This was somewhere around our 10th trip to CO, I’m not really sure since we forgot to check this time. We skipped the rental car again and used Louis R for the airport trips, arranged through CO each way. This works very well for us since we’re quite happy with beach-drink-eat-sleep-repeat, though we will try an occasional variation on the theme.

I cooked & grilled about half our meals since that’s what I like to do but we did have a few others that were worthy of mention. First was the inaugural pizza service at Papagayo. The vegetarian was our favorite, an odd statement from a carnivore like me, but it really was a very good pizza if you like the French style, which I very much do. I was also quite happy with the other dinners we had there; Papagayo has come along nicely and I plan on using them more next time.

Another place worth mentioning is Safari in Orient Village. Our intention was to have a nice fancy lunch and bottle of wine at Kakao, which is actually our favorite on Orient, but after being seated at a crummy table behind the beach bar, handed menus and left to wait...and wait...we left for greener pastures. To be fair, they were packed and the staff I could see were really working very hard, but I felt it best to cut our losses.

So we wander into Safari, the place is empty because we are late for lunch (it’s around 2:30 by now), and are graciously given a perfect table in the shade with a peasant breeze. I’ll skip the gory details but the tuna tartare was fantastic – all in all such a pleasant, relaxed, absolutely delicious lunch. It will be one of the other few reasons I’ll bother to leave CO for.

We also tried KokoMarina based on the many recs here. It was pretty good, I can pick apart every dish we had with petty objections but will just leave it as “pretty good”. Nice location though, and the waitress really tried hard. It’s definitely better than a burger. Except maybe one of mine. Really.

That’s about it. It was surprisingly quiet, which is fine for me, but I’m guessing CO was only a little better than half full. I think some places are going to close if things don’t pick up soon.