It’s been a month since I moved to San Jose, and I have mixed feelings about it. It’s a loud and busy city. And it doesn’t help that I’ve been having stomach pains for the past two weeks, which is very unusual for me. The doctor tells me I have an inflamed colon! So I am taking medication and taking it easy. Unfortunately, it’s not helping how I feel about being in San Jose!
On the plus side, teaching has been going really well and I was pleased to have positive feedback from my students. I also had a friend come to visit me for a week – the perfect excuse to do some travelling in Costa Rica. That’s one thing that San Jose is great for – it is the travel hub for the country so pretty easy to get to anywhere.
Our first stop was Monteverde for a night, about four hours away by bus. Monteverde is beautiful and famous for its cloud forests. We stayed at Pension Santa Elena hostel, a no frills place. In the afternoon we accidentally joined an adventure zip line tour. My friend and I bailed after the practice lines as it was just too scary! In the evening we went to the serpentorium for a guided tour which was really interesting. They have a number of snakes and frogs that are native to Costa Rica.
Dinner was at the Tree House, a really lovely restaurant with a unique venue. There’s a tree in it.
The next day, we went to Selvatura Park for their hanging bridges in the cloud forest and the hummingbird garden. This was definitely the highlight of the whole week of travel. The bridges were high up in the trees and the views were outstanding. I intend to go back!
We had lunch at a nice place called Amy’s Restaurant before heading back to San Jose.
The next day, which happened to be Christmas day, we went on a tour of Volcan Poas, the Dakota Coffee estate and Sarchi Arts and Crafts. The tour was really brilliant and I recommend it highly. The volcano was covered in cloud when we arrived but fortunately cleared after 20 minutes for some spectacular views.
The Coffee tour was really interesting and full of information. And the Arts and Crafts was really just a big shop full of tourist stuff, but still interesting to see. It was great that they picked us up and dropped us back off at the hotel for the tour.
And finally we went to Manuel Antonio for one night. It takes about four hours by bus from San Jose. Most of the first day was spent at the beach, and the following day we went to Manuel Antonio Park. We rolled up rather foolishly at 10am to find the queue was over an hour long. The wise thing to do is turn up early – say 8am. It was completely worth the wait and we hired a guide so actually got to see some animals like sloths, bats, frogs and monkeys. We stayed at the Cabinas Maria Teresa, which was a really nice treat with air con and a lovely shower.
It was a great week of travelling in Costa Rica, and I’m looking forward to doing some more!
TWO SHOES TRAVEL 