Restaurante El Oporto, San Francisco de Heredia

Food Poisoning Scandal at Restaurant El Oporto, Heredia
Guests were served poisonous fish and then overcharged.
Archive photo, not taken at Oporto. WC at el Oporto is filthier.
Not real #2 at the picture, but an illustrative substance made of beans.

What you see on the picture above is what happens to your WC if you should eat at rest. Oporto. It has the looks and prices of a fancy restaurant, but cheap plastic chairs, bad service and food that is not only tasteless, but also, as it turns out, poisonous. The IWCRP delegation ordered grilled tuna, and half way into the small and extremely overcooked fish, we started experiencing the first symptoms of histamine poisoning.
Quoting the Nutrition Research Newsletter (May, 2001), symptoms of histamine poisoning include rash, facial flushing, vomiting, diarrhea, dyspnea, a tightness of the throat, headache, or a metallic or peppery taste in the mouth. Within the next 24 hours, we had been through the whole list, and it kept going for almost a week.
Histamines are produced when tuna is decomposing or if it's kept in room temperature for long periods of time. Of course, accidents happen, but the official IWCRP theory is that the chef was fully aware that this tuna was bad, for two reasons:
1. Tuna was the chef's special that night, which, according to our sources in the restaurant business, means that they have to sell it quickly before it starts to smell.
2. It was so ridiculously overcooked that no sane, self-respecting chef would serve it unless it was made in an intent to kill bacterias and taste. Sadly, though, histamines survive high temperatures.

Conclusion: Never ever eat at the Rest. Oporto, it's a horrible, horrible place in every way and you may end up dead.

Unknown Soldier, Liberia, Costa Rica

This picture is taken at a chinese restaurant in Liberia, but the name is sadly forgotten. As always, we'll give a $10.000 reward to whoever can give us the name.

Bar y Restaurante La Puerta del Sol, Cartago, Costa Rica

La basílica de los ángeles. La Puerta del Sol is located on the left side, across the street.

La Puerta del Sol. 2nd floor has rooms for rent.

The Urinal.

La Puerta del Sol is one of the most famous bars in Cartago, given its strategic location next to la Basílica de Los Angeles. Approximately one million people walk to this church every august 2, hoping that this will be sufficient to get their lives back on track. Our guess is that a lot of these people have had a meal and a beer at La Puerta del Sol upon arrival.

Nevertheless, we must report that the food was a disappointment and the beer expensive. Add to that a non-smoking policy, and the sum is a severely unrecommendable place. For good places to visit in Cartago, see our report from the alternative pilgrimage arranged by IWCRP back in 2008

Bar & Restaurant Linda VistaNear Volcán Irazú, Cartago, Costa Rica

The Linda Vista does indeed have a nice view when the weather allows it. However, the food and general conditions of the establishment were not convincing. Although it was not completely awful, I doubt that anyone ever comes back to this place a second time.

Rest. Elena Brown, Puerto Viejo

Rest. Elena Brown boasts one of the purplest and most spacious ladies' rooms in Central America

Rest. Elena Brown, just outside town on the way to Cocles, appears to have changed quite a bit during the last months; new administration or something. The IWCRP restaurant inspectors feel that it has changed for the better. The menu is now quite interesting, and the chicken in green curry (thai style but less lethal) deserves special mention.

Playa Sámara, Costa Rica

Playa Sámara is an OK beach, not too spectacular, we stayed for one night before moving on to Playa Guiones about 1 hour north.

Tutti Frutti, one of several bars / restaurants on the beach. This one is italian and has a nice outside area under a big tree on the beach.

Tutti Frutti ladies' room, thanks to MJ for valuable research

Rest. Las Brasas by the football field in Sámara. The food was not particularly good, and not as plentiful as we had hoped for. The service was just weird.

First and fanciest bar on the beach, we think it's called Snacks. They have a relatively impressive list of drinks, and prices are not bad compared to the alternatives.

Snacks WC

Bar Las Olas, perhaps the least fancy of the bars on the beach, but with a pool tables and a Fussball table which kind of works despite certain missing key players

We stayed at the Tico Adventure Lodge. Basic rooms with a/c and a balcony cost $40. The reviews at tripadvisor generally express satisfaction with the rooms and hatred towards the owner, who is claimed to be a very rude person. We talked to him for about 2 minutes, and although it was a very uncontrovertial conversation, he did appear to have a quite unpleasant personality. The rest of the staff were great, though.

El Bogotazo: Restaurants in Bogota, Colombia : Rescoldo's

Rescoldo's Parrilla Argentina

Calle 11 # 3-83, La Candelaria

Rescoldo's is a little pricey, but worth it. Here we got a really good bife de chorizo for the first time since we moved the IWCRP headquarters from Argentina last year. The wine was good, too, although we would have appreciated more options. Even the service was very argentinian; a slightly grumpy, elderly man doing things the way he likes them, without any polite bullshit. Rescoldo's is hereby highly recommended by the IWCRP for special occations.

El Bogotazo: Café in Bogota, Colombia: Quimbay Café

Quimbay Café
Av. 19 #6-11

We were served a good coffee and a horrid sandwich here. There's a second floor with a terrace where you can sit and watch avenida 19, listen to the cars and smell the smog. Probably not the best place in Colombia, but an option if you're outside and you don't want to walk any more to get to a good place.

El Bogotazo: Café in Bogota, Colombia. Unknown Soldier

All WCs are unique, and make a lasting impression on those who are fortunate enough to see them. Nonetheless, we can't remember where we took this picture. It's a café somewhere in Bogotá, so we hereby encourage everyone to go treasurehunting. The first fifteen people who can give us the name of the place will receive $100.000 and two free rolls of toilet paper.

El Bogotazo: Restaurants in Bogota, Colombia: MalAbar

MalaAbar

Chorro de Quevedo
Carrera 1A #13-30

Chorro de Quevedo seen from the restaurant window

What we came to see

Nice atmosphere here, and cred to the restaurant for giving us a warm sangria on a cold night, but unfortunately the food was expensive and hardly edible. If given a table by the window, you can watch life on the plaza, mainly flower people and / or stoners.

In order to please the world population, we did some research and found a video from the area (early) at night. From about 0:30 - 0:50 into the video we can spot the unknown soldier on the corner to the right, before we walk through the spooky alley, passing the Rock and Chicha and then Bullitas del Callejon, both on the left side, and then the plaza known as Chorro de Quevedo appears. Interestingly, the person with the camera manages to go undisturbed for almost one whole minute before the inevitable informal worker appears, giving a high speed history class.

El Bogotazo: Café in Bogota, Colombia: Café de la Peña

Café de la Peña
Cuadra 3 # 9-66, La Candelaria

click image to see smiling lady inside

flowers!

cleanliness!

A nice place to sit down with a coffee, this one is located in a nice part of la Candelaria, a good place to go sightseeing. Good coffee and the nicest WC we saw in Bogotá.

El Bogotazo: Restaurants in Bogota, Colombia : Sanalejo

Restaurant Sanalejo

Avenida Jimenez #3-73

We ususally prefer the hole-in-the-wall kind of establishments, but this one has such a lovely door, so we accept it.

Good food and excellent service, but a little expensive. A good place to chill out at lunchtime, gets more hectic at night.

Rest. Cocolores, Montezuma, Costa Rica

This Restaurant has good seafood, decent prices and a serious insect problem. Before sunset, the food must be protected frantically against large amounts of huge, disgusting flies, after sunset there's just a lot of different small bugs seeking the lightbulb and then falling down on the table.

Apart from that, the location is good; centrally located and practically on the beach. And less expensive than fancier options like Playa de los artistas, which probably has the best food I've ever eaten in Costa Rica, and Ylang Ylang.

Cocolores is open Tue-Sun 17-22

Montezuma centre; Cocolores on the left

The entrance

Cosy urinal

Restaurant Ylang Ylang, Montezuma, Costa Rica

Ylang Ylang is a fine restaurant on the beach, about 20 min walk from the town of Montezuma. Although ridiculously expensive, the food was really good and the service excellent. And it's a really nice place to sit and enjoy the happy hour from 3 pm to 6 pm.

However, since it's a 20 min walk along the beach to get back to town, responsible drinking is advisable after sunset. In our case, we were given candles, and one of the waiters walked us through the first, difficult ten minutes with a flashlight. Waiters don't do that in San José or New York anymore.

In extreme cases, it's also possible to rent a bungalow and spend the night.

A great place to relax after a day at the beach

A real towel!

The Bakery Café, Montezuma, Costa Rica

Good breakfast and decent prices, and strange, tropical birds who come and steal your food or poke your eyes out if you don't have any. According to external sources, lunch is not so good here, though.

San José Safari. 7: Il Pomodoro, San José, Costa Rica

The seventh stop on the guarotour was a birthdayparty at Il pomodoro in San Pedro behind the Outlet Mall. Decent italian food, slightly pricey, perhaps, but not a bad place. Stage seven usually means taking other people's food without asking, so this was a surprisingly classy choice.

The soul of Il Pomodoro

San José Safari. 6: Soda y restaurante la Vasconia, San José, Costa Rica

In the middle of the heart of darkness known as downtown San José, we found this pleasant mid-scale chinchorro, offering decent bocas, mariachis and even a lottery with good possibilities of winning a beer or a drink.

Victor from Puriscal joined the safari at stage 2, and has now reached the point where it seems natural to sing mexican lovesongs.

Le exterieur

Le urinal

Juice place, Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

Lovely WC here at this cafe behind famous saturday hangout Johnny's Place. Flowers to lure you into thinking the fish you ate last night still smells nice. A lazy cat is the second factor needed to get a jackpot here at IWCRP, and this cat boasts more than average lazyness.

The fruit juice is quite good too.

Siquirres, Costa Rica

A picture taken at a soda in Siquirres. I have nothing interesting to say about the soda or Siquirres, except perhaps that I saw some chickens running around near the toilet. Funny creatures, chickens.

Playa Uvita, Costa Rica

View from the beach, Playa Uvita

Playa Uvita is a nice place to spend a weekend, but probably a boring place if you stay longer. The beach is nice, but since it's a national park, they charge a few colones to let you in. The use of the bathrooms shown below, on the other hand, is free, and therefore amongst the main attractions in Central America.

La Casona de Doña María

The entrance to the beach is to the right just after this little restaurant if you are driving from San José. Good, cheap food if you plan to keep going southwards and need a break.

Restaurante Las Delicias

Decent, inexpensive food here at one of the few restaurants accessible from the beach without driving.