Malpais is the surfers paradise of Costa Rica. I can understand why too. It´s a beautiful long white sandy beach with big waves rolling in. The road to Malpais is dusty and covered with pot holes, so i guess this stops the average tourist coming by and taking the waves off the pro´s.
That being said though, Darren and I did have a few waves to ourselves whilst we were there. We decided to take a surf lesson as Darren had never tried it before. I´ve done it alot, but haven´t practiced for 3 years, so thought i´d benefit from a lesson too. Both of us managed to get up on our first wave and by the end of the lesson the instructor said we didn´t need anymore lessons!
Malpais had this great spit roast chicken restaurant that was run by 2 Italian guys. That was our haunt for the whole time we were there.
Once the dust started to get on our nerves we packed up our stuff and moved on to Manuel Antonio, splashing out on a transfer by boat via Jaco.
Manuel Antonio didn´t strike any connection with us at all. We did spend one fantastic day in the reserve there, watching the animals with a guide and exploring the secret beach. When we weren´t there though, we had to spend time in the weirdest town we´ve experienced in all of C.R. Some how the ´sheriff´of Dallas befriended us and came to sit with us every meal time and would tell us all about his rescues as playing the sheriff in Manuel Antonio. (I´m sure the locals appreciated him just as much as we did!)
Basically after 2 nights there in the worst accommodation we´d had so far we were running away as fast as we could! This time we hired a car for a resonable price and managed to explore down South a bit and then on to the Carribean.
The drive to Dominical was fairly short, but of course a terrible dirt road to get there. Dominical is another laid back surfer town. The beach there is darker sand, but has rainforest hugging the coastline for as far as the eye can see. At sunset, also like Malpais, everyone would come out to the beach to say goodbye to the sun. We had such a nice time there, that i was disappointed to find i was sick the next day due to a tofu and vegetable meal.
Sickness aside i was able to jump in the car and make the 8 hour drive to the carribean. The roads there were all pretty good, just slow because you are stuck behind massive trucks on there way to the port of Limon. During one point of the drive you are on top of high mountains looking down to where the rainforest should be and all you can see is marshmellow type clouds thickly stuck in the valley. So so pretty.
Once we got to the carribean, of course it had to rain, the reason we´d avoided going earlier! We stayed in a fantastic accommodation called Jacaranda with its own rainforest garden inside and hammocks to chill in.
I loved the carribean side. It was so much more laidback from the pacific side. Many Europeans were there and a lot more backpackers too. I was most surprised to see that there was also surf rolling in on that side! We spent a day in our car exploring the south coastline. On our drives we had to stop several times to see sloths hanging from leaf-less trees and howler monkeys causing a racket in the forest.
I got some fantastic photos, especially of the sloth, but later that night we took our camera to a shop to download the photos to a disk and the guy managed to wipe the whole sim card!!! No more photos left at all! We couldn´t believe it, we wanted to cry. It made Darren dislike the Carriben even more.
Thankfully we´d pre-booked a tour to Tortuguero to float round the rivers and watch more wildlife. Tortuguero is known for having hundreds of turtles (3 different species) lay there eggs in the sand there, but it was not the right time of year.
Despite not seeing this phenomenon, we did manage to see many different animals and birds like; crocodiles, monkeys, turtles, lizards, snakes, frogs and the tucan! The list goes on...
Most of all, we enjoyed just chilling out in a family run hostel. The environment was mellow and we appreciated the change in scenery.
Unfortunately the trip home was not so chill. We were meant to be dropped at our car and to drive it back to the Carribean. The bus stopped several km´s away from the car and there was no connecting bus. It started to rain and we had to call a taxi. The taxi took a long time to show and when he did, i asked him to put on his meter (a common practise). He pretended not to understand the spanish i spoke to him and replied that he didn´t speak Spanish!
On the drive we realised he was drunk and we decided not to provoke him about the meter. I had only the equilvalent of US $20 or US $4 in change on me. $4 would have been more than enough if the meter was running, but of course he didn´t run it so he could charge what he liked. I ended up giving him the $4 and he complained about it, in perfect spanish i might add! As we were leaving with the car i was having images of him following us and doing something silly, but all was ok.
Once we were back in the south of the Carribean we thought we´d have missed all the bad weather, but it did cloud over for the whole time we were there again and then came out the same hour we had to leave! We spent our last days with me sick and Darren thoroughly sick of the place. I got so sick i had to go to the doctor to get antibiotics. Thankfully they worked a treat and i was able to catch the plane the next day.
Dropping the car back to San Jose took at least 10 years off our life. We were trying to avoid the middle of San Jose because the streets are notorious for chopping and changing sides of the road with no warning. There was no signage for our turn off, so we found ourselves in the middle of the city!
Children play on the side of the road and there is barely enough room for the cars and trucks that plow down the road at high speeds. On numerous occasions we found ourselves dogging the soccer balls that had rolled on to the road. Scary drive, but with Darrens careful driving we made it safely!
