Hi. I'm in San Jose.

Okay, not exactly because we spent this afternoon travelling but today was our day in the Costa Rican capital, San Jose.

We were up early and breakfasted in the hotel (traditional Gallo Pinto for Kevin and Costa Rican pancakes for me, which really were just normal pancakes - I feel swindled…) with some very good coffee before Julio and Sarah Joy picked us up and drove us into San Jose. I wish we had a little longer at this hotel, it was such a beautiful, peaceful spot. We do end our trip back here so maybe we’ll have time to enjoy it more. On the drive into the city, Sarah Joy told us about these enormous spiders we saw in the plants at the hotel - golden orb spiders. Not poisonous but their webs did inspire kevlar, so that’s pretty cool. We also learned about the devastation that the pineapple industry is wreaking on the country. Basically, only perfect pineapples get exported - and Costa Rica makes up a HUGE portion of the global pineapple market. The large growers don’t own their fields, they rent them. And they destroy the soil and the local water supply in pursuit of perfect pineapples with pesticides. Then, after 2 or 3 years, when the soil can’t grow anything anymore, they leave and move on to somewhere new. It’s pretty damn bad and we’re probably not going to be eating much pineapple anymore. At the very least, we’ll be switching to organic.

Soon, we arrived at the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica, which has a focus on the country’s pre-Columbian history but also overviews more modern history, too. Before we made it inside the museum, we learned about the monstrosity that is the new legislative building. It’s this big, ugly cement building with no character. It is quite environmentally friendly, which is good, but the general consensus is that the citizens hate it. And when you see the previous building, which is now all offices, it’s easy to understand. The building was selected through a contest and no one can quite figure out how it won, as Julio told us there were several really beautiful designs that were also very environmentally friendly. As a country, Costa Rica is at the forefront of sustainable energy production. Around 99% of their energy is produced with renewable resources, like hydroelectricity, windmills, and geothermal sources. So it makes sense that they wanted something that supported their commitment to the environment but it sounds like there were more attractive options.

Anyway. We also learned a bit about José Figueres Ferrer, the president who abolished the army in 1948 after a civil war.. Because they don’t spend money on a military, they have lots of money for education and environmental causes, which explains the investment in renewable energy! We also saw some of the famous spheres, which once you see them, they are everywhere! Not all are the actual spheres but spheres are now a part of the visual identity of Costa Rica. The spheres in question are pre-Columbian and made of different types of stone and while it’s unknown exactly what they were for, how they were moved, etc, they have been found all over the country. Many were destroyed because Europeans assumed the indigenous populations were hiding gold in them or other treasure. Many were also held privately but it’s now illegal to own any. We saw several outside of the museum and then many inside, as well.

The museum, itself, is housed in old military barracks and has a butterfly garden at the entrance. It was a bit early for the butterflies to really be out yet but we did see some feeding already and caught side of a few beautiful blue butterflies flitting about. Then, it was into the pre-Columbian section of the museum where we saw lots of spheres and other artifacts, including small tables that would have likely been used for crushing corn or grains. Some were decorative but others were used regularly. We also saw lots of interesting animal sculptures, hopefully as a precursor to seeing some of these animals in person as we travel throughout the country.

Then, it was onto the Museo del Jade, which was very interesting and where we learned that Costa Rica was a bit of a global meeting place early on where people would come from all over and trade their goods. So, jade was often something that was traded and explains why there is so much in Costa Rica. The museum has so many beautiful examples of jade used for religious, medicinal, and artistic purposes along with a lot of gold and other historical items. The collection is vast and so much of it is on display that it’s a lot to take in. Preserving the heritage of the jade is incredibly important and It’s now illegal to purchase it. If you bring jade into the country, you have to prove it’s not from Costa Rica or else it will be confiscated.

Then, we wandered up towards the National Theatre, which unfortunately was closed due a private event so we did an early lunch with Julio and Sarah Joy before meeting our driver, Oscar, who will be shepherding us around while we’re here. The roads can be difficult to navigate when you get out of the city and it isn’t unusual for roads to close during the rainy season or for a 30km drive to take hours so it’s good to have someone who knows what they are doing. Oscar took us up to Santa Elena, where we are spending the next two nights at Senda Hotel, another hotel known for its sustainable practices, where we were greeted with a welcome drink and escorted to our sweet little cabin. Once settled in, we walked into town to find some dinner and landed in a restaurant in a tree. Just a tree growing right up in the middle of the place. With lights on it that change colour. It was both ridiculous and wonderful.

Hi. I'm in Costa Rica.

But are you really that suprised? Okay, maybe specifically the Costa Rica part but not the travel, right? We often travel in the fall!

What we don’t often (read: ever) do is outsource most of our planning to someone else - but with the kitchen reno taking all my brain space and friends raving about the group they worked with and with making a relatively last-minute decision on where to go, some help was not only nice, it was pretty much mandatory.

Anyway. So we’re in Costa Rica. We landed tonight and were greeted at the airport by Julio from Boyero Tours, the small husband/wife company that we used to help plan & book everything for us. Our travel from Toronto to San Jose was quite smooth with no delays and now we’re nestled into the most charming room at Finca Rosa Blanca, a coffee plantantation & inn that is focused on sustainability. After a quick, late dinner (I had flan, which EDP tells me is not a favourite of the Costa Ricans but the internet tells me he is wrong), we’re nestled down to get a good sleep before we get picked up tomorrow by Julio and Sarah Joy to visit some museums in San Jose. We packed for rain since it’s the tail end of rainy season here but we expect it to be sunny tomorrow!

What else are we doing while we’re here? I’m glad you asked:

• Tomorrow is a day in San Jose, visiting the National Museum and the Jade Museum. We’re hoping to see the National Theatre, as well, but the timing might not work out for that.

• After that, we head off to Monteverde where we’re going to be taking a hike in a cloud forest reserve and dining in the tree tops.

• Then, it’s off to the Arenal Volcano area with a guided nature walk at the hanging bridges, stay at a resort with some pretty nice looking hot springs, go on an adventure in Tenorio National Park, take a farm tour, and go zip lining.

• We move on to Manuel Antonio for 2 hikes - a coastal challenge and a mild hike in the national park - with a stop for a chocolate tour on the way.

• Finally, we come back to Finca Rosa Blanca for one last night with a coffee plantation tour on the way.

We’re hoping the rain isn’t too bad while we’re here but we’re prepared with our rain jackets and hiking boots. Even if it does rain a lot, it’s still expected to be warm (low-to-mid-20s)

Terceira (and home again)

For our final day on Terceira, we rented a car to drive around the island. It isn’t a large island so it felt like this was pretty doable in a day. We picked a car up as soon as the rental spot opened up and tried to head off. We assumed it would be easy and didn’t get a map going. It’s not a big town and we just needed to stick along the water. But that didn’t go as expected. After we got further into a residential neighbourhood, we put a map on and got ourselves back on track.

From there, it was pretty smooth sailing. The island is made up of all these little villages, mostly along this one coastal road and they just flow into each other so as soon as you leave one, the next one is right there. It was a beautiful day for a drive and we enjoyed seeing these cute little villages. We stopped a few times, once at a lighthouse and once in one of the slightly larger villages (it had a bank!) before making it to the other large town on the island, Praia da Vitória. This was a charming little down and after wandering along the waterfront and to some of the historic buildings, we sat at a waterfront cafe for a very long lunch, since it had taken us very little time to drive around the island.

With lunch in our bellies, it was off to some caves - Algar do Carvão & Gruta do Natal. Algar do Carvão is actually a volcano that you get to climb down inside. I think it might technically be a vent? I’m not sure. But you get to climb down. It was very damp and felt like it was raining after we descended but it was so neat to see the landscape change from these lush green plants to the volcanic rock. Then, it was on to Gruta do Natal, a set of caves where they celebrate a Christmas mass each year. The caves are quite small and so you have to wear a hardhat inside, which came in handy in several spots, including a very small and narrow section that isn’t much more than about 2 feet tall.

Then, it was back to Angra - and one last dinner. We revisited the excellent spot we went to a few nights ago and each had the fresh fish again. I had trigger fish and EDP had forkbeard, which I believe is what he had the other night, as well. It was much busier tonight with a different waitperson and while the food was still excellent, the atmosphere wasn’t quite the same. We took our time wandering back to the hotel, enjoying the quiet town one last time.

Today, we made our way back home. We were, again, very early for our flight but the airlines systems were down so we waited for quite a long time to be able to get our bags dropped and boarding passes. They eventually had to start tagging bags and writing boarding passes by hand, but they must have gotten things back up at some point because many people on our flight had a printed boarding pass. The hand-tagged bags caused a bit of confusion in Ponta Delgada - obviously, they couldn’t check them through to Toronto as they were but because we had checked in online, they were registered in the system as going to Toronto. It took a few minutes but they eventually figured out how to cancel and recheck our bags. The flight back to Toronto was practically empty - we had no one in front of us, no one behind us, no one beside us… Definitely the emptiest flight I’ve ever been on and a nice surprise. Once back in Toronto, EDP got selected for random COVID testing but despite what we had been seeing in the news, the airport was fairly empty and it was a really quick detour to get him tested.

All-in-all, it felt great to be travelling again. We stayed masked-up when we were indoors but cases are quite low and with tourists generally needing to have negative tests and be vaccinated, the risk felt quite low. With a successful trip under our belts, I think we’ll be venturing out again soon - I heard rumours of another snowboard/city trip somewhere in Europe this winter. And you know I’m not going to say no to that!

Whale Watching

Today’s original plan had us going on our whale watching tour & then out to some caves in the middle of the island. But, with renting a car tomorrow, we’ve decided it makes more sense to push the caves to tomorrow so now - just the whale watching! We headed down to the harbour right after breakfast and after some waiting, we were heading out onto the water with our guide.

The Azores is a hotspot for a lot of whale and dolphin species. Some stay all year, some migrate through, some are on human-watching tours (I made that last one up) and the protection of the animals is something taken quite seriously. One of the key things they do is have a spotter up on the top of Monte Brasil, which we climbed yesterday. The spotter keeps an eye on the water and radios to the boats when something is seen. That keeps the boats from getting too close and scaring the animals.

Luckily, today was a much better day to be out on the water than yesterday. The sky was much clearer and it was warmer. We didn’t get a chance to see any whales but we saw a sunfish, a leatherhead turtle, common dolphins and flatnose dolphins. The flatnose dolphins get white as they age and apparently, like to fight each other as they also get a lot of scars. The common dolphins were quite playful, jumping out of the water quite a bit. The flatnose dolphins were a smaller pod, I think maybe four but there were many more of the common dolphins, maybe closer to 12 or 15? It was really quite enjoyable to watch them jumping around and they actually came quite close to the boat, which surprised me.

Once we were back on land, we got a bite of lunch at the other cafe at the harbour, this one a bit larger. And we found out that not only is it Sunday (we already knew that part) but it was also Mother’s Day and Labour Day. So nothing was going to be open, restaurant-wise. This place opened up because it had a big group coming. Hmmm. That’s okay, we figured out a plan of stopping at the grocery store (the only thing that would be open today) on the way back to the hotel to pick up some meat & cheese & bread to have a little hotel room picnic, which ended up working out nicely. Before heading back to the hotel, we took a little self-guided walking tour around town. We probably should have done that on our first afternoon because we had seen pretty much everything by that point, but it was a nice opportunity to see my favourite blue church again.

Then, it was some nice downtime once we made it back to the hotel, enjoying our little picnic and settling in for the night. Tomorrow is our last full day - we’re renting a car and driving around the island. I’m looking forward to it!

Monte Brasil

So…. I don’t know why I got it in my head that today’s hike was supposed to be relatively light & easy… I guess because it’s technical a city park? Well, it’s a good thing we visited the museum and gardens yesterday but I’m not convinced I’d have had the energy for it today. Because it turns out, it was pretty long (11km) and a 400+ metre ascent.

We started out early from our hotel, skipping the beginning part of the hike since it starts from the middle of town and we would end in town so we’d just pick that up on on the way back. Our hotel has a little path to the little bay that it backs onto, which gave us a nice little shortcut to get into the fort where the hike really does begin.

Monte Brasil is a volcano that is mostly covered in trees but does have an active military presence and a tonne of paths, trails and picnic areas with easy access by car. We, of course, opted for the hard way of hiking it. Once past the fort, we took a little side path that led us along side the volcano, overlooking the town and harbour. The day seemed more smokey than cloudy but I have no idea where the smoke would have been coming from so I assume it was just clouds. We got lovely views of the harbour before partially doubling back to take a side path up a steep grassy incline. That led to another incline with some stairs before another incline on a cement road before we finally reached the peak of Monte Brasil at Pico do Facho. It has an old telegraph site on it, which was interesting to see. Then, it was time to start descending on a series of switchbacks that had fitness equipment scattered along it. We didn’t see anyone using the equipment but we did see a jogger heading up. Her lungs must be in fantastic shape. We took another little cut off path that was much rockier (thank you, hiking pole, for your assistance here!) that led us down to a ruined fort at the edge of a cliff before we started climbing again. While Monte Brasil looks like two big hills (are they hills? are they mountains? They feel like mountains to me…) I think it’s just one with a volcano crater that makes it look like two. Anyway, the point is, we dipped and then started climbing to another peak again. We went to another summit where the whale watchers watch from and a third that was used as a WWII lookout. Heading back down, we walked along the edge of the crater for a bit, which is now used for target practice. Then, we climbed AGAIN but this time on much softer terrain up into the main park area where suddenly, there were tonnes of people. We had seen a few walkers at the beginning of our hike but we were soon the only people around, aside from a couple of joggers, a biker and one other hiker that we saw for a very short time. Anyway. We got up to another peak that gave us lovely views before starting to head back down to town, passing a petting zoo (with a cage parrot that very much wanted to be free…) and lots of picnic areas. It was a really popular area to be, and I can’t say I blame people - it was so lovely.

Eventually, we got back out and started to head into town, watching a tour bus squeeze through a very narrow arch (it made it) and tucking down along the water where we could before coming to a small cafe on the harbour for some delicious sandwiches, more kima (have I mentioned kima? We discovered it on our last hiking day - it’s a passionfruit soda that’s delicious.) The cafe also had ice cream, which was obviously something I was interested in since the day was now quite sunny & warm but as I played around on my phone while EDP was ordering, I found a lovely little bakery that I thought would be a nice place to stop in at for some treats that we’d both enjoy on our way back to the hotel, instead. I’m so selfless, sometimes. We went back up into the main part of town, passing the most beautiful blue church that I think might be my favourite church - it’s just so cheerful on the outside! There’s also a bright pink one that we’ve passed a few times, as well. I’m so torn about tucking inside because the inside is either going to be a massive disappointment compared to the outside OR it might be equally bright and cheerful? Anyway. I love this church. We got some treats (including the small cake that the island is famous for - I had one at breakfast and it was a bit sweet but I’m assuming a proper bakery will do a much better job than a hotel buffet) and some wine and had some nice balcony time back at the hotel before dinner.

Which was amazing. EDP found this tiny little restaurant for us so we set back off into the centre of town for this charming little restaurant that had a very limited menu since it was focused on fresh fish, cause each day. They had two whole fishes and two fillets - so we each ordered one of the fresh fillets. Mine was parrot fish and I can’t remember what EDP’s was but they were delicious. It was the kind of meal that is very simple but shows the skill of the chef. SO GOOD. As good as my tuna from our first night in Ponta Delgada. We topped our evening off with dessert, where I got my long-awaited ice cream (fresh passionfruit.) SO GOOD.

Tomorrow is our whale watching tour - we likely won’t see whales given the time of year and today wasn’t a great day for being on the water so it might end up being just a really nice boat ride but my fingers are crossed.

Angra do Heroísmo

Happily, the rain is gone! WIth how much rain was expected, there was a chance we’d have travel troubles today but it was relatively smooth sailing.

Our flight to take us over to Terceira was scheduled for 12:40 so we had a lazy morning, packing up while finishing up the bottle of champagne from last night and the dessert we had picked up at lunch but never got around to eating. Our transport back to the airport was right on time - 3 hours before the flight - which got us to the airport way too early. The counter wasn’t even open to check our bags in. So we waited for that and then got some warm beverages and headed back out front of the airport before heading through security. The airport, despite being one of the largest in Portugal, is quite small with not a whole heck of a lot to keep one occupied. It did end up getting a bit chilly outside so off we went through security and settled in by our gate for the wait for the flight. This time, we got to walk to the airplane when it was time to board. It was a small plane, though no where near as small as what we had in Belize, it was still pretty small. The flight was quick and easy, landing at the Terceira airport (also one of the largest in Portugal) and we quickly were through and found our transport driver, a lovely young woman who told us all sorts of interesting things about the island as she drove us into Angra do Heroísmo. For me, the most surprising was that there was running of the bulls on the island - and quite a bit. We were arriving just at the start of the season but when things really get going, it’s every weekend in all the little towns across the island. Who knew?!

While we weren’t arriving at our hotel incredibly early, we were still too early to check in so we dropped our bags and headed into town to see about some lunch and start poking around. We had hoped with our flight landing around 1, getting our room a bit early would be a possibility and could just have a lazy day all around but with that not happening, we walked into town. The hotel is on the edge of things, tucked at the end of a little bay so we’re not in the centre of everything.

A short walk got us into town and I just love this place. The buildings are all so colourful and remind me of somewhere but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s so vibrant! We found a little spot to have a sandwich and while there, we realised we were fairly close to things and had the time so we might as well visit the museum & garden we had planned for tomorrow. It was an easy walk to find the museum and we spent a nice hour or so learning more about the history of the city and the Azores, in general. Then, it was next door into the gardens - Jardim Duque da Terceira. These gardens were quite planned and manicured - and more extensive than I expected. We climbed up and then down, enjoying the warm weather and the lovely surroundings. Finally, we headed back to the hotel, got checked in and settled in, ending our day at a nearby restaurant where we had relatively decent pizza.

Tomorrow is our only hike for this island, hiking up the volcano that we can see from our hotel room - there is a tree blocking a good chunk of the volcano but we’ll get a better view tomorrow when we’re up close.