Sharing Paradise

Steve: After nearly two months of hogging paradise all to ourselves, we thought that out of the goodness of our hearts, we might share a small part of it just for a bit.  So our buddy Ray decided to come down to visit for a week.  We figured we’d hang out at the beach, drink cocktails by the pool, maybe take a hike or two, and show him the town.  What we didn’t figure on was the weather.  It was pouring rain straight for a solid week before Ray came, and so the ocean was saturated with all sorts of washed up crap (both natural and not so) making it no fun at all to swim in, rain or shine.  So that plan was out.  It continued to pour for the first two days Ray was here, so the rest of our plans were thwarted as well.  We didn’t know if the rain would ever clear out and we were feeling pretty guilty about having had Ray pay for that plane ticket and spend those 24 hours traveling, in each direction, just to end up sitting around in our little cabin playing cards for a week.

On the morning of the third day, the sun popped out, so we all decided to git while the getting was good, and we left the house trying to catch a bus to take us to a spot we’d never been to but were told was worth the hike.  We missed the bus.  If that wasn’t symbolic of how Ray’s trip had been thus far, nothing was.  But we could still see the sun, so we weren’t going to quit.  A taxi driver appeared out of nowhere, and from that moment on Ray’s visit was nothing but one grand adventure after another.  Here’s the short version:

That taxi took us to a trailhead from which we hiked down into the jungle and came upon a pretty sweet waterfall.  This catarata was much smaller and less breathtaking than Llanos de Cortez, which I wrote about in my last post, but in some ways it was more fun.  We could jump into the falls and it would push us out and away a good twenty feet before you could say “flotsam”.  We would have played in that pool all day if we weren’t so hungry.  We hiked back up the trail and walked along the main road to a restaurant that is on the same property as the fall and had some lunch.  The pictures below the waterfall shots were taken while sitting at our table in the restaurant.  Pretty sweet view. 

A friendly critter we met on the hike.  He wanted to race, but his "hare-racing" reputation preceded him, so we declined.

J-Dawg: "Hurry up and take the picture, I wanna get wet!"

Ray likes it too!

Sweet view from the restaraunt.

Hey, you can see the falls from here!

We caught the bus back home and then Josh, Ray and I took a bike ride down to the next town south of us called Carrillo, where the beach was supposed to be even better than our own, which is no small feat.  We weren’t disappointed.  None of the crap was in the water from the rain, like at Samara beach.  We had half a mile of pristine sand and clear water all to ourselves.  The waves were perfect. We body surfed wave after wave getting pushed as far as if we had boards.  Best beach experience of my adult life, despite the absolute lack of bikini clad sunbathers.  Absolutely perfect conditions.  Josh learned how to make sandballs that wouldn’t fall apart even if you played catch with them at some distance.  The ocean was just cool enough to be refreshing but not remotely cold in any way.

We went to dinner on Samara beach that night.  I’ve included a shot of us to try to convey the feeling of the place at night.  Still no good sunsets, but that would come later.  I have a separate post in the works dedicated solely to sunsets.

The motley crew with a nice backdrop.

The next day we decided to get even more adventurous, so we rented a car and drove to Barra Honda National Park.  Some cool four-wheelin’ up the mountain and then an incredibly sticky half-hour mud hike later, and we were at the mouth of Terciopelo cavern.  We’ve got a few pics, but it is hard to do justice with a cheap camera to an underground world 70 million years in the making. The kids really liked the absolute blackness of the caves when we turned out all of our headlamps.  I just liked spelunking amongst the stalagmitas y stalactitas.  Cool stuff.  Well worth the trip.

Not sure how useful this map is, but it's pretty cool.

Carol descending into the abyss (about a 60 foot drop).

When the stalactites and the stalagmites meet in the middle they form columns.  Each creeps toward the other at a rate of about 1cm every thousand years.

Been there, spelunked that.

That little bitty speck of light near the top of the photo is the only way out of the cave.

I really hope they don't walk off with those ropes or we could be stuck down here for a while.

Yesterday, we decided to reconstruct the horseback adventure we did a few weeks back only without the horses.  We splashed our way up the raging river in the hopes of getting back to the first waterfall we’d seen in Costa Rica.  There is video of that fall in the “Caballos y Cucarachas” post.  What we hadn’t counted on was a fork in the river.  Two separate rivers converged into one at one point, and none of us had a memory of that spot and we couldn’t tell which route to take.  In the end we took the “wrong” way and continued upstream until we came upon our fourth waterfall of the trip.  It was a bit smaller than the first three to be sure, but mother nature had it set up perfectly for swimming and playing and your basic fooling around.  Another catarata, another perfect spot.  I’ve included a bit of video below showing us enjoying the latest spot.  Costa Rica should be nicknamed the land of a thousand waterfalls.

Nice action shot of Chloe diving into the pool spoiled by my ugly dome emerging from the depths. 

Second Chloe action photo spoiled by the bearded Loch Ness Monster.

Whole family shot.  Yes J-Dawg is in the picture.  Can you spot him?

With Ray here, we ended up going out to eat far more than we usually do, so we got all kinds of yummy food.  Now that he is gone, we will be sad to have to go back to our own cooking and our boring same four or five meals over and over again.  But the restaurants and even the little local “sodas” where people basically feed you at their own homes, were all excellent.  I ordered one seafood paella dish at one of those “sodas” that turned out to be enough to feed a family of four and was out-of-this-world good.  Combine the top notch food with the daily dose of the San Francisco Giants kicking World Series butt and the nights were nearly as memorable as the days.  

In the end we did get in a fair amount of hanging out at the beach, we did drink those cocktails by the pool, we did take those hikes, and we absolutely showed Ray the town.  The best laid plans of mice and men actually can come to fruition sometimes.  Despite the lesson learned in Josh's last post.  But all good fun, planned or not, must come to an end.  And Ray quietly walked out our door at 4:00 this morning to catch a bus back to the airport.  The kids were really bummed to see him go.  The grown-ups too.  We now have only two weeks left in our home away from home, and then the traveling really begins!

And now, if you've been good and actually read the blog instead of just skipping to look at the pictures, you may treat yourself to a short video of us romping in the water:  (remember, as I pointed out before, i-devices and e-mails don't include the videos).