One week of mindfulness at Casa Zen & Yoga Center, Santa Teresa

One week at Casa Zen was the perfect way to practise to really being able to relax. Even though Santa Teresa in itself is a bit too hot and humid for my liking, a week full of yoga totally made up for it.

Santa Teresa is a small village on the South Pacific coast. To get there we had to take a bus from San Jose to Puntarenas and from there go on a 45 minute ferry ride to Paquera, take another bus to Cobano, then one last bus to Santa Teresa. Yes, it's a tricky journey to do (but then again, most places are pretty tricky to go to in Costa Rica, unless you can afford taking shuttle buses everywhere, or if you have your own car) 

We probably wouldn't have gone here if it wasn't for our booked mini retreat at Casa Zen. We had done lots of research and realised that this was the most affordable yoga retreat in the country. Because I can't say that I'm the biggest fan of Santa Teresa itself (it's probably a paradise if you're a surfer though!); things are expensive, the tap water is not drinkable in the area (which makes things even more expensive of course), there's no real town center, just a long dirt road stretched out along the beach and robberies are sadly very common. 

But, saying what you want about Santa Teresa, the yoga did make up for all of this and made it into one of the best weeks we've had since being away. 

Casa Zen is a really cool place with nice bedrooms, a garden where a monkey decides to hang out and be loud and an amazing yoga deck. The shared toilets unfortunately tends to become very dirty in a day, and having an air-con would've been a great plus because the room, well the air, was hot and humid ALL the time.

It does feel really homey because of the two dogs and one cat who lives here aswell. 

We'd book the mini retreat (8 days, 7 nights), which now during low season was slightly cheaper than in high season. For $175 each we got our private room with shared bathroom, tropical breakfast every morning, use of yoga equipments and we were able to attend unlimited yoga classes.

Our mornings would usually start with breakfast; a plate full of fruit and really nice coffee and at 9:30  we went on the first yoga class for the day.

All of the yoga classes we went to were really great. It really felt like doing yoga in paradise on that deck and it felt great to challenge myself to do poses I'm not so comfortable with doing. The teacher are real inspirations and after doing so much yoga that week, I feel like I can't live without it from now on. 

I've been struggling a lot with my patience hen it comes to yoga, because of my tight hamstrings and hips which makes it harder for me to do many poses. I really needed this week to realise that all I have to do is come back. In the end it does take some dedication, but finding the joy in it is a moment that I will never forget. 

Here I am practising crow pose, my next challenge to master. Step by step. 

I'm also so proud of Guy for coming with on all the classes and try to fight his scoliosis. 

At the end of every yoga class, when it was time for corpse pose I could hear the sound of the waves so after most morning classes we went down 50 meters from the guesthouse to the beach.

Some days we walked further to other beaches aswell, all of them with big waves though. Good for surfers, not for me.

Our daily treat before we went on the evening yoga class, was to go to the airconditioned organic food store Green World store, to have a big, cooling avocado-banana shake. Bliss in a glass.

Since restaurant food seemed to be very expensive around here, we cooked most of the food ourselves. And this was very simple food. A lot of pasta with soy chunks in tomato sauce, avocado pasta, pasta with refried beans and lots of papaya and bread.

There aren't that many vegetarian restaurant in the area either. I only know of one organic vegetarian restaurant and that's about it. But it seems like many restaurants do have vegan options. The Bali deli Cafe, the neighbour to Casa Zen, even had sandwiches with vegan cream cheese.

We treated ourselves one night to eat out, when our craving for falafel just went though the roof. And so we went to Zula Restaurant, with supposedly the best falafel in town. Now, I know we don't have any other falafel from Santa Teresa to compare with, but I'm still gonna agree to say that this is the best falafel in town. It was amazing, especially loved the tahini sauce that came with it.

One day in Montezuma

One of the days we escaped the retreat to explore the waterfalls of Montezuma. We took two local buses (changed in Cobano) to get there, which was way cheaper than paying for a shuttle. On the other hand, local buses are never easy to take in Costa Rica. Usually very delayed and don't make any sense since the time tables seem to change all the time. But, we managed to get there and back anyway.

The waterfall hike was really cool. There were locals trying to sell themselves as guides to us, but it wasn't a problem at all to do it all on our own. 

We walked along the river for a while until we reached the first monster waterfall where we had a swim and then we had to climb up (literally climb! There's ropes that you have to use to move forward and to keep you from not falling down the hill) a big hill to get to the top of that waterfall, where there was another waterfall, and on top of that, a tiny waterfall where we had another swim and had fun with a swing rope aswell. 

This waterfall loop took about 1-2 hours in total and was a great refreshing, free activity. But the refreshness from swimming in the waterfall was gone 5 minutes later on the walk back, so I was stoked to find Cafe Organico where they have VEGAN ICE CREAM! They were out of chocolate/mint when we were there, but my second choice, the avocado/coconut ice cream, was really good.

Cafe Organico had a good menu for vegans, with v marked on every vegan dish they offered. There were scrambled tofu, curry and other things so a vegan can be very satisfied around here. Especially with these bird friends around.

From La Fortuna with bus-boat-bus to Monteverde

La Fortuna 

After we left our beloved farm life, went straight back to San Jose for a night and then we had a 4 hour bus journey straight into the mountains, to the little town La Fortuna.

The tourism in La Fortuna is kind of extinct after the volcano Arenal stopped being active in 2010. I can only imagine how busy that place must have been before, because there were still plenty of tourists around here, along with many restaurants and hotels, as people are still going to the National Park to have a closer look at the volcano. There is no real nightlife anymore though, and the town is somehow very quiet even though it was full of people.

We had a great couple of days here, mostly taking advantage of staying at a really nice hotel for once and having some relaxing time by the pool. It was so humid when we were here, so air-con and a pool at the place we stayed, was the best thing that happened to us.

The nature around here is amazing, so we went out on a few small hikes on our own and found a rope swing by the river, where we had a much needed swim.

Vegan food hunt in La Fortuna

With this being a very small town, there is not many veggie restaurants in the area, and most restaurants visits comes with a big bill. Because we didn't have kitchen access at our hotel, we fought the high food prices by going to soda restaurants, where we hung out with the locals, and had yummy gallo pintos for 1500 colones.

But of course I couldn't leave La Fortuna without trying the only vegetarian restaurant in town; The Flying Tomato. It was hard to find without a map, since it is located on one of the streets of the main bit of town. The restaurant is cute and tiny (we sat at one of their two tables), and it wasn't that much on the menu to choose from, but the owner was friendly and the food was good. 

Our love for the soy burgers is simply too strong, so we went for that even though we've had burgers so many times on our trip by now.

The day we left we realised that the popular cafe My Coffee, had avocado and banana smoothies (!). I was in heaven. I haven't had a smoothie this great since the avocado smoothies we had all the time in Philippines and Indonesia.

The bus-boat-bus trip
Going from La Fortuna to popular Monteverde could be a nightmare, it seems. We had the option of either taking a long 8-9 hour bus journey, through sketchy, bumpy roads or go on a 3-4 hour journey and just take a shuttle bus to the Arenal Lake, ferry across the lake and then another shuttle to Monteverde.

The choice was pretty simple, considering just crossing the lake turned out to be a nice day trip on its own.  The view was stunning and we got to see Arenal Volcano really close by, without having to pay an expensive entrance fee to go into the national park.

Monteverde 
The rain ponchos came to good use, when we arrived to a very rainy Monteverde that evening. The air is so much cooler here than in La Fortuna, so there is no need for an air-conditioned room here.

Most tourists come to Monteverde for all the thrilling activities that are offered in the area. This is the place to go bungy jumping, zip lining, going on Tarzan swings and much more. The Monteverde National Park and the hanging bridges are probably the biggest attractions though. The confusing part of it all is that the actual Monteverde, is the national park. The majority of all the hotels, restaurants in the area are located a few minutes drive away, in Santa Elena (but everyone refers to the whole area as Monteverde).

Unfortunately, most attractions in this area are pricey and so we tried our best to find free stuff to do in the Monteverde area.

Climb up Cerro Amigo
On our first day exploring, we went on a very steep hike up the mountain Cerro Amigo. It was a climb up to 1840 meters. We were lucky to hike during a sunny day, because the road up could probably be pretty muddy and it would be easy to slide when it's rainy.

The view from the top was cool, but not as great as we thought it was going to be. So we asked the man who worked in the one and only souvenir shop up there, where the view point was and he just directed us to climb up the tall cable pole in the back of his house. When we did that, we could actually spot three volcanoes and the view was much better. (Even though it was hard to fully enjoy from up there)

We took a 1500 colones taxi ride to Bellmar Hotel, where the hike up the hill starts, but realised that 3 km walk from Santa Elena town wasn't too bad and decided to walk it back. On the way we stopped of at Choco Cafe, where we had a drink and tried some dark vegan chocolate that they make in the cafe. Okay, it wasn't free but it was much cheaper than paying $35 for a chocolate tour.

Ficus Climbing Tree

The next day we took another walk around the Monteverde area, this time to do another climb, but this time a tree top climb. This is the coolest climbing tree I've seen in my life (and without a doubt the most scary one). So you can either pay loads of money to go on a treetop tour with a guide, or come here and DIY. It was so fun!

I cannot believe how high up you could go. It was like climbing through a tunnel with the heaven in the end.

After that thrilling experience, a hot chocolate with soy milk from Beso in Santa Elena town was the perfect treat.

Vegan food hunt in Monteverde/Santa Elena 

Because we stayed at the hostel Cabinas de Pueblo, which had a shared kitchen for guests to use, we did most of the cooking ourselves. Prices in Monteverde are not low, and the options for vegans are pretty bad as well.

Instead of paying lots of money for salads, we enjoyed free coffee at the hostel (organic coffee which the owner of the hostel grows at his farm!) and spent much time in the big Supermarket nearby, where we also met a new four legged friend one day.

We made yummy sandwiches with avocado, tomato and refried beans. So, so, so simple and good at the same time! Just cannot get enough of refried beans here, they are sold in bags for a very cheap price in every supermarket you'll find in Costa Rica.

Other than that we have enjoyed a classic Tipsy Tofu dish - the mashed avocado and pasta dinner.

We did treat ourselves to a lunch at one of the few vegetarian restaurants in the area one day. There is only three vegetarian restaurants here, one of them was too far away for us to even try to find, the other one (with lots of different vegan ice cream, of course) was closed for vacation just the day we got there. So the vegetarian restaurant Paz y Flora, turned out to be the obvious choice to try.

It was a good menu, but not that great for vegans (but we were very grateful that the people working there knew what veganism is, and that everything that is vegan was marked on the menu). We tried the vegan cold chocolate drink, which was the best part of that lunch and then we had the veggie wrap and vegan pita with mushrooms for main.

Not the most exciting meal I've had, but still okay. I don't think that it helped that I was still grumpy about the fact that the vegan restaurant I really, really wanted to try (you know with the ice cream and all that) was shut for a month.