Amazing to relate we did not ford this river. We were trying to get to Playa Cocos from Playa Guiones and Google Maps said this was the road indicated. We gave up and turned around. There had to be a better way.
Yesterday was a crap show every way we turned. And as Layne pointed out indignantly we didn’t even get a glimpse of the ocean on this “coast” road.
The mud hole above was cleared for us by the truck driver. He saw us looking hopelessly at the hole so he flattened it and waved us through. Amazingly kind. Then there was a section of sharp pointed rocks. It made us jiggle in our seats like Mexican dancing beans.
It was Saturday so there was tons of traffic on the dirt roads to the beaches and they took the potholes at speed raising clouds of dust to cheer us up as we grumped along trying to find the least potholed way.
They passed us any way they could, on the left or the right weaving and dodging holes as they went.
I tried to photograph the nightmare but I couldn’t encompass the madness in mere pictures.
It was ten miles an hour and coming to a complete stop for the ones we couldn’t weave around.
Oh yes, they have weird antediluvian bridges to negotiate too.
No sign of an ocean or a beach. We spent all day struggling up and down this coast looking for a place to camp and the wild camps were worse than the seedy campgrounds and the roads were worst of all.
That was the best part: the iOverlander campgrounds were nightmares of grossness, and we are used to less than pristine campgrounds. Filthy facilities, cramped parking areas with no privacy and not a view of the ocean.
We found one place that looked like a weird replica of a down at heel Florida trailer park with trailers piled up against the water front higgeldy piggledy. The owner came out and he looked like a mobster’s mechanic covered in dirt, greased back hair and a tattered wife beater scowling like we were bothering him by showing up. As he scratched himself we left, his gaze unblinking followed us out.
It was exhausting looking for a place to park and we sure did explore the coast.
We inspected beaches to wild camp, campgrounds and any road we could get lost on. Some beaches had wild surf, some camping spots were centers of Saturday revelry and others had dreadful approach roads, steep inclines, rainy season trenches dug in the surface or collapsed muddy holes.
Another popular campground in Playa Cocos looked good on paper but it was tiny and filled with so many coconut trees we could barely turn around and get out never mind find a spot to park. The enthusiasm others reported for these nasty places baffled us.
It went on all day. We left our beach camp before seven in the morning and it was sunset by the time we found what looks like a really good spot which I’ll write about tomorrow as we may be here two days, maybe three…
But the rest of Saturday was an off the charts struggle to find our way. The towns and villages we passed through had no architectural merit whatsoever.
GANNET2 was brilliant taking it all in stride. We backed and forthed, made u-turns on narrow lanes and struggled up and down dirt tracks dodging vast holes in the roads without a problem.
We spent almost ten hours looking for our next spot and we now know all we need to know about the state of this part of Costa Rica. It is not to our taste.
Been there and done that including the dreadful unmarked speed bumps that hid from us in most of the villages. Invisible and lethal.
What a day.
Oh and some impossible hills.
The Gulf of Nicoya, a glimpse in the distance, as we tumbled down another impossibly steep hill whose angle is masked in the photograph.
Oddly we neither of us were too fussed at not knowing where we would overnight. There’s always a place no matter how desperate things look. We’ve been doing this for a while now, living on the road in a van.
$9 each per night, showers, toilets, electricity and picnic table included.
We landed on our feet in Pochote Costa Rica.
