Friday January 28th and Saturday January 29th

January 28th

When we took off from Samara on Friday, we drove pretty close to the coast as we headed down the Nicoya Peninsula.  We stopped to take this picture of Playa Islita, but it didn't come out too well, since the sun was in a bad spot.  But it was absolutely beautiful.

And here are some pictures we took when we got to Playa San Miguel and took an evening walk along the beach.

There were tons of these all over the beach, and some were light blue.  We have no idea what they are.

 The sunsets are always so pretty.

January 29th

 Waiting for breakfast at our hotel in the morning.

Today we drove to Montezuma on Gulf of Nicoya.  The drive to Montezuma took several hours because we opted to drive on a much smaller road that was closer to the coast so that we could see what that drive was like.  The road was a dirt road all the way and twice we had to cross rivers with water in them.  We had been told by someone at the hotel in Playa San Miguel how to approach and drive through one of the rivers and his advice helped.  It also helped that we had a car in front of us which kind of gave Fernando (who was driving) an idea of what the depth of the water was where that car was going through.  It's a good thing it's the dry season here, or we would have not been able to cross those rivers at all.  It being the dry season, and driving on those dirts roads, really made for a very dusty drive.  All along the road, the trees and vegetation weren't green anymore, they were all brown with the heavy coats of dust that were all over them.  It was a nice drive, though because the scenery was nice with lots of valleys with farm land.  

Once we got to Montezuma, the first thing we did was look for a place to stay the night.  We found a very nice looking place with lush vegetation all around.  We even saw a group of Capuchin monkeys move through the trees there.  They were lots of  fun to watch as they jumped from branch to branch.  Here's one of them.

Our little "casita" was up a hill and from the balcony you could see the ocean and hear the waves crashing on the shore.  There was a nice hammock on the porch and all the walls of the rooms of the casita had screens up at the top to let in air.  

After getting our room, we ventured into town and had a so-so lunch at a restaurant with a great view to the beach, but like all "neat" places like that, it seems to be more about the ambience than the food.  After lunch, we drove out on that dusty road again to look at a huge strangler fig tree.  

From there, we drove back to Montezuma and stopped at a section of beach where we had seen a bunch of pelicans in the water.  We walked along the beach there a while, just marveling at all the birds.

I love how the pelicans are riding the waves here.

After that drive, we came back to our casita and rested awhile before going out to dinner at a nice little italian restaurant.  We had some good pizza there!

So, back to our casita.  The fact that the walls were part screen led to part of the problem we had with the casita that night because the casita was right next to a VERY busy road and practically all night long, cars, ATVs, motorcycles, buses and probably anything else with wheels literally roared past our rooms.  Everything that passed always sounded so loud and so close and I guess it was, since the road was right there.  Needless to say, we didn't sleep much that night, although Eva said the noise didn't bother her at all.  Lucky for her that she was able to sleep through that.