EC-Rider Travels

Needless to say it was the most beautiful day today as we bid farewell to Tortuga Lodge and its lovely and incredibly hard-working staff.

Early breakfast and into the little boat to cross the river to meet Alexus who was in charge of passport control and security – plus weighing us all again. There is no doubt there was more leaving Tortuga than arrived, we have eaten very well over the last few days! Our little plane arrived on time and we left in fact a little early arriving back in San Jose about forty minutes later. Here we waited for a couple of hours looking longingly at the first real sunshine we had seen for some time.

Another little plane, once again piloted by our twelve-year old friends and we were in Liberia, on the pacific side, forty minutes later. Bit of a struggle to find our driver, but he was there but with rather a floppy piece of paper with our names which we missed. We drove an hour and a half through very green and fertile land, and several villages of nice looking brightly coloured one storey houses with well kept gardens. All very much more sophisticated (and tidier!) than anywhere I have been to date and certainly on a very different level to Guatemala. We eventually arrived at our hotel Cala Luna.

I think I will have to reserve judgement on this one! It is in a busy ‘sea-side’ town called Tamarindo, set back from a lovely but sadly rocky/coral beach. Tamarindo itself is a pretty happening place with lots of shops, bars and restaurants which should be fun, but just quite a surprise after the last weeks – culture shock perhaps! We walked into the town where the beach is less rocky with lots of fun bars and we had a jolly Italian dinner with an excellent Jazz band. Everything seems to happen early here and we too returned for a lovely early night.