This weekend I visited Samara & Playa Negro on the Pacific Coast in the Guanacaste Province of Costa Rica. In Samara I stayed in a funny little hostel which was full of German students who were studying Spanish in a school somewhere in the small town. I never did find out where or why they chose this place. The hostel was a building next to a farmhouse and there were plenty of horses, Brahman cattle and lots of dogs! I visited the Samara beach and the Carillo Beach – both very wide and good for swimming. Apparently Mel Gibson has a place somewhere nearby.
I also went off road to a small little town a bit further north, called Garzo, and came across a running
race about to commence. It was fun watching the little local band and the people getting ready.
The next day I went to Playa Negra which just seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. It is a bit dangerous for swimming but famous for surfing due to its right hand barrels that form between the rocky reefs. I enjoyed watching the surfers who had come here from many far away places. I met Swedes, Americans and French surfers, but the ones really cutting it up were the local kids of about 11 and 12 years of age.
I took a long walk along several little bays linked to Playa Negra and then had dinner at the cute little
restaurant belonging to the hotel on the beach and watched the sunset. The hotel was full (and too expensive anyway) so I stayed in a cute little 4 room hostel in the dusty little town of Pargos.
The whole landscape driving across from San Jose was very dry and the weather very hot.
I am pretty proud of myself for having a lazy sort of weekend hanging at the beach, in a “Caroline” sort of way – not something I do too often. I usually get bored and look for a mountain to climb or a river to cross, but this weekend was very chilled. So chilled in fact that I missed the bus back to San Jose on Sunday and had to stay another night.
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