Post Surf Breakfast

We got up early and made our way down to the small fruit shop down the road so that we could collect some fruit to get us through the next couple of days. We returned to the house ate some cereal and then headed to the beach for a surf. The water was clear and the waves were fun, we surfed for around two hours. Afterwards we returned the boards to the board shop down the road and then headed back to the accomodation to make a proper post surf breakfast. 

After our mid morning breakfast we ordered up an Uber and made our way over to a Reinas Chocolate farm, not far out of Tamarindo, so that we could do a chocolate tasting session. 

Reina’s Chocolate

The chocolate tasting was a stack of fun, they gave us a range of chocolates and small cups of coffee to cleanse the palate between each of the different chocolates. We all agreed that the tastiest chocolate was the 80% coca with habanero and sea salt, of course everyone else must have though the same because this was the one chocolate that they were out of. The asked the lady who hand makes the chocolates when that variety was going to be ready and she said not until Saturday. We were going to be in Colombia by this point, so we will have to wait until next time to get our 80% coca, with habanero and sea salt. We did buy some chocolate to take to Erica and Diego in Colombia, some drinking chocolate for Christine and Luke picked himself up a block of 80% coca with sea salt. 

Lunch and a great conversation

After our chocolate experience we wandered down the road to a Soda, that the bloke at the chocolate farm had recommended, to get some lunch. We had casadas with pulled beef, beans, rice and salad, they were delicious. 

After lunch we made our way to a nearby supermarket to pick up some flour and baking powder so that we could make our own tortillas and have tacos for dinner. After a bit of searching we managed to locate both of these ingredients. We then caught an Uber back to the accomodation. This Uber driver didn’t really speak a lot of English, so we had a great conversation in Spanish on the way back to the accomodation. 

The Beach Run

In the evening Luke and I went for a run along the beach, Christine filmed some of it with the drone while she was going for a walk. We ran down to the crocodile infested inlet just near Tamarindo and then back again, a track that took us a little over 6km. We all met up at Playa Grande just as the sun was setting to that we could film a drony shot.  

Home Made Tacos

Once we had worked up our appetite we wandered back to the accomodation and made flour tortillas with a tomato, red onion, cucumber, avocado, garlic and lime salsa. We fried some potato and made a meat sauce with beef, capsicum, carrot, ginger, garlic, chilli flakes and some tomato paste. Our meal was absolutely spectacular

Costa Rica Day 17

The long drive to San Jose

We got up relatively early, ate some breakfast and got organised for the day. Christine and I made our way over to Adobe car rentals to collect another car while Luke went to get himself a coffee. By the time we collected the car and got back to the accomodation it was already after 10. We were on the road by 11 at the latest. Now many people had said that it would take between 4 – 5 hours to drive from Playa Grande to San Juan. This is a lie, each time we drove it took well over 6 hours with traffic. We took an hour or so for lunch and didn’t arrive in San Jose until 7. 

We stopped at a road side restaurant and ordered 3 casadas, the place was fantastic with ornate wooden carvings everywhere. We made a couple of quick stops to collect some fruit and vegetables for dinner, but for the most part we were just driving and taking in the scenery. 

San Jose Accomodation

Checking in to the Air BnB was no problem, there was a guard on duty who checked our passports and then directed us to where to park and which elevator to take to get to our apartment. The apartment was beautiful, it had 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and a couple of balconies with spectacular views over San Juan with its looming volcanic mountains as a backdrop. 

We cooked up the last of our beef with some rice and the veggies that we had picked up on our journey. We checked the times for tomorrow’s adventures and then headed to bed early.