Costa Rica with Centaura

We’re riding from the Pacific Coast to the interior with Centaura, a horseback riding adventure travel company run by Monica and Esteban, a Costa Rican husband and wife team, and Serendipity Adventures, an adventure travel company that offers a plethora of outdoor adventures around Costa Rica.

Centaura’s horses are amazing. They are well trained, responsive and riders can have their pick based on what they want to experience on their adventures. Centaura specializes in custom riding vacations and offers other adventure activities through Serendipity Adventures. This means, I’ll not only be riding on the beaches, at the base of Arenal volcano and in the countryside of San Carlos, but I’ll also be climbing a twelve story tree, going hot air ballooning and visiting a frog farm and seeing abundant wildlife.

Today, we arrived in San Jose, after flying through San Salvador on Taca Airlines. Though the lines at the airport were long, the flight itself was not bad. Tucker and Reuban from Serendipity Adventures picked us up at the airport in their Land Cruiser and we were off, headed Northwest to San Carlos to the farm. San Carlos is an area of Costa Rica with rainforest, farmland and not a lot of tourists, meaning that I would be riding and hanging out with the locals.

We stopped for lunch along the winding and somewhat scary road from San Jose to San Carlos. I tried the traditional chicken and rice, and was introduced to the great fruit that they have in Costa Rica. Pineapples are grown in abundance here, as is sugarcane. Mangoes, watermelon, blackberries, etc. are all very good and fresh here. Smoothies, or what I would call a smoothie are offered at lots of the local restaurants. Costa Ricans order fruit blended with water or milk, which is great.

We arrived to the stables in the early afternoon, which are immaculate, as are the horses. After a long commute to get to Costa Rica, I was ready to sleep and ride the next morning.