It's incredible how early we wake up here. I don't know if it's the time difference or just being glad to be here. We decided to stay here another night because we love it so much. Mary wants to go to Ojochal to see some hotels there this morning so we are off for another road trip.
The trip is incredible. The intercoastal winds along the ocean and you are up pretty high so you overlook the some beautiful scenery. We stopped at a hotel, well cabinas, there really aren't a lot of US traditional hotels here. The climb was too much for these old legs and although at one point there may have been a view it was overgrown now and you couldn't see much.
We wound up at Club Fred. What a wonderful place. The pictures of the river and ocean are taken from the patio outside our room. Fred and Elly were great, very laid back. We decided to stay there for our 5th night.
We ate at this cute little restaurant called Exotica in Ojochal. The food was great and Mary was able to have something without cauliflower and broccoli! I had ceviche and she had a dish called the seashell. It was a shell covered in mashed potatoes, containing shrimp and a creamy cheese sauce, deliciosa! We stopped in this little line of stores and found a shop where the woman made the clothes. They have these serapes made of what I think is rayon, very light and soft material. She makes dresses, shirts and pants from it. Mary and I are both large women, me being larger, but she found a shirt and it didn't quite fit right. The woman said she could alter it and also make pants to match by the next day! So Mary ordered it, I think it was less than $30 in total for the outfit and it was handmade and fitted. The woman did not speak English, she was French, and so we communicated in Spanish, what a country lol.
From there we decided to visit the Borucan reservation. In almost all the shops in Dominical and San Isidro you can find these woven purses and painted (or unpainted) masks. The Borucans make these in their village. We had been told not to go there in the rain because the road is clay and steep. It was nice so we headed off. Steep is not really sufficient of a word, maybe straight up is better? The road was clay with gullies from the previous rains and of course rocks of various sizes. It was a mountain so it was curvy and you couldn't see what was coming down at you. With that type of road who would be coming down right? Well apparently everybody! And quickly too.
But we made it up the mountain and it was well worth it. What a view!
We felt like we were on top of the world. As we were climbing the road we kept seeing a dirt road up higher and guess what - that's where we were heading! There was not much to see at the village, we met a few nice people, chatted a while and bought some masks and stuff at the same price they charged in the hotel. Then it started to thunder so I got scared and we left.
On the way down we passed a little bull calf that had strayed outside the fence. What a cutie! We also saw cows grazing wayyyyyy up high on the mountainside. We barely made it down the mountain when it began to rain. It seems to be a nightly occurrence during the rainy season, but our days were filed with sunshine! We headed back to Hacienda Baru and started hearing a horrible noise from the car. It sounded like giant cicadas. I tried calling 4x4 Rentals but I couldn't figure out how to dial locally in Costa Rica from my cell from the states while I was in Costa Rica. To dial home I just called normally, 215-xxx-xxxx, and about 50% of the time it connected. I tried dialing internationally, locally, but nope didn't want to connect. I got messages in English and Spanish so God knows how much this is gonna cost me. We found that driving less than 30 mph eliminated the noise so we took a looonnnnggg leisurely drive back to the cabin. Boy did we piss off some Ticos! Luckily the intercoastal is pretty flat and they could pass.
When we got back, Jack nicely let us use the phone to call. Diego explained some complicated series of steps to disengage the hub (we had used 4 wheel drive in the mountains). Mary tried it and it worked, something like put it in 4 wheel drive, then reverse, then back up but not too far, then out of 4 wheel, you get the picture. I have no idea how she remembered the steps but we had to do it pretty much every time we used 4 wheel drive.
After another great dinner and our evening talk with Sammy we went to bed.
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