7-Day Cultural & Gastronomy Vacation to Costa Rica

After landing in San Jose, you will be greeted by a guide and transferred to the Central Valley. By passing a couple of old colonial towns, you will ascend onto a plateau that is dominated by coffee plantations. Your lodge will be situated amid coffee bushes and will afford you wonderful views across forest and volcano. The afternoon will be at your leisure, and you can enjoy one of the self-guided hikes that start from the lodge. A hillside swimming pool can provide you with a superb view in addition to being an excellent place to unwind. You can also indulge in a stroll through fruit orchards and an organic vegetable plantation before an introduction to Costa Rican cuisine this evening.

While Heredia has a couple of old-world, European cafes to try, in the villages, you can see people dining at street-side cafes, or sodas, and tucking into hearty meals. You will have a choice for lunch to either go local or to try a meal that is closer to European cuisine. You should save some room for more food because you will spend the afternoon at a cacao plantation. From wandering the crops to gourmet truffles and caramel, the cacao tour will lead you from bean to bar with a few bonbons and some pure dark chocolate along the way. You will learn how to taste for quality at different stages of production before creating your own gourmet chocolates during a hands-on workshop.

This morning, you will journey from bean to cup on a private tour of a small coffee plantation. After your step by step tour, you will participate in a coffee cupping class, which will teach you how experts discern and rank gourmet coffees at various stages of the production process. Then, you can try to analyze beans and cups to test your knowledge and see if you can identify the coffee and its properties. After lunch, you will be transferred to Bajos del Toro. Instead of one large, looming volcano, you will be among a landscape of many of them. This afternoon, you will have a couple of hours to relax in the spa or indulge in a walk through the reserve before a traditional Costa Rican dinner.

Today, you will follow the journey from farm to table. You will begin in a traditional market, where morning traders shout of their newly harvested goods. A morning at the market will provide you with the opportunity to interact with local culture and meet some of the traders. Food is integral to culture in many countries, and, in Costa Rica, the two go hand in hand. Food is also a way for different people to come together over a shared interest, and you can spend many hours at the market, getting to know people and their produce. After some purchases from the market, you will continue to pick fresh produce with your chef guide in a garden. You can try to pick the tastiest and freshest herbs before spending a couple of hours in the kitchen, preparing a rich Costa Rican lunch.

After a private transfer back to San Jose, you will fly to the North Pacific Coast and a secluded cove in Punta Islita. Here, beaches hide beneath cliffs and in small coves, Pacific waters are deep blue and inviting, and old farmhouses still dot the coast, imbuing the area with an air of rustic charm to complement Punta Islita’s growing sophistication. Most of today will be at your leisure, so you can spend some time on the beaches and inhale a classic Costa Rican experience. Such a scene can only be enhanced by cocktails, especially cocktails that are embellished by herbs that have been picked from an organic garden. After scouring the garden for spices and ingredients, you will enjoy a cocktail making class with an award-winning mixologist.

Today’s cooking class will celebrate Pacific cuisine, which is one of the primary cuisines of Costa Rica’s cloud forest interior. Seafood will take a priority, and this will be best showcased by ceviche, which is an incredibly fresh dish of raw fish that is marinated in lemon and other citrus juices. You will also learn how to cook picadillo, which is a stew that consists of ground beef and tomatoes with raisins and olives adding sweet and saltiness. Depending on the morning catch, you can also learn to prepare and grill large ocean fish. The meaty fish will be easy to cook once you know a couple of tips, especially concerning the heat at which it should be cooked and how to marinate it while preserving moisture.

This morning will be at your leisure, and there will be a variety of outdoor activities that you can try, including ziplining, horseback riding on the beach, and hiking to tidal pools. After lunch back at your lodge, you will be transferred to Liberia and the closest international airport in Punta Islita. You should note that this itinerary can be adjusted, so you fly domestically to San Jose and board your outbound flight from the country’s capital instead.