We arrived in San Jose at 2:30 in the afternoon, and it was a breathtaking landing. When I was here before, we landed at night, therefore I missed the amazing scenery that the end of the flight path travels through. San Jose is surrounded by volcanos, and the city is in a bowl. The landing was a long glide over the mountains. We made our way through customs, collected our baggage without any issues (Hurray!!!) and picked up our rental car. Making our way out of the city was uneventful, and the drive to the northern coast was absolutely beautiful. Sunset began when we were about 45 minutes away from our destination, and the sky and clouds were so gorgeous! The sky was purple and pink with red clouds and the blazing golden sun - bienvenido a Costa Rica!
We arrived at Los Suenos around 6:00 - Los Suenos itself is actually a large compound, composed of several hotels, private homes, rentals, a large marina, and a small European style marina that includes some shops and several nice restaurants. We made our way to our hotel, and we were amazed at how beautiful the architecture of the hotel is! It is Spanish in style, and completely open to the air other than the actual guest rooms themselves. In the hallways, where one would normally see windows, there are open spaces. The hotel is right by the beach, and has a lovely pool in between the hotel and beach. We made our way to our room and then headed to one of the restaurants to get dinner.
We ended up choosing a place that looked simple and was featuring a Mexican style menu that night, because we just wanted to eat and go to bed - we were exhausted! After a nice dinner, we headed up to bed. We had sea kayaking and snorkeling planned for early Sunday morning, and set our alarm for 6:00 in order to meet for breakfast at 6:30.
When the alarm on Brandon's phone went off, I felt like I was in a complete fog. We left Mountain time, spent 8 hours on Eastern time, and were now in Central time - our bodies had no internal clock whatsoever! I just assumed that I felt so weird because of exhaustion. We got dressed, packed up our masks and snorkels, and got ready to head down. I happened to glance at the clock on my bedside table, which read 5:28 - I did a huge double take! Not 6:28? We checked the time on my iPad and called concierge to ask what time it was - sure enough, it was 5:28! We thought about going back to sleep for another 30 minutes, but by this point we were wide awake and ready to go. We left our things in the room and headed outside to explore the beach and the hotel grounds. The beach was muy tranquilo; no one was out yet other than the two of us and the fishermen. We watched them wade into the water with their nets for a little while, and then walked down the beach a little way. The beach is darker sand, but has LOTS of beautiful pink shells. I'll try to remember to take a picture of them to post on here. We then headed back to the hotel grounds, and walked around part of the perimeter. We found a tree that had 4 scarlet macau's in it, and they were carrying on like crazy! They have a very distinctive call, and were definitely arguing - "Eduardo, your tail feathers poked me in the eye!" "It wasn't me, it was Jorge!" Or something to that effect.
After this we headed back to meet Bill and Della for breakfast. We went to the breakfast buffet, which had pretty much anything you could dream of. I had an omelet with spinach, jalapenos, tomatoes and cheddar cheese as well as a small croissant and TONS OF FRUIT. Oh my gosh, the pineapples mangos papayas kiwi oranges everything are so to die for. We also had, of course, delish Costa Rican coffee con leche. Mmmm... Sorry that I don't have pictures, but I know that you all have fabulous imaginations and can visualize the deliciousness. Yummm...
After breakfast we headed off to our kayaking and snorkeling date. We arrived at a place called "Kayak Jaco's" and were greeted by Wilbur and Jacob, our guide. Della, Brandon, and I had a blast jabbering away with them in Spanish. At this point, the Spanish was starting to kick in. Yesterday I felt like an idiot who once was nearly fluent in Spanish but could only remember about 4 phrases - fortunately the juices were starting to flow and it was all coming back to me! They gave us our lifejackets and paddles and we walked about a half mile to the beach. Brandon and I were in a double kayak, and Bill and Della were in one as well. Our two guides were each in a single. We paddled out of the bay and along a coastline that mostly cliff's. We saw lots of birds while paddling - obviously lots of pelicans, who were having a a fab time diving for their breakfast; Mat Mat's, which are the Nicaraguan national bird; lesser kiskadees; Frigate birds; and probably a lot more that I don't know the names of but that I'm sure my mother does.
We paddled across another bay, that had a gorgeous golden sand beach covered in palm trees, to a small peninsula. We beached the kayaks, grabbed our things, and crossed the peninsula. The view took our breath away! We were gazing upon a beautiful white sand beach with turquoise waves gently lapping the shore. We scrambled down some rocks and hit the beach. Needless to say, I immediately removed my Chacos as sandy feet are one of my fave things! We walked across to the far side of the beach, and donned our snorkel gear. Diving into the water we saw a great variety of fish, even though the water was a little murky. The highlight was when our guide, who was snorkeling near us, brought a puffed up blow fish to us! He was holding it, and it was SOOO PUFFY!!! It looked really stressed, the poor thing was probably terrified. We got to touch it, and it felt so cool! After snorkeling and swimming around for about two hours we headed back to the beach where our guides had fresh pineapple and watermelon for us. It was probably one of the most refreshing and delicious snacks I've ever had. Talk about a luxury - sitting in soft sand eating fresh juicy pineapple looking at an amazing ocean view. That's the kind of luxury that I crave, not things like expensive cars or fur. 😊
When we finished our fruit we headed back across the beach to our kayaks, and paddled back to the beach that we left from. When we got back to the hotel, we all switched into total relaxation mode. We headed to the pool area and crashed onto beach chairs. We spent the afternoon napping, swimming, reading, and winding down. Our hotel is on the far right side of a semicircular bay, and in the late afternoon Brandon and I walked on the beach all the way to the other side of the bay, a walk that we estimated to be about 2 1/2 miles. It was beautiful, and we traversed our beach, which is mostly sandy but also has some pebbles, the local beach for the town we are nearby which is called Playa Herradura, and then a beach with some beautiful volcanic rock.
After this we headed back to the hotel and showered for dinner. We went over to the marina area of Los Suenos, which is European style. We found "Lanterna," an Italian restaurant that looked delicious. We were lucky enough to be seated upstairs in the bar area, but on a small private balcony that overlooked the water. With the lights strung between the buildings around us and the lovely private atmosphere, it almost felt like our own restaurant. The food was DELISH!!! Della, Brandon, and I shared a bruschette trio - one had olive tapenade and roasted Roma tomatoes, one had trifolati mushrooms with fresh ricotta, and one had artichoke hearts with arugula and shaved parmigiano reggiano... So yummy. Billy had some beef carpaccio which was also quite tasty. After this it was on to the main course - Brandon and Bill both had the Dorado alla Sicilliana - fresh mahi mahi with linguine, Roma tomatoes, Kalamata olives, capers, and lots of olive oil and herbs.
Della had an amazing Agnolotti - fresh pasta filled with butternut squash and carmelized onions in a brown butter sauce with herbs. I had the Ravioli Saltimbocca - fresh pasta filled with slow cooked Veal and parmigiano reggiano, in a white wine sage, lime, and butter sauce with thinly sliced prosciutto. OMG it was so wonderful. I'm salivating writing about it, and I am in no way hungry right now! Then for dessert Brandon, Della, and I shared a large piece of chocolate cake with vanilla gelato, and Bill had a wonderful piece of pecan pie with vanilla gelato. My dessert experience was topped off by a perfect cappuccino with cinnamon on top. Mmmm... I don't have any pictures to post, but if you look at Brandon's facebook page, you'll see pictures of all of our entrees!
After dinner we walked around the marina, did our ubiquitous browsing of real estate postings, and headed back to the hotel. We then headed to bed as we planned on going to Carara National Park early in the morning for some jungle hiking and animal spotting!
Buenos Noches! Hard to believe that tomorrow is Christmas Eve!
Linds
Wow...all the skills to be a NY Times travel writer.
ReplyDelete