Costa Rica - Day 8 Up to Alajuela

We slept in, had breakfast at Frank's Place and grabbed a few last minute gifts.

Frank's Place was the only place that charged 10% service (which about half of the restaurants did) and then charged taxes on top. However, the set up at Frank's was really nice for a morning meal. We sat outside and there were a good number of people around.

I mentioned before I had a horrible rash reaction from the Isla Tortuga trip. My arm was on fire and I almost had a breakdown in the grocery store when I asked for calamine lotion and they handed me rubbing alcohol. I was terrified to use any sort of medical supplies that I couldn't understand the writing on. Luckily, Milarepa was great and gave me some sort of poison ivy/baby diaper rash cream. The owners told me that it didn't look like sea lice, but we couldn't figure out what else it could have been. I used that and Lore gave me a piece of an Aloe plant. Not sure which one helped but the next morning my arm was much better.

All in all we loved Malpais. We will definitely be going back. It was the perfect place for us. Very chill and gorgeous. One thing that made us sad was the commercial center being built right by Frank's Place. They are putting a hotel, condos and spaces for stores. At the rate they were working, it should take a while to complete.

We checked out and drove up to Alajuela.

ORQUIDEAS INN

We had a lot of trouble finding this place. The only time we really got confused during our trip. We had the map from the website, but since we were coming from the other direction it was hard with no streat names off the highway. We ended up going all the way from the airport and backtracking. We still got lost because the map would show landmarks. At one point it showed a church and a gas station. I thought they were across the street from each other, looking at the map. They were actually 4 blocks apart. The turnoff is actually where there is a large number of signs. I think Xandari and Doka Plantation all have a sign at that fork in the road. There was a sign for Orquideas, but we didn't see it the first time around.

Once we were there we felt at home. We had a roadside room and it was fine. The restaurant was quite expensive, so we spent the evening at the bar eating appetizers and had the strongest margarita I've had in a long time. They had live music, but we were asleep by 7:30! The musician was warming up when we were in there. He even played some Eric Clapton for us. They did have a TV, which we hadn't watched in a long time. The only thing in English was a marathon of Summerland episodes.

Great place to stay before or after the airport.

Sorry this was so long. Believe it or not I left out a lot. Feel free to ask questions.