Out of Nosara...maybe?

Monday August 20th

OK, so we finally made it out of Playa Nosara…wow, I keep saying this, but it is by far our favorite place we have visited. We ended up staying one more night (Saturday night…count that, three stay extensions) with Marisa and Garrett. Since they were full, we had to splurge on a bungalow…I know, life is tough. I would say however that both of us agree that the single room was better due to the sweet private deck and outdoor shower…just make all the difference…but I digress…

We had already returned our surf boards (plus the waves were pretty large, and there was a lot of white water to make it thru to get to the break…all in all not good for us beginners), so we opted to seek out a local Waterfall that we had heard about from super nice folks we had met (Brian and Tamzan). So we were off…we hit up Coconut Harry’s for some local direction. We go more than we could have asked for…Kevin (age 11) and Jordan (age ~13)…they were awesome. Anytime you can get a couple of local kids to show you around…yea, way better. Anyway, after cruising around on some knarly little roads for about 20 min, we pulled over next to this little river…now the fun starts. We started off by pretty much hiking right up the river…it was little, maybe 10-12’ across and 8’ deep…but still…up the river itself. From there, we continued to cris-crossed the river, from small overgrown path, back to river. We made our way thru a barbwire fence (and by thru, I mean spread the wires and weasel between…watch out or…ouch!), and thru a pasture with a little horse which looked at us like we were crazed. Along the way, it started the sprinkle…and Kevin and Jordan stopped in their tracks…I guess this little river gets pretty big when the rain starts…but we convinced them to press on, and the rain eventually stopped (for the time being anyway). After about a 30 min hike, we made it to a set of beautiful waterfalls. Kevin and Jordan were nice enough to show us the ins and outs of the falls, highlighting the proper jumping technique and location so as not to crack your head open (again, my reference to getting local kids to show you around…they have more fun than you do…LOL). We spent about 40 minutes kicking it old school in the pools, jumping and trying out different features on our cameras…yea, we are nerds. It was a great little place…no one else around, let alone other tourists (damn gringos!). After having our fill, we hiked back thru the little maze of trails, stumbling across a little tarantula…pretty sweet to just look around and find this stuff…As we made it back to the car, it started to rain…oh yea, and it didn’t stop until the next day (Sunday)…good thing we got out of there. We dropped the boys off at their homes and gave them each a couple bucks for taking time to play with us…LOL. From there it was off to nap…yea that was a solid nap. We never really recovered…we went off to dinner, but turned in early…probably due to a couple factors, including that we were really leaving this place the next day…

Sunday morning we got up early, packed our stuff, got some breakfast and were out the door. Since Garrett and Marisa were going the same direction, we wagon trained it for about 1.5 hours…from there, we parted ways, us off to Manuel Antonio National park (South), and them off to Arenal Volcano (North)…just to be sure, we will be seeing more of them…trip to San Diego anyone? But back to the story…So we kicked it south on the Intercontinental Highway for about 3 more hours till we hit a little town and traffic, um yea…stopped…dead. We tried to use some back-roads to get around, but ended up in about the same spot (a couple of cars better…yea, I win!). Turns out there it is a little one lane bridge that had some of it’s metal slats come loose…so we had to wait for the city workers to come reweld them in place. Welcome to Costa Rica baby! I think we waited a total of about ½ hour and traffic started to meander slowly towards the bridge, stopping for periods to let the traffic from the other side cross as well. So as we started driving across the bridge, we started to understand the problem…the bridge looked like a railroad trestle…just slats of metal, spaced about 2” apart keeping us from the rushing river below…good idea to stop and let them fix it. That was about the only stumble we had on our little path down to Manuel Antonio. We got in around 3:00pm and found a room at the Costa Verde Hotel (a little spendier than I wanted, but what the hell, only three more nights in Costa Rica…Pura Vida!) The Hotel is large by our standard, but situated on the hill overlooking the park and the ocean…very nice views…very nice. As we were checking in, a family of Howler Monkeys moved thru the trees by registration…pretty cool. After getting settled in our room, we strolled up to the “Adult” pool…sorry, no kids…yea right, I am here…and took in the view (pics to follow)…again, very nice. On the way back down to our room (yea, way down the hill…can you feel the burn?) a family of Spider Monkeys took over the trees above us…it was very cool…they followed us down the hill, jumping from tree to tree…I like this place already, it reminds me of home…all you crazy’s jumping around…LOL…I crack myself up. After freshening up…yea right! We sped off to try to catch the sunset (turns out they are pretty good here). We stopped at a restaurant at the top of the hill called El Avion…great views and good food. The catch to this place is that it actually is a old airplane…a C-123 I think. It is located in the middle of the restaurant and has a bar inside it…pretty cool. It was shipped here back in 2000, just for the restaurant, but has ties back to the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid 80’s…cool stuff. From there…to bed…the whole driving for 5 hours thing takes it out of you…but I got to see Monkeys…all worth it.

So on to today…not much on our plate…mostly relaxing by the pool…as it turns out the national park is closed on Mondays…isn’t that a kicker, so we will have to fly through tomorrow before heading back to San Jose…yea we fly home on Wednesday. Our other friends Scott and Kristen are here in town somewhere, so we will more than likely try to find them for some drinks and dinner…we will see…cannot wait to see everyone…we are missing home, family and friends a lot…ya’ll should have come along…good times, good times.

Cheers!

RB