The Monkey Trail

Saturday Kevin worked half a day. I went on my daily walk to the beach and read through the entire Nicoya Peninsula section of Lonely Planet, highlighting the areas we should visit on Sunday. That evening we headed to Liberia for dinner and ended up at a place that had sushi and German food, interesting combination.

Sunday we got up and took the monkey trail, a dirt path to the southern beaches. It is a dirt road that can only be used certain parts of the year. It is wet season, but hasn't hit the worst of it yet so it can still be traveled. Nice drive, went through 2 small rivers.

The first beach on our Lonely Planet agenda was Playa Conchal, named after the shells that make up the entire beach. Nice part is no mess, shells come right off your feet and shoes! We had read that it is the one area in the Pacific that has bright blue waters and a great spot for snorkeling, so we snorkeled for awhile, but the water was murky. It seems to be not so great when it is cloudy.

After that we drove to Playa Grande and went to Parque Nacional Marino Las Baulas de Guanacaste, a park known for its nesting of the leatherback turtle. We ate lunch at Hotel Tortugas, nice upstairs porch to eat on and look out at the beach, not so nice service and quesohamburgesas. We thought is was a bit overpriced, $27 for 2 burgers and 2 beers, come on now!

Our next stop was a drive through Playa Tamarindo, a more developed beach town. We didn't get out here, just checked out the scene from the car. After that we got back on the main road and headed south to Playa Samara. That trip took us over the mountains and through the hills, to a very cool beach town. We really liked this beach because of the palm trees and open water.