manuel Antonio was super warm and humid (I just got back, I was there in late March 2007), and during the day it was pretty uncomfortable to be outside. We took a taxi to Manuel Antonio National Park, where the best beaches are. You can even see some wildlife, and we saw iguanas, Capuchin monkeys, and an anteater.

We spent the morning at the lovely beach and I somehow managed to sunburn my shins. I loved wading in the Pacific Ocean, however. I kind of wanted to try surfing, but they didn’t offer it inside the national park so I didn’t.

The public beach right outside the national park is free, offers surfing, and you can rent beach chairs and umbrellas. I didn’t get a chance to go there but it looked nice but maybe a little more crowded than the beaches at the national park.

Don’t miss the street vendors selling fresh pineapple and coconut water. Also don’t miss the shopping on the main strip, mostly for jewelery and wooden craft things. And all the restaurants have happy hour drink specials :D

There are tons of things to do in Monteverde!

I spent three days here and loved it.

It’s easy to get to Monteverde from Fortuna by jeep-boat-jeep. This involves driving to Lake Arenal, then taking a boat across the lake, then taking a Jeep-like car on the bumpy, unpaved roads to Monteverde. It’s only 22 kilometers to Monteverde from Fortuna or something like that, but the transportation takes about 3 hours because the roads are so bad. I saw lots of cows on the way, and the scenic trip is absolutely beautiful.

Monteverde is so nice, but a little dusty because 99% of the roads aren’t paved. Monteverde was established by American expat Quakers in the 50’s so there’s a unique history there. They also have a cheese-making factory and the Monteverde cheese is pretty famous. I didn’t try any, needless to say. I did find an awesome ice cream shop featuring vegan sorbets, however. I had the guanabana flavor twice in three days.

I checked into my room at Arco Iris Lodge. We had a four-bed bunk bed budget room with private bathroom, only $35 total a night. Too bad we didn’t have two extra people, otherwise it would have been ridiculously cheap. Arco Iris was very nice, with beautiful flora and grounds, but I missed having a pool.

After that I headed over to the Orchid Garden. I had no idea but there are 1,500 species of wild orchids in Costa Rica. The garden there has 400 species, and 125 blooming when we went. Some of my favorite orchids I saw include the shooting star, and others: one, two, and three. There were also lots of interesting plants, including a wild cucumber plant, what looks like grapes, ground flora, and this intestine-looking plant.

After that, I went to CASEM craft co-operative. I bought some fair-trade, organic, shade-grown coffee there and some other things. It was a cute place.

The next day, I took a guided tour of the Monterverde Cloud Forest. Our guide was amazing and spoke perfect English, and the guide was informative and lasted about 4 hours. Unfortunately, there were hardly any clouds when we were there, but it was still amazing to see the rainforest flora and fauna. We saw quetzales, which everyone wants to see, and they had a hummingbird gallery. We also saw lots of flora, and these ancient trees: one and two. Here I am in front of the second tree.

After the cloud forest, I walked to the Lecheria, which is the Quaker cheese-making factory. They give tours, but we weren’t there at the right time, so I looked in at the process through the observation area. Nothing too interesting, really.

After that I had lunch at Flor de Vida, which was marked on our map as a vegetarian restaurant. However, it wasn’t vegetarian anymore. It was a little expensive, but I had some awesome polenta and a yummy coconut milk, ginger, cinnamon smoothie.

For dinner I went to an Italian restaurant called Tramonti. It was super fancy with wine glasses, paper napkins, white tablecloths, candles on the tables, and mood lighting. I had some vegan spaghetti, which was pretty good. The food was reasonably priced, as even the fancy restaurants in Costa Rica are mid-ranged in American prices.

I decided to stay an extra day in Monteverde instead of heading to Manuel Antonio. My sister whom I was traveling with took advantage of this and did the canopy zip-line and skywalk Selvatura tour at the Santa Elena Cloud Forest. I absolutely refused to do this because I’m scared of heights, but it worked out. She said it was really fun.

While she was zipping around in the rainforest, I went to the butterfly garden. It was amazing to walk into enclosures with butterflies flying all around you. My favorite butterfly is definitely the blue morpho, but I saw lots of other nice ones. This might be a Monarch, this one I call the panda butterfly and this one is a blue morpho’s outer wings. A butterfly called Halloween even landed on me, which means I have good luck.

Next I went to the Frog pond. I was expecting literal ponds and being able to touch frogs, but it was all enclosed glass exhibits. Which I suppose is good, because who wants to touch poisonous dart frogs anyway? It was nice seeing the bright-colored poisonous dart frogs and other species. My ticket was good for a second admission, meaning I could have gone at night to see the nocturnal frogs active, but I didn’t go back because I thought it was sort-of lame overall. The “blue jeans” or strawberry poison dart frog was my favorite.

I bought my lunch from the supermarket, which consisted of a ripe avocado, Bimbo brand tortillas, and plantain chips. Also, I had more guanabana sorbet because that stuff is addicting.

The next morning we took a coffee tour from Don Juan coffee. Our guide was a young art student Miami expat who (of course) spoke perfect English so it was nice. I didn’t have much idea of the process that it takes to make coffee, so it was interesting to see real coffee plants and see the whole process from planting to packaging. After the tour we even had a “coffee buffet” and I had an espresso and a cup of black coffee. There was also these really good fried bean empanadas and dark chocolate covered coffee beans to munch on. The Don Juan farm only grows Arabica coffee, so it’s really good. It’s also fair-trade, according to our guide. Also, Don Juan is a real man who started the coffee farm and grows his own corn moonshine and crops to live off of, and I met him. I even got to ride in an authentic oxcart.

And there is even more things to do, like a Quaker history museum and bat jungle and lots of shopping and restaurants!