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Published: March 2nd 2010
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Friday, the 26th. John was exhausted after the Nicaragua/Costa Rica border crossing so we stopped early just outside of Liberia. The road side police which we had been told we would need to bribe could not have been friendlier. One cop was cuter than any Chippendale I’ve ever seen. Now I’m and old lady but this guy was breath taking! Costa Rica is famous for its bad roads. The Pan American Highway through here has deteriorated from the northern countries.
The currency, colones, are trading at about 560 per dollar. Mental conversion into dollars is much harder to calculate than Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran and Nicaraguan currencies have been. Diesel costs about $3.60 per gallon. We are shocked at the food prices. Everything costs at least as much here as it does at home. Many things are more.
We spent two nights at a park called El Delfin which was listed in our 99 Days to Panama book. After we settled in, we drove into town and found a great restaurant with free Wi-Fi, terrific Margaritas and fantastic food. Our balcony seating overlooked Parque Central. Liberia is holding a ten day festival beginning this weekend. There were hundreds of people
Isthmus of Nicaragua.
There are ideas to build a second canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific thru here. out and lots going on.
Our waiter, Jorge is attending a business college. He told me that he was not familiar with computers but needed to obtain an online job advertisement and asked for my help. I think I found what he was looking for at Monster.com and because we don’t pack a printer around, I hand wrote everything he would probably need to complete his assignment. The job announcement that we selected which seemed the most appropriate for his skills was in Wisconsin. We had a laugh about that.
Saturday, the 27th. My main priority today was to get our laundry done. We had not washed clothes for four weeks. John and Johnette had washed all of their laundry by hand while camped at the volcano park waiting for us to come back to the Pacific side. Not sure that we would be able to find a lavendaria (laundry), I actually washed our sheets and pillow cases by hand, hung them up to dry, then bagged up the rest of our stuff. With the help of folks on the street, we did find a lavendaria right away but because there was a parade going on, the street
was blocked so we had to carry our laundry bags for a few blocks.
Later, after the parade was over we visited with people on the street and asked what they were celebrating. “Nothing really. It is just a festival. We do it often. It is for the people. It’s just for fun. There will be another parade tomorrow. We will be here. Come sit with us.”
Today’s parade just consisted of horses with riders, followed by cattle with long horns - not to be confused with Texas long horns. We didn’t get any pictures of the cows but did get a photo of one of the very large blue eyed white horses. Johnette, who owns four horses, struck up a conversation with one man whose daughter was in the parade. Johnette tried to find out what breed these horses are but all he would say is that “they are Costa Rican horses”. All of the horses were shoed. Some danced. Others have a strange walk, throwing their hooves out to the side. This was just one of those lucky days. It is rare in our travels that we stumble onto a community event like this. Johnette told
This bus passed about a mile of trucks.
He seemed to think we would get off the road to allow him to pass. We stood our ground. John that seeing all of the horses in today’s parade had, for her, made the trip worthwhile.
After the parade we headed over to the coast where we had a chance to wade in the warm water and visit with local boat owners and tourists. We think that we now have a better idea of what to expect along the beaches further south. John and Johnette’s daughter and husband are flying in on March 3rd and John’s brother and family are coming on April 2nd.
Monday, March 1st. Yesterday was our luckiest day. We had decided that we would try find to a long term camping location in Punterenas. We chose this location because it is relatively close to San Jose where John and Johnette will be picking up their daughter Daniela and her husband Heath on Wednesday morning.
Because there was a sharp turn from the Pan-American Highway into town, we left John and Johnette on the road and came into town to scout for camping places. It was a mad house. There was a cruise ship in port and many locals were enjoying a day at the beach. This is clearly a party town with
many bars and restaurants. At one point, we were unable to get thru a street because some jerk had parked his little pick-up half into the street. With the help of a few local guys, Ray, sometimes with less than an inch on either side, backed up the street for almost a block before we could turn onto another street.
We had spotted the Costa Rican Yacht Club on our way into town but were looking for something a little closer in. There was nothing so we came back out to the yacht club. Like many other RVers, we are also boaters and belong to a yacht club. Most yacht clubs welcome visiting yachters and offer reciprocal privileges. Carlos, the manager, has told us we can stay for five nights. I don’t think he is going to charge us anything. The club has an excellent restaurant with very reasonable prices and a lovely swimming pool in addition to the nicest restrooms we’ve had on the entire trip. The agua freo is about body temperature and very soft. (Our last camp site had very hard water). Internet access could not be better.
There is much to see in the
area. We are close to the cloud forests and volcanoes of Monteverde and just a ferry ride to the Gulf of Nicoya.
It is also awfully hot. Rambo's thermometer registered 99. Sitting outside of the camper in the shade and only a few feet from the water is quite comfortable. We have airconditioning in the camper.
We took a drive into town today. The beach is ugly and without the cruise ship and weekend crowds, it was dead. I’m so thankful we were unable to find a place to camp there.
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