January 2025: Costa Rica & Nicaragua Adventure

In January 2025, we took a short trip south. Mom, my wife, and I took a drive to Portland, Oregon the day before we flew out, to stay the night at the Holiday Inn Express. We arrived a little early so I could take advantage of the Danner boot company headquarters being there, and buy a new pair of boots for work, the added benefit from the discounted price was no sales tax in Oregon, double win! Early the next morning, we woke up to play the airport game with TSA. Everything went well, and the flight to Houston was pretty uneventful. A dull and boring flight is always great! Whenever I get to Texas, I like to eat at What-A-Burger, just a small treat which we hadn't had in years. After leaving Houston, we flew into San Jose, Costa Rica getting in around 10 pm. After having been up since 4am, we were all pretty much exhausted, but we picked up our rental and drove the long distance to the hotel for the night, all the way across the parking lot.

Looking down into an ACTIVE Volcano

Getting around San Jose by gps was a royal pain in the ass, I finally opened up my On X Offroad app, and plotted our route out of town getting to the La Paz Waterfalls and Gardens for a little Coasta Rican wildlife tour. After seeing so many cool critters, and a nice little walk to multiple waterfalls, we drove out to La Fortuna to our Air BNB. we got the car unloaded,and drove down to Mundo de Perezosos for private tour to view Sloths and Monkeys on a private ranch. This was a pretty cool place, and very informative, learned a lot about monkeys, heard different monkeys, but only a couple Sloths. All in all, it was a pretty cool adventure! We then went grocery shopping with the locals and cooked up a great dinner at the house before playing in the pool.

The next morning was a little wet, not too rainy, but misty as we drove to the Sky adventure park for the best zip lining I have done to date. They got us harnessed up and loaded onto a tram to take us up the mountain through the rain forest, and up above the canopy with some beautiful mountain views. It was awesome/ breathtaking! Once we reached the top, we hit 7 zip lines back to the restaurant. The longest line being over 2400 feet, and 650 feet above the canopy. Needless to say, it was frickin AMAZING!!! The weather didn't hold out too well for us, but was better than the group behind. We had a wet mist the whole time, one line we ran took us speeds of around 45 mph, which just reminded me of riding the bike at home. The "rain" felt like needles puncturing the face, picture a face tattoo, that's how it felt. Made me want to go get on a bike and ride! After the last line in, we ditched the gear and sat down for lunch, as we sat down, the Sky above got dark, and the clouds decided to DUMP rain hard. Kinda felt sorry for the groups on the lines at this point. Lunch was at the Chillout restaurant, and the food was AMAZING. This was our first meal in country, and turned out to be the second best meal we had there. We only had 1 meal that wasn't good, so that is saying a lot! If you go to Coast Rica, the Sky Adventure Park NEEDS to be on your list!

Jahanel on one of the long suspension bridges at Sky Adventure Park

After lunch we wandered the trails, crossing over hanging bridges and suspension bridges to see some amazing views of the rain forest canopies and canyons. At this point, I fell in love with Costa Rica, with the exception of the humidity. We then loaded our soaking wet bodies into the rental car, and proceeded to drive, and drive, and drive. We had a 4 1/2 hour drive out to Tamarindo to an all inclusive resort, the Occidental Tamarindo. This place was pretty amazing, the service was great, the grounds and rooms were fantastic, but the buffet needed help in my opinion. The food was ok, but not great. We stayed here for a few days, and on the first full days night, we did a private turtle tour. A local guide picked us up in his personal truck, and took us through some sketchy looking areas out through the forest and down to the beach. We had ZERO idea of where we were or how to get back if something happened. I am ALWAYS on guard and almost always have a sense of direction and escape plan if something happened. By the time we hit the beach, my only "plan" was to wait out the night and walk the beach at first light to get back. Well if something happened that night, we'd had been screwed! But obviously nothing bad happened, actually everything good happened. Not only did our guide fing a turtle nesting, it was an old momma who was digging to lay eggs! We were only supposed to be out there for an hour, well that turned into about 2.5 hours. Mom and my wife were basically up the turtles butt getting pictures, they could have EASILY reached over to pet the turtle if they wanted to. It was an awesome experience watching momma dig the nest. lay her eggs and bury it all back up. What a great night. So now we have seen the process of nesting as well as digging up/ rescuing and setting baby see turtle free while in Mexico. Life is so good!

Hiking in he hot and sticky jungle, cooling towels didn’t work.

The next couple days we just chilled out and relaxed at the resort, checking out the pool and the beach before heading out for more adventures in other lands. After checking out of the resort, we cruised on our to Palo Verde Boat Tours to take a fun excursion out to see Crocs, gators, monkeys, Sloths, birds and more. It was a pretty cool little trip, not the highlight for sure, but was a good experience. When we returned, the family fed us a Costa Rican lunch at their home which was amazing, and one family member was making pottery and clay animals. While he was making the items, he educated us on the materials used. No paint, just different parts of the land used to color in his amazing pieces of art. Needless to say, we had to support him and purchase a few items. We then finished our driving part of the adventure by heading to Liberia for the next few night. This was where we had our worst meal, and our best meal!

Nicaragua

The first day in Liberia was short, we woke up to a guide picking us up and taking us to Nicaragua. Holy shit, what an adventure that was! Our guide was some "local celebrity bull rider" who had all these contacts and assured us our border crossing was gonna be smooth, fast and painless. As we approached the border, there were MILES of cars waiting to cross. Our plan was to walk across, the meet up with his partner in Nicaragua who had a car there for us. He drop kicked us at the border, told us to "wait right here" while he parked the van. We waited for about 20 minutes for him to return. After he did, he had us get in line, but took our passports (I was very hesitant) and ran off for about another 30 minutes. After returning he told us ALL of his contacts were off that day, but he had a plan. He took mom by the arm, and started walking to the front of the line, my wife and I followed, about half way up, he turned around and was shocked to see us following, and said we were supposed to wait in line. Well shit, NOW you tell us? So we waited next to a police truck near "no mans land" for I'm to return with our passports, and my mom! Once they got to the front of the line, the crowd roared and yelled, and I knew they were upset with our guide cutting to the front. But he did it, he escorted the "frail old lady" through , and we followed. It was a very interesting experience to say the least, but we were only OUT of Coasta Rica, into No Mans Land, not into Nicaragua yet. As we got into the customs building, our guide's bs didn't change alot, he acted like he was the top shit, but slowly faded. It was entertaining to watch him jump all over the place. At one point I watched as he put his bag down and our passport down on a table, then walk over to a border agent. When he left the station, we waved s over and walked out the door, leaving our passports on the table, I quickly snatched them up. He claims he was supposed to hold them all day. After we got into Nicaragua, my wife snuck the passports into conversation, she knew what happened, and he lost his mind while searching his pockets and his pack for them. afte about 45 seconds of watching, I pulled them out of my pocket and told him he left them on the table.

Nicaragua was absolutely beautiful. Even though it's on the states list of countries not to visit, the people, the culture, the country, all beautiful. The roads were well maintained, way better than Costa Rica roads. We had a wonderful Nicaraguan lunch before seeing some beautiful scenery and Lake Nicaragua. I never thought I would say this, but I had a good time touring the chocolate factory, the guide there was fun as hell. A horse drawn carriage ride through town by another local bullshiter. Not sure if 20% of what he said was true or not, but he had some good stories along our tour through town. Entertaining to say the least! But not as entertaining as our return into Coast Rica!

To back up a little to the morning when we went TO Nicaragua, our guide needed to "stop at the boss's wife's house to get the cash needed for the border crossing". He got a backpack from the "boss's wife" which never left him the whole day. Well on the way back to the border, he had to stop and pick up another guide that he would be traveling with the next day. When we got there, the backpack vanished, and he had a box wrapped in black plastic. I immediately thought a drug deal just happened. When we got the the customs building, we had an easy time getting out of Nicaragua into the No Mans Land, and our guide sketched our way back to Coast Rica. We had to have 1 bag go through x-ray, so he asked me to put my backpack through and he slid his box off to the side. After going through customs, he had us wait, with his box, in a dark sketchy area while he went to get the van. Now, keep in mind, EVERYTHING you read says to no go out at night as a tourist. Well, here we are standing basically in No Mans Land, no passports, no guide, no clue what's in this damn box, and here comes a few dues towards us.... I immediately go into defense/ protection mode, one of the 3 comes up to us to see "if we need anything". Before I could say anything, mom said we were waiting for our guide, gave his name, and this dude stepped off about 10 yards and kept an eye on us until our guide showed up. On the way back to the Air BNB, we had to stop to drop the package at his "boss's house". Funny, this isn't the same house his "boss's wife" lives in. But the package was left, picture taken of the package on the door step, just like Amazon, another dude gets in the van and off to the house we go. Very interesting day/ border crossing!!! I am 95% sure we were just involved in a drug smuggling operation, but we have no way of really knowing what truly went down, I am smart enough to keep an eye on this, but NOT ask any questions.

Our last day in country we pretty much took it easy, went on a couple hikes at the Las Paila Park. We saw some beautiful waterfalls, and mud pots, rain forest to baren landscape, very cool place, well not temperature though, hot and humid. But we knew that going into the trip! After leaving the park, we decided we would walk to dinner at this sketchy looking place a block away from the house. 7 Fuefos was the name of the restaurant, and yep, you guessed it, the BEST food we had was here! Not only was the food spectacular, the service was the absolute best we experience ANYWHERE in the world! My mom and my wife are diabetic, and mom is vegetarian, well this is a steak house, so we questioned if she would find anything. After explaining this to the waiter, he brought the head chef to talk to mom and got an idea of what she could have. Then talked to my wife and came up with a plan for them. I went for something I never had before, Chimichurri Steak. Wasn't sure what chimichurri was, but upon first bite, I knew I found heaven. Mom's meal came out as veggies and a couple other things and she was extremely satisfied, as was my wife's meal. We loved the food and service so much that we paid double what the bill was by giving a huge tip. They stopped us as we were leaving, to try to give us money back and explain what we did, but we assured them that we purposely paid extra, and that was the tip for them. They were almost as happy with us, as we were with them. It was an awesome way to leave Coasta Rica, I don't think I ate anything the next day because I didn't want the chimichurri steak flavor to ever leave my mouth!!

Here it is 8 months after returning home from this trip, and I still think about that wonderful steak at least 2 per month, and sitting here typing this post, my mouth is watering thinking of this amazing pieces of meat that was cooked perfectly. I found chimichurri seasonings, and have made MANY different meals with it, great on burgers too by the way. But I now make my steak with a butter and chimichurri concoction, which comes out amazing! One of the best parts of traveling is returning home with part of the culture you just visited, then having it stick with you. I have since turned a few other people over to this amazing seasoning and way of cooking!