Late Like a Debate

It has been several weeks since my last confession...

On the weekend of the 9-10th Brian and I drove to the Pacific beach community of Quepos and stayed at a resort called the Parador for our belated Christmas present to each other.

The drive there was easy. I actually drove. The hotel was in an area that neither one of us knew. It was off the main road and then up, up, up and out toward the Pacific. The roads were so steep I had to put the Subaru in super low gear to make it up some of them. You don't want to roll backward.

The hotel was better than I imagined. It was designed to look old and Spanish, though it was built in the mid 90's by a Dutch family. Brian and I joked that there was buried treasure on the grounds and the owners are systematically searching for it while they run the hotel as a cover. I think that idea was brought on by the grounds which were tropical rain forest leading to cliffs that led to a rocky cove.
The hotel had its own nature trail.
We decided to do the nature hike early in the morning and were drenched in sweat by 10 am. The nature trail was a lot larger than we thought it was going to be judging by the maps. It had several spurs that took off through the jungle going who knows where, but for the most part we tried to stay on the main trail. We winded through the forest gaining and losing elevation, passing small creeks and every once in a while smelling monkeys or sloths. They have a distinctive smell, kind of musky. We made one diversion following a trail marked ocean view because by then we were hearing the crashing waves, but could not get a glimpse of the water. We followed the trail and it opened up upon giant black volcanic rocks right at the shore. We explored  the rocks avoiding the spray and dodging crabs. We climbed on a tree that was growing sideways out of the rocks toward the ocean, it was a nice place to sit and rest before we started the trek back up hill to the resort.

 

After the walk we had breakfast and headed to the beach. We hitched a ride on a fancy golf cart down the hill to the entrance to the walk to a public beach area. Our driver spotted a monkey and that always means there are more so we stopped the cart. We took some pictures but due to the photographer only a few came out. These are what came out.

We started the walk down the trail to the beach.

We passed a shanty that was practically at the waters edge that was still being lived in. They had a perro bravo (direct translation= mad dog), roosters and other edible birds. As we got closer to the sand we saw a large covered pot steaming over an open flame and made guesses as to what might be in it.
We wanted to take a photo but were wary we might offend the people.
We arrived on a very Gilligan's Island beach.

The weather was uncooperative in that it clouded up as we approached the beach. We walked up the beach, climbed over rocks and encountered more beach and more rocks. We decided to turn around and head back up the hill to the resort and as we did the sun came out! We rinsed off in the out door shower and hit the pool.

The resort gave us a late check out so we were able to enjoy the pool area for a few hours before we had to get packed up and get on the road. On the way out of town we stopped at the Aeroplane to have lunch.

Here's a shot from the front of the plane.

Well, that's pretty much it! We drove home. Oh, there is one thing... the traffic was congested on the way home, so the authorities closed the road with traffic going to Quepos from San Jose. All the traffic going to San Jose could use both sides of the freeway all the way back home. Pretty wild driving on the wrong side of the freeway, but effective.