Our trip - Part 2

After our jaunt to the Caribbean we returned to our lovely hosts and after a little chilling out, I (we) decided on our next outing. Himself was not giving a lot of input at all, just going where he was taken, a bit like a puppy I suppose.

I eventually found a B&B on the Pacific coast that did not seem to be surrounded by too many ‘touristy’ places.

Our trip was, again, by bus but unbeknown to us the road (tarmac) petered out after around 45mins and became a rocky dirt road. What fun! We had almost three hours of being bumped, rattled and shaken before we reached our destination. I am sure we both lost at least an inch in height by the time we arrived in Quepos. We noticed a distinct difference between the east and west coast. The further west we went the drier and dustier it was.

The mountains (big hills?) seemed to be denuded of trees. There were obvious terraces where plantations had, no doubt, been flourishing. On these hills there were cattle grazing, mainly Brahman which are obviously used to the heat and bred for a supply of beef! We noticed a distinct lack of trees!

When we were fairly close to our destination we passed many pineapple plantations, and as we dropped closer to sea level we noticed other plantations in the distance, we just could not work out what the trees were! Eventually we came to a tarmac road! Hurrah, smooth travel again. We were soon going through these other mysterious plantations. There they were, miles, and miles of palm trees bearing fruits for palm oil; amazing to see. The only time I have heard of palm oil is its use is in a certain soap, how my knowledge has grown!

On arrival at Quepos we found a taxi and gave the driver directions to our accommodation which, unbelievably, is in Londres.

The B&B I had booked is run by an American who is into all things green and organic and on our arrival we were greeted like old friends with all embracing hugs and kisses.

Our first day was just chilling out, I think that the very dry journey took it out of himself, meanwhile I went into Quepos on an ancient bus with Elena and took in the sights sounds and smells of the place. Elena went off and did ‘her thing’ whilst I wandered around, looked into shops bought a couple of things and eventually found my host who had also made her purchases including a pussycat from a local ‘american run’ cat charity. Great fun smuggling a cat on the bus coming back – livestock is not allowed, phew, we got away with it!

The following day we were introduced to another American who had settled many years before and was in the process of replanting a mountainside after it had been used by ranchers and completely stripped of foliage. We were very impressed at what he had achieved over the last few years. His garden is amazing and he is gradually replacing some of his temporary plantings with permanent plantings. Some species of plants need a very long time to get established and he is not rushing the process. Now there is a guy to applaud! We stopped off at a place where chicharrones were prepared along with yucca, delicious!

We enjoyed our stay on the Pacific coast. We met some lovely people, both Costa Ricans and Americans, maybe we will visit that area again!

Our last couple of days were with our hosts. Lovely people that we have known for, well, not a long while, you know, the sort of people that you just ‘click’ with. It was so good to see them and their new environment and, hopefully we will do the visit again in the near future.