Tag Archives: Costa Rica

Day 3 – Xandari to Luna Azul, Ostional

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Tuesday 21 February 2023 – Today’s story will be short on pictorial content, mainly because eight hours of it were spent in transit, six of them behind the wheel of our hire car. Which is now a lot dustier and only slightly more dented than it was at the start of the day.

Also, I’m getting some technical issues with WordPress which is making it difficult to upload images and video for these pages.  I hope to sort this out in due course, but please bear with me for visual oddities for the moment.

Breakfast at the Xandari was as pleasant as yesterday and, as usual, accompanied by the hotel’s trademark background music – pop and rock classics but played acoustically on Spanish guitar. This treatment underlines how important the original sound of a classic piece is.  Take the tune out of the context of its original sound and it can be really difficult to identify.  Admittedly, it didn’t take too long to identify Hotel California, possibly because of the importance of that guitar solo at the end. But another tune was very familiar, but we couldn’t place it. Jane in the end got it – It’s A Kind Of Magic, originally by Queen.  If you don’t hear Freddie Mercury’s voice, it’s surprising how difficult it is to place the song.

Anyhoo, some research by Jane discovered that the route we were due to take to our next hotel was likely to go via toll roads, something that our information from Pura Aventura hadn’t vouchsafed. Thus we needed some local currency, and the hotel helpfully suggested a local supermarket where we could find an ATM. Having checked out and eventually managed to get the car’s WiFi hotspot to provided some much-needed internet, we headed that way.

As we left the hotel, I was glad that I had been paying attention during our taxi ride in from the airport, as it demonstrated that road surfaces were potentially shocking and that it was quite acceptable to drive on the wrong side of the road to avoid the worst potholes. The short stretch of road to the supermarket simultaneously sharpened up my reflexes and gave me practice at the special slalom techniques necessary to negotiate the roads.

I managed not to crash into anything for the few kilometres to the supermarket, but my blameless stewardship of the hire car came to an abrupt end as I attempted to reverse into a parking spot and found an iron pillar instead.  The car suffered only minor damage. My pride, much more.

Once I’d calmed down a bit (it really is just a minor scuff), we found the ATM and got some money our of it, but of course it was in reasonably large denomination notes, so we thought it would be a good idea to buy something at the supermarket in order to get some smaller change.  This is how we came into possession of some gin and some tonic. This seemed to represent the ideal combination of utility and desirability.

The next several hours were spent behind the wheel. Our eventual destination was the Luna Azul hotel, but we knew that the restaurant there would be closed for today and so planned a late lunch at a nearby restaurant called La Luna.

The toll charges were small – in the region of 500 – 800 Colones, which is one or two dollars –  and it turns out that we could probably have used a card to pay, but only at the expense of being the slowest car in the queue, so we stuck with paying cash to the people who were staffing the “Manual” channels and, barring a couple of minor wrong turns which were pilot rather than navigator error, it all worked fine.

 

By and large, for the most part of the journey, the road surfaces were OK, with only the odd pothole and unmarked speed bump to leaven the mix.  There was some congestion to deal with, and the speed limit is a leisurely 80km/hour, so progress was steady rather than swift, through countryside that frankly wouldn’t have looked out of place in Spain or Portugal, except maybe for the occasional huge industrial installations which cropped up now and again.

 

Everything was going smoothly enough until we got past Nicoya, which, on the map above, appears to be not all that far from our destinations. This appearance is deceptive.  At first, the road simply narrowed and became more sinuous, which meant that getting stuck behind one of the many ponderous lorries slowed progress even further. One lorry we were stuck behind for many a long mile seemed to be making a really strange screeching noise as it ground along, so we were glad that it went straight on when we turned off. Two things happened at this point.  Firstly, the road surface turned feral, so that the pothole slalom that I’d practised earlier was now a matter of survival for the car’s suspension; and secondly we could still hear the screeching, which was really worrying.  We stopped as soon as the appalling surface and prevailing traffic conditions would let us and got our of the car to see what the problem was.  This was when we realised that the screeching didn’t come from the car at all.

It was coming from the power lines beside the road!

We had a short chat with the chap I had blocked in as we stopped to investigate. He said it was simply something that happened in February and March and had no further explanation of its cause.  But, as you can imagine, we were somewhat relieved that it wasn’t a problem with the car.

Further on along this ghastly road surface, Jane suddenly commanded me to stop.  Whilst I was having to concentrate grimly on the road surface, she had seen something surprising beside the road.

Howler monkeys in Costa Rica

Monkeys were crawling along these electrical wires, and using them as a base to relax on!  We later found out that these are Howler Monkeys.  More on them later, I’m sure….

We carried on, with the road surface varying from quite reasonable to actively hostile.  Much of it was dirt trail and wasn’t actually too bad

but progress was slow.  In the first and worst section, we managed just seven kilometres in 20 minutes. The next six took 15 minutes.  The practical upshot was that by 4pm, instead of arriving at our hotel, we had only made it to where we’d planned a late lunch, the restaurant La Luna. (There’s obviously some kind of Moon vibe going on in these parts.)

We were allowed to have a table provided we could finish within 45 minutes – this was clearly the time they were expecting the sunset rush, because the place is ideally set for cocktails or a meal as the sun goes down.

It’s a very fine place. We had a salad and a couple of drinks each before setting off into the gathering dusk to find our hotel, which we did, courtesy of Jane and Waze. The kindly hotel owner, Rolf, showed us to our room (rather nice – photos in due course) and clarified a couple of things that the Pura Aventura pack hadn’t made quite clear.  By this stage, we were somewhat tired after a long day.  Bouncing along over and around potholes is hard work, you know.  So we settled in and awarded ourselves an early night.

We have two full days here in Luna Azul and as yet have no firm plans as to what to do with ourselves.  I’m sure we’ll think of something (besides addressing our stocks of gin and tonic), so please keep coming back to see what we got up to.

Day 2 – Xandari

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Monday February 20 2023 – After a 23-hour day yesterday and a late night to boot, one could reasonably expect to sleep the sleep of the just completely knackered. In the event, what happened is what always happens when I travel to the American continental mass – I find that I’m wide awake at 4am. I sort of managed to drift off for a bit but sleep patterns were further disrupted by: the weather – it was windy, with occasionally very vigorous gusts whistling through whatever it was was causing them to whistle; the wildlife, which woke early and started shrieking, in voices and at volumes unfamiliar to the British ear, with joy at the prospect of the coming day; and the airport, from which jets would fly over the hotel quite low at intervals (see later).  At around 7am we gave up the unequal struggle of pretending we were still asleep and made ourselves some tea. Yes, we have brought some Twinings Earl Grey tea bags with us; whyever did you feel the need to ask?

The early morning gave us a little time to appreciate better the room we were in, which was really very substantial,

and had a decent view over towards Alajuela and San José. There were a lot of raptors out looking for their breakfasts

so we eventually went to have ours in the hotel restaurant, which shares the same view as we get from our room.

The hotel breakfast was perfectly fine without being outstanding in any way, and after it we found ourselves at leisure, with only the need to be ready to receive a hire car at 2pm on the formal schedule for the day.  So we went for a walk. Obviously.

Until we arrived and were shown the map, we hadn’t appreciated the extent of the area in which the Xandari Hotel is set.  It’s pretty considerable.

Jane had read the description in the hotel material of the trail that leads around the grounds and it told us various relevant facts: firstly, that there were some five waterfalls with vistas overlooking them; secondly, a walk to all the waterfalls would take over an hour; and thirdly that the route back from one of them was “arduous”. Whatever, it seemed a perfectly good idea to go exploring – the sun was shining, it wasn’t too hot and we needed to start to get back into the travelling habits.  So, off we went.

The immediate environs of the hotel are nicely landscaped

The path leading to our room

and there are many sculptures and artistic touches as you walk around.

The use of mosaic tiles features heavily

and I reckon is more than a small nod in the direction of Gaudi, whose modernista work can be seen all over Barcelona.

As well as the sculptures, there were some lovely flashes of colour from flowers, some familiar, some less so.

After a while, we left the hotel area and headed into the wider “jungle” of its grounds.  This is when it became apparent what they meant by “arduous”.  Some of the going was quite up-and-down.

and there were some big trees around, too.

and some huge bamboo.

One particular bamboo grove was little short of spectacular and the noises it made as the wind blew through it were amazing.

We followed the trail down and down until we found the waterfalls.  Owing to the somewhat eccentric nature of the numbering system, number 3 was the first we came across.

Further along the trail, numbers 1 and 2 were not that impressive, at least to us folk who have been fortunate enough to visit Iceland (the country, not the shop).

and number 5 was charming (and offered us some decorative seats so we could take a breather)

but the star of the show was number 4. Even an Icelander might grudgingly give this one a gruff nod.

Our walk was, as I say, quite up-and-downy

and it was also quite round-and-roundy

but we covered pretty much the whole of the hotel grounds, which was quite satisfactory, and a very pleasant way to start to get the feel of what the country had to offer.

Shortly after we got back to the hotel it was time to collect our hire car, which was brought to the hotel by a National Rental chap who didn’t speak English very well but introduced us to the SayHi app which helped us around some of the complexities of getting hold of what was to be our transport for the coming weeks.

after which a drink in the hotel bar seemed a decent logical step.

After some nachos and a couple of beers, we retreated to our room for a rest.  Just before dinner, we got the opportunity to understand the reason that jets are so noisy near the hotel. They take off from the airport

and then turn to the left and fly directly over the hotel.

We had a decent dinner in the restaurant and then retired to our room for the rest of the evening.  Tomorrow sees us embarking on the first drive of our time here, and it’s set to be a long one of about five hours as we head towards Ostional, on the west coast.  It may be that there will be nothing to report tomorrow, but I guess you’ll have to check in, just in case something interesting happens, eh?

Day 1 – Getting There

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Sunday 19 February 2023 – We were fortunate to have a civilised departure time – 1325. So the morning was reasonably leisurely, the taxi was on time and the journey uneventful.

We did, of course, pass one of my favourite travel road signs, which I find very reassuring

but I promise not to make any more Orville jokes about it.

Our previous experience traveling Air Canada enabled us to find the right check-in desk, which is in a dark corner at the extreme end of Heathrow’s Terminal 2. It’s school half term, which I inferred from the very high density of school kids clustered together by the Turkish Air check-ins.  I mean the physical density, of course. I expect some of them were quite intelligent.

Once checked in, we collected some US dollars at the Travelex desk, as we are assured that (a) these are widely accepted across Costa Rica and (b) trying to buy Costa Rican currency outside Costa Rica is a fool’s errand.  The currency is the colon, which I hadn’t known before but which is an easily-digestible fact.  Our travel pack recommends getting some local currency via ATM once we’ve arrived and I have acquired a Starling Debit Card to do this, as there are no commission charges for using it.  So once we have got some local money, I suppose our currency holding will be half dollar and semi colon..

Thank you.  Thank you for listening to my joke.

Next stage was security, which gave us our usual opportunity to shake our heads in disbelief about people who look perfectly intelligent but haven’t twigged about taking liquids in hand luggage.  The sooner they can that requirement, the better.  I also sneaked a photo that captured someone else’s packing strategy, which nicely combined comfort for travelling with luxury for the destination.

Check the coat. Check the shoes.

And then, with some time to spare, we found our way to the Air Canada Maple Lounge for some welcome refreshment.

Well, it’s got to be done, hasn’t it?  We had 13 hours in various jetliners in prospect, so one must fortify oneself, eh?

The first leg (on a Boeing 777) went entirely unremarkably, with very cordial service from the Air Canada staff, and a perfectly decent view from the loo.

On arrival into Montréal, we headed for the Correspondance, and were efficiently shepherded along towards our next gate, which just happened to be beside the Air Canada lounge, so we had a comfortable wait for our next flight. There was a gap of about an hour and a half between flights, which seems like a reasonable window of opportunity for the baggage handlers to get our bags from one aeroplane to the next one.

The second and final leg, on a Boeing 787 this time, was just as agreeable as the first.  Our arrival into Costa Rica airport was slightly unusual. After taxiing, the plane came to a halt and the captain told us that we would have to be patient as the plane would be towed into position.  This took a little while, but then the seatbelt sign was turned off and we could prepare to disembark.  This involved quite a wait as well.  I could see out of the small window in the plane’s door, and all I could see was what looked like the handrail of a staircase wobbling about rather a lot, so it was clear we weren’t on a jetway and I wondered if the driver of the stairs was having a bad day or something. While we waited, the steward explained that since there was only one gate and two jets had just arrived, only the first one could get anywhere near the terminal; so we were waiting for buses.  The reason, he told us, that we were towed into place is because there were a lot of private jets at the airport and there was concern that the backwash from the engines of a 787 might damage them as it went by into its parking spot.

Said parking spot appeared to be a long way away from the terminal, based on the length of the bus journey.  However, we eventually got there and there was the usual concerted rush for the passport queues. There were broadly two queue options, “Nacionales” or “Visitantes”. Obediently, we headed off down the latter and were immediately pointed into the area for the Nacionales, where several desks had opened up.  Although our queue was short, our wait was interminable as the operative seemed to sit immobile while studying passports with a puzzled and slightly mournful look on his face.  When we eventually presented ourselves for processing, he did a bit more of this studying of our passports whilst mumbling gently to himself, seemingly to be certain that he’d made no mistakes as he went through his procedures. The practical upshot, however, was that he let us through at just about the time the bags from our flight started arriving on the carousel.  Hearteningly, both our suitcases were among them, so we picked them up and went out (via bag scanners to which no-one was paying any attention) into the arrivals hall, where a chap called Alex was waiting to take us to our hotel, the Xandari.

The ride to was instructive in two major ways: Alex’s English was only a little better than my (virtually non-existent) Spanish, but Jane has been learning Spanish these past few weeks and so it gave her a chance to practise in a real-life situation; and I got a chance to get an impression of the roads, as I would be driving us around for the coming weeks. I think that my reaction times will be sorely tested as we move around the country, as potholes and speed bumps seem to appear at random and in fair profusion. Progress will, I think, be measured rather than rapid; but we’re on holiday travelling, so time will not be of the essence.

Some 30 minutes’ bumping along got us to the Xandari Resort and Spa, where Felipe was waiting to check us in, provide milk for tea and show us to our room, which is very large (pictures forthcoming when daylight illuminates it rather better than its lightbulbs, for it is worth a photo or two) and which offered a view over the twinkling lights of San José.

It being past midnight by this stage, and thus approaching 23 hours since we rose this morning, there was nothing more to be done than bend the coffee machine to our will to make a slightly coffee-flavoured cup of tea before turning out the lights and hoping for a decent night’s rest before the rigours of the morrow.

Which I will address in the next thrilling installment. Which I hope you will come back to read in due course.  For now, buenas noches.