Costa Rica - Playa Esterillos Este

We arrived at Playa Esterillos Este late in the afternoon. It had been a long and wet drive, the rain poured in buckets at points, but was thankfully uneventful. We had identified a place to stay in our guides, the Pelican Hotel. We drove there, across the grass airstrip, and pulled up at the hotel in the continuing rain. The rooms were a little more expensive than we were hoping to pay since rainy season isn't so exciting on the beach, but they had two rooms available next to each other, they had a restaurant and a pool table, and they were right on the beach. It suited our needs so we decided to stay there at least for that night and the next before moving on down the coast. It was getting dark and we were getting lazy, so we walked up and down the beach a little bit and ate dinner in the restaurant at the hotel. We were the only ones there, so they were probably glad to have something to do. After dinner we played a couple games of pool. Emily's pool shark behavior came out again. She looks so deceiving and bad at pool, but then she wipes the floor with you. After a day of sitting in the car we were all beat and didn't stay up late. Why does sitting in a car all day make you tired, anyway? It isn't like you are doing anything. Anyway, we were excited about the boat tour we were planning to go on for Monday.

Monday morning came, the sun was up, and the water was warm. The hotel had boogie boards and our boat tour wasn't until the afternoon, so Katie, Emily, and I grabbed some boards and headed out into the waves. Most of the waves were pretty small, but we did have a great time in the water. Then about 11:30 we left to go to Rafa's Boat Tour. The lady in the hotel office recommended it and made reservations for us, she said he was a real local and his tour was the best. Unfortunately, her directions were not great. Drive over two scary bridges, pass something, turn to your right and just go to the end or something like that. Navigating is difficult especially since roads aren't marked so you have to navigate by landmarks and luck. After stopping at some other strange hotel where the owner tried to get us to get a room, we did eventually manage to get down the right road. We got there early and had enough time to eat down the road at the cutest restaurant. The owner naturally took a liking to Becca and provided her with many coconuts to drink from, one of her many quests on this trip. The chicken and rice that I had was excellent and the owners were friendly.

After lunch we go back down to the boat dock and find Rafa. He is a really funny man, very expressive and interesting, though his English wasn't good. He made a fish, a grasshopper, and something else out of palm fronds for the girls and they were smitten. While waiting for the rest of the people to show up for our boat tour we chatted with a man who had lived in San Jose, CA for a long time but moved back to Costa Rica. As we found almost everywhere, the people were just so nice and welcoming! It was past boat launch time and the other people hadn't arrived yet, but Rafa loaded us in the boat anyway and we went for a quick ride while waiting some more. We didn't see anything exciting in the mangrove swamp yet, but we did see several drunk Texans waiting on the dock when we got back. They loaded into the boat in a typical loud American way and we set off. I was skeptical at first, thinking they were going to be really horrible. And while they did do a few stupid things, like continuing to ask our guide questions in English when he clearly didn't speak English, they weren't too bad.

The boat tour went through the mangrove swamps along the Pacific coast near Manuel Antonio. It was a little pontoon boat kind of thing, reminiscent to me of boat tours through the bayous in Louisiana. The exception here was the amazing wildlife that we got to see! Some of the highlights were a boa constrictor swimming next to the boat, some mapache (raccoon) and coati families, a lot of really brightly colored crabs (which Rafa put in his mouth), and a boatload of monkeys. And I do mean boatload.... Unbeknownst to myself, part of our ride included pulling up next to the trees and having monkeys jump all over us, eating old banana out of our hands, and making scary noises in our ears. Everyone else thought this was very exciting, and I guess I did too, however I'm a little bit creeped out by monkeys, so having them crawl all over me and smear banana in my hair only to eat it out again was a little terrifying. It was definitely an experience I'm glad I had, though I don't know if I would want to be covered in monkeys again.

Katie drove us back across the scary bridges and to our hotel. It would be time for dinner in a little while, so I scouted out the other hotel restaurant next door. I had a lovely long walk up and down the beach at sunset, spoke in Spanish/Italian to the waiter at the restaurant next door, and generally enjoyed the late afternoon on my own.

We wandered over to the next hotel to their fine dining restaurant. The food was pricy, but very good. Again we were very tired after a long day, so we didn't stay up late. We did, however, decide that Tuesday morning we should move on down the coast for Quepos and Manuel Antonio, we'd accomplished everything we could at this beach which included: sitting in the sun, boogie boarding, walking, collecting shells, and doing nothing. Fortunately when we woke up on Tuesday morning, the hotel staff didn't mind that we wanted to check out a day earlier than we said we would. So we took off for the scary bridges!