Day 1 – Culture, Coffee and Car Problems

Jet lag and election result shock meant I was wide awake at 5.00 in the morning, unable to get back to sleep.

First light of dawn was a chance to look around the gardens at Villa Margarita.

Why is it always such a surprise to see so many plants that are recognisable from gardens back home? House plants too! Of course these plants have come from some place they can survive all year round – that is here in the tropics.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a year-round garden, with year-round colour. Margarita did make the point that we are coming to the end of the rainy season, which is when the flowering plants are at their best. The garden won’t look so lush once dry season begins.

Our first mission of the trip was to get some local currency and local sim cards. The nearby town of Alajuela is one of Costa Rica’s most historical towns. It’s always nice to start with some local culture to set the context. Starting with San Jose, like most of the official tours do, felt like too much hard work. Was it worth visiting Alajuela? Margarita thought maybe, but only if you really had to.

We managed to work out where to park surprisingly easily. Right in the centre were these attended off-street parking lots. With all our bags on display in the boot (the car came with no parcel shelf) this was much more reassuring than parking on the street. The cost was 1500 colones which meant absolutely nothing to us until Google said it was about £2. Bargain! First stop was the ATM to get some colones to pay the man. Then a walk around town.

That’s Sarah sitting on one of the benches. She had already had enough of walking around town, so she found somewhere nice to sit instead.

A fine colonial era church. It looked to be open but the gates in front were locked so there was no chance to look around. Neither Sarah nor Jenny were that disappointed.

The cultural museum, also on the main square was open, and free to visit. Perfect.

There was a lot of focus on the history of early settlement in the Central Valley, and also on Costa Rica’s only war, the Fillibuster War, where they fought off a bunch of American mercenaries who were trying to appropriate the country for the Union. This is the American surrender. The Costa Rican side seem to have some very tall people which might be why they won.

This was just my sort of museum with lots of dioramas with little soldiers.

Sarah was not particularly impressed. She went to find somewhere to sit down to do her crochet.

By this time, Sarah had already lost her hat. She must have left it where she was sitting in the main square beause it does not appear in this picture.

We didn’t explore more of the town than this. That was enough culture for us.

Our next plan was to visit the Doka coffee estate. Margarita had recommended this as a good place to stop on the way to Poas. That is where we thought we were going. In fact we were staying on the opposite side of the mountain to Poas which meant that Doka was not on the way at all. We didn’t quite appreciate this until we got there. Still, it was a lovely destination, and a nice place to stop for lunch.

On the way up into the mountains the car started making a strange noise, some sort of vibration, getting worse the higher we went up into the hills. Jenny was driving. Hopefully it was nothing to do with the pothole she’d gone through. I tried calling the car hire help number but this was useless – some sort of switchboard service with only Spanish speaking people. I had more luck calling the office we’d hired the car from. They were happy for us to take the car back. We could do this because we had to drive back past Alajuela anyway to get to our accommodation.

That was for later. Here we were at the Doka coffee estate. Now Costa Rica is famous for its coffee and for its coffee tours, but I wasn’t sure if this sort of touristy thing was going to be my cup of tea (ha ha). Possibly we were just doing this to get ‘coffee tour’ ticked off the to-do list. However, we had a really engaging tour guide who brought everything to life, in a way that made you want to learn all there was to know about coffee. By the end of the tour I felt that I did!

Of course there was tasting at the end. So many blends coming from different roasting times and different roasts being combined for different effects.

Surprising coffee fact: the more roasting the less caffeine. Naturally decaffeinated coffee can be made by roasting it until all the caffeine has disappeared – no nasty chemicals required. Not that any of us planned on drinking decaffeinated coffee. What is the point?

We only had a few hours of daylight left. Given that it was day one, we thought it would be nice to get to our destination before dark. The daily afternoon rain had started, so driving conditions were going to be interesting. It was my turn to drive. Lo and behold, the car stopped making the noise. Was it Jenny’s driving after all? We decided not to take the car back, save us a bit of time and drive onwards to our destination. Hopefully the problem had gone away and it was just a pot-hole induced wobble, never to happen again.

We stopped for petrol and changed over so Jenny could do a bit more driving. We were heading back into the mountains again. The noise came back. So it was Jenny’s driving! No, of course it wasn’t. The car made the noise pulling hard uphill. But once it had rattled itself free it wouldn’t stop rattling.

We did try stopping at a little garage but even with Jenny’s impeccable Spanish they thought we were mad foreigners who didn’t know what a car was. We decided to press on and put up with the noise. It was definitely the exhaust box rattling so I was fairly confident it wasn’t going to affect the car in any bad way. Not until the exhaust fell off anyway.

We reached our destination, but only after some hairy driving on busy dual carriageways with some big trucks. Jenny got to do all this difficult stuff in the dusk and in the rain.

We checked into our cabin at Rancho Amalia, dumped our luggage then went straight out again to buy some supplies from the local supermarket in the local town.

We parked in the centre and discovered that the local town was Zarcero, famous for its crazy topiary. This is one of Costa Rica’s most famous urban landscapes.

Now we come to the trouble with us planning a trip so long ago. We can’t remember why we booked any of the places we’ve booked. It might be that we planned to stay at Rancho Amalia because it is near to Zarcero, on this side of the mountains, just so that we could see the famous hedges.

Anyway, onto the shopping where we discover that not all supermarkets around the world are the same.

Still, they had plenty of crisps and soda, some beer, some wine and enough fresh chicken that we felt confident we could cook ourselves a nice meal tomorrow. We’d eaten lunch at the coffee place, so for tonight we just needed snacks.

Fortunately there was WiFi in the cabin, so Sarah and Jenny could do Wordle, Squaredle, Waffle and all those necessary tasks of modern life. I lit a fire, though not a very good one (as you can see from the picture). It wasn’t exactly cold, but there was a chill in the air. That was because we were at 1700m above sea level.

They say Costa Rica is the Switzerland of Central America. I think this is because it is independent and peaceful, just like Switzerland. But tonight in our cabin, high up in the pastures and amongst the forests with rain lashing down it did actually feel we were in Switzerland, certainly not some country ini the tropics.