Wednesday March 12, 2014
Checkout day – time to leave Los Lagos. Our driver was supposed to meet us at 9:30. The kids decided to pass on a morning swim, and instead we visited the crocs and butterflies one last time. It was a perfectly cloudless morning, so I snapped a few more photos of Arenal as well – you could see two steam vents spewing smoke.
At breakfast today they served banana bread – Mallory was in heaven. We waited for our ride in the lobby, but the driver called to say she was stuck behind an accident on the road from San Jose, and would be late. We left closer to 10:30. I gave both the kids Gravol before the trip because both had had trouble with the drive from San Jose. I’m glad I did – we retraced our route all the way to San Jose over the same twisty turny mountain roads that gave us trouble the first time! By the time we pulled over outside of San Ramon for snacks, I felt very pukey as well so then I took a Gravol too, and felt much better for it.
Lunch consisted of the snacks we purchased, since we were later getting on the road than anticipated so did not want to stop for a lengthy lunch. Beyond San Jose was another 3 hours of driving, but the scenery was interesting. We stopped at the Rio Tarcoles bridge to see the crocs, and counted 27 of them. There were quite a few people on the bridge checking them out. Our driver also pulled over at a scenic overlook by Jaco. Finally we started driving through palm plantations, and knew we must be near. Through Quepos and finally into Manuel Antonio and the Tulemar gate.
Tulemar is every bit as beautiful as we had hoped. We were welcomed with drinks and met Tulemar Dave, who guaranteed us a sloth sighting this week! We settled into our bungalow, #113 (The Woodpecker) which has an incredible view, and sent some laundry out. Then we went down to the beach for an hour. The water is unbelievably warm, and the kids loved jumping in the calm waves.
We stayed until the sun set around 6 pm, and then walked back up, spotting our first squirrel monkey on the way. We all needed showers then, the kids because they were dirty from the beach and me because of the sweaty walk up the hill! People are not kidding when they say that’s a tough walk. (We would take the shuttle more from then on, but you really do see a ton of wildlife when you do it on foot.)
We got ready to go out and walked down to Barba Roja for dinner as recommended by the hotel staff. They say it has a great view of the sunset, but we were much too late for that! Before we went back to Tulemar we went to Super Joseth for some groceries, which were not cheap, except for my mango. Just a simple trip to the grocery store, but it made it into both kids’ journals as a highlight of the day.
Cook Family Travels 