Adventure Days, Feb 2023 – Day 1

We were very excited to have our (grown) kids, Andy and Allison, come to visit us in February. We love seeing them, and it gives us an opportunity to break out of our daily routine and do different activities. Of course, they have visited before, but we want to make sure they continue to experience new things in Costa Rica. In a previous visit, they had expressed an interest in ziplining, and we just hadn’t gotten around to that activity. With the idea of ziplining and exploring other new areas/activities, I started looking online to see what might be available within a reasonable distance from our location.

The Parque Nacional Rincón la Vieja is located a little northeast of Liberia, the city that the kids were flying into, and there are several hotels with activities located near there. With a little Internet research, I found the Hotel Hacienda Guachipelín, located near the park, that offers Adventure Tours, including zip lining.  One of the tour offerings was a One-Day Adventure Pass that included a canopy zip line tour through the Rio Blanco Canyon, a tubing adventure on the Rio Negro River with class III rapids, horseback riding, and volcano-heated thermal waters, plus lunch. It sounded like a fun and exciting day, so we booked the hotel for the first two nights of the kids’ trip, with the adventure tour on their first full day. We were going to start off their trip with a bang!

Fortunately, the kids’ flight arrived at the right time on the right day. It was a hot, very windy, and dry day, as it often is in February here on the Pacific side. We drove our truck to the airport to pick up the kids. The four of us would ride in the cab, but our suitcases would need to go in the truck bed. As we drive from our house to Liberia, there is an hour on mostly dirt/gravel roads with intermittent paving. Even though we have a cover for the truck bed, it still gets very dusty. Plus, the Liberia airport visitor parking lot is also just dust/gravel. (The tourist shuttle vans have a designated area that is paved, but the rest of us are on the dirt.) Based on our experience, we make sure to cover our suitcases with large garbage bags so they are protected.  After we greeted the kids, we made our way to the dirt/gravel parking area, and battled the wind as we encased their suitcases with the extra garbage bags we’d brought for them.

We were delayed from leaving the airport parking area for a few minutes, due to being blocked in by a police truck.  In the dirt lot there are no lines for designated parking spots, but there are some cement curb stops/parking blocks to delineate rows.  One car had apparently parked too far at the end of the row, beyond the last curb stop, which didn’t leave much room for cars to get around it. The police were taking action against this parking violator – they were removing the car’s license plate. This is what they do in this country when you violate traffic ordinances, drive without current stickers, etc. They take your plates so you can’t drive at all and it is a real pain to get the plates back.

It was lunch time, and we were hungry, so we quickly stopped at the Europa Café, conveniently located near the airport. This restaurant is now a favorite when we go to Liberia. Admittedly, we’d passed by this place for years, but never stopped, as we weren’t sure what to think of it. One large sign for it advertises “Vegan”, which isn’t our first choice in restaurants. On the other hand, it has two large, white, fun, “sculptures” at the entrance, one of a coffee cup and the other of a piece of pie, which is enticing. We finally tried it after friends told us it had good food. They may have a “Vegan” menu offering, but we’ve never seen it. Our go-to is the Vienna Style Wiener Schnitzel with Spaetzles, which we think is great!  Yes, it’s a not typical Costa Rican “casado” meal, (we think they offer that), but we can get that anywhere. Where else are you going to go in Costa Rica for a great Wiener Schnitzel?

After lunch we drove to the Hacienda Guachipelín, using Waze, as per usual. It felt like a shorter driver than we thought it would be, which is always a plus in Costa Rica. When we neared the hotel property, we came to a gate manned by a security guard.  This was labeled as a “toll” on Waze. The hotel Hacienda Guachipelín owns property that surrounds part of the national park and other attractions to visit.  If you don’t have a reservation at the hotel, you need to pay an entrance fee. The guard checked his list and found our names, so we were free to enter.

It was still a bit of a drive until we reached the hotel buildings. We found the building with the front desk. While we waited our turn to check-in, we noticed that the registration area opened to a pool and café.  The lady who checked us in was very efficient. She pulled a map/brochure from a stack behind her, along with a black marker, and started to mark up the map with the things we needed to know. We would have to drive to our room, here, here are the two restaurants – need to make a reservation for one of them at the front desk soon, here are the other attractions, with times they are open and costs, if applicable. The result was a confusing mashup of circles, arrows, letters and numbers. At least we’d already booked our adventure tour for the next day, so thought we’d just try to figure it out after we’d settled into our rooms. She also provided tickets for a welcome drink at the pool café.

We drove to the area with our rooms and parked in the unpaved parking area. Again, no designated spots and there wasn’t a lot of space left. The hotel rooms were typical and decent. Nothing upscale but had the basics. The pictures on our room’s walls appeared to be paintings of the hotel – the restaurant, outside view, etc. The pictures in the kids’ room were a bit disturbing – one had an outdoor picture with a horse with its tail up, seemingly defecating, and the other was of a creepy dog. Not sure what would possess the hotel to put up those pictures? Still, the hammock in front of each room was a nice touch.

We decided that we needed to visit the Adventure Center to understand how our Adventure Day would work logistically because we wanted to be prepared. We needed long pants for horseback riding, shorts for ziplining, and for tubing and hot springs, swimsuits. There was a walkway that allowed us to return to the registration and other hotel buildings, including the Adventure Center, without driving. We walked past the two restaurants and across the street to the Adventure Center. A young woman behind the full circle desk in the center of the room helped us – kind of.

I began by saying we’d signed up for the Adventure Pass and wanted to know the order of the activities and how it would work.

She replied that we would start with horseback riding, then the tubing, then lunch at the restaurant, then ziplining and finally the hot springs.

We were thinking – So, dry clothes, wet swimsuit, dry clothes, wet swimsuit.  The order didn’t make a lot of sense from a clothing perspective. 

I then asked, What about changing clothes? This is where the long conversation started. 

She first informed us that there were lockers available at the back of the Adventure Center. (That seemed promising.) But we should dress for horseback riding and wear our swimsuits underneath for tubing, because we wouldn’t come back to the Adventure Center until after the tubing, when we would have lunch at the hotel restaurant.

Me – will we be able to go back to our room to change during lunch?

Her – there really isn’t that much time – you shouldn’t plan on it.

Me – OK, but what do we do with our horseback riding clothes when we’re tubing?

Her – Oh, you’ll get a bag to put your clothes in.

Me – What about our eye/sunglasses?  (We were concerned about wearing glasses while tubing – after all, there were rapids, but kind of wanted to be able to see when horseback riding.)

Her – We don’t recommend putting your glasses in the clothes bag. We just had a guy here yesterday that did that and they broke. He was very upset.

Me – OK, how would you suggest handling this if you wear glasses?

Her – Well, I wear my contacts.

Me – we don’t wear contacts.

Her – We don’t suggest putting your glasses in the clothing bag. The guy yesterday had his glasses broken and he was angry. He said he was going to sue us.

I’m thinking – we can’t be the only people with this situation. But clearly, she’s been traumatized by the guy with the broken glasses and doesn’t want to have to deal with that again!

We thanked her and moved on. On the way out, John noticed that there was a guy with two oxen set up for a photo op. We saw a couple of people atop the oxen getting their pictures taken. Usually I am the one who is all about the photo ops but I thought I could give this one a pass. John, however, was intrigued.

We stopped at the pool café for our welcome drinks and figured out our strategy for the next day.  The wet/dry/wet/dry alternating activities still didn’t make much sense to us. But, I had brought plastic bags for each of us, so we could bring our dry clothes in them for after lunch, store the bags in the lockers, and then put our wet bathing suits in them, as needed.  

Then there was the glasses issue. All four of us wear glasses. The kids felt that they could get by without wearing them for horseback riding and would definitely prefer not to wear them for tubing on the rapids. I took off my prescription sunglasses, looked around, and judged that my vision was good enough to see far away things, like we’d be doing on the horseback riding, so decided I would go without as well. John had the bigger issue. He can’t see without his glasses and didn’t want to be blind on the horseback ride. He’d brought an older pair of sunglasses and with the croakie (eyeglass strap for water) that I’d brought for everyone, just in case, he decided to take his chances – he’d wear them horseback riding and then keep them on for the tubing. With that settled, we were ready to move on.

We went back to our rooms, where we encountered the “extra” friendly lady in the room next to the kids’ room. She’s just that person.  “Hello! Where are you from?” (It’s always easier just to respond, “Iowa” than to explain everything. And that usually stops most people, as most have never been to Iowa, so they kind of mutter something and find an excuse to move on.) Not this lady. “Oh, I did RAGBRAI! But that was 20 years ago,” she added with a smile. (Of course she had!)  We continued the forced, friendly chit-chat for a few minutes, where we found out she and her husband and two grown sons were also doing the Adventure Pass the next day, like us. Goodie!

There was still time before dinner, and consulting our marked up map, we saw that there was a 1.5 km trail to a waterfall, that started just down the road. Why not explore it? We walked along the road and came to a dirt road and a path. John and Andy were leading, and John turned around and asked, “well, which do you think we should take?  (The map hadn’t indicated two alternatives.) Allison looked up and said, “Well, how about the trail?  It’s literally right there!”  Yep, there was a marked trail entrance with the name of the waterfall (Las Chorreras) prominently displayed, complete with an arrow! I laughed. If you need to find something, there are two of the four of us that you shouldn’t bother to ask.

We took the gravel trail, which as it turns out, ran parallel to the road most of the way, and both ended up at the waterfall. We would have been fine with either choice. 

The Las Chorreras Waterfall was pretty.

There were steps leading down to the water where it looked like people could swim if they liked. A lifesaving buoy was provided, just in case of emergency. We walked around and took some pictures. 

As it was getting later, the sun would soon be setting and the mosquitos were already starting to come out, so we headed back. This time we just took the road.  The scenery was very pretty with the lighting from the dying sun.

Back from our excursion, we showered and changed for dinner. Surprisingly, it was getting chilly.  It doesn’t get chilly at night this time of year where we live (about 3 hours south), but there was a definite difference here! All buildings were open to the air, so you had to dress for the temperature.  The kids still had warm clothes since they’d traveled from cooler temperatures. John and I had each brought a long-sleeved shirt, just in case, and we were glad we did!

The restaurant dinner options included a more formal and more casual restaurant. For the first night’s dinner, we’d chosen the more casual restaurant. The restaurant was “decorated” with masquerades (large heads they wear for parades here in Costa Rica). This is the restaurant where breakfast and lunch are served, buffet style.  There was a dinner menu with a lot of good options.  We enjoyed our meals, despite the disturbing masquerades staring at us while we ate. 

The hotel had colorful night lighting around the restaurants, and next to the restaurants there are fire pits. 

We were feeling chilly, even with our warmer clothes and thought it would be nice to warm up next to a cozy fire pit.  Although they looked very inviting, there was safety glass around the fire, so that none of the chairs situated around the fire pit benefited from the warmth of the fire. We sat on the ledge of the firepit trying to get warm, but that was awkward as we had to each position ourselves facing outward, and not to each other. 

Eventually we gave up and went back to our rooms to get a good night’s sleep before our Adventure Day tour the next day.