Costa Rica - San Jose and Pura Vida Hotel

Suprisingly, there is no direct flight to Costa Rica from San Francisco. We were on the road by 8 am to SFO, and after a stopover in Dallas Fort Worth, plus delay, we finally made it to Costa Rica's capital, San Jose, at midnight. After carefully following taxi guidance at the aeroport (only official taxi officials! only official orange cabs!), we were greeted by our chipper host (originally from Santa Cruz, CA), admired the local art in our room, and crashed. In the morning, the world's friendliest cat (that we were warned not to let into our room), joined us for breakfast and then followed us to our patio.

Breakfast was al fresco at our jungle retreat, starting with a big platter of fruit. We had to look up the fruit that resembled a large pear, but with a hard shell. It's a relative of passion fruit, but much sweeter. You crack it like an egg and spoon out the gelatinous black seeds. The pith is edible too. Yogurt and banana bread rounded out breakfast, along with some mild coffee.

Here we also got our rental car, an all-wheel-drive Suzuki, to better handle potholes. Two men from Alamo set us up, mostly in Spanish. Our other host (Jose?) helped Steven back out of the driveway without hitting a tree, and off we went. Roads in San Jose are narrow two-ways without striping, with a fair number of single lane bridges. Inevitably, you are behind a slow truck, but no one is in too much of a hurry. The countryside is filled with greenhouses for fresos (strawberries), a lot of sugar cane (major crop for Costa Rica) and pineapple. "Sodas" (mom-and-pop restaurants, serving rice, beans and protein) dot the roads as do snack and souvenir shops. Houses are simple but colorful and almost always gated.

We stopped along the way for perhaps the most beautiful Starbucks in the world. It also happens to be a coffee farm where you can take tours and learn how that Starbucks' coffee is made. The next available tour was a tad late for us, so we elected to have coffee (of course), plus egg bites and fresos with chocolate in Starbucks' open air coffee shop, with views of the coffee plants themselves, plus a waterfall.

Lunch and coffee done, we wound our way to La Fortuna We stopped briefly at La Paz Waterfall to take in the dense tropical foliage, but elected not to hike down to the various waterfalls themselves. Not far from this private preserve, we saw our own waterfall while waiting to cross a single lane bridge. Tonight we're taking a night time frog walk. If I get a good picture, refer to my next blog!