Samara, Tamarindo, Avellana and Rio Tempisque

After a long drive down to Samara from Naranjo, where the ferry docks, I booked a room at Entre Dos Aquas, a recommendation from Lonely Planet; after going into town for a dinner of grilled veggies and flan, I went back and sat in the dark at the pool (photo). It is an exquisite setting, but the couple running the place is clearly in trouble; they were running on automatic with no genuine enthusiasm or interest. In fact, I am tempted to write the D.C. owner to tell him that he really ought to get out of the business. I will never return there merely because the vibes were so negative even though the place itself was lovely.

Although Tamarindo was honky tonky like the Jersey shore, I was greeted with such friendliness and smiling welcome that I loved staying at my little Villa Maconda, where the towels were folded in two hearts on my bed. I never used the pool, but here it stood in the middle of all the little units, each with its own hammock... My first walk along the beach showed me a very different kind of sand that at one part was covered with narrow, coiled shells that looked as though someone had thrown gold tees around the beach. In the morning I found these peculiar mounds of sand drippings, clearly something created by a critter, not a human because there were many of them, and it was early morn.

But my favorite was walking back along the beach and seeing the people sweeping the beaches in front of the fussy hotels, making it clean and uncluttered for the clean and uncluttered guests who were paying over $200 a night while I had the bargain room at $25!

The next day while waiting for friends to arrive, I drove to Avellana, a beach that required some driving through mud, potholes and all the way back to Santa Cruz just to get more gas. I had read about this beach where Lola the pig lived and bathed in the sea, but I was not expecting the quirky small, white shelled beach under shade trees with wonderfully modern wooden tables, chairs and loungers scattered throughout. Waitpersons bustled about, carrying trays loaded with food and drink to those seated at their posts while high tide waves pounded the shore and surfers waited to catch that perfect wave. I was not all that hungry, but the menu was enticing enough that I had some sushi tuna with sesame and wasabi and a heavenly smoothie. I went in search of Lola and found her, seriously dug into some sound sleep. From there, I drove back to Tamarindo for dinner with friends, walking from their fancy hotel back to mine along the beach where it was just about dark and raining. I had an umbrella and walked in the warm rain, watching as the lights came on in the restaurants and hotels, readying for the evening's festivities.

Of the rafting I have not a photo because I had to leave my camera and my glasses behind, which was fortunate because every single raft overturned at least several times during the two hour journey down a sunlit Rio Tempisque dappled with the shade from enormous overhanging trees and sheer cliffs that ridged the river. We had 5 in our raft, the guide at the back, and we paddled according to his instructions, bouncing over, twisting around and tumbling into the rows of white water rapids that ranged from 1s and 2s to a final 5-6 scale one that they claimed was 12 feet; we all looked at it and thought it more like 8-10 feet, but it WAS a challenge and two of us actually stayed onboard and made it over successfully; I was not one of those, and my friend Russell did comment as we all trudged up the trail at the end that I WAS the only person who kept her high heeled sandals on the whole time! Who knew that Dansko sandals were okay for rafting?