Samara & Playa Carrilo

Well it's been almost 2 weeks since we blogged last, 2 weeks since we've had a long weekend here in Atenas, and 2 weeks since we've been to the beach. So, guess what we did this weekend?

Friday was a municiple holiday here to commemorate San Rafael, the patron saint of the "canton" (or district), that Atenas falls in. So the kids had friday off school, and we decided we had so much fun on the last trip to coast, we thought we'd do it again. We originally thought to go to Manuel Antonio, which is a large land and marine nature reserve south of where we were last time, but the rainy season around here has really set in lately. So at the last minute, we changed our minds and went farther afield to a beach on the Nicoya penisula called Playa Samara.

This trip was quite different for us because we took off without having any accomodations planned anywhere. We were wingin it! As it turned out we found a great place just a short block off the beach that only cost us $30 night!!! It was very basic, but clean accomodation, with a shared bathroom even, but because it is the slow season, it was almost empty, and the owners had a couple of kids for ours to play with so it turned out really great. It was fun to watch our kids running around yelling in spanish with the local kids.

This travel in the rainy season is really starting to appeal to us. No crowds or traffic, no reservations needed, insanely low prices, and of course everything is green. Really green. When Megan and I were here last March near the end of the dry season, I recall there were a lot of trees with no leaves on them at all. It's like the difference between the trees in winter and summer in Calgary. And there are some spectacular trees. Trust me.

On top of that, the weather has been perfectly acceptable as well. We have had some rain, but nothing really that dampened our fun at all. We only got chased off the beach one day, and it's probably a good thing too. The second last day was nice and sunny all day, and we stayed at the beach all day, and we all got a bit too much sun.

On the day that was overcast, we headed out to a tiny little "zoo", that is run by a European couple who take you around personally and tell you a little bit about each animal, and how they got to thier zoo. A few of them were pets that got to be too much for the original owners, so it was nice to see them being taken care of. There were spiders, snakes, crocodiles (what trip to the beach with Nathan would be complete without a crocodile sighting?), toucans, a kinkajou, a pecarry, a jaguarundi, a marguay (a small, wild cat supposed to be the fastest cat "up in the trees". It can twist it's spine a full 180 degrees, so it can really bounce around from trunk to trunk. Google it). There were also Iguanas, an anteater, bats, parakeets, turtles, etc. etc. etc. The kids got hold the snake and the turtles, and got to feed the kinkajou. All kinda cool.

The zoo was near a neighboring beach to Samara, called Playa Carillo, and this beach is another little hidden gem, in my opinion. It is a really visually appealing beach, with the rocky outcroppings, the little hidden coves and the fresh water rivers running down into it which carve a really cool pattern into the sand. But again, the thing that struck me most about about this was the complete lack of commercialization. There is a cool tree lined boulevard running along the whole beach, and across this street from the beach is... NOTHING! There is a nice flat piece of land there, and my North Americanized brain's first reaction was "holy crap, why hasn't Mcdonalds, or Starbucks, or Super 8, or... (you get the picture)... found about about this yet!"... Please don't tell them!)

We just stopped the car, got out our cooler, and jumped in the waves. Awesome.

The next day, (our last full day), we were back in Samara and the plan was to just spend the whole day on the beach just relaxing... Megan lasted about 15 minutes (pretty good average for her), and had to go find something else to do. There is a small, uninhabited island right off shore, and they have kayaking tours that go there (with snorkeling and a light lunch etc.), or you can just rent your own kayak by the hour, etc. That sounded like a good idea, but do you think you could actually find anybody in any of the tour places? No way. I guess that is the down side of travel in the rainy season. In the Mexican Riviera, they are on you like locusts, here... You can't find em when you want to. It was a bit windy that day, so one other possible explaination is that they don't let people out in the wind anyway, so why have people staff the place if they can't charge you for anything anyway. Regardless, we didn't get to go kayaking afterall.

Oh, and one other thing that I love about Costa Rica is the cost of car repairs. We were coming back Monday morning, and I stopped to gas up. The guy at the station notices that one of my hoses has sprung a leak and points it out to me. We are 3 and a half hours from home and I have car problems... Just what you want. Anyway, the guy tells me there is a mechanic about a kilometer down the road, so off we go. We are out in the middle of nowhere when I notice the sign, and it's hardly the bright clean Petro-Canada station I see... More like that shop in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So we pull in anyway and I try to explain the problem to the guy. He tells me it's one of the heater hoses, and sends his buddy down the road for a new part. When he comes back he says they don't have the part and I figure I'm screwed... but wait! the mechanic goes off for a few minutes and comes back with "un otra solucion", (another solution). He fabricated the part, put it on, it worked like a charm, and by the look of it, it will probably be better than the original part anyway. When I asked how much it would cost me he says 3000 colones. That's less than $6 bucks Canadian. Gotta love Costa Rica!!!

Samara Beach...

Notice the crowds & the high rises?

Our accomodations...

Playa Carillo...

The Zoo...

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...

Rachel's 9th

Today is Rachel's 9th birthday, so it was obviously a big day in our household. Make that a big week.

It started last night when we picked her up after school... Our plan was to get her ears pierced, as all the Costa Rican girls have them done, and I think she wanted to "fit in" a bit more. We asked around where to get it done, and 3 different people told us that most Costa Rican girls get their ears pierced when they are 4 DAYS old, so they get it done at the clinic as part of their first check up, I think. Anyway, all 3 groups said we would need to get it done at the clinic. So, off we went as instructed. When we got there, there was what looked like a busy waiting room with a reception desk, similar to what we might see back home - this couldn't be the place?!? I started asking in my bumbly Spanish "where can I get my daughters ears pierced," and of course everybody looked at me like I was a bit crazy.... Sigh... Finally found a nurse to ask and, if I understood her correctly, she said that the nurse who usually does ear piercing was "incapacitaded" and wouldn't be back until at least Sunday. Great!

So, now Rachel's crying, and we now had no real idea where else to try. But wait, there is a private clinic as well! So, off we go there, and we park right under the "Ambulance Service - Open 24 hours" sign, go up to the door... and it's locked... No one home... Gotta love Costa Rica.

So we give up, and decide to go rent a movie (since we still don't have TV - hopefully coming soon.) Rachel's devastated, and barely gets out of the truck. Right beside the movie rental store, there is a salon for manicures, haircuts etc. Anyway, Megan says "why don't we ask in here?" So I do and she says, yeah, we do that. So Rachel (and us as well) practically does the dance of joy and now she's happier than a pig in..well, you know.... It cost 7000 colones (less than $14 Canadian), and that included the hypo-allergenic earring post thingies, or whatever you call them. They look great, and Rachel is happy again.

Today went much better. We picked her up after school, blindfolded her and told her we were taking her to see someone - the someone was Kay at "Kay's Gringo Postres", and Rachel LOVES the grilled cheese sandwiches there - think white bread with processed cheese slices, covered in butter, and fried to a perfect golden brown. You could put the picture on a Denny's menu! We had gone there earlier in the day and set up a homemade Happy Birthday sign and laid out some presents with it. Then, rather than take a cake, Kay makes great home-made apple pie, (another of Rachel's fav's) which we put a candle in, and sang Happy Birthday with Kay and a couple of gringos who just happened to be hanging out in the cafe. Then the last surprise was when we pulled up at home, Rachel was greeted with a "Pucca" pinata (for those not in the know, Pucca is a character in a Japanese animated kids' show - kids seem to love it, not sure why.) So it wasn't a big wild free-for-all with kids whacking away - just Rachel and Nathan whacking first with a piece of wood we found, then a piece of rebar (yikes!) and finally the broom-stick did the trick.

Tomorrow should be lots of fun as we are going out to dinner with 2 other (gringo) families who have kids in the same school as ours because the other Mom is also celebrating her birthday this week. But what we're looking forward to most is Friday - school lets out at 12:15 and then we are off to Esterillos for 3 days at the beach. Wahooo! Our first beach excursion - we're all very excited to be able to go hunting for shells and sand dollars, play in the waves, and watch the surfers. We'll let you know how it goes.

Birthday "pie"at Kays...

Rachels new earrings, plus one of the "Locals"...

Tarantula!

OK, I guess if I have to come across a tarantula, this is the best way to do it. (He was dead, and it's a good thing, cuz if THIS guy had of crawled across my chest at night I'd have freaked out!)

I was taking a little swim in the pool, and I thought I'd check the skimmer to see how dirty it is, and I found this:

Cute eh?

Feliz Anniversario...

Ok, so we've been in our new home for almost 7 full days already, so obviously it was time to get the heck out of the house and "see/do something." (Anyone that knows Megan well will not be very surprised by this).

So, on a Saturday afternoon whim, we jumped in the car and headed to Jaco beach. This is about an hour's drive from Atenas, depending on the traffic, on some very scenic, but winding mountainous roads. I guess it's like the Atenas version of a trip to Banff from Calgary.

We had heard about this place from a few people but had done zero research on it, so had no idea what to expect.

The first place we stopped was at a bridge over the Tarcoles River, where we were supposed to be able to spot some large crocs. Well we were not disappointed, there were about a dozen or so on one side, and another half dozen or so on the other. Some were really quite large. See the pics below.

Next we went into the little beach town of Jaco, which is a surfing destination. Megan commented that it wasn't as built up or commercial as she was expecting. And comparing it to the Mayan Riviera or Cancun, I would have to agree. The main drag did have a bunch of cool looking restaurants and bars which I bet are hopping at night, and there were a few larger hotels, but the beach itself really wasn't very busy, especially considering it was a weekend. As it was our 11th anniversary today, we decided to treat ourselves to lunch at a Mexican restaurant. It was definitely more expensive than most places in Atenas and surrounding towns, but we were expecting that as it is much more of a touristy place with lots of gringos so of course everything is more expensive.

In my stumbly Spanish, I managed to ask our waitress if she could recommend a good swimming beach (Jaco beach is more for surfing) and she pointed us back down the road to Herradura (sp?). This was an interesting spot in that we drove right up to the beach, parked the car under some trees, got changed behind our car door and ran right down to the waves. Again, not very crowded at all. Our kids love the waves and these ones were just big enough to give them some thrills without us worrying about them too much.

All in all, this anniversary was much better than our 10th last year, although Megan disagrees... She spent it in Vegas with her friends while I stayed home and watched the kids.

Here are a few pics...



Playa Herradura

Crocs at Tarcoles River

Where the heck is Atenas?

It occured to me that some of you might be wondering exactly where abouts in Costa Rica Atenas is.

So, here's a quick link to a Google Maps page for Atenas...

That's it... Ciao

We moved in!!!

Well, we finally found a house and moved in. HOORAY! We ended up in a small bungalow in Barrio Mercedes, which is just a few minutes outside of Atenas proper via a rather bumpy road. It is basically a new house, so everything is clean and everything works well (except for the odd leak here and there - but the guy is supposed to be coming tomorrow to fix those, so hopefully we'll see him within the next week or two.) We're happy to have a fairly well-built home because that is often not the case with houses here in Costa Rica. It seems that if they can cut corners on construction details, they often do). It was not fully furnished nor did it have cable or internet installed, but the owner agreed to install both, plus he let us pick out some new beds, a TV, DVD and Microwave which he'll just take off of the rent. So we're really fortunate to have stumbled across this place and are certainly happy to know that our beds and bedding and all brand new.

The house has 2 bedrooms/2 baths - one quite large master bedroom with a very good sized ensuite, and a small second bedroom where we got bunk beds for the kids. (they get a kick out of that). The living room is fairly large, there's a good sized kitchen with large breakfast bar (no table though) and a small laundry room (there is new washing machine, but no dryer... Yes, I have to hang the clothes out to dry. Most people don't have dryers here, which is fine if you get your laundry out to dry on the line early morning before the afternoon rains hit, but you're stuck with hanging them out for a second day if you miss the window of opportunity.) The house also a large veranda on the front of the house, which is very typical, as most people spend a good deal of time living outside, and we plan to do the same. Many people have what we would consider indoor furniture like couches and a table and chairs outside on their verandahs.

Oh, and did I mention the pool? Yeah baby! It's small, but oh so refreshing on those muggy afternoons. And the kids are perfectly happy to share a room in exchange for getting a pool.

Our property has a few mango trees (although unfortunately mango season is just about over,) some sort of orange trees and even a small jalapeno-like chili pepper tree on the property... I broke one of the ripe ones open and basically just touched it to my tongue and it was SMOKIN' hot. Spicy home made salsa coming up... Yum yum.

There are also many coffee plants on a lot of the neighboring properties and it's quite cool to see the large clusters of ripening beans. We also have a small heard of cattle living right across our little road - not the most sociable neighbours but at least they aren't noisy like the freakin' rooster 2 doors down!! He has about the most feable crow out of any rooster I've ever heard and I really don't think he has any concept of time. He tends to crow about once an hour starting at 3am, then a little more frequently once 5am hits. Nathan thinks he sounds like dying cow!

The one minor downside to living in such a lush location is that we do get quite a few bugs and critters around. We were told that they have pulled a couple of tarantulas (Megan shudders at the thought,) a small snake and a couple of scorpions out of the pool to date but we have not seen anything like that yet.

The very first day we moved in, we had a big thunderstorm (go figure...), and when it started to rain, I just happened to be looking out the window to where the downspouts go into the drainage basin in the ground, and up popped a huge toad. While I was sneaking up to get his picture, his BIGGER buddy popped up. I have a picture of it below, but it's a little dark and you don't get very good perspective, but it was easily one of the biggest ones I have ever seen.

We are kind of on a rural street with neighbouring coffee plantations and fruit farms all around. The neighbors a couple of doors down have horses and chickens and, of course, the rooster (el gallo diablo.) That's one thing I have noticed about Costa Rica that is very different from Calgary or Canada - it's very noisy. You hear roosters and dogs and crickets and frogs and birds and dirt bikes and often trucks with air brakes (if you are near the highway), etc. etc., but it doesn't seem all that bad. It sort of all blends into a different kind of white noise and doesn't bug you very much... at least not so far. Most of the noise is non-man made and it kind of makes me think how "alive" it is (or, on the other hand, how lifeless it seems in our sterile suburbs back home).

Enough... Here's a couple of pictures: