Costa Rica: Driving tests, Playa Flamingo, Cheese tour, Sea turtle

I am currently lounging in what is becoming my favorite hangout…the Houston airport. Bleh. By some cruel twist of fate and lack of funds to have bought a better ticket, I am in the middle of a nine hour layover before my flight to Buenos Aires tonight. What a perfect time to catch you all up on the rest of Costa Rica! Get ready for a really long email J

Last time I wrote, my two friends and I had just finished the amazing canopy tour in Monteverde (green mountain) and I had enough adrenaline pumping through my body to easily burn several of the snickers I had consumed in the past few days…or so I told myself. After the tour, we drove back down the crater infested roads to enjoy luke warm showers and change into fresh clothes. We called our important people using skype and wandered around town for a bit, which doesn’t take long because the whole town is about one city block. We saw some pretty jewelry made from various seeds, including watermelon seeds and just talked for a long time. We had dinner at a restaurant that was decorated with all sorts of butterfly things and drooled over our server. There really is no shortage of gorgeous Costa Rican men.

We woke up bright and early to get the car packed up before our cheese tour. For three people who love, love, love cheese, we were anticipating this tour with the same excitement of Christmas morning. We had breakfast once more at the restaurant next to our hostel, Los Amigos, and said a tearful good bye to the best banana pancakes on the planet. Maybe the cute old lady wants to come with us to be our cook? Unfortunately we would have to make the tough decision between our luggage and the cook…the luggage barely won, but only because I don’t want to limit myself to a single pair of underwear for the next week and a half.

We loaded our luggage into the car, a system that is already perfected; my duffle first on the folded down seat with the two backpacks on top, the two rolling suitcases facing in (keeps them from clobbering you when you open the door later), laundry bag in the middle, food in the nooks. We stopped at a bank and I tried an ATM once more and my some miracle, this bank liked my card and gave me some cash. The sound of the cash whirring out of the maching was music to my ears, although my happy screeches to those around me probably were not. We drove through the town to the cheese tour and got a private tour of the factory. It was founded by Quakers in 1953 who had left the US to object to all of the war and such…they had some yummy, yummy cheese and we plowed through all of the samples like the good Americans we are. We also tried caramel candy and coffee ice-cream.

Next stop, Playa Flamingo and Basilito, in the Northwest corner of the country. We picked playa (which means beach) Flamingo because the sand is supposed to be pink and my sister loves flamingos…pretty much as good as any reason when there are a bazillion beaches to choose from. The morning started out sunny and beautiful and instantly turned into rain as soon as we were driving. Seven billion pot holes later, we arrive at playa flamingo and it turns out they’re big fat liars and the sand is just tan, but it was beautiful none the less. We stayed in a hostel very close to the beach, enjoyed more food to the sounds of the ocean on picnic furniture at several local places and played about a billion hands of gin rummy. Very chill and relaxing. During our first afternoon of swimming, I took out my contacts and Adam took off his glasses thinking it would be better for our eyes when being crashed into by the waves and saltwater. Since Ashley was the only one of us who could see, Adam and I kept pestering her to look at the beach; Adam wanted to know if anyone was bothering our stuff laying on the beach and I wanted to know if the guys walking on the beach were cute. Obviously our priorities are different. It actually started to rain while we were swimming, but the sun was still out, more or less, and the rain was warm. It was just a different experience to swim in the rain that we enjoyed ourselves.

Each day of this trip manages to bring some large test of my skills as a driver and these days were no different. On our first pass through playa flamingo, we went up through some of the condos on winding and skinny roads that have a very sharp drop to the ocean below. Naturally, there are no guardrails to protect poor drivers from plummeting to their deaths. We were approaching what appeared to be the end of the road and were carefully inspecting houses we couldn’t expect to enter even as the cleaning crew when I suggested we turn around just before a bend in the road to make sure we didn’t get stuck. Ashley and Adam, using their X-ray vision super powers, assured me that we could turn around at the end of the road and that we didn’t want to miss out on whatever adventure lay around this last turn. Totally submitting to peer pressure, I press on and turn around the corner. Bad words, times ten. We have reached a locked gate at the end of a steep hill with a wall on one side and a plummet to death on the other. More bad words. I guess it didn’t cross my mind to back out, that seemed more dangerous at the time. In my state of terror, I decided to turn around. I put on the super powered four wheel drive and proceeded to turn around, taking about a 72 passes, feeling way too close to the cliff the entire time. May I remind you that this is a stick shift car with the ability to roll? After successfully turning around and making it back up the hill of death, I made them promise to buy me a beer and to let me make all further driving decisions. Humph.

Next beach was Playa Ostional, and teensy town with not much of anything but is famous for being a place where giant sea turtles lay eggs. The beach is also famous for its black volcanic sand. Of course the road provided some more tests; today it was crossing several rivers/creeks in the car. Thanks the lord for our super car with four wheel drive. I approach the river with caution, Agent Ashley pops our of the car to survey the scene. She walks back to the car and says that the river instantly gets super deep and we cannot cross. I guy pops out of a little shack thing on the other side of the river and waves us across. I asked if we were going to die, and he just motions us across again, pointing to a specific route that is more shallow. I take in a deep breath, put the car in super four wheel drive and creep across. The water is splashing around the wheels and I begin to screech as we get closer to the other side. The guide on the bank doesn’t even crack a smile; he must be used to dumb tourists. We did in fact live, and were feeling pretty proud of our super jungle skills only to see a guy on a motorcycle go across the river. A teeny motorcycle. He didn’t die either, nor did he scream going across. Oh humility.

I was happy to see that the guide book wasn’t lying about the sand here; very black indeed. We took a long walk down the beach, accompanied by several local dogs eager to make our friendship. They were also interested in digging up turtle eggs. Yuck. Other companions on the beach included these freaky black birds that looked like the vulture birds in Alice in Wonderland. Super creepy. I captured Ashley on video walking towards the birds to try to scare them but running away when they flew in her direction. She didn’t know I was filming, and said she would have acted more brave had she known. I took a nap on a hammock and read the end of another John Grisham book and we played more cards on a cute picnic table.

That night Adam and I went on a turtle walk after dark to try to see turtles laying eggs. The beach was lit by a small sliver of moon and the sounds of the ocean waves were soothing in the cool night air. It was so tranquil. We walked with our guide for a while and talked about turtles, the town, and searched for turtles. We didn’t end up seeing a turtle laying eggs, but we did see an old lady turtle who had popped onto the beach. She was really big and beautiful and it was so incredible to see this animal up close. They can live to be 100 years old.

The road we were planning on taking was not possible because of a river even our super SUV, now named Zora (Fox) couldn’t handle. We’re backtracking across the smaller river to Montezuma!