Monday morning in the campground. What joy! What bliss! There is but one other tent far out of sight and we are alone in our little patch of Costa Rican waterfront.
We arrived at the campground Saturday afternoon and managed a quick swim as the sun was setting but we’ve been back in the water twice a day since then. This is the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica so tides are big and lots of sand is uncovered at low tide.
The locals mostly come for the day at the weekend though some bring tents. Our mobile home (“casa rodante”) creates some interest and we showed our home to Jorge who was next door and fascinated by our roaming life. He’s an IT manager in the city of Alajuela three hours inland and he had brought his family to spend Saturday night under canvas on the shore of Bahia Ballena (Whale Bay) at the campground.
So let’s see, we think this campsite is brilliant and not just because we are alone here during the week. Ticos unlike Mexicans are quite restrained in public. They don’t play loud music and they aren’t very effusive or openly curious about the gringos in their midst. So being surrounded by quiet conscientious Costa Ricans of a weekend is no hardship. They even pick up and bag their own trash!
Still you have to understand this is no Kampground Of America. The caretaker cleans and removes our trash bags after sloshing the loo and shower with disinfectant. We put toilet paper in the loo for our convenience but this rates as A plus on our travels! Toilet seat, proper flush and regularly emptied toilet paper basket. Big thumbs up! In Latin America you don’t flush toilet paper or you’ll bung up the sewage system. Indeed we have a separate basket in our van toilet compartment. When I’m back in the States I get confused remembering to flush the paper!
And the shower, ah yes indeed. This is all we need, cold water is no hardship this close to the equator. We have nails to hang our clothes and a place to put shampoo. Big thumbs up!
This is what we look for when we spend twenty bucks a night. Then we like to have a pool or better yet smooth sea water to swim in, not a surf break. If surfers like a spot we generally don’t. Rusty likes no dogs but when there are some, as there are here, he growls if any of them come too close to his home. He’s figured out they are all pretty scared and he doesn’t hesitate to tell them to stay clear. I like my dog’s new level of confidence that he’s developed on the road.
So here we are on a hot dry sunny day with a muddy van after our driving adventures. We’d better wash the mats and stuff hadn’t we?
Well yes indeed and then hang them out them out to dry but first I wanted to mention that other critical feature we look for in camp life: plug in electricity. And here it is inside the palapa we get to use which also has an electric light. Notice all you fussy engineering types it’s just a household outlet but at least here it’s protected from the rain… the big black box is our voltage regulator and step up converter. Electrical outlets as far as Ecuador are 110 volts like the US but from Peru south they are 220 volts like Europe. So our magic box will step 220 down to 110 for us but it also prevents electrical spikes. We were having a few Monday morning spikes yesterday so the box interrupted the current from time to time saving our system from extra work and overloading our inverter. Brilliant! (In case you’re interested we have a 3000w inverter so we bought a 3000w step up regulator so we can run the air conditioning through it. However in Central America we use shore power to charge our batteries and run the a/c at night off our 600 amp battery system. I fear if we try running a/c direct off shorepower we’ll blow the campground electrical system…)
Most of Costa Rica seems to have potable water at least so far. So we fill our tank using a bucket and a siphon though we still filter our drinking water through our Berkey. But it’s nice to be able to wash dishes outside the van and do some laundry by hand.
Even though it’s not all spiffy like you’d see in the States it’s nice for us to find this level of amenity on the road. We might stay a few days before we head toward Panama and our container shipping plan to get to South America.
