7 Days in La Fortuna Costa Rica (Part 3)
I became obsessed with finding these particular nachos so we had lunch at Cafeto Chill Out and I was not disappointed. We drove by the sloth farm (all week and never went in. Sorry sloth-lovers) to pick up dinner fruit and veggies then headed back to the house for our afternoon downtime.
the "usual"
I’d like to write a bit about what our “usual” afternoons/evenings consisted of. It starts with rain in the afternoon and hammock fetching with Lucy, then later I start cutting vegetables outside. I bring the veggies inside to make a simple soup on the simple stove (small propane burners) in the simple kitchen (one not-sharp knife). It gets dark at 6, and I don’t understand why even after reading about it on wikipedia.
We bring the soup outside in mugs and cut fruit outside under the roof in a rain storm. The adults like a beer or two. We all wear barely anything because rain is blowing in anyhow. Usually it’s thundering very loudly. We take the dishes inside and immediately wash everything, every dish, every surface, or else… ants. Well, the ants come anyways so whatever.
In the Evenings
After the cleanup we retreat to the living room where we watch the one channel that is in English and “not the news” which is MTV 80s, an all 80s music video channel with no commercials! We’re pretty obsessed with this channel and we watch it all night, every night, laughing, singing along, shouting. It’s the best. We watch the lizards on the walls eat whatever winged thing has flown in. (See video below for both a lizard winning at life and also a Falco cameo) We cheer for the lizards. At some point I silently disappear and pass out for the best sleep I get anywhere and eventually wake up to roosters and howler monkeys the next morning
At any point during this procedure I find myself absent-mindedly smiling, because, even with the ants, it’s pretty apparent, “pura vida” is the best life.
Day 5: river tubing
I don’t like touristy activities but sometimes you have to just bite the bullet and do the guided tour, especially if it’s something you can die doing, so we signed up for the river tubing tour. I can tell you that if you don’t want to end up in a huge group of tourists, this is the thing to do. Everyone else went ziplining so we got a private tour on the river. I’m sure ziplining was amazing but we simply didn’t choose to do it.
First thing I did in the rapids was get dunked and have a major sinus wash. Thank you waterproof phone cover! I highly recommend the waterproof phone cover. A must! Luckily the tour guide convinced us to leave our glasses behind because one of us went over backwards twice and at some point another lost his inner tube and accidentally floated down the rapids sans tube. The other guide looked worried but was able to retrieve both tube and guy, who said he was never worried at all because he figured “it would slow down at some point” and that’s correct. But also if you floated down the river long enough you’d also “end up in Nicaragua at some point”…so yay for river guides! We had so much fun on this one.
Day 5: hot springs
There are some natural hot springs near the Tabacon resort. Most of the resorts have snapped up their own part of the geothermally-heated warm water but this is open and free. The hot springs were #1 on my personal to-do list. You can park on the side of the road right near them and it’s a short walk down. There are some guys hanging around who want a small payment to “watch over your car”. We didn’t know how legit this was but we gave them $5 because we didn’t want someone to “not watch over our car”. You can get into any of the bathtub-sized nooks and crannies you can find in the river and luxuriate away. You can stay as long as you want. It wasn’t crowded.
Later on we ate more wonderful food, took a walk, and saw a forest cow or two.
Day 6: Driving aimlessly
We had finished all of our planned activities for the week and had a very free day to do anything. We were all checking out the scenery and I was being a total creep – taking pics of random houses because I don’t think just explaining it works. So as I’ve mentioned before, a lot of houses either lacked exterior walls and/or had large covered outdoor spaces. Sometimes you’d drive by and see all the way through a person’s house to their chickens in the backyard. It’s very simple living with few boundaries to the outdoors. The climate is temperate to warm year round. Plenty of water to grow anything you need. It’s a nice life. Here are a collection of pictures from our drive.
We accidentally found and stopped at the Arenal waterfall but the parking lot and overall touristy vibe freaked us out so we just left and kept driving. It’s ok to not see the “big items” on the to-do list. It’s ok to say no.
After meandering down all sorts of roads, we had seen enough. We returned home to Pineapple House to swim and hang with dogs. It’s a nice life that, and at this point, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to leave.
Day 7: Coffee time
We had already known about how delicious the coffee was here from visiting the Red Frog Coffee Roasters just about every day. Our last full day in La Fortuna was Father’s Day so we went out to another coffee shop, Arábigos Coffee House, for a relaxed coffee. The coffee was a process!
The server arrives with boiled coffee in a kettle, that’s then poured over fresh ground beans in a sock-like device and strains the brewed coffee into your mug. There’s another smaller cup that you set underneath to catch extra drops after you remove your drinking cup. The milk they bring for your coffee is always steamed and foamed. Delicious, fun, and entertaining.
We drove some back roads a bit more and picked up our favorite coconut, doughnut-shaped cookies (picking up cookies was pretty much a daily activity) then went back for a cold swim until rain and another fruit and veggie soup dinner.
Last Supper
This day’s dinner fruit was a papaya, a tiny pineapple brought by the house host, and a guanabana/soursop! The guanabana is the white, fleshy thing with the black seeds. It’s very soft and tastes like a mild pineapple. The seeds are hard and you cannot accidentally eat them. They’re like marbles. The soft flesh was the consistency of fish and I was a little put off by that fact (fish is not my thing!) but my son was really into the soursop and ate most of it. Dinner soup was always made with chicken bullion, onion, cabbage, giant carrot and quinoa. The giant carrots were so flavorful that even within the soup they stood out. I felt they were almost lemony. Usually there were beers, and my son enjoyed getting different yogurt drinks or coconut waters. These simple dinners were always enough and everyone was happy.
Day 8: Leaving Pineapple House
I was sad to leave. The only bad part about this trip is that I didn’t get to say goodbye to Lucy. Maybe it’s for the better because then I would have been a crying, slobbering mess all morning. But you know how the ancient saying goes: sometimes you have to shake the lizards out of your underpants and leave the pineapple house.
So, if you’ve read this far, want to know what I learned? That great food and human connection is all that really matters. That doing uncomfortable things is the only way to grow. Enjoying the moment, whether it’s throwing the avocado seed for a dog or eating fruit in the rainstorm, is everything. Comfort doesn’t equal living.
I’m glad we drove a slightly out-of-the-way road back to San Jose which showed us small towns, giant waterfalls, coffee farms and other volcanos. It was a nice distraction from my sadness over leaving Lucy and our nice town. We grabbed our obligatory airport Starbucks drinks with misspelled names and headed home. For many days straight I had to actively try not to cry over missing Lucy and Pineapple House. I hope this long post has inspired you to go find your own Pineapple House in La Fortuna. The end.
