03/08/2022 From Tamarindo to el Coco

Trying to catch the local bus

We didn’t want to pay for another expensive shuttle to our next destination el Coco. This is why we tried to catch the local bus. The only problem was that no one could really tell us where and when the bus would leave. (It sounded really familiar to our arrival in San José.)

In the end we found out that the first local bus would leave every 1.5 hours and we’d just have to flag it down the street. We should then tell the bus driver that we want to get to el Coco. He’d drop us off somewhere on the way. From there we could flag down another public bus that would drive us to el Coco. Sounded like an adventure and we were up for the challenge.

Taking a shuttle after all

At this point it was raining really heavily. Moreover, our backs started aching from our backpacks so that we started looking into different options.

Call us weak, but we approached a shuttle bus driver on the street who we bargained down to a reasonable price. He then dropped us off right at our hotel “Toucan House” (that we had booked while the shuttle bus driver was finishing his lunch) – we are flashpackers after all.

El Coco

Toucan House

When the shuttle bus driver dropped us off at the gate, the Toucan house didn’t look anything special. It looked rather run down.

Furthermore, the French owners were really helpful and gave us great tips about el Coco!

Walk along the beach promenade

Friendly ticos

On the walk downtown, Costa Rican kids were greeting us, local grandmas were smiling at us and everyone in the neighbourhood seemed so kind! It was great staying in a local neighbourhood. So far, we’ve only met kind and helpful ticos (as the Costa Ricans call themselves).

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04/08/2022 El Coco

Kind owners

Our French owners from the Toucan House are really kind. They washed and dried our washing for free (!) and told us about great beaches in the area. That’s why the plan was to go beach hopping today and rent two of their bicycles to get around.

Explore the nearby beaches

As often we only decided to leave our place around lunch – the hottest part of the day. One of the bikes was broken. And since it was quite a mission to get to the first beach Playa Penca (a lot of hills and very hidden), the owner suggested to kayak to the beach instead.

Go kayaking

The heat is killing us

Feeling way too confident that we could easily kayak to the hidden beach (after the 10 minutes of kayaking we had done in Tamarindo), we agreed to it.
After 40 minutes of walking in the midday sun with great humidity and no shade, we arrived at the beach spot where we picked up the kayak. Being already a bit exhausted was an understatement.
We heaved the kayak into the water, pushed it over the first few waves and hopped in. (I make this sound very easy. It was, however, a process of 20 minutes, that’s how “professional” we were behaving.)

Quite the workout

The “fun and easy” activity turned into a 45-minute-battle against the wind and the waves and still no playa in sight. Nevertheless, the scenery was really beautiful around us. You could see groups of pelicans flying over the water and hear monkeys howling from one of the islands. If only we weren’t in such pain and the clouds weren’t slowly coming closer…
We knew how fast the weather could change from sunny to overcast to full on thunderstorm from our experience of the sailing trip in Tamarindo. And we also knew we didn’t want to sit in our little kayak when the thunderstorm would hit the ocean aka us.

Never made it to Playa Penca

So we acted “wisely” and turned around to the shore without ever having seen Playa Penca. Luckily, the rain only picked up when we surfed the last bigger wave in our kayak back to the shore.

Listen to live music

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05/08/2022 Leaving Costa Rica
Today was our last day in Costa Rica – for now. And el Coco was famous for one thing particularly: scuba diving.

Go scuba diving

I went scuba diving with the company “Rich Coast Diving”, as I had read great things about them online.
There were about 8 of us on the little boat. But we went scuba diving in only a little group (consisting of the dive instructor, my “buddy” and I). Everyone was really friendly and the dive was truly breath-taking (not in a literal way, luckily 😉)! We saw sea horses, lots of eels, tons of manta rays, round rays and stingrays and about 7 to 8 sharks on both dives! I loved it!

Watch sunset at the beach

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Last day in Costa Rica – for now

It was a pretty amazing last day in Costa Rica. We are quite anxious to see if we and our drone will make it to the new destination tomorrow as drones are illegal in the next country we are travelling to…