The World According To A Costa Rican Cab Driver

by Dave Seminara on

I would never think of getting in a cab in my hometown of Chicago and asking for a lift to Indianapolis, Iowa City or Milwaukee. But when I’m outside the U.S. without a rental car, I sometimes resort to long-distance taxi rides as a way of getting from point A to point B. On a recent trip to Costa Rica I took a three-hour taxi ride from Heredia, near San Jose, to Manuel Antonio National Park and two more long rides to get from Manuel Antonio to Santa Teresa on the Nicoya Peninsula after failing to find a reasonable car rental.

Costa Rica is blessed with incredible natural beauty. It has 26 national parks with a ridiculous array of wildlife and every type of natural terrain you can imagine, from beaches to volcanoes to mountains and more. But like any country, it has some grubby areas as well and while driving in the outskirts of San Jose, I couldn’t help but wonder why so many homes and businesses had barbed wire fences.

“You can buy drugs really cheap here,” said Mario, my 36-year-old taxi driver, when I asked him what was up with all the barbed wire. “Drug addicts need to feed their habits so they steal and people are afraid.”I was surprised to hear that drugs were cheap because it seemed like everything in Costa Rica was expensive.

“You can get some drugs here for like a dollar,” he said.

“Drugs for a buck, what kind?” I asked.

“Crack,” he said.

I was confused by the cut-rate Costa Rican crack but also a little perplexed as to why there were white horses tied up outside tiny, very humble looking urban homes that seemed to have no real space for animals.

“The people like to take their horses into town and show them off for parades,” Mario said, explaining the phenomenon.

Mario spent a huge amount of time fiddling with his mobile phone and I resisted the urge to ask him to concentrate on the road. Eventually I realized that he was trying to stream Toy Story 3 for my children, who were sitting in the back seat of the minivan. My sons were excited to hear Buzz and Woody at an ear-splitting volume but they couldn’t really see the movie from their vantage point on his little phone and quickly lost interest.

As we barreled southbound on the highway, Mario kept fiddling with his phone until he found a song he liked. Sadly, it turned out to be John Waite’s truly reprehensible, “I Ain’t Missing You (At All).”

And it’s my heart that’s breaking down this long-distance line tonight.
I ain’t missing you at all
Since you’ve been gone away.
I ain’t missing you
No matter what my friends say.

He was humming it and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to its loathsome rhythm and when I noticed that my wife was sleeping and both my boys were entranced in a movie on our Kindle, I decided to nod off myself, hoping to avoid more American power ballads.

I woke up in a town called Jaco to Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love (But It’s Over Now).” The earworm stayed in my head for days.

After DJ Mario played Gangnam Style for us, he told me he learned English working as a waiter on cruise ships. It was good money, by Costa Rican standards, but he worked at least 12 hours a day for 9 months at a time with no days off.

“You can’t even really meet girls,” he said as we motored through a stretch of road that was encircled by dense palm oil plants. “But when you get into the ports, well, you have to do something.”

He signed his first contract without telling his wife he was leaving the country, just days before he leaving town. She was annoyed but got over it. But after four years, once he had saved up enough money to buy a house, he decided it was time to move back to Costa Rica.

“I only needed a little big of money,” he said. “I don’t need to get rich.”

As we approached Quepos, the nearest town to Manuel Antonio, we saw derelict men sleeping off hangovers on benches, lobster-shaded gringos walking on the side of the road with next to no clothing on, and a host of signs advertising surf schools, lodges, adventure tours and even a “gentleman’s club.”

“They got a choice of girls,” Mario explained. “Costa Rican, Colombians, and plenty of Nicaraguans.”

Mario said that Costa Ricans are getting a little soft and there are tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans in the country doing the jobs Costa Ricans supposedly don’t want.

I asked him about Laura Chinchilla, the country’s (first) female president.

“She changes her mind too much and she’s not very powerful,” he said. “But at least she’s honest.”

We caught a few tantalizing glimpses of the Pacific, dotted with a few rocky little islands, and as we pulled up in front of our hotel, Mario handed us his business card.

“I’ll come back and drive you anywhere in the country you want to go,” he said. It made no sense to me at all, but I just thanked him. As he drove off, I wondered what his profit margin on our $150 fare was. And I wondered what horrible American power ballads he planned to blast on the way back to San Jose.

[Photo credit: twicepix on Flickr]

Releasing My Inner Gringo In Costa Rica

by Dave Seminara on

I try not to be the stereotypical ugly gringo when I’m in Latin America. I tolerate leisurely or downright rude service, I use my poor but functional Spanish, and I try to go with the flow, bearing in mind that things are just different south of the border. But no matter how hard I try, there are occasions when I can’t help but act like a gringo.

My first, and hopefully last, real gringo moment on a recent trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua came at a ticket office in the Costa Rican port of Puntarenas. I arrived with my wife and two little boys about 15 minutes before our 11 a.m. ferry was due to depart for the Nicoya Peninsula and found a long, slow moving line with just one clerk selling tickets in a little booth behind a window.

I am not the kind of worrywart who shows up three hours early for a domestic flight, but as the line barely moved in the next few minutes, I started to get nervous. It was already well over 90 degrees and if we missed the 11 a.m. ferry, we’d have to wait three hours for the next boat in a dull, sweltering limbo, essentially killing a whole day of our trip.

Even worse, a cab driver was supposed to meet us on the other side to make the 90-minute ride from the ferry port in Paquera to our hotel in Santa Teresa. We had no functioning cellphone and no clue if the driver or anyone else would be there to meet us if we turned up three hours late.

As the clock ticked towards 11 and the ferry blew its horn, apparently warning us that it was getting ready to depart, I had so little personal space in the line that I was pretty sure I knew what the guy behind me had for lunch (I think it was rotten eggs). As we inched forward, ever so slowly, I analyzed each transaction that took place at the window and silently stewed.

Why is this woman just now digging through her purse for money? Did she think the tickets were going to be free? And what about this guy? Why is he asking so many questions? Buy your damn ticket and get out. What’s she doing now? Is she talking on the phone? No! Sell tickets!

At 10:54, there was a woman buying her ticket who seemed to be making small talk with the clerk. It was a good thing her back was turned to me because I think the intensity of my glare in her general direction could have singed her eyebrows. The ticket office was right across the street from the boat, but we had baggage, a stroller and small kids to shepherd on board, and I had no reason to believe the ship wouldn’t depart on time.

I continued to check my watch in 30-second intervals, since there was nothing better to do but worry, as beads of sweat pored down my back. At 10:56, there was only one person in front of me in the line.

But just as the man in front of me was about to proceed to the window, a woman in a uniform came by, stopped him, and made an announcement in Spanish and English. She wanted all the passengers bringing vehicles on the ferry to step forward and form a new line. About half of the thirty or so people behind me stepped forward and the woman announced that all of the passengers with vehicles would get to buy their tickets first.

Instead of being second in line, I was now about 17th and with just four minutes to spare. The woman in uniform offered us no consolation like, “Don’t worry, everyone in line will get tickets.”

I called after her to ask if the ship was going to leave without us, but she ignored me and walked away. A middle-aged American guy, a surfer type, who just vaulted ahead of me in line so he’d be next, said, “Dude, relax, you’ll get your ticket.”

Relax? In what alternate reality could one find waiting in a long line in the sweltering heat under these circumstances relaxing? In an abstract sense, I could understand why they needed people with cars to go first – it takes longer to board with a car than it does on foot. But the vehicle passenger tickets cost almost 20 times as much as foot passenger tickets. Were they using the few remaining minutes to sell the most expensive tickets to maximize profit? The old man in front of me in the passenger line look nonplussed. Perhaps he assumed the boat would depart late? Or did he have nothing better to do than wait for the 2 o’clock ferry?

I said nothing to the American who told me to relax, and waited as a few of the sanctioned line jumpers were serviced. At 10:59, the ship’s horn blasted again and, in a moment of panic and chutzpah, I barged right ahead of a meek looking man in the newly formed line and pleaded for the clerk to sell me a ticket, which she did, despite some grumbling from the people I’d cut in front of (I wanted to say, “You cut me, now I’m cutting you, deal with it,” but I had no time to spare).

We dashed across the street, baggage, children and stroller in tow and by the time I hauled all of our gear up two steep flights of steps onto the first passenger deck, I was drenched in sweat but relieved to be on the damn boat.

We pulled out of the harbor about five minutes late and I looked around to see if the man who was in front of me in the screwed over passenger line had made it, but I found no sign of him. Perhaps everyone in line had somehow secured tickets and made it on board but I doubt it.

As Americans, we carry a lot of baggage when we travel outside the country. I try to be cognizant of the fact that some of the people I encounter will formulate an opinion about my country based on how I act. There are times when you have to swallow your anger and just deal with situations as they unfold, even if it’s to your detriment.

And then there are times when you have to be assertive and follow the rules of the jungle. Perhaps I should have waited stoically and hoped for the best, but if I’d followed that course and had missed the boat, my inner-gringo would have released even more negative vibes on everyone in my vicinity.

What would you have done?

[Photo credits: Dave Seminara]

An Unforgettable Coffee Tour At Finca Rosa Blanca In Costa Rica

by Dave Seminara on

Coffee! It’s the most addictive drug in the world. Many of us could barely function without it, but have you ever toured a coffee plantation? I hadn’t until I stumbled upon a coffee plantation and inn called Finca Rosa Blanca near San Jose last week. We were set to arrive in Costa Rica just before nightfall and the idea of immediately heading south to our first stop, Manuel Antonio National Park, in the dark didn’t seem enticing.

Finca Rosa Blanca (FRB) is only about 25 minutes from the San Jose airport and they offer coffee tours twice daily, so it’s an ideal place to start or end a trip to Costa Rica depending on your itinerary. Glenn and Terry, the American owners of FRB, moved to the country in 1985. Glenn’s mom purchased the land where the inn sits intending to build a vacation home, but she died and Glenn decided to open an inn on the land she purchased. Twelve years later, they bought some adjacent land that had been part of a commercial coffee estate with the intention of expanding their business to produce organic, shade grown estate coffee.


The inn is set in a lush, tropical forest in hilly Heredia. At night, the temperature dips and there is no need for air conditioning. We slept with the windows open and woke to the sounds of chirping birds, a delightful novelty for city dwellers. After a delicious breakfast, we met Leo Vergnani, our coffee guide, along with three other visitors who’d be joining us on the 2-1/2 hour tour. ($35 per person, kids are free) Our group included two Leos, two Nicks, and two Jens, plus me and my son, James.




As we walked across the street from the inn toward the coffee plantation, Leo told me that he was born near Venice, Italy, and his father, an engineer, moved the family to Costa Rica in 1978, after he was offered a two-year contract to work in San Jose.

“But we liked it here, so we decided to stay,” he said, before pausing and adding the phrase, muy bien.




In the roasting room, Leo gave us a primer on worldwide coffee production. There are 103 coffee species, and about 6,000 varietals, but only three species have commercial value: liberica, which makes up about 5% of the world supply of coffee, robusta, (23%), and Arabica, ( 72%).

Nicholas, a Frenchman who was on the tour to learn more about coffee for his job at a New York restaurant, made a joke about robusta coffee but Leo quickly corrected him.

“We never say robusta is terrible coffee,” he said. “It’s just a different species.”

Leo said that Norwegians drink the most coffee, while Brazil produces the most, at about 53% of the world’s supply. Vietnam is #2 in production at about 17%, though they only produce robusta, which was illegal to produce in Costa until 1978. Costa Rica produces only about 1.5% of the world’s supply of coffee.

“We used to be thought of as a banana republic and a coffee country,” he said. “But these days tourism is by far our most important industry, followed by high-tech and coffee is considerably further down the list.”

Leo told us a little bit about the lengthy process of becoming a certified organic producer and about how some corner-cutting producers add all kinds of nasty things to their coffee.

“Producers used to mix in arsenic but it was killing their customers,” he said. “Some used blood, iodine, and other things and then in 1894, they started using sugar.”

Nick, a thirty-something New Jersey native, told the group that his employer was conducting research on the dangers of sugar and scared the hell out of us all when he said, “The coffee you drink from Dunkin’ Donuts could kill you.”




“When you go to the store, the labels on the coffee usually don’t tell you anything useful,” Leo explained. “You want to know what region the coffee is from, the altitude of that place and lots of other things. You need to buy from reputable specialty stores and ask questions.”

He said that it took FBR 7 years to become certified as an organic producer and complained that the cost of the process unfortunately has to be passed onto consumers.

“Basically, the industry made such a huge mess, using sugars and all these things that today we have to pay more just to go back in time to produce coffee the way our grandparents did 60 years ago,” he said.

We trekked through the lush, tropical plantation, with Leo stopping to show us things, like how banana trees were essentially living “irrigation systems” (see photo) and offer insights, usually punctuating each sentence with the phrase, muy bien.

It was a perfect morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the temperature was about 75, the birds were singing, and there was a light breeze sweeping through the green terrain of banana plants and trees. I couldn’t have been happier.

Leo told us that in 2012 FRB produced 148 100-pound sacks of coffee, 80% of which was sold or consumed at the inn. FBR had just concluded its harvest in mid-January but there were still some beans left on the trees unpicked. Leo said that a typical workday for the coffee pickers was 6 a.m. – 2 p.m. They are paid based on productivity and good pickers make about $25-30 per day. Unroasted coffee sells for about $1.28 a pound on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

“Once roasted, we get about $16 a pound for our coffee, retail, or about $6-7 a pound wholesale,” Leo said, before noting that about 7-8% of what they produce goes to the U.S. and Canada through an importer called Café Milagro.

After our walking tour, we returned to the inn’s restaurant for a coffee tasting. Leo put a big scoop of cheap coffee from a producer that uses sugar in a glass of ice water and then put a scoop of FRB coffee in a second glass.

“You see,” he said. “The sugary coffee turns the whole glass of water a murky brown, but our coffee, it sights right on top of the water.”

So there’s a litmus test for you to find out how good your coffee is.




“Coffee tasters have no manners,” Leo said before giving us two FBR varietals to try. “I want you to put your nose to the drink, then moved it along the whole cup to breath in the aroma. Then I want you to slurp as fast and as noisy as you can. Pay attention to the tip of your tongue.”

My little boys, ages 3 and 5, loved Leo’s noisy slurping and then when he spit his coffee, they were truly thrilled (see video above). Leo gave us an introduction on how to taste for sweetness, acidity and bitterness and as the tour drew to a conclusion, there was only one more thing I wanted: more of their damn good coffee.

[Photo/video credits: Dave Seminara]

Has Mañana Arrived For Nicaragua?

by Dave Seminara on

Travel writers have been hyping Nicaragua as the next big tropical paradise for years. The New York Times listed it as one of 46 places to go in 2013. A host of travel magazines have promoted it as a cheaper Costa Rica without the crowds. And CBS brought some of Nicaragua’s natural beauty into American homes three years ago by filming a season of “Survivor” in the country.

But an article in the Wall Street Journal last week about the challenges of trying to pitch Nicaragua to high-end travelers highlighted the reality that the country is still more of a haven for backpackers than the well heeled. In 2011, visitors to Nicaragua spent an average of just $43 per day, compared to $118 in neighboring Costa Rica. But is Nicaragua in danger of losing the cool, off-the-radar status it once enjoyed?

Fifteen years ago, Amber Dobrzensky boarded a Greyhound bus in New York City and eventually washed up in Matagalpa, Nicaragua’s Central Northern Highlands, where she helped build a medical clinic and taught English.

“The country had a profound impact on how I viewed the world,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave Nicaragua.”

The Vancouver native eventually did leave, but she returned in 2008 and has lived there ever since. She edits a cultural magazine called Hecho and is the author of the “Moon Guide to Nicaragua,” which just came out last week. We spoke to Amber to find out if Nicaragua’s still the next big thing or if it’s already arrived.


Where do you live?

I live in Managua, which is an unlikely place for expats. I’ve always intended to migrate toward the beach, but I haven’t been able to decide which stretch of beach I want to land in. I love both coasts.

Travel writers have been hyping Nicaragua for years. But it’s still not overrun by gringos, is it?

Compared to Costa Rica, it’s still pretty quiet. It’s also still relatively inexpensive; it’s definitely cheaper than Costa Rica or Panama. It has great diving on the Caribbean coast and great surfing and whale spotting on the Pacific side. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recently about the challenge of pitching Nicaragua as the next paradise.

They’ve just opened the country’s first luxury five-star resort – it’s called Mukul – and they invited a lot of travel agents to promote it but I think a lot of people were scratching their heads. People were saying, ‘This place is fantastic but it might be hard to pitch it.’ Nicaragua is still a bit raw and unvarnished, especially the rest of the country, so it’ll be interesting to see where the trend leads.

Invariably, when a place that used to be very under-the-radar starts to attract more attention, the old guard gets antsy and starts worrying the place will be ruined, right?

There was just an interesting article about this question in the Nicaraguan Dispatch called “Has Nicaragua Gone Mainstream?” The truth is that chaotic things still happen here. It’s a fun place. There’s a very telling phrase here – mañana no existe – which means tomorrow doesn’t exist. This mentality really resonates here. Schedules don’t stick but you just shrug your shoulders and move on, but tourists don’t really like that. So it’s definitely more of a country for travelers, rather than tourists.

I came here for the first time to work for an NGO in 1998 and the difference between then and when I returned in 2008 to live here has been huge. In ’98, I think I saw six travelers in eight months.




Have Nicaraguans benefited much from the increase in tourism?

There are benefits but they are just starting to be seen. I think there were 1.2 million tourists last year. Roads have improved and, while that may have been done for tourism, everyone benefits from that. There are a lot of foreign owned businesses but Nicas are also now getting into the act.

So for travelers who plan to base themselves in the country’s two most popular places, the colonial city of Granada and San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific, are there some excursions you recommend to get off the beaten path?

Ometepe Island can be done as a day trip from San Juan del Sur, but you might prefer to stay for a couple days. It’s an island made up of twin volcanoes that’s in the center of a lake. There are volcano hikes and the views are fantastic and the nature and wildlife are amazing. One of the volcanoes is active and it’s often smoking into the skyline. It’s pretty spectacular.

There are also beaches to the south that, because the road access isn’t very good, aren’t crowded and you can often see turtles coming ashore to lay eggs.

Is it easy to get away from the crowds in San Juan del Sur?

Absolutely. There are at least 5-6 beaches within a half hour of San Juan. But in the rainy season, you need a 4 x 4 to get to them. You can have a non-touristy experience very close to a tourist center.

There are some great excursions from Granada as well. You can tour the isletas; there are several hundred tiny little islands at the foot of the Mombacho volcano in the lake. Some of them are just big enough for a house. You can mountain bike on Mombacho or do hiking tours. The Laguna de Apoyo swimming hole is another great trip from Granada. It’s a beautiful, extinct volcano crater and there are a few small hotels and an eco-resort there. It’s very peaceful and quiet and it’s only about a half hour from Granada.

Do most travelers need a rental car?

It depends on the aim of your travels. You can get everywhere on buses and there are also shuttles to get you to places like Leon, Granada and San Juan in an air-conditioned mini-van, which is a step up from the chicken buses you hear about. To get to the major cities and towns, you will have a choice between chicken buses or other buses or collectivos, which are shared minivans that leave from bus stations once they are full.




In the book, you recommend a two-week, best of Nicaragua itinerary that takes travelers to Granada, Masaya, Ometepe, San Juan del Sur, San Ramon and Big Corn Island. Is that very ambitious for two weeks?

It’s ambitious but it depends how much time you want at each place. If you’re into beaches, you might want to spend more time around San Juan. If you’re into culture you might spend more time in Granada, Masaya or Leon.

For travelers who want a relaxing beach holiday and they have time for just the Caribbean or the Pacific coast, how should they decide where to go?

Once you get to the Corn Islands, there’s great diving and snorkeling and fishing but there are no volcanoes, no hustle and bustle, no crafts. There’s more diversity of things to do on the Pacific side.

What are some must-do experiences in Nicaragua?

Volcano boarding at Cerro Negro, near Leon is really unique to Nicaragua. You can sit down and do like a sled type of volcano boarding or you can do it on a modified snowboard. But to ride down the ash and grit and rock of the crater of an active volcano is pretty memorable. There’s no other country where you can slide down an active volcano, so that’s a huge draw. It’s about three hours from Granada, but it’s near Leon and Leon is a great alternative to Granada. You have the same colonial charm but it’s slightly younger and less trafficked.

So Leon is an alternative to busier Granada. What’s a good alternative to San Juan del Sur?

From Leon, there are two nice beach communities, Poneloya and Las Peñitas, which are less popular with surfers but they are very lovely beaches.

What about food and drinks in Nicaragua?

The thing that most people want to try and also bring home with them is Flor de Caña rum. I wasn’t a rum drinker but it’s incredibly drinkable. It’s world-class rum. Everyone leaves with a few bottles of it. Rum is cheaper than water. A half-liter goes for $7 roughly. A cocktail at a bar could be $3; $4 would be a stretch actually.

Beer is also cheap in Nicaragua, right?

It’s very cheap. There are three primary national brands. It’s about $1 per beer at a bar.




What about food?

Everyone should try gallo pinto, which is refried beans with rice mixed together and eaten with a chili hot sauce. And there is a lot of vigoron, and fried and stewed porks, often served with yucca or cabbage. There is also a breakfast food that is like a tamale called nacatamal, traditionally eaten on weekends, where people throw in all kinds of ingredients left over from the week.

In the book you wrote about the tensions between the gringo community and locals in San Juan del Sur, and how that came to a boil in 2007 when an American, Eric Volz, was imprisoned on pretty flimsy grounds for allegedly murdering his ex-girlfriend. (He was later released.) There was some ugly anti-American sentiment at that time, has that died down?

That’s history. I think Nicaraguans mostly see the benefits of having foreigners here. There are elements of tourism that people here enjoy and other elements that trouble people. Anti-gringo sentiment isn’t unique to San Juan or Nicaragua. The doors are open to foreigners here, no matter where they are from.

Nicaraguans boast that it’s the safest country in Central America. Is that a fact?

It’s hard to say. In general the crime here is opportunistic, and petty, not violent crime. I’m a solo female traveler and I’ve lived here for five years. Incidents can happen anywhere in the world.

Do you worry that too many gringos will discover Nicaragua?

It’s an unpredictable country and I think a lot of travelers will fall in love with the place and spread the word. Tourism will continue to grow, but I don’t see it ruining what is special about Nicaragua or the authenticity of the experience here. Most tourists are going to stick to the most popular destinations, so you’ll always be able to go to the cowboy central lowlands and highlands of the country and not see a single tourist. Nicaragua will continue to keep its doors wide open and I don’t think it’s going to change much.

[Photo credits: Javier Losa, Alex Barth and thombo2 on Flickr, Amber Dobrzensky]

Photo Of The Day: Antigua At Sunset

by Jessica Marati on

Tucked in a valley in the central highlands of Guatemala, the colonial town of Antigua is one of Central America’s greatest treasures, as well as one of its best budget travel destinations. The town is captured magically at sunset in today’s Photo of the Day, taken by Flickr user Adam Baker from his perch at the Earth Lodge, an eco-resort and avocado farm located just outside the city. According to Baker, “Even the bartender came out to enjoy the view.”

Have you captured any awe-inspiring sunset photographs lately? Upload your travel shots to the Gadling Flickr Pool and your image could be selected as our Photo of the Day.