Trips about Botanical Gardens

Please see the first post on Costa Rica for important details about this post.

We had a great breakfast at the Costa Verde Inn and left to find our way to the Caribbean coast. On the way there though we stopped at Lankester Gardens, a botanical garden that contains many of Costa Rica's native plants. Among their specialties is a huge collection of orchids.

After leaving the botanical gardens, we continued on our way to the Caribbean coast. Unfortunately, this is not as straightforward as one would hope, as the signs are non-existent and the maps in the guide books do not correspond to reality. After getting lost a few times, we eventually made it to the town of Turribaldo. The town is famous for its whitewater rapids, which we were not interested in, but at least it had a nice hostel called the Hotel Interamericana. Luckily, one of the owners was an American woman who was able to help us quite a bit on our journey to the coast. One of the first things she helped us out with was pointing us to an amazing restaurant called Don Parzi. This was essentially a four or five star restaurant with great service and very low prices. I wish one could get a 3 course meal in the US for $10/person.

The next day we went to Costa Rica's only archaeological site - Guayabo National Monument. I can't say it was very exciting, although the road to it was definitely a fun trek.

Leaving the monument, we managed to get to Siquerres where we joined one of the few well built highways in Costa Rica. Between Siquerres and Puerto Limon we found a pineapple farm tour and although there were no tours left for that day, we did pick up some nice pineapple jam.

Unfortunately, the highway only lasted until the coast (at Puerto Limon), from where we took an increasingly pothole infested road south to Puerto Viejo.