Costa Rica's Central Valley in One Day By Bus

If you want to go to Arenal you have to book the hotel within several months in advance. When we started planning, back in November (almost 1 month in advance), all the nice hotels close to the park (namely the observatory), were already fully booked. Even the ones that had mixed reviews didn't have any availability.
While in Rio Blanco, we gave it another try in the same day we were planning to sleep in Arenal. Turns out they had cancellations in the observatory and in some other hotels.
But when we checked the weather that area, we realized that it was rainy and foggy. We changed plans. We decided to follow the good weather and go to the Central Valley.

View from the road leading to Poas volcano

If you read my previous entries, at this point you already got that we took at least 3 buses with a connection in San Jose in a dodgy terminal in the middle of nowhere.
Grecia was our base to explore the villages around. We stayed in a nice new hotel called B&B Garden Grecia.

Ronald and Illeana were the hosts. Illeana cooked for us some of the best meals that we had in Costa Rica (check my foodie guide to Costa Rica here). And Ronald drove us around a couple of times (fairly priced tours and transfers).

Tico breakfast at B&B Garden Grecia

Breakfast at B&B Garden Grecia

Ronald took us to visit some waterfalls around Grecia, Los Chorros. It's privately owned but it's well kept.
There is a small waterfall that is accessible by land. The other one is bigger, you have to walk in the river to reach it. I would say that a couple of hours is enough to visit it unless you want to spend there more time relaxing in the water and you are bringing some food. We just checked the closer one and we left because we were more interested in visiting the other small villages around Grecia.

Los Chorros Waterfall

River

Before we came here, we tried to go up Poas, a volcano. Supposedly there is a webcam where you can get live updates but it wasn't working at that time. So we went all the way to the volcano. When we reached the top we realized that it was foggy and it would be impossible to see the volcano's crater.

Naranjo

Then we took a bus from Grecia to Naranjo. The initial plan was to connect (no direct buses in Costa Rica, there is always a connection) to a bus to Zarcero. But there was no such thing as a schedule and after a long wait under the sun and starving, we decided to have lunch in Naranjo. There is a reason for this city not to be mentioned for anything else besides the bus connection to the other villages. There is no sightseeing and the food is nothing to write home about.

Zarcero

Palmito cheese in Zarcero

Zarcero is known as the Costa Rica's organic city. Along the road we could see several food stalls and restaurants with breathtaking views over the mountains. Unfortunately we couldn't stop to check those since we were traveling by bus and it was freezing outside. 

We stopped in the main plaza, checked it quickly, got a palmito cheese and took a bus back to Naranjo. It was really cold. 

Factory

Chair and other items being produced

Famous Sarchi's carreta 

Artisan painting carreta's wheels

Our next stop was Sarchi, the most famous craft center in Costa Rica. There are several small stores selling wood crafts. But we wanted to go to this particular one, the Eloy Alfaro factory. It's the most famous. 

We could visit the factory and see how detailed is their work. In the shop we bought some nice and unique souvenirs.