Guanacaste

On Friday night, Nicole, Molly and I joined our friend Jose for a trip to his home town in the province of Guanacaste. Since it’s a long weekend, we took advantage of having today off (it’s the national celebration of Columbus Day!) to go away. Our bus left from San Jose in the pouring rain on Friday night and took 5.5 hours to arrive in Liberia, a small beach town near Jose’s town, Sarinal. The bus had to take a couple detours due; all this rain led to some mudslides and road closures!  Upon our arrival, Jose’s dad met us at the bus station and took us to his home where he so generously put us up for two nights.

On Saturday morning we hit the beach, praying for a little bit of sunshine...and it worked! For the first time in two weeks, it stopped raining. We hit the road to a practically private beach called Matapalo (kill a tree?). The name turned out to be appropriate...we found a fallen tree crossing the path to the beach! 

Also on the way, we encountered a lovely French couple who had stopped for a monkey sighting. We hopped out of the car, grabbed the camera, and listened to the very loud calls of the monkeys climbing through the trees. Squint hard in the pictures below, and you can almost tell that it’s a monkey! 

These beach pictures can speak for themselves, but Jose and his friend Wilbur didn’t let us settle for the first beautiful, private playa that we found (above). Nope! We followed them across a river and over a small mountain, literally, to this secret spot:

Pelican Jim stopped by for a visit!

Notice how there's no one else around!

When the rain moved in, we packed everything in plastic bags and trekked back to the first beach where the car was parked. It was a trek indeed, but this time not over the mountain...we took the rocky coastline instead! Talk about excitement (and the wrong shoes! I thought my flip-flops were going to fall apart...)  On this beach, the sand was completely black and the waterline was rock-less. We were a bit closer to the giant hotel (which meant we actually saw tourists...ha!), but it was still quiet.

Check out the color change in the sand

With Jose, our fabulous host

Lounging for the rest of a very relaxing weekend :)

Unfortunately Sunday’s weather wasn’t quite as forgiving. It poured from the second we woke up until midafternoon. Luckily, we were able to enjoy a breakfast of Gallo Pinto and Tamales fit for kings and watch a soccer match before heading to Jose’s church for a bit. After enjoying some music and prayers with his community, we headed to the bus station and back to San Jose, and most importantly to Margie and Amanda who stayed behind because they weren’t feeling well. We missed them!