I spent my last few nights in Costa Rica in the remote town of Drake Bay. It’s a little hard to get to and I had a surprisingly hard time finding any kind of cohesive bus schedule. In the end I took a taxi to a town called La Palma where a bus departs twice a day for Drake Bay. Along the way the bus fords several rivers- not a drive I’d want to do!
The town of Drake Bay is super tiny, with a handful of restaurants and tour operators. They don’t even have an ATM or full grocery store!
Bustling Drake Bay!
Drake Bay took a little bit of warming up for me, I wasn’t sure at first if I’d picked wisely but by the end was sad to go!
At the “bus stop” (aka random bench in town), the owner of the hotel came to pick me up…well, he didn’t at first but then the nice bus driver called him for me hehe.
I stayed at Casa Horozontes, perched up a steep hill from the bay, with a beautiful view, comfortable hammock and very kind owners, Yami and Pedro. Pedro doesn’t speak any English but has the biggest permanent smile I’ve ever seen! Yami is like a nice mom, and helped to arrange all the tours I wanted to do while there. Breakfast is included and is delicious and huge, eggs, pancakes, fruit, YUM. You can also opt to have dinner there which is similarly tasty and grande (and much better than most of the food I had at restaurants in Costa Rica)
View from Casa Horozontes
It was afternoon when I got in, so I just strolled along a beach collecting some shells (which is something I LOVE to do, but I don’t think you’re really supposed to take shells from beaches. Oh well).
Just another stunning sunset
The next morning, after my huge breakfast, I went on a snorkeling tour, which ended up being just so-so. The visibility in the water wasn’t great; we still saw a few fish, turtle, and manta ray, just not all that clearly. I’m not sure if it was the weather that day or if it’s always like that, I assume it was the weather otherwise I doubt snorkeling would be as big a deal as it is there! That evening I had a great strawberry daiquiri and a horrible piece of fish at a restaurant in town before embarking on a night tour which is a popular activity all around Costa Rica.
At first the tour was pretty cool. Even in the dark, our guide somehow spotted frogs, lizards, tarantulas and other creepy crawlies. The tour would have been great if it was two hours; that’s about how long I want to look at spiders and amphibians while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. But it was FOUR HOURS LONG. I think it was supposed to be three hours long but our guide just kept on going! I appreciate his enthusiasm, but honestly all the frogs looked the same, I didn’t need to see 50 of them to get the idea. At least he got some cool photos….which he never emailed to us. Here’s the one photo of a spider that I took:
My last day of vacation (SAD FACE) I hiked to San Josecito beach. It was a beautiful clear day and the hike isn’t too hard, but like in Corcovado, the heat and humidity make it a bit more challenging. On the way, you have the jungle on one side and the ocean on the other, so the views are great and I even saw a few monkeys. The nice thing about this hike is that you can chill at the beach a while before heading back! I laid around and read and floated in the ocean, managing to get an impressive stomach sunburn to bring home.
Hike views!
Just a cute sign along the way!
I spent my last evening having dinner at the hotel with three Costa Rican sisters who were beginning their Semana Santa (holy week) vacation and who really pushed the limits of my conversational Spanish! After 3 flights and a long travel day, it was back home to San Francisco to dream about my next adventure!