Busses and Beach

The public bus system and Costa Rica may be cheap and a bit of an adventure, but it is certainly not the most time efficient means of travel. To get from San Carlos to Liberia, I had to take 4 different busses. With time spent waiting in towns along the way, and at paradas (bus stops), the entire trip took about 7 and a half hours.

The trip, however, was very scenic and got us where we wanted to go. There are no (reasonably priced) hotels near the beach that we went to, so we stayed in the city of Liberia in a really neat little rustic hotel with shared bathrooms. It had a tiny courtyards filled with random things (ancient bicycles, oxen yokes, water pumps, hay bales, papaya trees, fish tanks and christmas tree lights) and our room was decorated with a lamp made out of an old sewing machine, frayed ship ropes, and an antique meat grinder.

We arrived around one thirty in the afternoon and based on the bus schedule, did not really have time to go to the beach that day. After settling in, Laura gave me the tour of the town, showing me where she used to work, live and eat. We wandered around looking for sandals and shopping for our picnic the next day. It was very hot there and we bought some pipas frias (cold coconuts) to drink and eat (they cut a hole for a straw in them with a huge knife).

The next day, we headed for the beach as early as possible, changing busses in Tamarindo before arriving at the coast. The beach that we wanted to go, Conchal, had been taken over by a large resort style hotel and the only way to get to it now is to travel to a small nearby town and walk about half a mile down the beach. The initial beach looked pretty good to me, but once we rounded the corner, I could see why going to the next was worth the added effort. The water was an amazing turquoise blue, the beach was lined with trees, and in many places, there were crushed shells so deep that you sunk in up to your ankles when you walked through them.

We swam, sat under our tree, read the news paper in Spanish, napped, swam, people watched, talked, ate, looked for shells, laid around and swam some more. It was pretty amazing and definitely the most beautiful beach I have ever been too.

This bird came over and enchanted me for about 15 minutes. He was not shy at all and was paying close attention to us. Then I realized that he wanted our watermelon (sandia). Don't worry, I don't feed wild life ;)