Costa Rica 2024: Day One

Can you believe that it's already June? Where did the time go? Whew!

As usual, I am very late in posting about this trip that my husband and I took with four of our friends from March 13-20, 2024. This was a DIY, road trip kind of vacation with stops in Arenal, Manuel Antonio and the capital city San Jose.

Five of us came from the San Francisco Bay Area and the other one came from North Carolina. We will meet her at the airport in San Jose.

From SFO to Tocumen Int'l Airport (Panama City) took 7 hours. We had a 2-hour layover in Panama City and that time was spent getting our steps.

Happy faces.

Sandwich shop inside the airport called Chao Baby.

We arrived at 9 am and found that Olive Garden offers breakfast. We opted for "local" breakfast sandwiches.

Wanted some coffee but the stall is crowded with the Brazilian rugby team.

We got delayed in the car rental place because of confusion with the car insurance. We thought that Expedia covered it but apparently we had to buy insurance there and that was the law. Believe it or not we probably took around 2 hours discussing this with the rental guys, but eventually we had no choice and we had to shoulder the "exorbitant" charge. Good thing the car rental feee and the insurance was split four ways with us since we rode with the 2 others.

The first order of business was to go get groceries - bottled water, snacks, wine, etc- and we found a Walmart. Inside this humongous Walmart was a deli counter offering Costa Rican dishes, so we also got lunch there since we were going to be traveling quite a ways to Arenal.

Along the way, I took shots of the passing scenery. To be honest, I was trying to see something familiar. This would be my 2nd visit and I thought I would recognize some spots, but I didn't. Everything was new; well, no surprise since the first visit was over a decade ago.

I believe this was in the Monteverde area. The road was curvy and winding and visibility was not very good, I was a bit anxious.

Once we passed the foggy mountainous area, we decided to stop stretch our legs.

The bridge where we took the pictures. Underneath is a river. We could not find a way to go down to the river; we tried.

Sculptures in front of houses.

We finally reached our destination town.

Our home for 3 nights. Really cute spot, individual huts and thermal pools.

I think there were 5 thermal pools of varying heat degrees.

The Termales del Arenal has 6 huts with A-line living roof and 2 casitas and that's all. They offer free breakfast but you must put your order in the night before.

For dinner on the first night (as with all the succeeding dinners) we ate at a soda. A soda in Costa Rica is a small local restaurant that serves traditional Costa Rican food. Casado is a traditional Costa Rican dish that combines rice, beans, protein of your choice, and side dishes like green salad, or potato salad or plantains, etc. Casado is often considered the national dish. Essentially, a casado is a what we familiarly call in States a combination plate. It's so filling.

I made extensive research prior to the trip of the most reliable and most recommended sodas in the cities we went to. In Arenal/La Fortuna area, one of these well-loved sodas is Soda Viquez in the heart of town.

The place was jampacked when we arrived and considered looking for other options, since we have 3 nights here, but we were able to wait it out and ended up in one long table all six of us.

We all had casados since it's the most logical choice.

Pay at the counter for your meals, we ate here twice. After paying, the owner- the senora- brought out her home-made moonshine brew and asked one of the servers to pour us some shots. I'm not into shots, but everyone was game, so when in Costa Rica do a Pura Vida shot.

It was a fun first full day in paradise.