Nourishing Journeys » Costa Rica

The Real Costa Rica?

ahewcn — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:54:43 +0000

OK. So we returned from our Costa Rica trip five weeks ago and, FINALLY, I’ve found some time to share both the disappointments and gems we encountered down there.

Costa Rica is a beautiful country hailed for its eco-friendly attributes — lush rain forests, mountains, and pristine beaches. But it is equally ridiculed for its boring, even awful, food. In both cases, we encountered major disillusionment, but luckily that led to discovering lots of friendly people and off the beaten track experiences.

The first disappointment was that while Costa Rica certainly had beautiful rain forests, dramatic mountains an gorgeous beaches (particularly the one where we stayed), it was far from environmentally conscious in so many ways. First of all, darn near everything is packaged in plastic. I understand that Costa Rica is a poor country. So fine, there is no opportunity to recycle all that plastic, but burning it by the side of the road? Well, that was the view driving along the highway every night after sundown — men standing over burning garbage (plastic and all) pushing it around with a stick. It smelled awful! And I don’t even want to think about the estrogens and other endocrine disruptors that were in the fumes these poor people were inhaling.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t expect the country that kicked Starbucks out and is at least sort of embracing sustainable energy to be completely overrun with European hotels, ugly condos and Wal-Mart! Some of this expansion seems to be relatively new in the Jaco area, but nonetheless, it was a shame. While these places seemed to provide some jobs, in many (if not, most) cases, the development left many natives homeless. To boot, prices were totally jacked up! I’m from New York City and would never pay their inflated prices there, which made it a little difficult to get totally comfortable with paying their often ridiculous prices for simple services. But as much as possible, we tried to at least patronize the mom and pop establishments which often still were “overcharging”. Seeing as they were living in such an expensive area, it was easier to know that they would get 100% of profits instead of seeing it shipped back to the US or Europe.

We were also shocked to learn that it was really difficult to find native handcrafts — at least where we were. In fact, the Canadian woman who stayed in the apartment upstairs from us has been visiting Costa Rica every year for seven years and learned from friends who own a souvenir shop down there that most of the so-called Costa Rican handcrafts come from Thailand! Yes. And the Thai artisans who manufacture these goods are so in tune the Costa Rican fauna that they’ve sent wood carvings of bears with salmon down there bearing a “made in Costa Rica” sticker. So we never ran into the limited edition bear with salmon carving, but this piece of information explained why I thought the wooden products looked distinctly Asian.

This lack of reasonably priced and authentic Costa Rican souvenirs made gift shopping really difficult. It was further complicated by the fact that there was a virtual absence of nice food or toiletry items in any of the stores. That brings me to Costa Rican food, which I’ll continue with later.

What they don’t tell you about renting a car in CR

ahewcn — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:54:09 +0000

As a developing nation, Costa Rica is often promoted as a nearby, cheap and safe tourist destination. So when I booked a two-week Thrifty car rental for a mere $200, I wasn’t so surprised. But standing online at the rental agency, we quickly noticed renters standing at the desk were infuriated by the news they received.

It turns out that Costa Rica has an obligatory insurance policy that is not posted anywhere and you may only learn of ahead of time, if you book through a travel agent who specializes in the region. The rules and cost of this insurance apparently vary from one rental agency to another, but here are the basics you must know.

1) There are 3 tiers to the insurance program.

2) The most expensive, which costs US$40/day on an compact-sized vehicle covers darn-near anything that might happen to your car short of deliberately setting it on fire. So seriously consider this if you’re planning on doing lots of adventure driving as anything off the main highways is not only unpaved, but likely to involve flying rocks or cattle crossings.

3) The next tier at US$25/day is what we took. This covered damage to another driver’s car (if one were to be involved) or replacing a tire or broken window. At this price, the cost was essentially the same as renting a car in Western Europe.

4) The least expensive option cost US$20/day. It relied primarily on your US-based credit card’s insurance (CDW) and only pays for damages resulting from an accident. In this scenario you must foot the bill and await reimbursement, at least according to Thrifty.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m proficient in Spanish, but before leaving the parking lot, the Thrifty agent came to our car window and warned us that there is a police scam to be aware of. According to the agent, police sometimes stop Gringos on the road claiming that they violated some local traffic law. They will then ask you to pay the hefty fine on the spot. NEVER pay the fine directly to the cop in cash!!! What you need to do is ask the cop for his/her name. If they really are trying to con you, they will usually give up and let you go. If you really did break a law, they will give you a ticket which then you pay at any bank (and I think post office).

Keep in mind that the above insurance options vary from one company to another, each one stating that each option covers something different. While we were there, other travelers told us that they were offered only 2 options or even a 4th option. Many people (understandingly) consider this surcharge to be a government monopoly. It was very frustrating to experience this as our “Welcome to Costa Rica”, but we were able to put it behind us. And quite frankly, if this is what the government needed to do to feel “powerful”, then I hope it works for them. I just needed some rest and relaxation.

Some people hire taxis or vans to get around the country. This is fine, but keep in mind that not many towns (unless you’re in a really built-up touristy area) have restaurants or well-stocked bodegas where you can buy your food.

This can also be really pricey if the taxi isn’t based in your town and needs to travel 1/2 hour to pick you up. Furthermore, with the taxi option it’s much harder (I’d presume) to explore and take detours off the beaten track. If it’s anything like Europe or the States, I’m sure many drivers down there would gladly take you to their friend’s overpriced gift shops, making their commission from whatever you buy. So you may want to take that into consideration, but personally, exploring on our own is what eventually made the trip down there worthwhile.

Costa Rican Coffee Sucks!

ahewcn — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:52:45 +0000

This was a major source of anxiety when we arrived. I don’t generally drink a lot of coffee, but I figured in a country known to produce excellent coffee, a sip here and there would be a nice little indulgence. Unfortunately, what we were told was the best coffee was about as good as the stuff Dunkin’ Donuts serves at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Luckily our neighbors didn’t protect their wi-fi service we were able to locate Café Milagro on the internet.

Café Milagro was started by an American (also named Adrienne), who over a decade ago was equally horrified by the lack of good coffee available within the country. All the good stuff got shipped overseas!

Unlike me, however, Adrienne decided to stay and be part of the solution. She started out by acquiring a small coffee roaster in the town of Quepos. Over time, she gained the respect of the nearby coffee growers (who by now had stopped selling her bags of nails!) and locals who would swarm around her shop to smell the freshly roasted beans and enjoy a pastry.

Today, Adrienne has a thriving business. Café Milagro is now a very popular restaurant (seemingly popular with the gay crowd for all my homosexual friends!). And she’s also opened another restaurant about half way between Quepos and Manuel Antonio — considered by many the most beautiful of Costa Ricas national parks. Her coffees are available at several restaurants and hotels throughout the country and to you through the internet! She offers organic, whole bean, ground, dark and light roast all with flat rate shipping to the US of $9.95! If you visit, make sure to stop in the roasting building next door where you can also pick up some souvenirs and learn a little about the roasting process.

Another great place we found for coffee is a souvenir shop and restaurant called El Mirador del Cafetal, located about 50 minutes outside of San Jose on the road to Jacó. It will be on the driver’s side overlooking the west coast valley. Actually, there are only two restaurants on that mountain. It is the second one — only a few hundred meters past the first one. You can’t miss it.

It turns out that this restaurant is an extension of El Cafetal Inn, a coffee plantation and bed and breakfast in Atenas (20 minutes from the SJ airport). The view from this restaurant is breathtaking! And the souvenirs were not only reasonably priced, but had an authentic, Costa-Rican made look to them. El Mirador also sells coffee beans that you can bring home, including green beans that you can roast yourself, (although not vacuum-sealed to preserve freshness, so get them in the freezer when you get home!).

For food, I’d have to say that I enjoyed the food at El Mirador more than the fare at Café Milagro. The food at Milagro was not bad, but it had a distinctly American flair. A little like Friday’s gone Latin American with some experimental concoctions based on locally available foods. Milagro also had the soy milk option on the menu which just makes me cringe since soy is NOT the health food we’ve all led to believe (read The Whole Soy Story for the dirty details of this phenomenon or wait for my blog entry under health).

El Mirador’s menu, by contrast, featured an extensive selection of Latin American favorites such as black beans with yucca fries, chicharrones and tamales at really, really good prices. Because the country has been duped into widely using industrial oils in their cooking, it was unfortunately prepared with less than ideal ingredients. I considered this, however, a small price to pay for the spectacular views and more traditional menu that afternoon. To my knowledge, you cannot purchase their coffee over the internet.

As a final note, in the town of Quepos (same town as where Café Milagro is located) facing the bus station is a place called the MegaSuper. While this store caters to the expat crowd, complete with sushi fixin’s and a few fresh vegetables (rarer than you’d think it would be down there), it also carries Costa Rica’s most famous coffee, Café Britt. Café Britt isn’t only reputed to have excellent coffee, but they have a huge variety of shade-grown organic coffee, hot cocoa, chocolates, and iced drinks in interesting flavors. Keep in mind that they export the best, so that would probably put Café Britt on top since they are also available in the airports as well.

Eating Whole Foods in Costa Rica

ahewcn — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:10:29 +0000

Since Costa Rica has become a popular eco-friendly destination for nature lovers, I was really looking forward to some down-home native cooking during our time there. How horrified I was to discover no more than 3 vegetables at most of the farmers markets: broccoli, cauliflower and string beans — hardly tropical crops! But it didn’t stop there, trying to find local fats like coconut or palm oil (we stayed 20 minutes away from the palm oil plantations) was impossible. Meats were labeled tenderizado (tenderized) — whatever that meant — butchers didn’t have an answer. Even salt had fluoride added to it.

In fact, I’d say 90% of the food available was highly processed and sold in boxes, cans or bottles.

At first I was under the impression that the unavailability of indigenous foods had to do with the fact that we were staying in a more touristy area. There was a hole in this theory though. The only places where natural foods (not even talking organics or health food here) could be found were in the expat stores. The town of Quepos near Parque Manuel Antonio featured a good smathering of Italian restaurants and delis as well as a great catch-all store called El Super Más across from the bus station. Surprisingly, El Super Más was not outrageously priced. Some items were actually more reasonably priced there than at roadside stands (at least as far as the Gringo prices went).

Even though I was able to get some better produce in Quepos, I was really glad that I packed a few non-perishables in the suitcase. Cans of low mercury, PCB-free canned salmon; spicy Sicilian olives; and a little mineral-rich sea salt. Unfortunately, the only coconut oil I carried with me was scented with Tahitian monoi for my skin and hair.

This is where the beauty of renting a vacation apartment comes in. Up the road, in Esterillos Oeste, a fisherman sold fresh caught pargo (red snapper), pinky shrimp and tiburón (shark) daily. Down the road on the way to Parritas, a pleasant couple from the mountainous regions outside of San José sells farm fresh raw milk Costa Rican cheeses on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays ’til noon.

Quepos has a huge farmers market on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We didn’t get to visit this one (although we drove past it one night thinking we’d have another opportunity), but we were told by an American living there that the variety is much better than at roadside stands. I also met a guy named Reynaldo from the Caribbean side (a distant cousin maybe?) who was selling lobster and enormous pinky shrimp from the back of his refrigerated truck just down the street from the El Super Más.

The highlight was meeting Eliazar, a retired government worker who sells fresh-pressed azucar de caña (sugar cane juice) by the side of the road about 45 minutes north of Esterillos in Puntarenas. He was all too proud to show us his operation and his planation where he had some 26 varieties of fruits and vegetables growing: sugar cane, coconut, avocado, yucca, gandul, star fruit, sweet and sour lemons, oranges (which are actually green in the tropics), bananas, plantains (rhymes with mountain), papaya, cashews, even loofah… you name it, he had it!

As it was getting late at the time of our arrival, Eliazar invited us back for a visit the following Monday. When we got there, he was unable to get away from his juice cart because his help canceled on him at the last minute. That’s when he introduced us to his Nicaraguan neighbor, Guadalupe, who took us on a tour of a huge plantation just up the hill — really off the beaten track. It was really hot that day, but the views from there were spectacular and we learned a lot about local edibles as well as the fact that the plantation was picked clean regularly by Nicaraguans and Panamanians who brought the produce back to their home countries for sale. We still don’t understand why all this variety wasn’t offered locally. It seemed that Eliazar and Guadalupe were a bit of an oddity in their love of agriculture. They admitted that modern Costa Ricans existed mainly on processed foods from any of the local Wal-Mart owned chains.

We not only got to eat some of the best locally grown foods by meeting locals like Eliazar, Guadalupe and Reynaldo, but we met some really wonderful Ticos. We have several invites throughout the country to come back next year. We’re looking forward to it.