Nov 12- From 5000’ above sea level to ……..sea level

8:00am, picked up from our hostel by Roca Verde transport. It was $45/pp to Samara Beach (4 hrs), instead of $65/pp through Tropical Shuttle. I haven’t booked more than 2 days ahead of our next stop in case plans changed (which they have a few times), and you can always find a better deal by talking to people or your hotel staff. I almost just booked online with Tropical Shuttle, but our hostel uses the same company all the time so they get a deal; we saved $40 in the end for the same trip.

The driver did take us to their office to pay, but their machine was not working, so we ended up finding a bank near Liberia and we got some cash out instead. Our driver Ernan didn’t speak any English, but it made for a great drive! We were dropping another couple off in Liberia first, then headed back down to Playa Samara.We had another 1:45hrs from Liberia to Samara, and we learned some more Spanish along the route. Ernan was awesome!

***ADD moment, I am trying to sit and write this as I am about 4 days behind now, but there are howler monkeys in the trees next to us, they are eating leaves and throwing branches on the tin roof…..too much to see!**

OK, so we were driving…..before we dropped the other couple off, Ernan took us back to the same awesome lookout point/coffee shop for more photos and a coffee/snack. Those views will never get old. I took a few more snaps, and the rooster was hanging around so I got him on video doing what he does best.

There were some white horses there just on the side of the road eating grass, not sure if they belonged to anyone. We continued learning some Spanish the rest of the way until we reached our Hotel, Pension Playa Samara. We booked this place because we were just staying at the Pension in Santa Elena, and we could get a 15% discount if we stayed at their Samara location. Sounds great to us!

Nothing fancy, just a small room with a double bed and a private bathroom with A/C! We paid around $55us/night. There is a small pool as well if we want, and our breakfast is included here.

We settled into our room and then we were going to go 1 block down to the beach to meet some people we met online in a backpackers group. They are here for 5 nights, until Friday as well, and were looking for other people to go fishing with! The 3 of them are friends who were here for a few weeks from Belgium. I told Jay he should go, since that is his thing. They were having lunch at Lo Que Hay, which is a cool bar right on the beach.

Gross beach right?! Lol

We found them and chatted for a bit, they said they met a local lady who could get them a fishing/dolphin watching excursion for $50/pp. It didn’t sound like a deep sea fishing charter and I got persuaded into going ( I get seasick)
Whatever, I will take 2 gravol and try to not pass out/barf on everyone. We had a few drinks and ended up eating lunch there, we shared a nacho platter. Beers were 1500 colones which is about $2.50/bottle. Our friends left and I said we would meet up with them in a few hours or so, so we could go get some cash out for this lady. Samara is a very small town with just a few roads, so the bank was a few blocks away. It was a Banco of Costa Rica (BCR), which is perfect because that one works for me. After we got our moola, we walked over to the hotel our friends were at which was about a 10 minute walk on the beach. We then walked to this lady’s house (Sara was her name) which was right next to their hotel. She is a local who has been here around 17 years and knows a lot of people, so she hooked us up with her friend who has a bigger boat and runs tours regularly. We were to get picked up at that spot the next morning at 8am, where we would get driven to the next beach where the boat is located.

It was getting dark so we ended up back at Lo Que Hay for more beers since it was close to our hotel. We stayed until 9 or so before heading back, we didn’t eat dinner since we were still full from the nachos. We met a few locals and chatted for awhile;)

On our way back to our hotel earlier in the day, we had a group of howler monkeys walk right over our heads on the power lines! They are pretty cool, I still can’t believe the noise that comes out of them at 5am. I knew we would be up early most mornings if they are here…….

MONKEY BALLS. YER WELCOME