2021 September - Day 03 - Costa Rica - Another crazy drive and Playa Carchal.

 Day 3 already and what an adventure so far.  We’ve done a lot in 48 hours here.  This morning was a bit more lazy.  We both slept pretty well.  The bed was comfy and the room cool.  Breakfast at Camino Verde was really good.  Lots of choices.   But we both opted for #3….Eggs (scrambled), Pancakes, Bacon and a fruit plate.  We also had unlimited orange juice.  Very good it was.

After eating we jumped in the car to head north to a beach I had researched on for good snorkeling.  Playa Conchal is its name.  The hotel I chose is called Conchal Hotel and the reviews were pretty good.  Anyway, the drive was to take 3 hours to go about 90 miles.  The drive started pretty good, on good roads.  However, the drive deteriorated as we wound through the mountains and eventually down to the valley.  It took about a1.5 hours to get off the mountain driving sometimes on pot hole laced, very narrow, very windy, in the clouds, roads.  I am so glad I chose not to do ANY driving here at night, especially in the Monteverde area.  But, the views while driving, were absolutely amazing coming down from Santa Elena in Monteverde.  Just so green and lush.  And I’m always amazed at the homes of made basic materials all through out the hills…so remote.  I wonder how they survive on so little and so far away.  But they do and they are happy.  They wave happily as we drive by.  

Once we were off the mountain and on to some better, straighter roads, I decided to get some gasoline.  We pulled into a station on as we turned off highway 1 on to highway 18 and a fellow immediately came over to pump our gas.    After getting it started, he pulled out a hose and hosed my windshield off followed by a soap spray.  He then scrubbed the window and squeegee’d it off.  It never looked so good.  It was nice to have someone pump your gas.  I remember when they use to do that at places in the USA.

The remaining drive was on better roads for the middle part.  But toward the end, we did take some back roads until we got to another main road that took us to our hotel.  We arrived around 12:45 PM…a little early.  Now, these ‘hotels’ are roadside type places.  And sometimes it is hard to see the name and it is easy to pass by them.  This one, we caught the name but initially wondered what we had purchased.  You feel like you are in the middle of nowhere.  And the funny thing…I had yet to see the darn beach!  Anyway, the beach could be seen about 100 yards down the road and the ‘hotel’ is kind of like a little paradise with rooms that surround a pool with lush plants and trees all around.  On the 2nd floor is a restaurant and bar that happens be closed today.  The owner who checked us in gave us the low down on the area we were in and how to get to Playa Conchal.  Playa Brasilito was what we could see down the road.  To get to Playa Conchal…well it was a 15 or more walk from our hotel.  You enter at Playa Brasilito and then turn south for most of the walk to get to Playa Conchal…which was a much prettier beach than Brasilito.  You can’t get easily to Conchal due to a Westin Resort that occupies the frontage to most of Playa Conchal.  Anyway….not like Pismo Beach with the beach out our back door…that’s for sure.

Once we were in our room, we changed into beach clothes and headed out on our walk to Playa Conchal.  I had all my snorkel gear as I had read on a few blogs that this beach had some really good snorkeling.  Well…what a let down that was.  Indeed the beach is a beautiful one that starts out with a beach of crunched up sea shells and ends in nice white sand.  But the snorkeling around the coral rocks…horrible.  Never tried to snorkel in a place with such poor visibility.  I tried it for a bit but I could barely see my hand in front of my face due to the sand being swirled up by the surf.  So…my snorkeling is all but over here I suppose.  We did spend an hour or two there swimming in the surf and laying on the beach under a very nice tree.  But we had to keep an eye on storm that seemed to be moving in as at one point we had to cross a river inlet that was flowing into the ocean.  And the hotel owner warned us that this would swell if a rainstorm kicked up and could be difficult to cross.  So…we opted to get out of there.

On the way back we stopped at a ‘Soda’…which is a food place\stand to get a ‘snack’.  We shared a very chewy fish and chip plate.  The fish was fried and a bit chewy…which was odd.  Who knows what type of crazy fish it was.  Nonetheless…it hit the spot to get us to dinner later.  We ended up back at our room around 4 PM’ish and decided to just swim in the pool and hand out there for awhile.  It was quite relaxing and felt good.

Around 6 PM, we took our hotel owners advice and walked maybe 75 yards down the road to an Indian food restaurant.  Holy smokes…that food was amazing!  It was called Masala’s if I remember right.  Man, we hummed as we ate a beef curry dish along with butter chicken, lemon rice with garlic naan.  We were both licking our fingers it was so darn good.  It was worth the flight to Costa Rica to eat such good Indian food.

Well, it is time to retire.  Tomorrow is going to be a lazy beach hopping day.  We will probably drive up the coast and check out some beaches along the way.  Looking forward to report on tomorrow’s blog how that turned out.

Some pictures:

This picture shows what much of the road look like coming off of Monteverde.  You can’t go too fast with such pot holes looming everywhere.  It was another crazy drive.

This was our stop at the ‘Soda’…the mom and pop food stop as we walked back from the beach to out room.

Playa Conchal beach looking to the north.  Behind us is where I tried to snorkel.  But it was a sad experience unfortunately.

We had visitors at our table at the Soda.  They were pretty skinny so Denise secretly fed some of her fish to them.  George’s cousin (black and white cat) was a hog and did not share well with the other one.  Just like George!

That’s not a whale out there.  That’s me heading over to the rocks to see if the water cleared up at all.

Playa Conchal looking to the south from under the tree where we were hanging out.  Pretty picturesque it was.

Did I tell you that this Indian food was really good.  One more time…it was really good.  Going counter clockwise….Lemon Rice, Butter Chicken, Beef Curry, and Garlic Butter Naan.  How are those Indian’s so darn skinny!

Great picture that showed the clouds we were in and the blue skies we eventually saw.

A beach made up of crunched sea shells.  Interesting….

We ate under this for dinner tonight at Masala’s…..

To get to Playa Conchal from Playa Brasilito, we had to go over this little rise between the beaches.  There  we were greeted by people wanting to rent us seats and beach covers…which we turned down.

Relaxing at the pool at our hotel.  Really nice.

Walking home from dinner.

This is where the river water flowed into the ocean.  The current was pretty strong.  Glad we got out of there as it did eventually rain a bit.  It rains almost every day here during this season.

The court yard and pool at our hotel.  Our room is in the far corner by the far corner of the pool.

Another driving shot of driving in the clouds.

2021 September - Day 02 - Costa Rica - Monteverde Zip Lining & Night Walk

 I’m back…day 2 of our Costa Rica trip.  We were rested well at our Costa Del Sol hotel by the port of Calderas.   We had one problem with the toilet in that it clogged quickly.  We had to wait until the morning to request a plunger.  And with all my plumbing experience, I was able to free the ‘caca’ blockage.  Breakfast seems to be always a part of the deal.  So we ate in the same restaurant found under our room that we did last night.  We had a choice of a few things.  But in the end we had huevos ( fried or scrambled eggs), fresh fruit, jugo de naranja and I had some rice and beans prepared the Costa Rican way.  It was a good breakfast.

We left the hotel around 9 AM heading to the Monteverde area and the cloud forest.  The drive, even on their ‘big highway 1’ was single lanes, quite a few pot holes and so on.  But when we left highway 1 on to road 606, it became amazing…amazingly curvy, quite a bit more potholes and a pretty good climb up the mountain.  But it was extremely beautiful.  It took us about 1.5 hours to arrive at our BnB here.  So we showed up early.  They were really kind about it.  I began to ask the guy about getting to Selvatura Park to do some Zip Lining.  He said they would pick us up and that one of the tours was at 10:30 AM…which time it was.  And I kid you not, but the bus was just passing our BnB while the front desk guy was talking to him.  So I ran got Denise, moved the car, emptied the car giving our bags to the front desk young to store and then boarded the bus praying our stuff would be there when we returned.  But off we went on a 20 minute non-paved ride up higher into the mountains to fly over the jungle canopy.  Because I boarded the bus so quickly, I forgot to grab my mask.  But fortunately,  a couple from Palestine\Israel had a mask that had not been used.  So he gave it to me.

Zip Lining…not necessarily my cup of tea.   Heights are tough for me.  But it is odd.  I get more scared on the platforms than being hung from a cable zooming over a forest.  Who knows why.  The experience was pretty amazing.  I think they had 13 platforms that we launched from.  Some were short…others really long.  It took 2.5 hours to do it mostly because we were with about another 10 people from many locations in the world.  Naturally I tried to talk to most to learn about them and where they were from.  That is always fun to do.  By the time we were done, we were pretty wet from sweat.  We did a good amount of hiking up the mountains at some points.  We aren’t the best hikers with great stamina.  But we did going our own pace.  I think the oldest other person there was probably only 30 years old.  But we held our own.  We did purchase the picture package which should be online fairly soon.  We will share if anyone wants to see the pictures.  Maybe I’ll download a few for here.  Oh…and on one of the last platforms they had a Tarzan swing.  Denise sucked it up and did and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I weighed to much…would have snapped the rope!  Anyway…a ton of fun at Selvatura Park.

Our BnB is called the Camino Verde.  It sits on the edge of the mountain with a panoramic view from the dining area of the mountains and valley.  The Front Desk said that you can see the Pacific Ocean on a clear day.  But…they don’t call this the Cloud Forest for nothing.  As I write this, I feel like I’m doing it in a cloud.  The town is engulfed in a cloud…foggy, misty…loving it much.  Our room is not one with a view….bummer.  Can’t luck out twice.   But what do you expect for $60.  It is pretty darn nice for that price.  It is much smaller than last nights room.  But it is still very comfortable.  Santa Elena is very hilly.  The center is only a 5 minute walk which we made to find a late lunch\early dinner.  We were told to go to one of the ‘Sodas’ … which are mom and pop places where food is made and sold.  We followed our Front Desk’s recommendation…but upon getting there…we were told they were closed and would open tomorrow.  Pretty odd it was.  Anyway, we reversed course and headed toward town and ended up at Taco, Taco.  Yep…Mexican food.  Pretty good though.  We’ll find some native Costa Rican food soon enough.  After enjoying the meal, we went to the Super Market to buy some travel snacks for tomorrow and more bottled water.  We then walked back to the BnB to rest before we do our next adventure…a Night Walk.  I’ve read and heard these are a lot of fun.  So more to come on that…along with pictures.

We just returned from the Night Walk.   It was interesting…walking in the dark with really small flashlights, stomping in the mud and water, hoping the lightening and thunder did not turn into a massive rainstorm like last night, looking for insects, animals…anything that moved.  We saw some nice stuff, Tarantula, Toucan, distinct frogs, spiders, centipedes, scorpions, etcetera.  But the hope of the tour…a Sloth…was no where to be seen.  And fortunately we did not see a Puma.  All in all the 2 hour walk up and down the side of a mountain was a fun unique experience.  We were with 2 other couples.  One couple was from Israel although the young girl was from Jersey.  The other couple was a pair of ladies from Switzerland.  We did have a nice discussion with a fellow doing a solo trip down here who lives in Montreal.  But his parents are from El Salvador so he spoke really good Spanish.  He had never done a solo trip like this before.  Interesting.  

Well, we are pooped (caca’d).  We are learning that we are not supposed to put toilet paper down the toilets in Costa Rica.  Now we know what happened last night….it wasn’t the caca.   Until tomorrow.

Pictures:

Our elevator in our first hotel.  It was quite unique.

My Tarzan wife.  Well she has too much clothing on to be Jane.  But she did have a lot of fun doing this swing.  At first she hesitated. But then her Lagoon mentality go to her and she braved it and loved it.

Denise getting worried as the prepare to put the harness equipment on us.

The drives here look like this always.  So lush and green.  I’m not sure when this was taken but I assume it was on our drive up to Santa Elena where we are staying at tonight.  Yes…looking closer it is.  The following pictures show the same road too.

This is what the Google Map had for our drive to Monteverde.  I don’t think you can go over 35 MPH. 

Enjoying breakfast this morning at our hotel and restaurant.

Lush and beautiful.  It is pretty amazing country here.

Denise getting ready to launch.  She did not scream like some of the girls did.  The last line was the longest and we did it together.  But some paid extra to do it Superman style (on their bellies).  A few of the  girls had a hard time pushing off they were so scared in being a Superwoman!

More views of the country side….

This was our first hotel looking back at it as we left the area.  On the other side of our car was the Pacific Ocean.

Happy Zip Liners….at least one was!

Some pictures of bugs and things from our night hike.  The first one is a cool spider and its web.

The guide new where this guy lived…a Tarantula.  He put a long stick into his home and eventually he came out chasing it.  It was fun to see.

A nice centipede and all its legs.  The guide gave great details about all these insects, animals and such.  That was fun to listen on all that.

One of the many small frogs we found along the way.  We did see one frog who was transparent.  You can see into its body and see its organs.  This is not that frog.  Not sure the name of this one.  Anyway…it was an interesting experience.

2021 September - Day 01 - Costa Rica - San Jose - Rainy Travel Day.

 Hey everyone…it is been a long time since we’ve travelled internationally.  But we finally made it to Costa Rica after a first failed attempt about a month ago in August.  Our trip down here from SLC took us through Houston.  Our connection time was only 50 minutes.  So thank goodness, flights were all on time even arriving early.  We landed in San Jose around 2:30 PM…which is in the same time zone as Utah.  Getting through customs was fairly easy.  We only needed their Health Passport completed and ready to show along with our passport.  In these Covid times, Costa Rica is only requiring proof of vaccination for the Covid virus.  So pretty easy.  After getting out of customs, we looked for the Adobe Rental car van.  We found a fellow holding a sign and a few of us go in a van and made a crazy drive away from the airport to where most car rentals were found.  It took almost an hour to get the car and we ended up being forced to pay almost $200 for insurances on the car.  Liability is required by law in this country.  But for car coverage, they would not accept the insurance that the credit card offered unless the credit card company had written a letter stating that they would be an insurance carrier….which I did not do or realize I had to do.  I was pretty ticked at them saying that I’ve never seen this requirement in most of the world in which I’ve traveled.  They just listened to me rant in their nice way.  It was all good in the end.  

I’ve been a bit anxious about driving down here.  I have had visions of Mexico…which causes sleepless nights.  And yes, the driving in San Jose was a big congested.  But not too bad.  We used our cell phone to navigate us through but I made a mistake and left the ‘No Toll’ option on my phone and as a result we started down a crazy, windy (highway 3) toward our hotel.  I wondered why we were not taking Highway 1, the main freeway through this country that would get us to this place quicker.  It then dawned on me that I had this option on.  Well, once we turned it off, it took us to another, toll based, highway that knocked about 15 minutes off our drive.  But the rain…oh my…it is definitely the rainy season down here.  We went through some real down pours to get to Puerto Calderas and the Casa del Sol hotel that we are staying in.

The hotel sits right on an inlet from the sea.  It is a small port.  Our room has an ocean view with a nice little balcony.  The people have been so nice.  The hotel has a fancy restaurant that we chose to eat at.  Pretty pricey however.  Denise did not want to walk down to the other restaurant where the locals seemed to be eating due to darkness.  It was dark down here by 6 PM.  I’m glad I did not try to drive to Monteverdi area…like I had planned…as it was another 2 hours of driving.  We will head that way tomorrow early.

Lastly, our food was really good.  Denise had surf and turf on a skewer.  I had their seafood platter.  It was all yummy.  

We are tired and going to turn in a bit early.  We have begun another trip in a new country and are excited to come to know Costa Rica a little bit.

Some pictures:

Our room with an ocean view balcony.  Pretty nice for $80.

This little area is just outside our room door for sitting and just relaxing.  It is kind of humid, but cooler than we anticipated.  We’ll see how the morning is.

When I travel to other countries, I’m always amazed at the wires that are above ground.  We’ve seen some amazing sites in this regard.  Not too bad here as we left San Jose.

Yum…lots of butter, garlic and seafood.  Pretty good.

An example on what I saw driving as we headed to the pacific coast.  It rained hard most of the way there…about 1.5 hours.  But once on the coast here, it has not been too bad.

Having a wonderful dinner with my beautiful wife.  What a great travel companion she really is.  I know I’m not easy especially in stressful situations.  But she is such a great calming and reassuring voice as things come up.  We do well together mostly because of her.

You can see the restaurant.  Actually, our room is above this place out by the water.  The waiters…well everyone…has been really nice and accommodating.

Another picture of our small, clean room.  Tomorrow we get a breakfast as a part of our room deal.  I hear it is pretty good.  Good way to start our journey to Monteverde area and possibly some zip lining and hanging bridges.  We’ll see!

2021 - South Carolina - Day 06 - Charleston City Tour

 Today was the day of seeing as much of Charleston as possible in about 8 hours.  Fortunately yesterday we had booked a horse drawn carriage ride and a Charleston Harbor boat tour.  They were both really fun, really informative and quite tiring.  Tiring because we did a bit of walking and the temperature was a bit higher and the air a bit muggier.  

We grabbed our brown bag ‘to go’ breakfast bags for breakfast.  Yum.  We didn’t even meet up with Kim and Ilene to do that.  They are always kind of interesting what you get in those bags.  But it did feel the ‘hole’ for a few hours.  At about 9:30 AM, we drove back into the same ‘Market Street’ area.  The first item was finding a garage where we would not be gouged too bad.  We found a public garage that charged a $1 every half hour with a max of $18. We ended up spending #17,  So we were there for 8.5 hours touring the city.  Last night, when we were in this area, the open air market was closed already.  But this morning, wide open with lots of people walking through and looking at all the goods.  We had some time to kill until our horse and carriage ride, so we too walked through the market.  It is never anything I enjoy doing.  But Ilene and Denise both purchased some fans knowing the day was going to be a bit sunny and warm...which it was.

At 11 AM, we boarded a carriage and set out to tour the downtown area of the city and its historical sites.  Our guide was a gal who was really well informed, kind and had a great singing voice.  At one point, she shared a black spiritual song...wish I could remember the name.  But my golly, she had such a nice voice.  We really enjoyed that.  We saw lots of really old buildings....1600’s, 1700’s and 1800’s.   We went down to the battery where cannons are still shown.  We went to Rainbow Row where the multi story homes are painted in many colors.  I guess this was an abandoned area a few hundred years ago...but then purchased and turned into brothels for a bit.  They had an interesting past.  The funny part was in front of the famous row of colorfully painted were two city, large, dumpsters.  They really added to all the pictures that people wanted to take.  For this reason, later in the afternoon, we walked all the way back there to see if we could get better pictures.  Not sure we did though.  The carriage ride was awesome.  It is something that Denise and I had never done before through the city streets of a historical city like Charleston.

Once the carriage ride was over, we have about 1.5 hours to get to the Charleston Maritime Center to get on the boat for the harbor tour.  It took us about 15 minutes to get there.  Once we arrived, we realized we had 45 minutes before we start boarding and all were growing hungry so we set out to go find some food.  We ended up walking another 15 minutes to  East Bay Street Deli.  We stopped a gal on the street and asked about food and she pointed us to this.  It turned out to be a pretty good place for fresh sandwiches and salads.  Once we got our food and inhaled it down, we quickly headed back to the Maritime Center just in time to get in line and immediately board the boat.  The harbor cruise was about 1.5 hours long with the captain giving great details about the going on in the harbor over time and currently.  I’m always amazed at the homes that sit on the shores of the islands and the mainland.  I guess it is a fantasy that most can only have to have such a place to come to.  They look so beautiful, appealing and fun looking.  One thing of interest is that yesterday, they opened up a new shipping yard.  This yard can accommodate the largest shipping vessels, ones that can carry 12,000 shipping containers.  12,000!!!  That is crazy.  How those boats stay afloat.

After the boat ride, we decide to walk back to the Rainbow Row of houses to try and get better pictures.  It was about a mile walk...not too bad.  We tried to get better pictures....not sure that we did.  While there, Travis began his defense of his Master Degree paper.  Denise tuned in to listen to Travis speak in statistical gibberish.  Fortunately, his advisors and professors approved his work.  So he his now a full accredited Master Degree recipient.  Proud of him.  Lots of hard work.  I hope it helps his career over the years to come.  This defense took a while.  So about half way through, we began walking to the restaurant that we wanted to eat at for dinner.  It is called Hyman’s Seafood and appears to be one of the favorites in the downtown area.  The food turned out to be very good.  But the portions were smaller than what we’ve been having with the prices being up there a bit due to being downtown.  All and all, a great experience.  One note...looking at our waitress...I thought we were at Hooters.  She was pretty scantily dressed with a low cut tank top and really short shorts.  We just scratched our heads and wondered why she got away with this.

Since dinner did not fill us like we thought it would, we knew the Ice Cream shop to fix that.  So off we went to the same Ice Cream shop we went to yesterday.  It was just as good as last night.

I am now writing this in our room.  We had decided that our best stand by hope to get home tomorrow was the flight at 7 AM.  We had asked Kim if he would get up to take us to the airport around 5:30 AM.  He said he would.  But that caused Kim and Ilene to wonder if they could switch their 4 PM flight to that one.  Well, they never had time to pursue it.  But while we were walking around, they got a text from United saying that their flight was really full and if they wanted to switch to another flight.  So they did!  So we are all going to be on the same flight headed home early tomorrow.  And, thank you Kim, for agreeing to take us even though that is now not needed.  We will be going together...yay!

Trip is almost over.  It will be a memorable one.  We covered the South Carolina coast and history pretty good.  It is a great place to visit.  Our beautiful earth has so many great places to see and visit and some are right here in our own backyard in the USA!

Some pictures:

I can’t remember the name of this iconic bridge, but it is a beautiful bridge.  We went under it and sounded the horn and it echoed for a good 5 seconds after the horn quit.  Pretty cool.

Houses on the Rainbow Row of houses....

A US aircraft carrier docked in the harbor.  There actually was an old submarine and a battleship moored here too.  I think you can go out to Patriot Island and tour them.

One of the projects in the harbor going on is to dredge it down to 50+ feet.  I think it is currently 45 feet deep.  But they intend to make it be the deepest harbor in the USA.

Happy boaters...

Horse mates....we all loved our ride from this nice horse.

Waterside....waiting for our harbor cruise.

Fort Sumter...where the civil war began.

Denise and our carriage driver.  She was so good.  We used the Palmetto Carriage Company.

At dinner, all the tables had names of famous people whom had dined at the given table.  We sat where Billy Joel, and a few others had dined.

One of the beautiful churches in Charleston....

Taking a break between our walks swinging in a nice swing near a park.

More pictures of some of the Rainbow Row houses....

The outdoor markets on Market Street in downtown Charleston.  Part of it is enclosed.  Other parts are indeed open air.  All kinds of things are sold except produce and food.

Wind blown ladies....Ilene and Denise.

Loved the names of their streets and signs....

Travis defending his master thesis to his advisors.  He dis really well.  I could tell they really liked ‘Trav’...as they called him.  Proud of you Travis!

Carriage mates.  Pretty tight quarters.  I think Ilene and Denise were almost wedged outside of the cart.  It was pretty tight.

Cruising the harbor....

They have some of the best trees in South Carolina.  Old oak trees.  This place, they decided to try and build around the tree as you can see by the picture.

Denise walking and listening to Travis defend his paper.  But Charleston is full of streets like this...cobble stone, narrow and quaint.

More of the market on Market Street....

This is the break room for the horses that pulled the carriages.  The horses are treated really well by their employers.

The cool part of most of these homes is the patios that are built off of them.  The story goes that in the summer, everyone slept outside on them because of the sea breezes that would come each evening and during the day.  The looked pretty neat on these extremely large homes.

Fantastic trip....now we head back to our castles in Utah.