Samara

(August 27th - August 31st)

We enjoyed our time in Samara, but probably won't be back. The area we were in was nice enough, with plenty of stores, but the beaches around here were fairly large and very crowded (and it's still low season, so it will only get more packed). The closest ward/branch is all the way in Nicoya, which was 45 minutes inland. Not too bad, but that makes 3 hours of church turn into almost 5. Doable, but definitely not great.

The beaches around here were, for the most part, the crappy volcanic dirt, as opposed to sand, which we aren't too fond of. As Anakin Skywalker would say "...it gets everywhere!" But seriously, it's a pain in the butt.

We spent a day at Playa Carillo, and the girls had a blast because it turned out to be a "junk beach", which, as the name implies, is full of junk. They love to collect it all and play with it. Blech.

The next day, we visited Playa Samara to catch the sunset, and Justin and I made a competition out of it, trying to get the best photo. We'd hoped to get a vote of the best one, so leave a comment with the number of the one you think is the best!

The next day, we visited Playa Barrigona, which was a very nice, out of the way beach. And by 'out of the way', I mean it was a crazy long and dangerous drive, which meant it was only us and like one other couple on the whole long beach. The sand here was actually sand (!!) and it was surrounded by beautiful jungle and mountains.

I spent a lot of time exploring, like usual. I love to collect seashells and sometimes the best place to find good ones is far away from the main beach. Most main beach areas are devoid of anything cool, like sand dollars, sea urchins, or larger shells, because there's more traffic. The trick is to head off to the ends of the beaches, and climb through the rocks if there are any.

This beach, on both ends, had tons of rocks that wrapped around both points of the little cove. As soon as I went around the points, it was like a jackpot. It was a harder area to climb to, but totally worth it. I filled up our frisbee like 6 inches high of shells! It was awesome. Here's the best/biggest ones from that side of the beach (not including all the ones I found exploring the other side!):