Wow, there is nothing here except jungle and beach

Trip Start Dec 12, 2006
1
37
55
Trip End Mar 09, 2007


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of Costa Rica  ,
Tuesday, February 13, 2007

I'm glad Charlie rented a 4x4 car, because we were really gonna need it.  We drove to Cabo Matapalo the following morning.  Sketchy bridges and a few stream crossings.  There is nothing in the town of Cabo Matapalo.  Its the hilliest and crappiest dirt road I have ever driven on in a town.  Its extremely narrow (barely fits one small car).  They call it a town, but its not really a town.  There are just dirt paths that go off the dirt road that we were on.  There are two nice places to stay at and one crappy one.  Everything here is really expensive because we are in the middle of no where bordered by the jungle and the beach.  There is no electricity here, none.  It appears that people either use solar power (the rich), gas generators (the rich or the restaurant) or candles. 

We stayed in the hostel which was the crappiest and it cost 20 bucks a head.  Pretty expensive for getting absolutely nothing.  It was a glorified shack with some bunk beds in it.  20 bucks.  Oh well, not much of an option since we are in the middle of no where.  Our only other option is the nicer hotelish cabinas for 87 dollars a person a night.  They kind of have electricity.

Seriously though, there is nothing here.  The dirt road (if you can even call it a road, in fact its more of a rock path) has maybe 10-15 dirt driveways off of it.  All of them are private residences, some rich and some poor.  But thats it.  No stores, restaurants, nothing.  A dirt path with more dirt paths off it.  This place is sweet, too bad its so expensive.

We headed down to the beach by following our dirt path road.  The one great thing about being in the middle of no where is that there is no one else around.  There was one local sitting on a log looking out at the ocean, thats it.  Bit of a rocky beach, but beautiful.

Randomly throughout the day we have seen these pretty big parrots that are really colorful.  I wish I could tell you where they were called, but I don't have Lisa around anymore to tell me what they were.  These parrots are always in pairs of two since they mate for life.  They are really colorful and really beautiful.  The closer we got to the middle of no where, the more we saw.  Really cool to see them out in their natural habitat and not in some cage or zoo.

We botched the sunset and watched it from an opening on the dirt road (more on this in tomorrows entry) towards the town of Carate.  Luckily there is one spot 1km outside Matapalo that has food, they had two dinner options. Casado with chicken or pork.  A casado is the basic plate of food here in Costa Rica, it has rice, beans, a salad and some type of meat.  Gallo Pinto and Casados are the two Costa Rican Staples.

After dinner we retreated to our dark hostel with our head lamps.  Its pretty damn hot out here and since there is no electricity there are no fans or AC.
Print this entry San Jose hotels