Monday, November 28

Travel day from Playa Potrero to San Jose. We chose a shared shuttle, $50 each as opposed to a private one that  would cost around $250 US.  It is a planned stop as all of the tourist buses stop here. We are told that the stop is 25 minutes. Everyone heads to the baños (bathrooms). When I prepare to go in I see people outside aiming their cameras, up in the trees. I look and there they are, Sarlet Macaws,  and lots of them. When I come out I join Ron to get some shots. We see that there are also Toucans. They are free but it looks like a sanctuary.

Keel-billed Toucan. He was interested in the dog food. The dogs came around pretty quickly at this 

point.

He was moving around a lot.

We got back on the road almost one hour later. But in a different van. That is the idea of all of the buses and vans stopping at the same place. From there there is a triage as to where people are going. Our van, six of us, we're headed to San Jose. One couple got dropped off at the airport. And we were dropped off last around 1:45. That's six hours including the hour break.

We arrive at the same hotel as at the beginning of our trip here. And we get the same room. It's cooler here at 23 degrees and it's raining off and on.

Off for a walk around 3pm. We stop in at the tourist market where one can buy all sorts of souvenirs.

Entering the market.

Looking in the market.

After this we walk around the pedestrian areas of downtown. Around 4:30 we decide that we are getting hungry so we head to another area of town to find supper. We end up at The Beer Factory Inc. The menu is completely in Spanish so we get some things, but we're guessing a lot. The girl tries her best to help us make decisions: which beer as they probably have at least twenty on tap, and a lot more in bottles. We decide on Craft beer from their company. I choose a Dota- fresh tasting with the flavour of Apple. Ron chooses Escalate which tastes like a red ale. They are both good.

The tall blond one is the Dota, mine.

 We order our meals. Mine comes back not looking at all what I thought that it would look like. I wanted a chicken burger with salad and roasted potatoes. I get pieces of chicken on lettuce with red onion and a few pieces of cucumber and tomato. Ron gets a huge burger and roast potatoes. Ah well, the food is good. 

Back at the hotel where we will pack and get warmer clothes out for our return. Seems that it is good weather in Toronto, it is Moncton that we are worried about. Good timing for the first storm of the season. We are scheduled to arrive around noon on Wednesday so hopefull it will be over and the 

roads will be cleared. Of course we do not have winter tires on the car... 

Sunday, November 27

Awake around 7. We hang out on the deck for awhile, then have breakfast and finally we go out for a walk on the beach. Ron goes in to play in the waves.

The waves are good today as the wind is up for the first day since we arrived.

Looks like Ron is all wrapped up.

Trying to swim the wave.

Saw this fishing boat. A shrimper?

We come back and have a swim in the pool then back upstairs to relax, (because going for a walk and swim is not relaxing enough).

We have a bite to eat for lunch and we head out to the beach again. The wind has calmed down but the waves were a lot of fun. The only thing is that the undertow is very strong. There are no kids in the water.

Looks like a Sanderling 

A Whimbrel, I think. It was not in the bird book so had to look it up.

Ron caught in another wave.

A slow motion video of Ron trying to catch the wave.

We get back after three and sit out at the pool for a bit. It's cloudy out mostly and thank goodness as it's close to 30 degrees today without the sun. When it does come out, you need to find shade.  When we come in I finally remember to take photos of our condo. 

Living room. Golf on the tv.. 

Kitchen. There is no other table, just the island seats. 

Good size shower.

Nice bedroom as well.

Small balcony but perfect for bird watching.

We were so excited to have a washer and dryer. 

All of this for about $70 US a night. Cheaper than a lot of hotels. We are only one block away from the beach. 

We go out around 5:30 and it's a little late but we catch a little of the sunset. It's been so cloudy every night that we never got to see this.

From the beach

From our place. 

We go to La Perla  for supper. It's 1/2 price on pasta dishes so Ron orders Lasagna and I get Buffalo chicken wrap and a salad. I had noodles yesterday at the Asian restaurant so didn't feel likes ta again. We both ate really well. Back at the condo around 7:30 and we will get our packing done as we have an early morning. The shuttle will pick us up at the meeting point at 7:45 to take us to San Jose. 

Saturday, November 26

We are up around 7 and it looks cloudy outside. I sit out on the deck as the birds are normally
more active in the early morning. I hear their chirping, but just see the doves and a few other black ones that we see every day. We have breakfast and then walk over to the bike rental place. It is after 9am but they are not open. This place is new and they probably don't have regular hours. We decide we'll walk to Flamingo beach again. On our way to the beach we pass another spot that rents bikes. We go in, pay more than the other guys and get older bikes. Ah well, we get a bit of info from this guy as he suggests we go to another beach first. It's called Playa Penca and it's only about one km away. My bike is wonky to say the least. I'll be going back to exchange it on our way back. Ron's is not great either, but he'll put up with it. We were told that anorkelling could be good here but Ron goes out and see zero, zilch, nothing but water. The waves are bigger today it seems.

The old man and the sea. Didn't spot anything.

We leave Penca and I change bikes on our way through Potrero to Playa Flamingo. This beach is a lot busier than our beach. It has more hotels and condos. The beach itself has nicer sand as well. There are venders here. You can buy coconuts for drinking, souvenirs, ice cream, etc.

Waves were crashing pretty regularly.

We stay here for about an hour. Ron has a snooze, what's new? We hop back on the bikes as we make our wayto another beach called Playa Basilito. On the way we pass a bigger supermarket so we stop to have a look. We also pass an Asian fusion restaurant and our breakfast is long gone as it is approaching 1:30. We decide to stop for lunch. They have Japanese, Chinese, Philipino, and Korean foods. Ron chooses Teryaki chicken and I have chicken chow lo mein.

Mine. So good but too many noodles.

Ron ate and liked all of his.

After lunch we didn't feel like going another 4 km to the next beach so we stopped at the supermarket to buy a few groceries. We don't need much as we leave Monday for San Jose.

We return the bikes. The guys thought there was something wrong as he had told us we could keep them until tomorrow morning. We return to the condo. I have a shower as I have sand all over my body. I got caught in a good wave and it carried me to the shore. I couldn't rinse off all of the sand in the water. I then sit on the deck and take pictures of a little squirrel that is usually hiding. Today he stayed in the open for a long time eating.

A real cutie. 

I love his tail.

We also decide  to have papaya Daquiris as it needs to be eaten and what better way than a drink? 

We're not sure if we'll make it out tonight or not as lunch was a little late. Also it started raining a few minutes ago. 

Last day here tomorrow, than the long drive back to San Jose.

Friday November 25- playa Potrero

It's the day after Hurricane Otto. After losing power at 10pm, we went to sleep. It was raining hard but the winds were not bad at all. We slept through until 3:30am when the power came back on. Didn't bother looking out as it is very dark and it's a wooded area that we see. We got up around 7:30 then went for a walk around 9  to see how everything stood up. Here are some pictures.

This is the parking area of our condo.

This is our pool. Mostly broken branches and lots of fallen leaves.

This partition on the beach was not there before this morning.

This area used to be attached with no gap.

This massive tree was u rooted and fell on top of the local market. 

We were surprised that the building/shed withstood the weight of those limbs. Sturdier than it looks. 

About five men were cutting away the branches with machetes. One guy had a power saw. We were hoping to go buy some avocados this morning, but for some reason he is cloaed

This was a dry area yesterday. This is about three lots from where we are. 

During our walk on the beach I saw this bird roost itself on top of the tree. With the help of the bird book I discovered that it is a Crested Caracara.

We hung out for a bit this afternoon before going for another walk on the beach around 3pm. We waded in the water then came back for a swim in the pool. The workers had cleaned up all of the leaves in and around the pool. We decided to stay in for supper as we had bought pasta and sauce. Pretty boring meal when the ingredients in the kitchen are  limited, quite boring actually. It will be a quiet night, watching basketball on tv and doing a wash. Tomorrow we are planning on renting bikes and visiting the beaches in the vicinity. 

Thursday November 24- happy birthday Ron-56 yrs young.

it's a cloudy morning in Playa Potrero, but no signs of a storm, yet. We get up and go for a walk on the beach at 7:30. We find the "fair" that takes place every Thursday. We would call it a market, but in Spanish, it's a "feria". We return for breakfast around 9:00. Of course Ron gets spoiled and I make him an omelet and cut up a fresh pineapple. We are going to return to the fair to get more fresh produce. We are looking to buy mangoes, oranges, avocados, and anything else that looks good.
We walk the beach again and are lucky to spot two new birds.

A Sanderling, I think after so after consulting the bird book. So happy to have found a book on Costa Rican birds to help me to identify them.

A couple of Pelicans sitting on a moored boat.

What Ron and I believe to be a Red-Lored Parrot by the picture in the book.

The Great Egret again with it's reflection.

Another Geeat Egret, but it's the other one that caught my eye, a Muscovy duck. Don't believe we've seen one of those before.

Picture a little out of focus but I was afraid to scare it if I got too close. I wanted to try to see it's features a bit better. The book says that this bird can be black or white and the males have "warty" faces. This was a male.

We got to the fair only to find about five stalls. Disappointing. We bought a papaya (paid more than I would at home, but it is fresher), got two big mangoes, and bought some home made mango chutney.

We then decided to return by walking on the road as it was a new section of town. This is what we saw, for Wendy.

A grocery store in your name.

A local cow walking down our street just beside us.y

Love these beautiful palms

Ron has found more flowers

Also encountered lots of chickens, no turkeys though. They are either hiding or being roasted for today's dinner.

Christmas cactus? 

The full cactus tree.

This tree is in the middle of the road. I love that this tree is more important than needed space for development. 

Upon our return we were warmed up so we put our bathing suits and went down to the pool. I had a swim and Ron fell asleep while reading. It's very peaceful and serene here. 

It has been raining off and on for the last hour so we will stay in, actually we are sitting out on the deck, me writing the blog and Ron reading, actually, he's snoozing agin. Really wild life we lead. He will probably watch some football games later and our reservations are at 7 tonight. The big downpours are not scheduled to start, according to the weather network until around 10pm. Let's hope  we get back from our meal before the deluge. 

Can't stand the pace of life. Ha.

Made some mango Daquiris for Ron's b'day

Saw this little rascal just below our deck.

I can't believe that I'm becoming a birder. I sat on the deck with the binoculars that my future brother-in-law so generously lent me for the trip, and sat waiting for any movement in the trees just in front of me. I actually saw a very colourful big bird, but rather than focus and try to really see what was there I turned to get Ron's attention to look, and of course the bird was gone. I remember seeing a lot of bright orange. I saw this little one in the picture. It is a scissor-tailed flycatcher. I saw another big black bird which was probably a black Turkey. It was quite entertaining.

Just got back from our Thanksgiving supper at El Castillo (the Castle). It was buffet style where there was a salad, green beans, carrots, brocoli and cauliflower, mashed potatoes, stuffing, Turkey, gravy, a bit watery, and dessert of pumpkin cheesecake. It was good. That was Ron's birthday meal. It started really raining while we were eating. It's off and on like someone was turning a tap. Anyway, the majority of the rain should come overnight. Might be a stay home day tomorrow.