a weblog by Dax

Day 3 - The Adventure Continues

Posted on October 22nd, 2006 by Dax.
Categories: blog post.

Today we woke up right around sunrise, 5:30 AM, to even more rain. We had breakfast and started to head out.

The sun snuck out for a little bit, and our odds were looking good to finally find Avellana.

We tried the original path that had the washed out road. This time when we pulled up and saw a tourist in a rental vehicle just like ours was stuck in the river, with water up to the middle of his windshield. They were coming from the opposite direction, I guess the water didn’t look as deep from the other side of the road.

They were all standing at the riverbank talking with locals, I guess they were trying to figure out how to get the car out. I really felt bad for them.

We started to head back to where we ran into the second dead-end where the semi was stuck in the mud, but the mud getting there was just too crazy. At one point our vehicle was basically sliding sideways, and it was no longer fun.

On our way back I saw a sign for a different way to Avellana, so we decided to try it out. The road condition was a lot better, but it kept heading inland. The road kept cutting into the country. We were beginning to see even more lush mountainsides. We turned where the sign told us to go, and eventually ran into dead-end number three. And here is a close up. We found out later that this road was actually a real dead-end that does just simply stop in the river.

Obviously, by this time I was really pissed. I decided that we needed to head back to the hotel and regroup, it was still very early in the day.

We chilled at the hotel for a couple of hours and I checked out the waves, nothing yet due to it being low tide. So we decided to head north and try to find the road to Playa Grande.

The roads heading north up the coast were a little bit better than to the south. We beleive that the roads are a little bit better taken care of up that way due to Playa Flamingo, which is a huge resort area. We were doing pretty fine until we hit this small town and got totally lost. We no longer saw any signs for Playa Grande, and we actually ended up next to a baseball field where it looked like some of the locals were starting up a game.
We found our way back out of town and headed even further north toward Playa Flamingo and Playa Brasilito.

By this time the sun was really blazing, it was really nice to see some blue skys. I guess we were so elated with the sun that we got a little lost again. I was following traffic, which was one red Tercel in front of me. Next thing I know, we are driving down a road that looks like it was definitely off the regular path. It was like we were driving through a neighborhood.

We came to an area where the road was a little thinner than our vehicle, the bushes were hitting each side of the vehicle. Then we got extremely lucky, and we ended up on this beautiful beach. We never found out the name of the beach, but it looked like it was probably not a place that tourists frequented. Up the coast about a mile we could see some locals playing football (not american football, but real football). It was a real find. If you want to see some additional photos of this beach you can find them here.

We headed back out on the correct path and found our way to Playa Flamingo. This was definitely more touristy, and we decided that we would head back to the hotel so I could check out the surf and maybe get a little wet.

The tide was still out a bit, so we headed down to Madero (Punta San Francisco), which is the southern tip of Tamarindo Bay. As we walked along we could see some more lava rocks and a couple of hardend lava flows.

When we got to Madero the wind was really blowing and felt really good due to the Equatorial sun beating down on us. We kept walking south, around Madero, and the beach was virtually empty. Along this part of the beach there are just a couple of Bed & Breakfasts’ hidden up in the trees, it appeared to be very remote, which was kind of nice.

We hiked on for quite a distance, but we figured that we better head back because the tide was coming in, and we would have to climb over the rocks at Madero. By the time we got back to Madero the tide was already pushing up the rocks and we had to half way wade threw the water while the waves were breaking over the rocks. We made it through without a scratch, and headed back to the hotel.

When we got back, the surf was still pretty crappy, and the crowds were crazy thick, I guess due to it being Sunday, I hope.

The rain started to pick up again, but it was getting close to the end of daylight for the day, so we didn’t mind relaxing for the rest of the day.

If the sun comes out tomorrow, we plan on hiking back to Madero to take some pictures, and hopefully I can finally get some surfing in…and maybe, just maybe we will finally make it to Playa Avellana.

Dax out-

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