Nemo James

2012 Costa Rica – Tamarindo

20th January 2012
Our next stop was on the Pacific coast. The first part of the journey went well but then our satnav decided to direct us across a banana field. I don’t mean a path through the middle but an actual field full of banana trees. I ignored the instructions so the satnav recalculated and proceeded to take us into a town where it directed us the wrong way up a one-way street, then to the front door of a funeral home and I accepted defeat when we found ourselves facing a cow’s arsehole. Federika asked a couple of policemen who gave us some complicated directions which had no relationship to reality but did send us in the right direction until the satnav decided to wake up. I had already paid quite a lot for maps of Europe and the USA so it was annoying that I paid an extra £40 for a map of Costa Rica which was so inaccurate.

We wanted to stay at Conchal Beach but there was only one hotel there which was very expensive so we booked a hotel in the next village, Brasilito which was only a 15-minute walk to Conchal. It was the only hotel in the village and very cheap so we weren’t expecting much. Although it looked very tatty, it was on the beach with a pleasant restaurant and bar so I thought it might be ok but when I saw our room my heart sank. It was clean enough and had air conditioning but it was stark and depressing. The worst thing was there was a communal balcony which meant we either kept our curtains closed or left them open so everyone could look into our room as they passed. It also bothered me that there was no safe in the room. I don’t usually regard it as a requirement but at our first Hotel in Puerto Viejo, there was a warning notice. It had a long list of all the things you had to be careful of which included don’t walk around with any valuables and don’t walk around at night. It also advised who to contact if we were robbed and had so many warnings that I did a search for the percentage of tourists that survived a holiday in Costa Rica. I found nothing so either there was no such statistic or it was so bad they had to keep it secret. At this hotel, there was a similar notice with the main point being “Don’t leave your valuables in your room.” They recommended leaving valuables in their safe behind the reception and I knew we used to do that in olden days but it was no longer practical. These days, apart from the passports and cash we used to carry, we had iPods, laptops, satnavs, mobile phones, and digital cameras. Gone were the days when guests were expected to go to reception every time they wanted access to their valuables. Apart from the inconvenience, I had read about things going missing from hotel safes anyway. I even read once of a young couple who had £1000 stolen from the hotel safe and not only did the hotel not re-emburse them but the couple still had to pay the hotel’s charge for using their safe. We stayed there the night and I walked around with all our valuables in my rucksack.

Any doubt I might have had about changing hotels were dispelled when we were woken at 5 a.m. by chicken and cockerel noises that were so loud that I thought they were using microphones. Then cockerels started cock-a-bloody-doodling, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, monkeys joined in with loud screeching noises. We noticed the night before that in the house next door, two ladders were leaning up against a tree for chickens to climb. When I woke that morning I saw the branches full of chickens happily clucking away, oblivious to the possibility that they might be on the menu that night.

We checked out the next morning and the hotel was very good in not charging us for the nights we weren’t going to use. We drove to a town called Tamarindo and our new hotel was a big contrast to Brasilito. We had a two-storey apartment next to the swimming pool and had our own little terrace. The building was superbly designed by a German who, unlike the previous accommodation had given great thought to everything in the complex. It was twice the price of our last hotel but still very reasonable. It was in a lively area with plenty of shops and places to stroll around at night after dinner. Federika found the town too commercialised but she still preferred it to Brasalito where there was nothing to do at night. What surprised us was there were a lot of good hotels and apartment blocks but no proper roads leading to them. The high street was tarmac but all the side roads were made of dirt so every time a car went past we got covered in dust. In the rainy season those roads must have been thick with mud.

We spent our first morning on the beach at Tamarindo which was very pleasant with the sea being much calmer than on the Caribbean side but for the next two days we took the 20-minute drive to Conchal Beach which well deserved its reputation as being the best beach in the area. I had stupidly been a bit nervous about swimming there as I had read they had nasty fish that buried themselves in the sand leaving a venomous spiky bit sticking out for swimmers to stand on. I don’t usually worry about that sort of thing but a lot of the shops were selling souvenirs made from the sting rays and there was an awful lot of them. I just swam around making sure not to put my feet on the sand but just as I thought it was safe to stay in the water, I was zapped by a jellyfish on my back. It wasn’t too bad though so I bravely soldiered on.

Our apartment had a kitchen and although we had no intention of cooking it was great sitting on our terrace at night with a beer and some fresh bread and cheese. I loved eating out but doing it three times a day got a bit much. Like most travellers, we always liked to try the local dishes with the romantic idea that they will always be something special but in reality, local specialities can often be a letdown. In Costa Rica, you will be encouraged to try the amazing local speciality Casado which is nothing more than a plate of rice and beans. There was an equally exotic-sounding dish called Pinto which was the same rice and beans only mixed together instead of served separately. Most of the time we ate the same food as in the UK or Croatia including cheeseburger, pizza and even the local version of Kentucky Fried Chicken. They did have some good fish but it was always deep fried and served with French fries. We still enjoyed it but there was much better ways to cook fish.

The best thing about our apartment was the hammock on our terrace. I loved laying in hammocks but have never mastered the art of getting into the damn things and on one occasion I was so intent on not falling out that I missed it completely and landed on the floor. I learnt to fall at a very young age and can usually do so without hurting myself but my pride took a bashing as a man was walking past at the time and came rushing over out of concern. For some stupid reason that made me feel more stupid than if he had laughed.

One night we were woken by the loud, long scream of a man not far from us. I assumed it was yet another drunk who judged a good night out by the number of people they could wake up on their way home, so I turned around and went back to sleep. A few minutes later we heard someone talking loudly so Federika looked out the window to see what was happening. An American man was trying to explain to the security guard in terrible Spanish that his friend needed to be taken to hospital. Feeling sure that the problem was alcohol-related I was still unable to muster up any sympathy and so went back to sleep but it affected Federika so she lay awake for ages even though the security guard spoke good English so there was no need for her to translate. The next day we discovered that the man had returned at 3 am to find the gates to the car park locked. He decided to climb over the gates which was a bad idea as the hotel was well designed, both aesthetically and for security. To stop people climbing over the wall or gate, there were nasty spikes at the top and he must have become impaled on one of them and heaven knows how he got down. The irony was that if he hadn’t been so drunk he would have walked 20 metres further down the road and seen the gate with a security guard waiting to let people in.

One problem we had in Croatia was stray cats and as we were both too soft-hearted to turn them away we sometimes had five or six coming to us to be fed at the same time. Within minutes of our arrival in our Tamarindo apartment, a cat appeared from nowhere, opened our front door and entrenched himself firmly in front of our fridge. Of course we couldn’t resist feeding him so from that moment on he never left our terrace and insisted on sleeping on the living room sofa. [sg_popup id=”17369″ event=”inherit”][/sg_popup]

On our last day in Tamarindo, we went on a boat ride up the estuary into a mangrove. It started with a large estuary where we saw a crocodile lazing in the sun and then it got gradually narrower with the mangroves closing in on us from both sides until there was barely enough room for the boat to turn around. It was so peaceful and yet so noisy with so many animals competing to be heard. We stopped somewhere and walked to an area where there were a lot of howler monkeys high up in the trees. They were great but I do think they should have moved around a bit more with some swinging from tree to tree or banging their chests or something. They made an amazing noise which was more like an elephant than a monkey. The guide tried to imitate the noise to get them to join in but they weren’t fooled and continued the important job of doing nothing.

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