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Published: February 4th 2016
The best part of this 5-day stay on this central Pacific coast had to be the Hostel, “Wide Mouth Frog” (WMF): nice people, great guests from all over the globe, Danes, French and Canadians; swimming pool, everything tiled from all common areas and accommodations, to library and kitchens. (And being a lousy backpacker, I even booked myself into a single room rather than a dorm). Many of my fellow world travellers were somewhat luke warm on Costa Rica -- rumblings about too many “touristas”, declining authenticity, and more pricey than other central american states.
On that thought, Manuel Antonio Park was absolutely beautiful,with picture perfect beaches……but by 8:00 am just one busload after the other, literally thousands of tourists, lots of them snapping pictures of spots of just vacated by wildlife, or of indiscernably shady spots which might reveal some wildlife, under strenuous photo management back home. You could hear the howler monkeys off in the distance, beautiful blue butterflies fluttering away, but most of the anticipated wildlife just didn’t 'cooperate' –except perhaps for some common raccoons on the beach, creating some excitement among the Europeans. And with so many tourists, Park Wardens also
had to be defensive with crowd control.
Horero, WMF’s manager, came to my rescue, guiding me to some good snorkeling at an "off-the-radar" beach around the Quepos headlands; saw lots of fast moving capuchin monkeys in the trees as you came down to the beach. It was a 1000’ drop from the main road to the beach, so I was very grateful when a kind Tico gave me a ride back up on his Honda motorbike. Quite a few Ticos, and very few gringos, down on that beach!
Yesterday was also great; I took a bus down the coast to Dominical Beach, a surfer town. Beautiful long surf beach with nice beach bars and restaurants, well shaded under trees to escape the oppressive hot weather. And yes, lots of cute surfees and surfers, emerging from hostels and coffee bars at the edges of town. They headed out to hit the surf before it got too hot.
Well, that's it for this part of the coast, so tomorrow I'm heading to cooler higher climes at the Monteverde cloud forests, from
where I'll report back in about a week. Hope you all have a great one. Cheers. Pete
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Sofie
non-member comment
Entertaining account, as usual! Monteverde sounds beautiful and exotic. Hope it proves less touristy! Sounds like you've done really well with your accommodations, though. The off-the-radar beach sounded spectacular. Hope you weren't too afraid to be there, though. Do you feel safe? Lots of love, Sofie