Costa Rican Vacation - Part 1
Since work & LIFE have been keeping me overwhelmed I decided to break up my CR vacation post into multiple posts. This will keep each post from getting too L-O-N-G.CR was a blast. A thoroughly good time. Would I recommend CR? It would depend on who you are and what your interests are. I wouldn’t recommend CR for shopping or theater. But I would recommend CR for outdoor pursuits, relaxing, and hot weather.
The people:
Warm and friendly. Not just the workers in the hotel or restaurants but everywhere we went. Even the bus drivers were nice! This really added to the experience (and lowered our stress) since we didn’t speak much Spanish. I felt comfortable with the very basic phrases I knew, but there’s no way I could hold a conversation. (Unless it was with a 3 year old) The people were gracious enough to switch to English as soon as they heard me butchering their language. They were nice about it. They knew I was trying and I think that was enough for them. I wasn’t pulling the typical American attitude of “Everyone should speak English! It’s the official language of the universe. If YOU don’t understand me, I’ll speak English louder & slower. ”
The food:
From the nicest place we ate at to the local hang out bar: reasonably priced, consistently good, and fresh. The seafood was amazing. We were right down the road from the port town of Quepos so I’m sure a lot of the daily catch ended up in Manuel Antonio. Everyplace we went to had fish on the menu and had it cheap. Tuna and Mahi-Mahi were the most available but Swordfish, Sea Bass, and Snapper were also on the menus. Grilled, blackened, fried, baked. You name it they prepared the fish that way!! The chicken was also good. Don’t bother with the beef. (It was stringy and a bit tough.) But the seafood rocked!! The typical CR side dish to a meal is black beans & rice. (Including breakfast. How about bacon & eggs with black beans & rice? You bet!) You might think black beans & rice are pretty boring but every place did it a little differently and it was usually pretty good.
We ate at some pretty cool restaurants: El Avion, Barba Roja, Anaconda, Restaurant Marlin, El Gran Escape. Again all good, reasonable priced, friendly, and fresh.
El Avion: Was the most unique since part of the décor was a CIA C-123 cargo plane. The view of the ocean and coastline was breathtaking. The food was good & the waiters were funny. They were always joking with their customers.
Barba Roja: The food was really good. The view of sunset over the ocean was awesome. A Pirate theme. What more could I want? The second time we were there we watched a storm roll in and a lightning show over the ocean. Very cool.
Anaconda: Probably the fanciest place we ate at. The food was really good. A very diverse menu with a lot of European influenced menu items. Wonderful view of the ocean and coastline. I felt like I was in a big fancy tree house.
El Gran Escape: Seafood. Seafood. Seafood. Good & fresh. The portions were large and the people were warm & friendly. The décor was fun & tacky. All kinds of fish & fishing related paraphernalia.
The Restaurant Marlin: Was our local hang out. The food & drinks were good & cheap. The people were nice.
Labels: food, Holiday, travel, vacation
posted by ChowderHead @ 6/02/2007 02:58:00 PM
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