Last Day in Costa Rica

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On our last day, we made the drive down from Monteverde. This time, it wasn't nearly as bad. The unpaved section seemed much shorter and we were much more comfortable, having driven on dirt roads all week. Despite the night's rain, the roads were not muddy in the least - quite dry in fact. However, the drive felt much longer, because I think we all wanted to get back to Hotel La Rosa de America and jump in the pool.

We got back to Barrio San Jose de Alajuela around noon. The first order of business was finding lunch. Just down the road, we found Las Delicias del Maiz. It looked a bit like a tourist attraction, in the same way that Bugaboo Creek might to a non-American, but was wholely a family destination for Costa Ricans as far as I could tell. There were a few other foreign families there but mainly it seemed to be Tico families. Wooden picnic-style tables filled a big room, and the menu offered many family platters for sharing. It was almost like getting Ethiopian - we got a platter called "Fiesta" and it came with arracache (sp?), potatoes, arroz con pollo, beef with peppers, sweet plantains and pork. It came with tortillas and no serving implements. The kids were in heaven. Our toddlers were also extremely popular here. At one point, a fellow restaurant guest picked up my son and played with him for a bit. Overall, we enjoyed this restaurant and felt that we had at last had an authentic Costa Rican experience, vs. all the tourist restaurants we had visited all week in Monteverde.

In the afternoon, we lstayed by the pool so that the kids could swim. Of course, Kai wanted to swim only when he was in his clothes. When I got him into swimtrunks, he wanted out of the pool and to run around the garden. I loved that the hotel had a nice pool and a huge garden, and felt so remote from the airport - yet we were only 15 minutes away. Just feeling the warm air and breezes and reading my Kindle and watching my son run around happily - it was wonderful.

Of course, for dinner, we ended up with Pizza Hut ($25 USD for a "grande" pizza!), mostly because we didn't want to leave the hotel as the babies were sleeping. We spent the rest of the night on the porch of the cabina, with the baby monitors hooked up, drinking glasses of Chilean wine. When we ran out, Mike ran down the street to "Chery's Bar" to get more cervezas. We talked so much that at eleven, we were asked to go to bed because there were kids sleeping. Of course we felt like dorks because we had asked people to keep down the noise since our babies were sleeping themselves!

Our last day in Costa Rica was low-key, but we needed it to gear up for a 16-hour of travel day the next day.

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