Costa Rica: Pacific Coast

Part 2 of the Costa Rican adventure...

Our second leg of the trip was to the Pacific coast, where we stayed in a small, spread out town just outside of Uvita.  This was our spurge part of the trip where we found this amazing hotel.  Not to make you jealous, but a few amenities included a king sized bed with Egyptian cotton (not that I would know the difference if it was just plain old cotton), an outdoor jungle shower, our own balcony with views of the jungle and the ocean and an infinity pool, not to mention awesome breakfast and a welcome cocktail.  If you want info for your upcoming trip to Costa Rica, let me know and I'll hook it up.

Here is where we called home for a couple nights:

In the mornings, we would wake up to Howler Monkeys and watch the birds emerge from the trees.  Probably the best place I've ever slept.

 And in the evenings, we would hang out in the pool and watch the sun set over the Pacific.

On the best day ever, we took the advice of one of the men working at the hotel and went to Playa Ventanas, a secluded beach where the only access is through a guy's property.  We had to pay him a couple bucks to go through, but he watched our car...best deal of the year!

Here is a view of the beach.  There was maybe four other people there and for a little while, we had the beach to ourselves!  Not only the beach, but the waves too!

Casey caught some good pictures of me surfing.  It wasn't the biggest surf, but the water was so warm and it was all mine!  I was stoked too because I've only seen a picture of myself on a wave once, and that was a looong time ago.  

Playa Ventanas also had a couple of caves to explore.  

I got a little claustrophobic with the waves crashing at one end and flowing through the cave, but Casey was pretty brave and saw the deeper regions.  

 Here's a cool little crab that Casey found.  It was so well camouflaged I have no idea how she spotted it, especially since it was pretty dark in there and I used my flash to get a picture of this guy.

 This was my view as I waited for the sets to come.  I could have stayed there another week, easy!

The final view of that magical beach.

Fascinated by wildlife, the following are some pictures of creatures we saw.

Leaf Cutter Ants.  They are so cool, both as individuals and as a colony.  We saw them throughout Costa Rica, weaving down long highways they created like specks of flickering confetti flowing across the ground.  Some of their trails were so big that we could probably have used them!

Blue Morphose Butterfly.  This we also saw throughout Costa Rica.  They are so iridescent and beautiful and actually really fast.  This isn't a great shot, but I was lucky to have gotten it.

Not sure what this guy is called, but it was a pretty big beetle, just hanging out on a light.  It would have been fun to feed him to a giant spider.

Also not sure what these butterflies are called, but it was a magical moment.  They were fluttering around and landed in this patch of sunlight in the shade of overhead trees.  I love this picture for the shear light with the shadow of the top butterfly on the other.

 Man did we see a ton of butterflies.  I promise there will be more animal than just these painted flyers.

No creatures in this one, I just liked the composition of this.

On our last day in the region, we found a waterfall not too far from our hotel.  It was really easy to get to and there was a path to the top.  When we first got there, we saw a guy slide off of it a couple of time and decided to go for it too.

I went first, sitting in the water and feeling the force of the stream.  I let go and let it flush me over the edge.  It was so fast and there was a little bump about a third of the way down that propelled me off and then into the water.  It was all so fast, and with my mouth ajar when I hit the water, it chomped down and heard a crack.  As I came back up to the surface, I felt a small, hard piece of something in my mouth that wasn't there before.  Well ... it was there, it was just attached to the other side of my tooth.  Yup, I broke my tooth on this waterfall.

Not the funnest thing to happen, but shit happens.  After some time of thinking what my best solution would be, we got directions from the hotel to the nearest dentist and in a few hours I got my tooth fixed...sorta.  It's patched up pretty good for now, but not a permanent solution.  In retrospect though, I'm really glad I got it fixed since the next day we went on a 20 km trek through the rainforest 3.5 hours away from this place.  And that is where I'll leave it until the next post!