Ahhhhh... The Beach!

That's more like it.


We have been in Costa Rica for 6 or 7 weeks, but we have been spending way too much time looking for a house, getting the kids going in school, etc. etc. to really have a relaxing good time. That is until this past weekend. It was a long weekend here for us a well as you guys in Canada, but not because of Thanksgiving. As far as I could tell it was a mandated school holiday, sort of a professional day, I guess.


So, right after school on Friday (the kids get out at 12:15 on Fridays), we headed off to "Esterillos Oeste", a little beach/surfing community a little over an hour away, just south of Jaco. It is mentioned in the touristy guide books, but we were again blown away at how UNDER-developed it seemed to us. There is very little infrastructure, only one or two small stores, bad roads, a few surf shops, a few restaurants, and some cool beach bars with a lot of character. I guess I am comparing this to the Mexican Riviera, which is what I keep expecting at these places, but perhaps this is what Playa Del Carmen looked like before the developers got a hold of it.


Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not complaining, just the opposite in fact. It was stunning to look down what seemed like miles of gorgeous beach and NOT see anything taller than the trees. There were no signs saying NO this, and NO that. There were no trinket sellers, nobody trying to convince you to go para-gliding or jet-skiing, no lifeguards or colored flags warning about wave conditions - NADA! You could drive right up to the beach (or as one guy was doing drive your ATV up and down the beach,) open your car door and set up your BBQ, cooler, basically whatever you wanted for the day . And every day we saw the same 3 or 4 local dogs (not sure if they actually belonged to anyone- I doubt it) chasing each other or some of the passing-by horses on the beach. It occured to me that every other beach I've been to has seemed somewhat of a "controlled" situation, and this one was not. I thought more than once that I was lucky enough once in my life to find a cool beach before it got famous. The wild flocks of spectacular Scarlet Macaws is also something else you don't see in the Mexican Riviera (anymore???).


The other side of that coin is that there are also no garbage cans or bathrooms on the beach either (but I hasten to add that the beach was NOT dirty. Most people seemed to be quite good about packing out their own garbage, and the beach bars had no trouble with you using their bathrooms). Nor were there any signs warning you about possible rip tides, or salt-water crocodiles in the water either (see story below)


In the end, the lack of a few conveniences was completely minor compared to the feeling of a REAL freedom that I was surprised to realize you don't get very often in our over-controlled world. I liked it... a lot!


The place we stayed at was called Apartamentos Iguanas, and it was a very nice, clean, well run place. It was not right on the beach, but an easy 5 minute walk away. We got a room with a kitchette, so we had breakfast & lunch there, and ate our dinners at the local restaurants. It had cable TV which was actually a treat for us because we have been without TV for the whole time so far. I got to watch the Costa Rican under-20 national soccer team make it into the quarterfinals of the under-twenty world cup, which is as far as any national team has gone in an important tournament.


One afternoon I was sitting on the balcony outside our room and we saw some very large Iguanas up high in the trees (See pics below). Two of them were quite close to each other and were bobbing their heads up and down, and were perhaps having a territorial dispute. Anyway, push came to shove and one of them fell at least 40 feet down to the ground, right before our eyes. We think it survived as we saw a similar-looking one crawling the tree a short time later, but can't be sure. Regardless, it was fabulous to see first hand. The Apartamentos Iguanas is aptly named.


The actual beach was huge and had a large difference between low and high tide. So you could alternate between low tide pools and big waves. It is a surfing beach afterall, and depending on the time and tide there were some good waves, and our kids LOVE the waves. It's the one place where we can go for hours at a time and not have petty fights. They sit there waiting for the next really big one to come and then run screaming away from it. They both loved it. Nathan got tossed around so much, I started to call him "Bob" because you never knew exactly where he would bob up from once a wave passed. (Don't worry Grandmas - they were perfectly fine.) They eventually learned you could dive under the really big ones without much impact, so they both became a little braver and went out a bit further. We also inherited a little boogie board with our car down here, and they both had a go with that, but are perhaps a year or two away from mastering that just yet. Once they got tired of the waves they would go and find shells, or dig holes, or bury each other in sand for a while, but soon enough it was back to the waves. That was the big attraction.


The first day Nathan and I were out in the waves, and I swear I saw something that MIGHT have been a crocodile just before it submerged. (No, it was still early in the day and I had not consumed several Imperials - Nathan thought he saw something too.) Could it actually be true that 7 year old Nathan had just had his SECOND close encounter with a crocodile in the open ocean, or did I just see a piece of driftwood? Megan is quite sure it was the latter of the two. (The first was in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico a couple of years ago when a croc was spotted VERY near to where our kids were playing in the ocean in front of our hotel.) I'll never know, but I did ask around and they do get crocs in open ocean here on occasion, especially after a good rain... (Hmmmm, it had rained most of the night before). However, attacks are very rare, and, like shark attacks, usually happen farther out than the breaking beach waves, and again like shark attacks, it's the surfers who are more at risk. Still, I will freely admit to being more than a little freaked out AGAIN, and questioned whether what we were doing was responsible parenting. In the end I decided the kids are probably in much more risky situations when we are doing our everyday driving on the Costa Rican roads. (Which on second reading doesn't really help my responsible parenting argument much, does it?)


Oh, and one other example that this area has yet to be "discovered" is the cost of things. We went out for supper on Megan's birthday and I had a Caribbean jerk chicken dish, Megan had a Thai chicken dish, the kids has cheese quesadillas, plus we had a couple of beers, a grape pop and a shared a brownie sundae dessert, and with tax and tip, it cost all of $32 Canadian. I figure the whole weekend cost us about $300 Canadian. You'd be lucky to get 3 nights in the Super 8 hotel in the Calgary for that price!


Some pics...




Road trip... Woohoo!!

The view from our room...

The mermaid at low tide...

Hmmm, crowded today...

Megan & the kids in the waves...

One of the fightin' Iguanas...

Another example of positive parenting...

And another...

And another...