Well, we left Cafe Playa Negra and the good people there and headed south and east towards Santa Cruz, one of the largest towns in the Nicoya Peninsula, for groceries and then on to our destination of Playa Hermosa on the central Pacific coast. I left with mixed feelings. I'm always excited about going back to Playa Hermosa, where I've had so many good waves, but I felt disappointed that we didn't explore Nicoya further south to Camoranal, Mal Pais, or Santa Teresa. Of course, that leaves those places for my next trip.
I see it as a sign of how limited development is thus far in Playa Negra and Nosara that we were excited to find a "Mega-Super" and a bank in Santa Cruz. The "Mega-Super" was neither mega nor super by U.S. standards, but it was a lot bigger than anything we'd seen on the whole trip and I was able to stock up on such hard-to-find items as fruit and nuts and suntan lotion and get good prices on cereal, peanut butter, and jam.
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| Evergreen and Deciduous Trees Together |
To leave Los Pargos, the little town near Playa Negra, we headed south to a slightly bigger town called Paraiso. It's not big by any means but it has a central soccer field surrounded by a few bars and restaurants and there's a half-stocked grocery store. From there we drove east from Paraiso (on a paved road, our first of the trip!) towards Santa Cruz and Costa Rica's main north-south highway. We passed through cattle and horse fields that lie draped over and in between streams and rolling hills. At this time of year these hills are covered in a mix of naked deciduous trees and the vibrant color of scattered evergreens. For many of these first few miles there was a bike lane and it was good to see so many locals using it on a Sunday morning. In a country that is both mountainous and less-developed, it's rare to see a bicycle path.
Eventually we came to the large Puente La Amistad de Taiwan, a bridge that spans the lower Tempisque River where it enters the Gulf of Nicoya. It's a long bridge and the muddy water it crosses feels more like the Gulf of Nicoya than a river. It's clearly tidal, as we could see large sandbars exposed by the dropping tide. The bridge was designed and paid for by Taiwan in 2003 as part of their efforts to collect allies and secure their status as an independent state. Before the bridge, there were ferries or a long overland route around the upper Gulf to get to the Nicoya Peninsula. This longer route is how Dan Gunter and I visited the area via bus in the mid-nineties. Interesting, Wikipedia tells me that, "e
ver since former Costa Rican President Óscar Arias cut off relations with Taiwan in favour of China, the bridge has been known colloquially as Puente de la Apuñalada (Back stab Bridge)." Ha! That's funny. China is more important to trade and investment in Costa Rica than Taiwan, apparently. Plus, they've already got the bridge. Go figure.
Turning south on the Pan American Highway in our rattling rental Suzuki Grand Vitara (not so grand, after all), we entered the rolling foothills of the central mountains. Unfortunately this meant that every time we came to an uphill grade some old truck would come nearly to a stop as it downshifted repeatedly and traffic would literally come to a standstill for minutes at a time. There was no way to pass around on the two lane highway because of the barreling oncoming downhill traffic. Eventually we made it to Puntarenas, a slightly dingy port city, where we promptly got lost and confused and missed our turns not once, not twice, but three times!. One of these badly marked exits required a right turn of 160 degrees. Now that's a serious right turn. Eventually we got on the right track and headed south into the province of Puntarenas.
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| Hotel Tortuga Del Mar |
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| Our Beach Porch |
As we headed south the air took on an increasingly thick humidity and vegetation became noticeably denser and greener. By the time we reached the Rio Tarcoloes and Playa Herradura, just north of Playa Hermosa, clouds had built into obvious thunderheads over the mountains. While Catalina hiked out on the bridge over the Rio Tarcoles to see the fat crocodiles that live under the bridge, the sky opened up with a real rainstorm and we were treated to a display lighting and thunder. Having never been here in the dry season (December to April), I was once again struck by the differences in humidity from what I'd expected and from north to south in the country. The added humidity in Playa Hermosa makes the air feel much heavy and hot, more like the summer months, when I choose to hide inside air-conditioned hotel rooms during the midday hours. I'm now even more amazed by the pleasant conditions we found in the Nicoya Peninsula. That will definitely be my winter and springtime destination in the future, especially since the surf here in Hermosa is so dependent on the south swells that are most common and more powerful between May and August.
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| Sydney's Coconut |
So, about the surf. It's as small now as I've ever seen it in Playa Hermosa. It's really nothing like the monstrous surf I remember from summers passed, but there are a few hours every day when the waves are at least shoulder high. I went swimming in the warm little peelers rolling in this morning and Catalina and I go for an ocean swim each day. As I said, there's been small, waist to shoulder high surf these last three days but it's very sensitive to tide and the wind has been bad for the surf except in the early mornings and just before sunset. Of course the waning of the surf is a good thing for me at the moment because until recently I've found it nearly impossible to resist surfing for hours each day and my body continues to suffer. As a result, my neck, back, shin, and forearm muscles have contracted and stiffened and I suffer from constant muscle pain. Three big 500mg aspirin pills a day help, of course. Thus, I've managed to resist completely for a three days now. What's more, I'm in the early stages of a nasty case of surfer's elbow (why should tennis players get all the credit?). This has been a recurrent problem for me for the last year or so and is only improved by complete rest. I doubt three weeks of constant duck diving and paddling and popping up was what the doctor ordered. It hurts much less today than yesterday, but I'll probably need to buy a brace when I get home and try to protect it for awhile.
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| Nice sneaks and beer belly, kid. |
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| They have really good Batidos (smoothies) here! |
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| School Time |
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| We visited the local furniture maker. |
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| They love their Suzuki Samarai down here. |
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| There are no good chairs in our room. I use Sydney's. |
We continue to function without a car. It forces us to have long lazy days and that's just fine with me. Shannon and I, but especially Shannon, spend lots of time helping Catalina with her school work each day. She's doing pretty well with the change, but she definitely has melt downs periodically as she pushes the limits of what we'll let her get away with. For example, she's crying on her bed right now because she's resisting a writing assignment. She'll come around in a minute. She always does. So we swim in the pool. We walk the beach. Catalina and I swim in the surf. Usually we walk or take a taxi to one restaurant meal a day.
Last night we headed back to my old hang out Cabinas Las Olas to see if the seared tuna was still excellent and to refresh my sense of nostalgia. It was, excellent as usual, but the hotel continues to decay. For lunch yesterday we went by taxi to
Taco Bar in Jaco. Taco Bar is great. Jaco sucks, but it has a few good restaurants, including
Graffiti, where we had dinner on our first night here.
In fact, Jaco has become downright depressing to me. The economic downturn affect this formerly small town worse than most. That's probably because the economic bubble dreams were bigger here. There are half-finished condo towers all over town. There are half-completed apartment buildings on the main street. The beachfront itself has a few empty lots, surrounded by plywood fences splattered with imagery of the magnificent tourist hotel that was planned, but instead beyond the fence are half-destroyed homes and piles of debris. All of this is a bit odd because Jaco is not a beautiful beach. The waves are too big for most tourists, but too small for most surfers. The sand is a medium brown that just looks dirty to many people. It's main advantage seems to be that it is the closest beach on a road from San Jose, the capital. Dan Gunter and I stayed in a little hotel here in 1994. If my memory is correct, we paid only $60 a week for this. The little hotel is still there, amazingly, but now it's surrounded by restaurants, shops, and the mess I just described. It's called Hotel Calu. I can't remember if that's what it was called way back then.
Also, we've all enjoy Lilly and Till's flowers and gardens. Plus, scarlet macaws fly by regularly. They are not only the brilliant red of their namesake, but are among the loudest birds I've ever heard screeching as they fly by and inhabit the palms. They come often in pairs, which makes sense since they mate for life, I think. There are also small, frantic bats each evening at sunset, lots of neighborhood cats and dogs (like everywhere in this country), and plenty of chameleons for the kids to chase.
Finally, for the surfers, a few thoughts on surfing in the area. First, tide matters here, especially in Playa Hermosa proper. Usually near high tide is best, even when it's smallish. There is, however, much more beach to the south and that area breaks well on different tides than right here so as long as you're willing to walk, or have access to a rental car, you can find waves to surf each morning and evening. I stress the morning and evening because unlike further north in Nicoya, the wind patterns here are much the same as I found them in June It's calm or offshore in the early morning but switches to side shore by about 9:00 am. It then gets pretty windy in the heat of the day and slowly backs off as the sun goes down. Evenings can be glassy, but more often there's a gentle texture on the waves even as the sun sets. Mornings are definitely best.
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| Typical Wave this week at Pl.aya Hermosa. |
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| Even small, they're hollow and fast. |
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| An Aussie Harbinger? Lost in Costa Rican Simple Life? |
Then I slowly, but steadily consumed 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann . This book will permanently change the way you think about the America's before European settlement. Highly recommend for those who teach or consume history, anthropology or geography.
In fact, Jaco has become downright depressing to me. The economic downturn affect this formerly small town worse than most. That's probably because the economic bubble dreams were bigger here. There are half-finished condo towers all over town. There are half-completed apartment buildings on the main street. The beachfront itself has a few empty lots, surrounded by plywood fences splattered with imagery of the magnificent tourist hotel that was planned, but instead beyond the fence are half-destroyed homes and piles of debris. All of this is a bit odd because Jaco is not a beautiful beach. The waves are too big for most tourists, but too small for most surfers. The sand is a medium brown that just looks dirty to many people. It's main advantage seems to be that it is the closest beach on a road from San Jose, the capital. Dan Gunter and I stayed in a little hotel here in 1994. If my memory is correct, we paid only $60 a week for this. The little hotel is still there, amazingly, but now it's surrounded by restaurants, shops, and the mess I just described. It's called Hotel Calu. I can't remember if that's what it was called way back then.
Finally, for the surfers, a few thoughts on surfing in the area. First, tide matters here, especially in Playa Hermosa proper. Usually near high tide is best, even when it's smallish. There is, however, much more beach to the south and that area breaks well on different tides than right here so as long as you're willing to walk, or have access to a rental car, you can find waves to surf each morning and evening. I stress the morning and evening because unlike further north in Nicoya, the wind patterns here are much the same as I found them in June It's calm or offshore in the early morning but switches to side shore by about 9:00 am. It then gets pretty windy in the heat of the day and slowly backs off as the sun goes down. Evenings can be glassy, but more often there's a gentle texture on the waves even as the sun sets. Mornings are definitely best. 
