On October 8, 2000 we flew to Houston to meet up with friends for a trip to Costa Rica. We met our good friends Henry & Marie Aase from Norfolk and Larry & Bonnie Schumacher from Omaha. Also joining us were Jim & Connie Rourke, Wendell & Lelice Newcomb, Leo & Elaine Moschenross, Cliff & Bonnie Flynn and Kurt & De Kurtenback. These folks were friends of Henry & Marie. We had met some of them previously on ski trips they made to Colorado.
Larry & Bonnie surprised us with 1st class upgrade tickets for the flight from Houston to San Jose. Bonnie & Larry's daughter works for an airline or a travel agent and was able to get our seats upgraded. This was welcome since the flight was over 3 hours long.
We arrived in San Jose about 8:30 PM and were met by someone from our tour company who picked up our luggage and whisked us through customs. They must have slipped someone some extra cash as it was very painless. We then met up with our tour guide Carlos and our bus driver Oscar. Carlos assured us that we were in good hands as Oscar was the number 2 driver in all of Costa Rica, but that he had recently been elevated to #1 as the previous #1 driver was killed in an auto accident. 
I believe we all agreed at the end of the tour that Oscar was indeed a very good driver.
We had an overnight stay at the Camino Real International Hotel in San Jose. Not much to say about it other than it was a nice hotel. It had a beautiful garden surrounding the pool area. It did have a very good buffet breadfast. Lots of fresh fruit; pineapple, mango, papaya and citrus. I thought they had the best rice & beans, a mainstay of the Costa Rican diet, of any that we had.
After breakfast we boarded our bus for the Tabacon Resort and Hot Springs near Volcano Arenal. It is normally a three and half hour drive, however we made many stops along the way so it
took us the better part of the day. The trip took us through the mountains east of San Jose to the Carribean side of the continental divide. Once over the divide, we passed along a mountain ridge overlooking a narrow valley for quite some time. The mountains on either side of the valley were covered with agriculture, mostly coffee plantations with some vegetables. They practiced good soil conservation techniques as I saw little evidence of erosion. The soil is volcanic ash based so it is very pourous. All the labor involved must have to be done by hand as it didn't seem possible to use much of anything mechanical.
Our first stop was at I guess one would call a small convenience store. It was located in the middle of nowhere next to the road. No other commerce around. We encountered many business like this through out our trip. Sometimes a convenience store or small restaurant or bar. We had been traveling a couple of hours by this time, so we were only interested in the restroom facilities and a soft drink.
The next stop was the medium sized city of Zarcero. The attraction here was a church with a sculptured garden. The sculptor has been maintaning this garden for thirty years. I don't know what kind of shrubs that were used, possibly some kind of cypress. At any rate it was a very beautiful church and a beautiful setting.
Click here for more pictures of Zarcero.
From Zacero we continued on to our destination of Volcano Arenal and the Tabacon Resort. We passed through more small villages, mountain side plantations and finally some small fields of flat land agriculture. The flat lands in this area are used primarily to raise rice, sugar cane, bananas, some corn and costado(sp).
The costado, as Carlos explained, is grown for the root. The plants that we saw had a slim trunk about five foot tall with the leaves on top that looked similar to the leaves of a yucca plant. The plants were grown in rows. The root itself is highly toxic, but when boiled and peeled (or peeled and boiled, I don't remember which) it yields a product that looks and tastes similar to a boiled potato. We had it served at a couple of meals where it was diced and mixed with sweet corn and was quite good.
We stopped at a road side restaurant about 2 PM for lunch. The restaurant was open air (as were most of them) and quite large. The upstairs dining room had a spectacular view of the volcano that was about 25-30 miles distant. Considering the lateness of the hour and the fact that they probably weren't expecting as many guests at that time, the food was very good.
As we continued our journey, the landscape changed from flatland to a more hilly terrain. We passed some grass land where they were raising beef cattle (Brahmas).
To be continued
Last Updated 01/09/2001