Paradise on earth. Just don't tell any more gringos about it or they'll buy the whole place up.

About 30 minutes walk from Orosi village is a great little waterfall-fed swimming hole. It's a tad on the chilly side, but really refreshing when you're sweating after the hike here. It's a two-tiered swimming hole. The first tier has a strong current due to the river/waterfall above and the force of it will probably push you down to the second tier. This is pretty scary the first time as you're essentially shooting down a natural waterslide, getting dunked under water for a few seconds and then emerging in another, larger swimming pool! There are great big rocks surrounding the swimming holes, perfect for sunbathing or mermaid poses.
Here's how to get here from Orosi village:
If you're strapped for time, you could take the bus (every 30 minutes) to the power plant (ask the driver to let you off at 'a la planta'). Or if you´re walking, just follow the main road up the hill as it curves left. Walk past the gas station (La Bomba) for about 15 minutes until you reach a fork in the road. Take the fork to the left and follow the main road for 30 seconds until you see the first wide road on your right hand side with a sign saying Parque Nacional Tapanti. Turn right here and follow the road for 1 minute until you meet up with a paved road in front of you. Turn left and continue walking until you get to a big power plant on your right. Just after the power plant on your right you'll see a church and a road leading up a hill with a house on the top. Turn right at the church and follow the steep road up into the little town and walk for about 10 minutes until you can hear the river on your left. The town ends and you'll get closer to the swimming hole. You'll then see a trail on your left leading down to the swimming hole.

When in Orosi, you gotta take a trip to the natural hot springs. They are fed by the surrounding volcanoes and the hot water seeps out of the rocks into small pools beside a raging, refreshing river. The spot is surrounded by forest and coffee plantations and across the river is a clump of bamboo. It's just magic. Head there on a starry night with torches, a few candles and a bottle of vino, and you've got it made.
Here's how to get there from 'downtown' Orosi village:
Follow the main road up the hill as it curves left. Walk past the gas station (La Bomba) and then continue walking along the side of the road for about 15 minutes until you reach a fork in the road. Take the fork to the left and follow this main road for 30 seconds until you see the first wide road on your right hand side with a sign saying Parque Nacional Tapanti. Turn right here and follow the road for 1 minute until you meet up with a paved road in front of you. Turn left and continue walking until you get to a big power plant on your right. Keep walking along the main road (ie DON'T take the street with the church on it). Just after the curve of the road, you´ll see a bar called Bar Rio Macho. In front of the bar is a steel car bridge. Just after you cross the bridge you´ll see a large gap in the barbed wire fence on the left-hand side. Enter here. Follow the trail through the coffee plantation (keep going straight, don't get sidetracked by the small trails). The trail will curve slightly to the right and then you'll start to go downhill a bit. Continue walking and just before the trail starts to go uphill, you'll see a small trail to your left with a wooden post with the word 'caminante' ('walker' in Spanish). It should have taken you about 10-15 minutes from the gap in the fence to get here. Follow the narrow forest trail for about 5 minutes until you see two pools with natural rock walls on your left. The river is just in front of the pools and the bamboo forest is on the other side of the river. If the pools look green with algae, just move some of the rocks at the end of the pool and let the water drain. Replace the stones and in a few minutes the pools should fill up again with hot water. The water temperature depends on how much rain there's been. If there's been lots of rain, the river will be high and some of the cold water splashes into the hot pools. If you're here in the middle of the day, you might want to take a beach umbrella and a book and a picnic lunch. Oh, and it's best to avoid the hot springs (agua caliente) on weekends when it's really popular with locals. There's really only enough room in the pools for about 5 people. Happy soaking!

As a vegetarian travelling in Costa Rica, it´s near on impossible to find a decent veggie restaurant and downright boring - not to mention perilous to one´s health - trying to survive on rice, beans, plantains and eggs. But after scouring the country top to toe, I stumbled across Tia´s Garden in the lush Central Valley village of Orosi, about 25 minutes by bus from the city of Cartago. Tia´s Garden is no ordinary Costa Rica restaurant.
It´s run by an American family who had to change their diet after one of their daughters converted to vegetarianism. You literally walk in off the street and into the family´s kitchen. The menu - a piece of paper in a plastic sleeve - ranges from potatoes (grown in volcanic soil) ¨errrupting¨ with vegetables; felafel; veggie soup; homemade bagels and big hearty salads. All the veggies are sourced locally from a small-scale organic farmer, they make their own tofu and if you have a craving for something special (eg I just NEEDED broccolli, so they came out with a bowl or raw broccolli and hummous dip), they´ll whip it up for you. Friday they serve a four-course Thai feast for US$6 and Saturday is Mexican.
Buen provecho!