Visit to El Arca

-

Today we went to a place called El Arca, which is a really cool botanical garden and restaurant.

 

The weather was actually quite cool when we arrived, so that was really nice! I was  glad though that I had my sun jacket to provide a bit of warmth.

 

We saw a ton of different kinds of plants, including medicinal, culinary, and ones used for dyes. Interestingly, several of the plants were in a few categories, which shows that they are used for different things. See the many pictures I posted below (I took more, but it would be too much to share I think). We unfortunately did get caught in the rain, but we did not let it dampen our spirits. It helped that we had umbrellas though.

 

After we finished walking around, we met up to have lunch at the restaurant. It was a really cool 5 course event, with the plants coming from the garden. There were are lot of really cool dishes, which I also took pictures of (shown below).

Unfortunately, my throat was hurting and it hurt to swallow, so it was less enjoyable for me. There was a meadery that was either next door, or a part of the arc, so I had some of the mead, and it was good

 

After that, we went to a store to get some house stuff, including an outdoor table and chairs. Sophie and I will need to pick them up later once they are available, as they needed to be ordered.

 

I also got a tea ball from the tea shop since I could not find one anywhere else, even though I had been looking in several places, so now I can have my tea!

 

 

We were pretty exhausted when we got home, since there had been a lot of activity. It was past 6 when we finally got home, so we got ready for bed and went to sleep.



















































The food:









Some cool paintings at the restaurant:





On our way home:

An interesting building we saw

Mist in the hills
Beginnings of the sunset
Monkeys again!















My new tea ball, with a cat








Comments

  1. JeanneAugust 22, 2025 at 7:43 PM

    What a fun outing! Exhausting. I have so many questions and comments!!!
    Most importantly, what was going on with your throat? Is it better now? Was it jut the one day, or did it last longer?
    Re: Medicinal garden-- they are definitely not fans of "Big Pharma."
    Paintings-- water-logged Lincoln Memorial-- I wonder if that's a reference to coastal flooding with climate change?
    Beautiful scenery!
    Love the tea ball.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Meyer FamilySeptember 22, 2025 at 2:54 PM

    No fan of Big Pharma here. Sometimes I think I've been keeping them in business all by myself, what with all the migraine/allergy meds!!
    Oh -- and thanks for making me VERY hungry!! (Those dishes look delicious!!)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Birthday Trip

-
Image
Sophie and I took a trip for my birthday! This post is going to be a long one with a lot of pictures! And apologies, I thought about splitting this into two parts, but I had already added all the images by then, and it was a lot of work to add these all.   8/27  The first   place we went was Carara National Park. Sophie had arranged for us to get a tour from a guide, and I am really glad we did! When we got there, there were about a half dozen iguanas,which was really neat, they were really big and just watched you.   First, we went down one path, and the guide was able to find a family of howler monkeys. It was really cool! She had a telescope, so we were able to see them really well. There was a baby monkey too, which was really cute!   After that we went down another path through the jungle, and we saw all sorts of creatures. We saw a bunch of spiders, including big orb weavers. We also saw an agouti, which is a really cute large rodent. It look...
Read more

Meetings and New Friends

-
Image
Today we had a delivery of coconut milk from someone who sells it in the community. It arrives frozen, so we have to defrost it.   We later had a zoom meeting with architects to discuss some things we found with the house to tie up the loose ends.   Met with the landscaping person to discuss plans for plants around the house, especially ones for erosion control.   Later on, we were invited over to our neighbor Ross and Nathalie's house for cacao drinks. It was really nice! We had some snacks too, I believe they were fig based desserts. It was really nice to spend time and talk with them!   When we were getting ready to head over though, it started raining, and it rained a lot! It ended up raining for the rest of the day and into the morning. Little Jumping Spider! I released it outside. Sitting outside with some drinks and snacks Rain coming off the neighbors roof!  
Read more