Costa Rica - part 4

Tamarindo is a small town on the west coast of the Nicoya Peninsula. The town is a little more touristy than we might have wanted, but it was charming enough. We had to decide on one beach town to visit, and our eventual decision was based largely on the accommodations we could find. Carrie was the most pro-beach of our group, and her criteria for accommodations were threefold: on the beach, ocean view, and with a pool. There was another unofficial criterion: it shouldn't break the bank.

It's currently high season, meaning availability is limited and prices are at their highest. What we ended up getting had a pool, but it didn't have an ocean view and it wasn't on the beach (but a mere two-minute walk to it). Our two-bedroom suite was part of a five-suite complex with small shared pool. It was a very nice place and we enjoyed our four days there.

R&I chilling in the pool:


The pool at night:


Tamarindo is quite a surfing town, and the water is great for that. We learned that for swimming or tanning, however, there are probably better locations out there. The surf was considerable, which can be fun to play in, especially if you like accumulating sand in your swimwear. But hanging out on the beach was less fun, since it was quite windy and sand was constantly being blown in our faces (and trying to steal our stuff). But we sucked it up and dutifully hit the beach every day since that's why we were there.


Watching the kids play in the water. (Occasionally gringo strangers would ask me to watch their stuff so they could go in the water; apparently being an extraordinarily pale foreigner makes me a reputable guardian. Interesting how the threat of theft is perceived by tourists.)


Riding the waves... the easy way.


Reuben did try the hard way (our hotel had boards we could borrow) but without paying outrageous prices for surfing lessons, he didn't get too far.


Local wildlife; howler monkeys I think.


As seen in the first photo in this post, I worked hard on my tan/burn, as I tend to do when forced to hang out in the sun. I tend to go easy on the sunscreen for the sake of colour. Not always the wisest strategy but the results are guaranteed (more on that later).

Since Tamarindo is but one of many beaches along the coast, and since we had our own wheels, we did a couple of day trips to other nearby beaches in the hopes of finding better conditions. One trip was to Playa Conchal, which was rumoured to be very nice. As we found with most beaches, it was fairly unpopulated (surprisingly) and not groomed. This is fine as it means things aren't over-commercialized. A minor problem with that, however, is having trouble finding beach chairs or umbrellas for day use.

At Playa Conchal, the Westin is the one major resort near the beach. On our search for beach chairs, we came across a pile for use by Westin customers only. But since money talks, we thought we'd ask to borrow/rent four chairs for the day. We asked the attendant and he said they don't rent chair but would for us (because we're special I guess). We asked how much. He in turn asked us what we wanted to pay. Then, to the horror of my great negotiating sensibilities (and I have next to none), Reuben says $20.

TWENTY BUCKS!!!

I imagine that's as much as the guy makes in a day standing around guarding chairs. Clearly floored by our amazing bartering skills, he swallowed his anticipated response (he was probably about to counter our initial offer with $5 of his own or something) and turned to his buddy, kinda confused. Then he recovered nicely and agreed to our offer with a warm handshake. We had our four chairs for the day. And he had a good chunk of his next month's rent. (I'm thinking now I shouldn't have had to pay half... hmmm.)

Anyway, the girls were happy they had chairs to lounge in, so that's all that matters, right?


Locals tend to be creative when finding employment, and one older fellow parks himself in a lawn chair at the beach and tries to be helpful to tourists by providing pamphlets, recommendations, and information in general. We met Teo there that day, and we chatted with him about our trip. He seemed to think we had nothing planned and tried to send all over the country to see the sites. Never once did he ask for money for his dubious services, and we rather appreciated his genuineness. I did give him a dollar for his efforts, as presumably this is how he tries to earn a living (and thankfully in a non-overbearing way).

We had brought a cooler to the beach with a few drinks in it, only to find that our beers weren't twist-off and we had no way to open them! Reuben took off with great purpose, and soon returned with Teo's keychain. (I think he paid him in beer.) Teo told us to keep the keychain for the day, trusting us not to run away with them. (I think we earned said trust earlier when, upon hearing we were from Canada, he gave Reuben and me big awkward hugs for living in the Canada where a couple of his grandkids are living.)


Playa (Spanish for "beach") Conchal turned out to be nicer than Tamarindo (and even less busy), but maybe just because it wasn't as windy, as well as the fact that we had lounging chairs.



Further down the beach there were opportunities to rent Sea-Doos, ATVs, horses and maybe other stuff. Instead of spending money on that, Reuben and I decided to drive on down the beach to see what there was to see. Beach access is via a path you drive along at the edge of the sand until you decide to stop wherever you want; we figured we'd explore by following that "road" further.


The narrow road soon hit a patch of beach where we had to drive through the sand to get to the path on the other side. We decided that a 50/50 chance of making it across was acceptable, and off we went.

We made it through without a problem and proceeded down to the end of the trail. It met with a road that led to real estate developments further down the coast. We thanked ourselves for not shelling out for a lame four-wheeler tour that would have taken us down the same roads we'd just driven. After exploring a bit and looking at real estate, we headed back.

Back at the sandy expanse, we figured we again would have no problem.


But partway through, the car did flounder a little. We probably should have taken a faster run at it. Oh well. Thanks to 4WD, and no thanks to our bald tires, we dug our way back to safety. As always, four-bying is funner than four-wheeling!

C'mon, you can do it, crappy car!


Back to the ladies, where we caught some more sun. At some point, we were visited by some monkeys overhead. These creatures didn't like ATVs; every time an ATV tour passed by on the path under their tree they would bark their displeasure. Quite amusing, and we quite agreed with their sentiment.


We also saw some nice iguanas, both at the beach and during our little drive down the beach. These are pretty big lizards and can moving surprisingly fast.



The one sad event of the day involved the mean ol' ocean. Reuben had borrowed a nice waterproof GoPro camera from a friend; it's the kind you strap on your forehead so you can take cool videos of whatever you're doing... skydiving, mountain biking, bungee jumping, ziplining, snorkelling... or just playing in the surf.


He was enjoying the latter activity when the tide ripped the camera harness off his head. This didn't particularly impress him, and we spent the next half hour sifting through the sand with our toes amidst the crashing waves. Only slightly amusing was the knowledge that the camera would be filming high-quality ocean floor video for the next four hours or so.

The following day we tried yet another beach, Playa Hermosa. On the way there we stopped by the supermarket to stock up on food. I stayed in the car since we had stuff in it we didn't want left unattended. As the other three went off into the store, smartypants Reuben decided to lock the car with the remote while I was in it. This of course locked me in the car lest I set off the alarm. A few minutes later Carrie came out to the car to get her wallet or something, and of course my opening the car door for her tripped the alarm. I very casually walked away while Carrie ran to get Reuben and the remote. Good times.

Looking around for somewhere decent to park for the day at Playa Hermosa, we found a resort that had beach chairs set up on the beach in front of it. The problem was that all the users seemed to be wearing those colourful resort bracelets, presumably authorizing them to use the chairs. Not being the type to ask for forgiveness later, I finally spotted a fellow who wasn't wearing a resort bracelet. I mustered up some false authority and said to him "Excuse me sir, I see you're not wearing a bracelet, ahem!" Fortunately he had a sense of humour, and we learned from him that using the beach chairs was fine, but we should maybe order a drink from the resort staff. And so we did.

Playa Hermosa was a nice beach, and as quiet as the rest. There are so many beaches around, and the ones you have to drive to are bound to be even less crowded than the rest.

Costa Rica - part 3

(I'm officially ignoring my crazy sisters' calls to get to the good stuff; I shall systematically plod along with my vacation report.)

On the day it was time to move on, we had arranged for a rental car company to pick us up at our hotel at 9am. The designated time came and went with no rental car showing up, but this is hardly cause for panic in Latin America. Nonetheless, I had the rental company called after 20 minutes to see what was up. They claimed they had expected to pick us up at the airport and didn't know of any arrangements to meet us at our hotel. Furthermore, our vehicle wasn't exactly available yet, but would be in an hour or so.

Well, this happens even in Canada, and really, what can you do? So we hung out while Carrie tried to check out of the hotel; for some reason this took her 45 minutes... perhaps something to do with four of us showing up for free breakfast when the room had only two official occupants. In the end, all was settled, and our rental vehicle arrived a little after 10:30. We piled in and headed to the agency office to do the paperwork.



As also happens in Canada, we didn't get the car we'd been promised. We had reserved a 2012 Nissan X-Trail with manual transmission; we got a 2006 automatic. (In hindsight, the age worked in our favour since any nicks we may have put on it blended in with all the existing ones.) After arguing for a bit, we got the extra driver fee waived. And we were off!

Here's my attempt at a geography lesson. The whole country is shown here, and the purple line that is our route shows how little we actually covered. The country is very rugged, and even though it's maybe 500km at its longest, and the Pacific and Caribbean Oceans are as little as 120km apart, there's no quick way to get anywhere. Even the main highway shown on the map, which is the Pan-American Highway, isn't what you might expect: speed limits vary from 40km/h to 80km/h, and the road is often just a one-lane-each-way country road winding through numerous villages. It's prudent never to expect to average more than 50km/h on any trip.


But I digress. Our road trip starts near the airport at Alajuela, takes the southern route west to the beach, then takes the northern route east (via Liberia and over the lake).


With all the rumours about terrible roads and being stuck behind slow trucks, we weren't sure what to expect. Fortunately the first leg of our journey was on a nice new toll highway toward the coast; four tolls ran us about 75 cents each. And slow trucks didn't matter too much at this point, as there were a number of passing lanes. Not that the absence of passing lanes ever matters; lines on the road mean very little to your average tico.


We made good time as we headed to the Nicoya Peninsula and got close to Tamarindo. Carrie had the small village of Guaitil on her radar, one where handmade pottery is produced and painted by locals.

We stopped at this local establishment, which was a home with an adjoining shop. The dog looked less than well, as did his companion chicken with the bare bum.


The stuff all looked the same to me, but Carrie found something she really liked. They packaged it well, and it has since made it home in one piece!


It was only a short drive from there to Tamarindo. It was also a lot of gravel road with washboards, decidedly the worst part the drive so far. But if one could ignore that, the scenery was beautiful and made us think that this is what we'd expect Africa to look like.

Costa Rica - part 2

Our Thursday flight to Costa Rica was via Newark, New Jersey, and it left at the unearthly time of 6am. Doesn't sound so bad, you say? Well, it's an international flight, and US customs occurs in Ottawa. That means arriving on time at the airport, and thus getting up at 4:30 or so. While security is up and running at 4:30am, US customs crawls to a slow start at 5, so you can get there as early as you want but then you're waiting for a long time for customs to open its doors. I was a little earlier than R&I and made it through to the departure gate with only a couple of minutes to spare. In the snaky line I had just cleared waiting for customs, R&I were physically a mere few feet away from me but a good 20 minutes behind. Once I was through, I contemplated how I might hold up the flight for a while to let them make it, but I was told I should have had them jump the queue. Past the point of no return, and without a phone, I couldn't do much.

But lo and behold, there they came a-runnin'! They'd frantically sold the story that they were reeeeally late, and people very kindly let them ahead. Turns out most people had later flights and were in no rush. That was close... I'm not sure I would have stayed behind with them...

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We eventually landed at San Jose (capital city) airport and took a cab to Carrie's hotel, only 10 minutes away.

Most of the day was lost to air travel, so we mostly chilled thereafter. Reuben and I did walk over to a nearby mall (surprisingly similar to those here) to check things out. It wasn't far away, but there wasn't much in the way of sidewalks along the route, and it was after dark. Crossing the street at one point, I noticed that I was stepping over a minor trench at the roadside, maybe 8 inches deep and a little wider. Where in Canada you'd expect a flat area at the curb, with the occasional drainage grate, they instead have a little concrete ditch that turns out to be difficult to spot at night. I tried a quick "Watch it...", but Reuben was already stepping down...

My warning may have been just in time; he had the sense to make his leg buckle as his ankle twisted, minimizing the force on it as he stepped into the trench. He fell rather hard and yelled for a spell as I looked around and wondered how hard it would be to get an ambulance in these parts. I feared a sprained or broken ankle, but a couple minutes later he was able to hobble along and it eventually got better. That might have put a damper on his vacation early on. Fortunately, any such dampers wouldn't appear until the following week...

We hit the mall too late that night, but the next day we made sure to go cigar shopping, and thereafter started an almost nightly cigar-and-nightcap routine.


Two untanned gringos, ready for adventure:


The hotel we were staying at was close to the airport but a ways from downtown San Jose. We never ended up downtown, as apparently there isn't a whole lot to see (and it's not a particularly pretty city). We did do a tour of a coffee plantation, where we learned a bunch of stuff about coffee production (and storage, such as not to store it in the freezer). During a presentation, Reuben and another tourist volunteered to go up front and learn some hands-on quality control at the plantation, i.e., how to smell/slurp coffee samples all day without wrecking the taste buds. They won a coffee-picking hat for their slurping efforts.


In an effort to save money, we thought we'd all share the one room for the first couple of nights. What we hadn't counted on was various acoustic incompatibilities with respect to nocturnal... oh, whatever, I'll just say it: snoring!! Let's say only half of us slept reasonably well while the other half looked forward to the next accommodations where we'd have separate rooms.

Here's our too-cold pool at the hotel.

Costa Rica - part 1

Three weeks ago Carrie left for Costa Rica for work, leaving me behind with a freezer full of food. (Incidentally, we returned home this week to a freezer full of food.)

Five days later I flew out with our friends Reuben & Irene to join her in the balmy south. Costa Rica is the farthest south I've been, at 10 degrees north of the equator. I don't imagine I'll get that close to the equator in future vacations.

Costa Rica is situated in Central America, between Nicaragua and Panama. It's a stable democracy with a population of 4.3 million, and it's the most visited Central American country by tourists. Tourism brings in more money than the three main exports combined (bananas, pineapples, coffee).

Costa Rica has significantly developed its ecotourism, and it's considered to be a very "green" country. Politically this may be the case, but you wouldn't guess it from the scads of people burning their garbage regularly in their back yards, or simply burning their back yards.

Costa Ricans are informally known as ticos (or ticas). It's a great label to which to aspire while travelling the country and trying to fit in.

When researching for our trip, we of course turned to the Internet for unbiased reports and reviews. Of course, much of what is reported is bad experiences by travellers. (Why would you report good experiences? That's just not worth sharing!) So we wondered about all the petty theft, rental vehicle risks (unscrupulous rental companies, crazy drivers, horrible roads, evil transit cops), the snakes, the bugs. Well, we braced ourselves for the worst, and as a result were rarely disappointed.

One tip when travelling to countries with a "minor" currency: consider not buying any of it in Canada! The currency is the colón, of which about 500 equal a dollar. We bought some at the Royal Bank before leaving (ordered in, as they don't stock much), and on a day when the official exchange rate was 514, the bank gave a lousy rate of 458. That means the bank charged us an exchange fee of 12%... ouch! In hindsight, we should have taken only US dollars, since those are accepted almost everywhere in Costa Rica, and exchanges were done on the fly at around 500 colones per dollar. We were quite amazed at the lack of ripping off by vendors accepting US cash. Also, bank machines there dispense both US and local currency, which is rather convenient.

Carrie had some time to see things during her work week. She took a day trip with colleagues to see the nearby Poás volcano. The nice thing there is that you can actually go right to the edge of the crater. Just don't hang around too long: the toxic fumes being emitted discourage prolonged exposure.