Mountain Life in Colorado: Playa Avellanas

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Playa Avellanas





Wilson! He was our driver from the airport at 5:30 am and our driver the 5 hours it took for us to get to Playa Avellanas right to our door to the casita. What a generous, nice guy. He was at the B&B at 9:30a.m. right on time and we loaded up the van with all of our stuff. He packed a basket full of snacks and candy, a cooler full of water, pop and beer and he had DVD's, in English, for the kids, travel books on Costa Rica, anything to make our trip more comfortable. We were off. We stopped at a fruit stand and got some fruit and we stopped for lunch. Casado's, which is the typical dish of CR made with rice, beans, choice of pescado, pollo, carne, etc. All this for $3000 colones, which comes to $6 bucks. We got to the casita after driving around for awhile looking for it. This place is remote. Wilson helped us unload our things and he was off for his haul back to his family another 4-5 hours. I have to admit, I was shell shocked when we got here. It's in the middle of lush trees, birds everywhere, the monkey's were howling at us. They have 2 baby monkey's and they are cute. I'm looking at them looking at me right now as I type. The casita is pretty cool. 2 bedrooms, each with it's own bath. That's a bonus. I won't have to share with the girls for the first time ever. The beds are double size. No bueno since I'm used to a King. The kitchen has the essentials. Everything is concrete to easy to clean. We got our suits on and decided to walk to the beach before it got dark. It's dark everyday by 6:30. Never changes. So that'll be an adjustment. The walk to the beach is a long one. It's around 20 min. We'll need to rent or buy bikes. We can't stay here without transportation. This week we'll deal with everything on foot but then we search for our bikes. I like it though. I'm certainly not complaining. This is what we were looking for.
Last night I turned on the light to the girls' bathroom and there was a spider the size of my fist behind the toilet. It was fast too. I didn't say anything because I knew if I did we all 4 would be sharing MY bathroom. The spider ran behind the toilet in a hole in the wall and I haven't seen it since. I have to admit, I didn't sleep well as I felt creepy crawlers on me all night. I don't know if it was my imagination or real. I don't want to know. I'm not the squirmish type but this is different. I am the squirmish type here. It'll be a huge adjustment. The bites on my legs are huge. I'm hoping I can ignore them. So far so good.
There are kittens, dogs, and even a baby ocelot. She came right up to us and she looks like a baby leopard. She's beautiful. Aparently they are trying to get her to be wild since her mother isn't with her but she is totally tame. It'll be hard. She's beautiful.
Wilson gave us a cell phone to use. He just said "here, I don't use this one. Just pay me for the calls you make and use it." So, we now have a cell phone to make local calls and hopefully we can get some stuff done fairly pain-free with our lot. He said renting a phone is a huge pain and we would be standing in line for 4-6 hours just to possibly find out we cannot get one for some reason. We had our first experience with lines our first day at the bank. I'll talk about that later. Time for the beach.

4 comments:

Jan said...

Hef,
Is this the place you will be staying in all summer? Wow!!! I love reading your blogs. How exciting. You will be chasing down the spiders by the end of the summer! It will be interesting to watch you assimilate to your surroundings. Take pics of your place! Love the pictures, it brings your world alive. Will the waves be big enough for Jack to surf on? great pic with the luggage. How did you find Wilson?

hefr said...

Hey Jan. I can't tell you how happy I am to see you on my blog. Yes. This is the place we are staying at for the summer. I'll get lot's of pics. The waves here are all levels. Beginner to Expert. Yesterday we played in the ocean all day. We found Wilson through the B$B we stayed at our first night. We will use him as our driver as long as he is driving. I will recommend him and hopefully send him any business we can. It's worth it to have an honest, nice caring driver. We have not been so lucky in the past. The bugs here are amazing. I wish I could name them. I don't have a book. Later.

Angie said...

First of all, plug that hole in the bathroom, so Charlotte cant come back in. Heather, this is so exciting for me, I cant wait to read your blog everyday. Take pics of the bugs if you can, I love interesting bugs. Any snakes yet?

hefr said...

Angie, the holes are abundunt. A monkey could get in if it wanted to. No snakes yet. Thank God.