gone south

Feb. 16,2009

Costa Rica Revisited

After the border crossing, we returned to Golfito for the afternoon and night but this time we spent some time in the town itself and enjoyed the area even more than the last visit. The town is one road wide encompassing a pretty harbor which leads out to some of the  best sport fishing areas in the Pacific- quite picturesque.  Camped with monkeys, toucans and learned to share the outhouse with the bats. Craig also got to carry the flag to the end of the waiting line of vehicles in a road construction site-no radios but the system works.

From here we headed out to the Oso Peninsula- a breathtaking ride along a ridge just wide enough for a road, providing expansive views; on one side the ocean and on the other sweeping mountain/valley vistas. We were forced to abandon the ride when the tarmac turned to gravel since this would have meant many hours at a very slow pace. But we were happy that we saw as much as we did. Another time in a different vehicle would be another story.

And so…we turned our sights north,  still hugging the Pacific. The southwest sector of the country is heavily populated by national parks and forest reserves. As often, by chance, we followed a narrow dirt road, hardly signed, to Playa Pinuelas in the Parque  Marino Ballena. This being a Sunday we expected to worse as far a crowds go but were pleasantly surprised to find only a few folks enjoying the water and the great shaded areas and they all left by dusk leaving us alone with the moon and the monkey. Bought some red snapper from the fisherman on Monday and found that we just were not ready to say goodbye just yet and so stayed another night.

Continuing north, we stuck to the coastal road, this one gravel, covering 20 miles in 2 hours heading to the town of Quepos, gateway to the Parque Manuel Antonio, a favorite for nature loving tourists. We checked out the town which we found nicely funky while watching the boats. Then continued on, landing on a beach just outside of Jaco for the night.

The last few days in Costa Rica we spent in the northwest corner in Santa Rosa National Park before crossing the border back into Nicaragua. Hard to believe this was the same crossing that left us shaking last time; no crowds and quite stressless. Wonderful to be back in the country. Found a new favorite place on the coast and stayed 2 days. It’s a good thing that we do have somewhat of a time constraint and still so much to see because it would be very easy to stop indefinitely in some of these places.

 

 

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.