This morning we made one last breakfast in our little home away from home before leaving Monteverde to head back to the Pacific coast. The weather has been rainy and cold here in Monteverde (it’s a rainforest after all), so we’re looking forward to getting back to warmer beach weather!
Before leaving our AirBnb, which is connected to a local art studio, we wanted to purchase an original art piece. After thumbing through some of the available pieces, we found a small original featuring a blue morpho butterfly! We chose this piece because we’ve seen so many of these butterflies throughout our trip, and Keeshia LOVES butterflies!
We were out before noon and began our drive back down to sea level from the 4,000-feet of Monteverde’s cloud forest.
The drive from Monteverde to Manuel Antonio was about 3 ½ hours, and is on all paved roads with one highway that has a 200+ colones (>$1USD) toll right before passing the beach town of Jaco.
We checked into our hotel, Buena Vista, which is located in the small town Manuel Antonio and right on Playa Espadilla Norte. It’s a small group of rooms that has private balconies with beach views…can’t beat it!
We were very hungry when we arrived to town, so we walked to a nearby food truck called En Todas. It was about a 10-minute walk along the road from our hotel, and located in a yellow school bus…so it’s pretty hard to miss. We ordered chips with guacamole and salsa and tacos de camarones (local shrimps). Everything tasted great…and that isn’t just our hunger speaking!
After finishing lunch, we realized the food truck was right along the beach, so we ended up walking on Playa Espadilla back to our hotel rather than the road. It’s such a lively beach, with so many tourists and locals coming together for a good time. As soon as we got back to our room, we changed into our swimsuits headed back to the playa!
We spent some time in the water, at the beach, and on our balcony…the perks of staying right on the ocean! Before we knew it, dinnertime was approaching and our stomachs were letting us know. We were both craving some local tico food and found a really great local spot a little off the main road, Restaurante Cerdo Feliz. It’s in a fairly residential area of town and we were the only tourists driving through the neighborhood, but if you want great local cuisine, you have to go where the locals go! We ordered the casado dish with pollo (chicken) and local dedos de pescado (mahi fish fingers) with papas fritas…it was todos deliciosos!
After a heartwarming Costa Rican dinner, we headed back to our hotel. While we were driving we looked up at the sky and noticed a pretty epic sunset! I don’t think we’ll ever get tired of the sunsets here in Costa Rica…especially right along this beautiful Pacific coast.
When we got back to the hotel, we snoozed off pretty early… being lulled to sleep by the crashing waves just outside our door isn’t too bad. Tomorrow we plan to visit Costa Rica’s most popular national park, Manuel Antonio National Park…so stay posted!