The Beach

Jaco Beach, Costa Rica

On to Jaco, a short beach stay of 3 nights.  Turns out that near the coasts and high tourist areas they actually have direction signs and highway markers, so we probably didn't need to follow that Iguana the whole way.

We weren't able to get the treehouse for these last 3 days so we decided to do the beach.  We mostly just hung out, enjoying the water, and Jan swam once.

Right on the beach, a perfect location.  This was a small, family-run place, and we actually had a suite, with two bedrooms, kitchen, and patio, the closest unit to the beach.

The town area, the strip, if you will, is all about tourism.  It reminded us somewhat of Provincetown.

We stopped at the Carara National Park hoping to see some Macaws, which are found in numbers here and not so much elsewhere now in Costa Rica.

Iguanas are everywhere.  And we did see the promised crocodiles from the bridge near where they congregate, near the entrance to the National Park.  There are always some there, and as many as several dozen.  Iguanas and crocodiles look so prehistoric!

We didn't see any parrots or Macaws, but this parrot photo was taken on our first trip to South America 10 years ago.  This parrot was multi-lingual, no kidding!  It spoke in both English and Spanish that it wanted something to eat and it wanted it right now!

We enjoyed Costa Rica and would do it again, including the driving.  But...we were never so glad to see a hotel sign as we were to see this one the evening before we were to fly home.  After there being basically no direction or road marking signs in most of rural Costa Rica, we shouted for joy when we saw that our hotel was even listed on the highway signs at the airport.  We usually prefer more local ambiance, but this place had it going on for what we needed.  A place to crash the night before our early flight in the morning.  They had shuttles going the short distance to the airport all night long, and even had a breakfast all sacked up and ready for you as you went out the door to catch your flight... at 3:30 AM in our case.

The End...