Costa Rica - Part One, the Coast
I'm going to put up a day-by-day summary of our trip to Costa Rica. It will be in sections, because it was a long trip and I wanted to post in some detail (partly for my own records). If it's too much, just skip to the pretty pictures.
Outline of the trip (Each destination marked with a red circle, driven routes in red)
Playa del Coco
On the coast we stayed at the beautiful Casa Vista Azul, about 2km outside of the town and way up on the hillside. It was built just this spring, and we were the only guests. We had rented a stick-shift 4x4 for our trip, and we very glad of it on the first day.
Hotel:
Views:
The town itself was small, and hadn't become overly-touristy yet. Playa del Coco:
Yes, those are howler monkeys in the trees in town. The food was excellent, being local and cheap. We ate there all 3 nights. A 9oz piece of swordfish or tuna was only $8. The fish was seasoned and cooked to perfection. I got my tuna "rare", which they understood to be seared lightly on the outside and basically raw all the way through. Awesome! Also, delicious tres leches dessert, and a beautiful 2nd floor restaurant patio.
The big highlight of the coast for us was, of course, scuba diving! We were so pumped to actually dive in the ocean, having only been in Lake Champlain in October/November. After a quick refresher couse in the pool at 6:30 AM, we did two mornings of two tank local dives out of Rich Coast Diving:
As you can see, the weather was absolutely gorgeous in the mornings. We'd get up about 6:30 each day, have breakfast on the patio, and head down to the dive shop. The warmth and sun held all morning. The diving itself was absolutely spectacular, we saw everything we could have wanted to see, and more! We had our own private divemaster who basically babysat us underwater and poked things with his special Dive Master Poking Stick.
Things we saw on the boat! (all at close range)
Things we saw underwater!
Here's Paul, our friendly and experienced divemaster, and Jeepie, the baby couatimundi kept around the diveshop:
I believe that wraps it up for our time on the coast. It generally poured from about noon until two, and then we wandered around town the rest of the day. Scuba diving wore us out, so we rested a lot.
Next - Volcano Arenal
Outline of the trip (Each destination marked with a red circle, driven routes in red)
- Fly into Liberia Airport, drive to Playa del Coco on the beach
- Spend 3 nights in Playa del Coco, scuba diving each morning
- Drive to Volcano Arenal, east of Lake Arenal in the town of Fortuna
- 3 nights at the volcano
- Drive back around Lake Arenal to the town of Monteverde in the cloud forest
- Next day, drive back to Playa del Coco for last night in Costa Rica
Playa del Coco
On the coast we stayed at the beautiful Casa Vista Azul, about 2km outside of the town and way up on the hillside. It was built just this spring, and we were the only guests. We had rented a stick-shift 4x4 for our trip, and we very glad of it on the first day.
Hotel:
Views:
The town itself was small, and hadn't become overly-touristy yet. Playa del Coco:
Yes, those are howler monkeys in the trees in town. The food was excellent, being local and cheap. We ate there all 3 nights. A 9oz piece of swordfish or tuna was only $8. The fish was seasoned and cooked to perfection. I got my tuna "rare", which they understood to be seared lightly on the outside and basically raw all the way through. Awesome! Also, delicious tres leches dessert, and a beautiful 2nd floor restaurant patio.
The big highlight of the coast for us was, of course, scuba diving! We were so pumped to actually dive in the ocean, having only been in Lake Champlain in October/November. After a quick refresher couse in the pool at 6:30 AM, we did two mornings of two tank local dives out of Rich Coast Diving:
As you can see, the weather was absolutely gorgeous in the mornings. We'd get up about 6:30 each day, have breakfast on the patio, and head down to the dive shop. The warmth and sun held all morning. The diving itself was absolutely spectacular, we saw everything we could have wanted to see, and more! We had our own private divemaster who basically babysat us underwater and poked things with his special Dive Master Poking Stick.
Things we saw on the boat! (all at close range)
- Fish Hawks diving into the ocean
- Three sea turtles, two of them mating
- Flying fish! They look like big dragonflies
- A mother humpbacked whale and her baby
Things we saw underwater!
- Whitetip sharks!
- Octopi: we saw three, one I stuck my face right up to, and another the divemaster poked with his stick, making it swim around and ink at us
- Eels: maybe 10 different morays of different sizes, some were tiny and we wanted to adopt them, one was a huge green ugly one. Saw striped, snowflake, and green
- Eagle rays swimming in the open water
- One big stingray, which we chased around
- Little round "pizza" stingrays
- A guitar shark, which was rare enough to impress the other divemasters
- A scorpionfish clinging to the rock. Our divemaster poked it to show off its bright orange feet
- Bright yellow seahorses, clinging to the seaweed and coral
- Clown shrimp, eating a starfish
- Brittle stars and sea urchins
- Big green parrotfish
- Huge wrasses sticking to the rocks
- Schools of jacks, about a foot long
- Sea cucumber
- Guineafowl pufferfish in grey, blue, and bright yellow. Very friendly, you could put your face right next to them
- Prickly pufferfish
- Many baby pufferfish! Little tiny guys swimming and defending 6 inches of rock
- Fields of coral
- The wreck of a ship down around 65'
- Pipefish
- Cornetfish
Here's Paul, our friendly and experienced divemaster, and Jeepie, the baby couatimundi kept around the diveshop:
I believe that wraps it up for our time on the coast. It generally poured from about noon until two, and then we wandered around town the rest of the day. Scuba diving wore us out, so we rested a lot.
Next - Volcano Arenal