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Published: January 15th 2013
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We´ve had a wonderful week in Samara! Samara is a small, quiet and easy to navigate beach town on the Nicoya Peninsula. It has a 3 star appeal and the surf is quite calm making it popular with swimmers and beginner surfers. It´s fun to watch them trying to get up on their surf boards. If I was a little younger I might try, but I think I am beyond that now!
Speaking of 3 star appeal, our hotel is definately above that! I found Samara Palm Lodge on Trip Advisor. It was rated #1 boutique hotel for the area and we certainly know why. It has only 8 rooms that surround a lovely pool, tropical garden and deck. There is so much attention to detail like the wooden bed frames, soothing music playing around the pool, shells and flowers petals on the bed and a delicious breakfast. We can´t say enough about it.
We´ve really enjoyed meeting people at the hotel from all over the world. . . . . Finland, Switzerland, France, Germany, Isreal, England & US. They all speak english so our conversations are easy. It´s one of our favourite things about travelling.
As most
of you know, the beaches on the Pacific Ocean are not like the Caribbean with the pure white sand and turquoise water but they are still stunning. The ones is Costa Rica are very wide with light gray brownish sand and the water is very warm. The waters are not calm but most of the surf is enjoyable to bob around in if you´re careful! We spend about 4 hours at the beach everyday including lunch and the rest relaxin around our pool. A tough life!!
One day we rented bicycles and road to the next beach "Playa Carillo" about 15 kms return trip. The road was very scenic and had a few rather steep hills. For me this was no problem but I heard Warren cursing as we went along, however he was a trouper and made the trip with a few rest stops.
There are a wide variety of restuarants here in Samara. Besides the "sodas" (local restuarants with typical Costa Rican food and fast food) we have found just about every type of cuisine from Thai, French, Mexican, Asian, and many fusion restuarants. And they have been all excellent. An average meal is around $8-10,
a beer $2.50 and a glass of wine or cockatil around $4-5 so it´s fairly reasonable.
The weather is very hot. Warren checked the other day and the temperature was 35 degrees. It does cool down a little in the evenings. The only down side is that there have been a few small earthquakes (3.5) during the late afternoons! Warren felt one when he was sitting on the deck at the hotel. Some of you may remember the earthquake they had here in September. It did some damage to our hotel. Hopefully we will avoid anymore!!
One of the highlights here has been the family of howler monkeys living in the trees next to our hotel. Howling definately describes the sound they make. It sounds more like big apes even though they are very small. They´re so cute and hang upside down while they´re eating in the trees. They tend to wake us up some mornings!
That´s it for Samara. Thanks for reading. Next stop . . . . Santa Teresa
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