I’M BACK BITCHES!!! Best two weeks I’ve had in a while — just got back from Ecuador and Costa Rica with SS and B and had the most incredible food for very little moola.
Let me start with QUITO, ECUADOR —
Stayed with SS’s host fam where all food was free. The greatest thing about Ecuador is that they put popcorn on everything — soup, ceviche, etc. It’s really fun. That’s probably also why they’re really fat given that the rest of their diet consists of aji – so I mean, it’s gotta be the popcorn. To be perfectly honest, while I can’t complain about the lack of money I spent in Quito, the quality of food was not too superb except for their choclo, avocado and cheese dish, along with the world’s largest empanada that I had the pleasure of eating all by myself:
World's Largest Empanada
Another terrific dish was cuy, they are so cute:
Cuy
I am jk. I don’t eat rodents.
Moving on to COSTA RICA —
Costa Rica was epic. Beers are $2 and I ate steak literally every single day for ~$10. Credomatic was having some 50% off promotions at Costa Rica’s most expensive restaurants, so B took SS and me to one every night (and by most expensive restaurants I mean <$20 steaks, which turn into <$10 steaks with the discount). Let me walk you through my trip.
Day 1, San Jose – The day started out disastrous when migracion denied SS access into the country because she didn’t have her yellow fever immunization card with her, so they made her fly back to Quito, get her f-ing card, then come back the next day. B and I were like, well fuck, so we went to Henry’s 2-for-1 happy hour at 5pm to drown ourselves in guaro, followed by La Cascada where we had baby beef steak with beans and maduros (plantains) with baked potato, accompanied by Bavaria beer, tortillas with chimichurri, tres leches dessert, all for $16:
La Cascada
Day 2, Monteverde – As soon as SS was actually let into the country, we were off to Monteverde in the B-mobile, where we ziplined and Tarzaned and then had steak with chimichurri with green rice and vegetables, accompanied by a bottle of wine and strawberry/papaya smoothie, all for $11:
Monteverde
Day 3, Tamarindo – Well, Tamarindo was quite the ugly beach compared to what I’m used to and I lost $20 in 10 minutes of blackjack, but the upside was that I got tan, saw a lot of legal hookers, and ate steak salad with potato chips, mangos, pineapples and corn on the cob, accompanied by two 2-for-1 strawberry caipirinhas and two 2-for-1 strawberry mojitos (best drinks I’ve had in a while), all for $13:
Steak Salad
Day 4, Liberia – Drove to J’s farm that is a huge sugar plane plantation, where there was nothing to do but drink copious amounts of wine, tell scary stories, and tan by the pool. That night I ate sirloin steak with chimichurri, rice, beans and veggies, accompanied by chifrijo and a bottle of wine, all for $12. Photo unavailable. Lo siento.
Day 5, San Jose – Day 1 was so good that I had this exact same meal on Day 5 with the same group of people, but this time with more bottles of wine followed by a night at Cuartel, which I like to call a ‘mini Carnaval’:
La Cascada
Best two weeks I’ve had in a while. In the words of B, Costa Rican food was all “very nice.”
Poverexic in NYC 