Playa Tamarindo - are we there yet?

Early Thursday morning, we took off for the grueling four-hour drive to Playa Tamarindo, a 'must see' beach on the Pacific side of the country. We rented a itty bitty SUV with 4-wheel drive, and were a bit dismissive when we were told "you'll need it...". Uh-huh, shuuuuuuuure we will.

I told him if he laid down and stretched real long, he might be longer than the car!

I'll fill you in on one thing about Costa Rica that drives even the Ticos (native Costa Ricans) crazy: signage is poor at best...in lots of places, an indicative sign can only be found from ONE of the two directions. Much like in the States, you follow signs based on the general area that you're traveling to, and signs get (marginally) more specific as you approach your destination. One of Rob's roomies is a Tico and busted out his monster map for us to study the night before we left. We wrote down about 9 city/province names along the way to ensure that we'd find our way.

Much of the drive was on a narrow paved two-lane highway, with semis clogging the way until we found clearings for passing. Imagine our surprise when we came upon a pair of signs indicating six different cities/provinces, only one of which we recognized. What is now referred to as 'the Puntarenas detour' was born when we followed said signs toward the sole city we knew and ended up at the ferry building in the harbor city of Puntarenas. After asking no fewer than three people for directions, we managed to find our way back to the very highway we strayed from.

About two hours and a few nervous turns later, we came upon a bit of trouble. The bridge we were to take through Nicoya had collapsed and there was simply no quick and easy way around it. Our solitary alternative? An hour of rain-drenched off-roading on country roads up and around the river. Once we found Nicoya's main road on the other side, there were no signs indicating any directions. Awesome. After a best guess gone wrong, we found signs (facing the opposite direction, of course) toward Santa Cruz.

when we came upon the collapsed bridge, we chatted briefly with a car full o' locals that explained that they knew an alternate route and led us 'round to Nicoya

If you can believe it, there's more: the roads into Tamarindo consist of dirt, rocks and potholes. And, it had started to rain. Lovely. Rob, being admittedly stubborn, didn't turn on the 4-wheel drive until well into our bumpy 13kilometer drive. Our little Jimny was so light that we'd hit a rut and bounce into another, and then another. Sounds fun at first, right? Right. After hitting a series of holes, losing control and bouncing (in slow motion, I swear it) for 10 full seconds, we stopped just a few feet short of a truck parked on the roadside. Needless to say, 4-wheel drive made frequent appearances during the rest of the trip...

a wee taste of what we dealt with for about 45 minutes - f-u-n fun!

We arrived in a rainy, gray Playa Tamarindo and fortuitously found our hostel, a cute place with a chocolate lab mascot named Makai. A quick lunch and a beer wrapped up our afternoon...