It always helps to bring your chef with you of course. The fish store was a bounty of fresh seafood – smoked salmon, scallops, snow crab, fish cakes. Greens with apples, walnuts, gorgonzola and kraft vinaigrette (the only option in this part of the universe). Mashed with garlic, spinach, peppers and onions with garlic butter sauce. Wine is expensive here but we splurged on a sweet Chilean red wine for this fine dinner.
Iceberg Man tour in Twillingate. Bundle up! We got up close to some amazing icebergs. They do make it cold out though. All look different with viens of pure blue ice and volcanic ash. Some grounded or flipped. They pulled some ice up for us to taste and take some home for a cocktail later.
We arrive in St Johns on June 4th and head to Clarenville for a two night stay so we can visit the Bonavista peninsula.We visited Trinity a cute little historic town. Then off to Port Rexton to take the Skerwink trail listed as one of the best trails in North America. 5.3. KM, lot of ups and downs but beautiful and we spotted our first iceberg in the distance.
And here we are in Steve’s carport. Betsy Rose just fits.
In our search for a retro camper to be used as a sewing studio we happened upon this Shasta reissue of the 1961 model in Tualatin OR.
On our way from Sámara to Liberia to catch the plane back to the USA, or as it may be known next year, TRUMPISTAN.
Free range horses, ranging freely in the middle of Sámara.
We made a side trip to the small town of Guaitil, famous for their pottery.
This is what you look like after driving to Liberia, flying to the US and finally sitting on the bus to the car park at 5am the next day.
Paying to leave the country?
After a full day of bouncing around in the car on the way to Monteverde and back, we chose a simple, relaxing beach afternoon for our last full day in Costa Rica.
The bar/restaurant area of Rancho de la Playa. Pool to the right.
The comfy hang-out area. Pretty nice. Our room included air conditioning, two beds and a full, if sometimes comical kitchen. Friendly staff. $85/night. Would be happy to stay there again.
Oddly enough, this is not referred to “coco frio”, but instead “pipa frio”.
Some light beach reading. In case you’re wondering, the good guys won.
Forgot my platform dancing shoes…
Please help the fish.
Oh yes, dinner by the sea.
This is what you get when you order squid stuffed with Chorizo – basically chorizo with squid on the outside :-D.
Here’s Dennis from Switzerland showing me his home-made backgammon board. He’s traveling around looking for a good place to settle.
On Thursday we headed from the beach to the mountains to check out the Monteverde cloud forest. We went to this nature park: http://www.selvatura.com/. Sure, we could have done zip-lining, but we had made a vacation mistake – it was simply too far a drive to do more than a long tour and lunch. To do this place properly best to spend the night.
Joyce following Miguel into the forest. We had an usual sunny day. It’s supposed to be cloudy and raining.
Here we go…
Yikes, a long way down.
A photo of Joyce taking a photo. Fascinating to see plants that in our world are small decorative things that live in pots. Here they are giants.
Trees in this section are small because it was clear-cut for dairy farming in the 60’s.
So, we started our day at sea level. At the start of our hike we were at 5,300+ feet above sea level. In between is a lot of steep, narrow gravel road switch-backing up the valleys you see below. Some of it’s scenic, most of it is jouncy.
Ever heard the phrase, “you look like 10 miles of bad road”…? This road actually isn’t all that bad. You can do the whole thing in the standard Tico battered compact asian sedan without incident, but it’s so nice when the pavement starts again.
We saw many unusual plants in the Selvatura reserve in the cloud forest as we walked over 8 suspension bridges over and though the canopy. It was an unusual sunny day. The adventure starts much before the preserve as you must traverse over some unusually bad roads, if you can call them that. And try to avoid the dogs, horses, bikes, pedestrians, motorbikes, giant trucks…..
Hot lips flower!
And a millipede. Which is good, no bite. Centipedes aren’t much fun as they bite.
And the eyes must have been on us as they have one snake for every two trees. And they had a lot of trees. Luckily we saw no vipers today. But we did find a slothful sloth.
They have a lot of giant plants we pay good money for tiny versions of.
And some sort of big wild turkey.
It really is a magical place. And Miguel did an excellent tour for us!
A tough day at the beach. Starting with our homemade breakfast of pâtécones and egg scramble. It’s hard to pass up the bounty of fruits and veggies on the cheap. And luckily I brought my own pâtécones maker. Here’s a clue we found on the intarwubs. Instead of frying them *twice*, boil them for 10-15 minutes before doing the big squish on them.
Packed up all we needed for a beach day only 3 miles south of town…the beach to ourselves. The coconut delivery man came once with some refreshing beverages.
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Now I know why they call them howlers….
