Costa Rica is not showing any signs of slowing as a popular destination for Americans. And for good reason. The place is flat-out fun, with beautiful rainforests, rampant wildlife and
genuinely wonderful people (even those who don’t work in the tourism industry). It’s been a few years since my visit, but I still have some tips [...]
Posts under ‘Costa Rica’
Going to Costa Rica? 9 Tips to Help
Mixing Coffee and Travel
I think it’s really fun to find quality microbrews while traveling. I get a chance to try something tasty, and I often get a chance to mingle with locals (in the case of my recent visit to the Lost Abbey/Port Brewing tasting room, I even met a friendly black cat). It’s also not super-hard to [...]
Creature Feature – Coatis in Costa Rica
If you like things furry and four-legged, there’s a good chance you’ll run into a coati during your visit to Costa Rica. I didn’t know this until I arrived in Monteverde, a laid-back town in the mountains north of San Jose.
We showed up in Monteverde after the bruising ride from La Fortuna – the boat [...]
Monkeys on the Prowl in Costa Rica
So picture sitting down to breakfast. You’re having a nice plate of eggs and some fresh fruit when a monkey comes bursting in through a window.
The sharp-eyed little guy, who might weigh about 10 pounds, surveys the situation. His finely tuned senses spot a bunch of bananas hanging from some sort of rack. Before you [...]
Something Tasty I Found in Central America
Here in the states, I’ve become hooked on a mighty sauce. It’s available just about everywhere despite its Asian heritage. That would be Sriracha, AKA Rooster Sauce. It goes on everything short of ice cream and oatmeal, and I’ve even seen a yogurt shop offer it as a topping. Crazy, right?
But there’s one sauce I’ve [...]
7 Recycled Airplanes that Still Thrill
These days, recycling is cool. And so are airplanes – even the Honda Civic of the skies that is the 737.
That makes recycling airplanes an off-the-charts, Ricardo Montalban-level of cool. I’m not talking about turning Cessnas into aluminum cans. I’m talking about turning Boeing jumbo jets into backpacker hostels, or shady old military cargo planes [...]
My Top 5 Flights – Plus, a Site for Flight Geeks
The rise of Facebook as a great time-waster is pretty well-documented, and now aviation geeks have their own way to flush hours down the lavatory: Let me introduce FlightMemory.com, a Web site that lets you input all your commercial flights. It then tracks your time and mileage and plots it on a map. You can [...]
Coffee Culture Showdown – Comparing Caffeine
Coffee is a shape-shifting drink. No matter what country you’re in, that country has added something distinct to the coffee bean and the way people drink it. Each time I travel out of North America, I find a little learning curve waiting for me.
Imagine an Australian visiting a cafe in California and asking for [...]
Grab a flight … like now!
So how many times do you talk to people about traveling, and they’ll say “I wish I could go (fill in the blank”?
Well, if there’s ever a time to do that awesome trip, this is it. Oil is cheap. The economy sucks, which means that airlines are doing all sorts of stuff to [...]
Viva el Monstruo – Capturing Costa Rican Character
When I landed in Costa Rica back in 2003, I was pretty underprepared. This was my wife’s trip. She planned it and sweated the details. I packed my backpack (and actually remembered my underwear, for once), got on the plane and went along for the ride.
Unfortunately, this means I had little concept of the awesome [...]
