RVing in Central America - San Jose to San Jose y Beyond

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Thursday, March 4th. Tomorrow, we will leave our excellent accommodations at the Costa Rica Yacht Club and head south. Not comfortable with staying here for free, we settled with the manager for fifty bucks apiece - $10 per rig per night.

John and Johnette’s daughter Daniella and her husband Heath joined us for a few days. John and Johnette will take the kids around to see some of the sights and then the kids plan to spend a few days in the touristy town of Manuel Antonio where they can get in some beach time and do some touring on their own.

We are sharing our digs with a family of iguanas. All are the very ugly gray things. The father must be at least three feet long. I don’t like them but guess this is their home. We have a truce. I won’t bother them if they don’t bother me. None the less, I kick the restroom door open and listen for claws on the tile before I enter. They must not be carnivorous because there is a small kitty that has the run of the place too.

We have met several interesting people here. We visited with Lynn and Mark from Westcliffe, Colorado. They appear to be about our age. She had previously owned a sailboat but sold it after moving to Colorado and becoming a rock climber. Lynn has spent quite a bit of time in Panama and Costa Rica and has worked as a line handler for small boats transiting the Panama Canal. Two years ago, in Panama, she had met an American who normally sails alone. They exchanged phone numbers. He recently called and invited Lynn and Mark to crew with him to the Sea of Cortez.

The boat is beautiful. Johnette had visited with the owner. He told her that he was a former airline pilot and that his wife was a flight attendant. They each travel and work about six months out of the year. She will join him after he arrives in the Sea of Cortez.

Last night we visited with David who operates a local parasailing business. David had previously been a casino manager in Las Vegas. After putting both of his daughters thru Law School, he “met the love of his life” and moved to Costa Rica. David uses the winch parasail system, which we had enjoyed many years ago on Lake Tahoe. David offered to take us all out for a boat ride tomorrow if we’d pay for the fuel but we’ve overstayed our welcome here at the yacht club and they need our parking spaces so we must move on.

Today, we visited with Carl from Los Angeles. Carl works in the movie industry. He and his wife and two sons (15 and 10) have been living on a 46 foot sail boat for the past five years. They have moored at the Puerto Vallarta Yacht Club for the last two years. The boys are home schooled but are now interested in attending a regular school. Carl flew down here to check out the international schools in the area. He was impressed with the quality of the private schools and pleased with the cost. He plans to fly back to Los Angeles, work a few months, rejoin his family in Puerto Vallarta and sail south.

Speaking of education, Costa Rica has the highest literacy rate in Central America. We’ve been told that it is 97%. Doubt the U.S. could boast such figures.

Yesterday, Ray and I caught the ferry to the Peninsulu de Nicoya. What a disappointment. We paid about twenty-five dollars each way for the one hour ferry ride. Lonely Planet says that Nicoya’s sun drenched coastline is the most popular tourist destination in the whole country and that one of its most popular beach towns is the bohemian village of Montezuma. Our plan was to drive south, visit Montezuma and then drive around the peninsula. A Canadian on the ferry told us about a location where turtles come ashore like D-day to lay their eggs. It took us about an hour and a half over pot holed pavement, gravel and dirt roads to reach Montezuma. The town sure did have that bohemian feel - looked like a very small Aptos - but we could not find a place to park. We returned to the ferry without even getting out of the truck.

On the return ferry we visited with a young woman from this San Jose who had just completed her studies in ecological management at a university in the Netherlands. She said she had lived in Chicago for ten years and would like to return to the U.S. but says it is hard to get work permits. She understood my complaint about the roads but said that for years Costa Rica had placed their emphasis on education and basically let their roads go. So, what the heck are they doing with the four bucks a gallon they collect at the pumps if it is not for road improvements. This young lady said the roads are much improved over what they were like only five years ago when she went away to school.

Monday, March 8th. We spent the past two days at Dominical. It is a cute little hippie surfer town with only about six dusty streets. Unable to get into the town because of cars parked along the streets, we spent the first night parked just off the highway. We had no problems but Ray and I don’t like boondocking. By morning it was already in the 90s. We left Furgie in the camper with a twelve volt fan blowing on her and walked into town with Johnette. We weren’t able to find parking where we could plug in our electric cords so we opted to rent a hotel room at the only establishment had ample parking for our truck. The room was pretty shabby for ninety bucks but we had air conditioning, unlimited warm water and cable TV if you can count International CNN which was their only English language station. John, Johnette and the kids stayed in their trailer. They took turns getting up all night to add gasoline to their generator to keep the air conditioner running.

We sat on our patio and visited with our next door neighbor for some time. Frank Sanders is the proprietor of Devils Tower Lodge Bed and Breakfast and leads groups of climbers up the mountain. He used to live in Davis, California and has climbed El Capitan many times. Here is his web site: www.devilstowerlodge.com

We also visited with another American guy who lives in Dominical. He had moved here and invested his life savings in a development that has turned sour with the economy.

We had dinner at cute hippy looking place. The menu was primarily vegetarian and our server wore dreadlocks, surfer shorts and flip flops.

Today we headed inland to San Jose. We are settled in at Belen Trailer Park in a small village called San Antonio de Belen overlooking the city. Our landlady, Laurie was born and raised in Los Angeles. She moved here about forty years ago after meeting and marrying a local guy. They drove down here in an RV similar to ours. We got the impression that they were given the land by a relative as she said it had previously been a pasture. They built the park themselves. Political situations in Mexico and Central America really affect their business. Europeans make up a large segment of their guests. Presently, there is a couple here from Munich and a Swiss couple. We visited with the German couple for a bit. We haven’t had much contact with the Swiss couple yet. All speak very good English.

Although we haven’t met the husband yet, Juan is actively involved in the operation of the park although he has another job too. They have five kids and a few grandkids. We met some of them as well as Laurie’s sister Terri who is visiting from El Paso. This is the only RV park in Costa Rica. All of the caravans stay here. They have clean hot showers, some English language TV programming (we watched the Academy Awards last night), internet, and even laundry facilities. Well, a washing machine and line drying! There is a small aviary on site with quite a few pretty birds.

It is much cooler up here. We plan to offload the camper and do much of our Costa Rican sightseeing from here. After all, the whole country is only about the size of San Bernardino County. We’ve never slept in the camper off the truck before.

The highways for the past few days have been much improved over our first experiences with Costa Rican roads. Thankfully, Costa Ricans don’t seem to share the rest of Latin America’s habit of tossing their trash out along the streets and roadways. In fact, so far San Jose, Costa Rica appears to be cleaner than San Jose, California.

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Photos

Peninsulu de Nicoya from ferry on the Golfo de Nicoya.
Two hour ferry ride and about four hours driving over pot hole infested and dusty dirt roads roads to see nada.

Setting up shop on the beach at Dominical.
Nobody pressures you to buy anything.

Cute little hippy place where we ate.
Must be the best restaurant in town. A tour group had lunched there earlier in the day.

Our hotel. We shared the place with two tour buses.
We must have gotten the last room. It was pretty shabby for $90 but we had showers, air conditioning and a place to park our truck.

View from our patio.
The onsite restaurant is in the background. Our complimentary desayuno (breakfast) gallo pinto consisted of black beans and rice with seasonings and chopped vegetables. Much tastier than oatmeal.

Do you know the way?
To convert kilometers to miles, you multiply the first number (or 1st & 2nd) by six, i.e. 10 Ks equals 6 miles or 100 Ks equals 60 miles.

Excellent new highway leading into San Jose from the south.
They collected about $5.00 total from us at three different toll booths. John paid about three times as much. They really soaked him for his trailer