Samara Beach
We checked out of Hotel Brasiito this morning, and took a taxi with our driver Herman to Samara. Along the way though we stopped at Santa Cruz to buy a watch. Since Herman spoke no English, we used a combination of sign language and our phrase book to tell him that we wanted to stop to buy a watch. He got the idea, so took us to the first jewellery store, but it was all closed and barred. He asked a man on the street who pointed out another store just a block away, where we stopped again.
I went into the store and asked for “un reloj barato” and the jewellery store clerk must have understood me enough as she said “barato y bueno” so I did get a cheap (about $16 Cdn) and decent Casio watch. It was a good thing though that one of the shoppers in the store could speak some English, as I have a difficult time with numbers still, so he got me the right price.
From there we drove on to Nicoya, and then to Samara. All in all the trip took us two hours, which was much quicker than we would have been on the bus. The taxi driver did not know Samara at all, but we’d given him directions to the hotel, and he again asked someone on the street, then used his cell phone to call the hotel.
The Samara Palms Lodge is is a very beautiful small hotel run by a young couple. After we’d checked in we walked to the bank to make sure our bank card works (thank goodness we have two, since the Credit Union card doesn’t work here), stopped in the grocery store to see what was there (more variety, but not nearly as good bread as in Brasilito) and then walked to the beach to check out the restaurants there. We stopped as well at Jaime Koss art gallery, where we had a discussion with the artist, not about his art which was very bright and colorful, and would overpower our house, but about the social fabric of the culture of Costa Rica.
We went to the small soda, Sol y Mar, which is right next door to our hotel and had a very nice casado with pork chop. The waiter spoke very good English, and he patiently listened to our poor Spanish and helped us to correct it. Enid decided that she wanted some desert, and he recommended “tres leches” which he said was a typical Costa Rican desert. It was delicious .
Yellow flower at our hotel
Along the drive today we passed many farms. Most of them seemed to be ranches, but occasionally we saw some row crops under plastic mulch, and in one field the farmer seemed to be checking a flowering plant. It looked somewhat like cucumbers, or perhaps it was watermelon (of which we bought one yesterday, and finished for our lunch today). As we got closer to Samara we saw many more flowering plants than at Brasilito so it was a very pretty drive.