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2006 Adventures

Costa Rica 2006

We're back from Costa Rica . We had a great time in Playa Guiones and made it down
to Mal Pais for one day.

We even have pictures.


We did some packing before the trip.

Here's my lonely pile of clothes and towels that will soon be rolled and stuffed around the surfboard bag, to further protect the rails from the luggage handlers in Charlotte and Liberia, CR.

.

Here is Nicole's neat packing job, she's got her things in her new suitcase or lying next to the suitcase.

So we packed up the car and drove...

And the next think we knew... we were driving along the rutted dirt roads in Costa Rica.

Well not exactly...

We didn't drive... at least not all the way to Costa Rica. That would take days! We had to drive to Charlotte, NC about a 3 hour drive.

We got up very early on Saturday morning, car packed and ready and set out on the road to Charlotte.

It was so early that Nicole didn't really want her picture taken this early in the morning, but I persuaded her to pose for this shot. Notice the finger pointed at me and the look on her face. Isn't she a trooper, pretending to be mad at me for taking a picture.

Ok, she isn't posing. She was mad but how else are you going to know how early 5:00 AM really is for us.

It's a good thing she usually doesn't stay mad at me for long.

In this case, she wasn't mad at me any more after sleeping in the car during the 3 hour drive to Charlotte.

The drive to Charlotte is about 3 hours from the house. So we got to CLT

around 9:00 AM. That's including parking the car at the airport and getting to the terminal. When we got to the terminal, we had to lug our baggage to the check-in counter and pay the $50 fee to fly my large surf bag to Liberia.
e I do admit that my bag is very large and I thought about not bringing my boards and just renting while I was down there. However, surfing on your own board is definitely better than getting used to some rental, then going home and readjusting to yours.

But the bag is huge... About 3 meters (or 9 and 1/2 feet if you're still using Imperial measurements). It took them a while to get a porter to move it to the baggage X-ray machine. I watched it closely until a nice guy rolled it to the checked baggage screening area and then I said a tearful goodbye and hoped to be reunited with it on the other side.

So the next thing, we're in the air, flying towards the equator and listening to cool tunes. The flight was pretty empty and we had an exit row on the way down. Sort of a poor-man's first-class. Not bad for a frequent flyer ticket we booked just a few weeks before.
I took a picture out the window... just to keep the photo story moving. Not much to see, some clouds, the wing of the airplane, some dirt on the window. Dang, someone should climb up here on a ladder or something and wash these windows, don't you think?

Now that I think about it, maybe that's why the window is dirty.

So a direct flight to Liberia and once we landed, our taxi was waiting there to pick us up at the airport.

Ok...

Really we didn't ride an oxen cart around Costa Rica for a week. I mean that would be cool and retro, but it's over 100 kilometers to Playa Nosara from Liberia. At about 5 klicks an hour... ok, you can do math also, so it's a bit impractical to use the Oxen Taxi service but it is a cool way to move Teak wood down the dirt road. And don't you just love the Oxen hats those beasts are wearing?

I was just seeing if you were paying attention to the story. We actually rented this nice Grand Vitara 4x4.

And we headed off from Liberia to Playa Nosara (or really Playa Guiones is what it is on the maps and the signs you follow to take you there).

Now I want to make a disclaimer. Not every road in Costa Rica looks like this. Some are much better, with pavement and speed limits of 80 KMH. Others are MUCH worse, not much better than a rutted deer track or a poorly maintained fire trail. However, the majority of roads we drove on were dirt or in poor condition compared to any "road" we might think of

in America. However, I was told by several ex-pats that the roads were in the best condition of the entire year. Having been greatly improved just in time for the "rainy season". Dirt roads, rainy season... can you guess what is next for these roads? Yea, muddy drainage ditches is what these things will look like soon.

We played a game on some of the asphalt roads called "Pothole Dodge" which was roughly to drive across both lanes of the road, dodging potholes while keeping an eye on the horizon so we would not run into any car coming the other way doing the same thing.

Now this is in part because we were in the bad roads section of the country. And that part of the country is roughly bounded by the Pacific Ocean on one side, the Carribean Sea on the other, and extends mostly from Nicaragua in the North to Panama in the South. I am told that there are some nice roads in the capital of Costa Rica, San Jose. It's affectionately known as the Autobaun region of Costa Rica. Sadly, we didn't go there. (If you don't get the joke above, look at a map of Costa Rica and re-read the description of the bad road part of Costa Rica).

We stayed at the Guilded Iguana, a small hotel with 12 rooms and a restaurant and a pool, about a 100 yard walk to the beach. Cool place to stay, great food in the restaurant and their pool use policy is pretty liberal. Basically if you buy a drink, you can swim in the pool.
This was our room in the Guilded Iguana. A Double "Plus" room that included a double or Costa Rican Queen bed and a second single bed (for one of you, if you had come with us) and 6 fans. Really, the room had six fans and every window was a louvre window so that the tropical breezes could waift through the room and bring the sweet smell of the jungle and ocean (ok, really it wasn't a sweet smell, but it was a nice breeze once 10 PM came).
This was the stairs that led to the room. The stairs made getting a large surfboard up and down the stairs (notice the circular design). I usually leaned my surfboard against the railing, then pulled the board up to the second floor. I tripped once on these stairs and came pretty close to 1) killing the cat 2) breaking my board 3) hurting myself pretty badly. Sorry, no photo was taken of that.
This was the parking dirt at the break nearest the Guilded Iguana. Most days I just walked 100 yards to the beach. Maybe this was the first day, or there was some other reason for driving. Anyway, it was really too close have to drive.
This was a sunset at Guiones beach, right where we surfed.
This was also Guiones beach. We had some great sunsets all week long.
I also got a chance to surf a lot during the week. This was early in the week, when the waves were mostly waist to shoulder high.
This was some of the waves from early in the week, on Tuesday, before the swell picked up.
The series continued
And another from that day as I try and "make a section" before it closes out.
That's a pretty heavy level of concentration for such a small wave.
Another decent wave during the first part of the trip
Enjoying a nice wave, standing near the front of the board for a little speed. Maybe I can get get 5 toes off the nose...
Trying to make a radical move on a 9 foot longboard...
...9 foot boards don't usually make radical moves very easily.
So we had planned to go to Mal Pais, down the Nicoya Penninsula from Nosara (the top-left side of this map, along the Pacific coast), it looks like a short little drive down the coast. It's about 100 miles down the coast. However, this translates into about 4+ hour drive on the roads along the coast. That's if two conditions exist, 1) the roads are dry and in reasonably good condition since you'll have to cross riverbeds on the roads. 2) You don't make a wrong turn and get lost.

It hadn't rained for 4 months in Nicoya, so the dry weather condition was met. But we DID make a wrong turn and got lost, climbing over the coastal mountains on a dirt road for an hour, then having to make our way back on another road back to the coast and then driving the rest of the way to the tip of Nicoya.

It's mid morning on Tuesday after the surf session. Nicole is getting a bit of reading in before we pack up and take off.
We started down the road and saw some beautiful coastline including this fishing town of Garza, jus 10 kmt from Nosara.
This is the condition of the better roads on the way from Nosara to Mal Pais.
Crossing river beds is part of the fun. Don't try this after it rains.
It's a poor country and people often have corrigated metal and palm frond roofs and small houses.
Traffic of the 4 legged variety is a problem on these roads. They ALWAYS have the right-away. The last thing you want to do is use every bit of spanish you can muster to tell a farmer you hit his cow or horse and that you're very sorry and will pay for it.
After almost 6 hours in the car on some rough roads, we were so close to Mal Pais, and so we asked a local how to get to the Mal Pais beach. His directions were outstanding, but we were looking for the beach ROAD... not the actual beach. But we decided to drive along the beach itself and we were able to rejoin the road right at Mal Pais.
We found Casa Zen, which turned out to be more of a backpacker place than we were thinking it would be. We rolled up at 5:30 PM, tired and had to convince the guys who ran the place to open up (it was the day they close early) and give us a key to the apartment.
It was beautiful and the surfing looked good. I didn't surf that evening but we did enjoy the sunset.
We ended the long day with a terrific sunset. Then we went back to Casa Zen, had dinner and went to bed. Ahhhh, but the problem was that our balcony was a common area and our hotel mates were having a conversation until after midnight while our windows were wide open and we were tossing and turning on the futon that was our combination couch/bed in the apartment.

It was not an ideal situation.

By the next morning, we were so frustrated and we just got up and left, which might have been a bit of a mistake, we could have found another hotel, and I could have surfed Mal Pais at least one day but that didn't happen and we packed up the car at 6:00 am and drove back to Nosara.
So we drove back, and got some great views on our way back up the Nicoya penninsula.
It's very beautiful country
And soon we were back in Nosara
And we found Plumarias Del Mar, a B&B with a restaurant and two casitas for rent. We stayed in this newly built casita right next to the main house and the pool.
Attached to this cool house/bar/restaurant on the hill overlooking the ocean.
The inside of our Casita
And the bathroom in our Casita was pretty nice also.
And the sunsets were still good
And the cool people I met in the water were great dinner companions also.
True love.
GOODBYE!

THE END