Moving down the Guanacaste Coast with the cattle!
Travel Location: Tamarindo,Costa-Rica
We hated to leave the fabulous Casa de Conde but knew we had to make it down the Guanacaste Coast. CR is divided up into 7 Provinces. Guanacaste is in the North West of Costa Rica and is the smallest province in terms of population (256K.) The beaches are not connected (they are like little small bays) so you just can’t drive down the coast looking at the ocean. Some of the roads were paved but some gave you the Costa Rican massage as they like to joke! We did enjoy the scenery along the way, especially the cattle drive down the road. The cows are called Brahmin cattle and have a hump on their back.
We made it into Tamarindo at lunch time. We found a lovely restaurant on the ocean with a pretty view but also where we keep an eye on our parked car. There were definitely more tourists than other areas we’ve visited so far. There were many shops and restaurants in the small surfer town to support the vacationers. Tamarindo is known for being a good place for beginner surfers. There are lots of surf board shops which offer lessons. Maybe one day we’ll try but for now we took a break to swim in the ocean & pool. We had read warning signs about the rip tides, but there were many swimmers and surfers on the beach. The current did not feel too strong but Andrew got knocked around a little. A kind Costa Rican who had gently asked us if we were interested in a tour came up to us to warn us about the rip tides. This was in contrast to the aggressive foreigners offering you a free lunch to see their resort in Playa del Coco.
We enjoyed walking around Tamarindo and decided to try a fruit smoothie with fruits we had not tried before. They used passion fruit, pineapple & star fruit. We read that Star fruit are grown in Florida too but we had never tried it. The smoothie was good and we walked around a little to the shops. We wandered around until we found a restaurant and ended up eating at a cute open air pizzeria on top of a building with a brick oven. The pizza was good and the owner was very friendly. The owner had a 3 year old daughter in Hawaii. He showed us a surf board he was making for her and offered to give the boys surfing lessons. He was great with the kids and very friendly. We thought at first he was a surfer tourist turned resident, but he was actually from San Jose. It is not always easy to tell who is Costa Rican but our traveling clan of five definitely sticks out!
The next morning after breakfast we took one last walk on Tamarindo’s beach. It was low tide so the kids could walk out on the rocks croppings. Ashley found a 6 inch diameter perfect conch shell! The sea creature was still alive in it so she let it go. I have to learn to carry my pocket camera with me, even at breakfast! Alex had discovered the designs on the wet beach sand were snails so the boys had fun digging a few more up then letting them go.
Since we knew the next towns would be smaller (usually only a few buildings like a restaurant, bank maybe a TINY grocery store)we decided to go to the book store. Ashley was thrilled to get another book. Many hotels have book exchanges which is a wonderful idea. Unfortunately, there are very few kid/young adult books and many more books are in German than in English. We headed back out to see more of the coast.
