Dominical/Uvita

(Sept 4th - Sept 8th)

We sort of had a love/hate relationship with this area. We loved the town of Dominical, where we were staying. There was a decent grocery store nearby, and church would have been in San Isidro, about 45 minutes if we would have been there on a Sunday.

The only problem was the beaches. There were a few, but they were all crappy dirt, and lots of driftwood/debris in the water and on the beach. We even drove up to Uvita to see if there were better beaches, but it was more of the same.

Day 1 was spent driving there, and then getting lost. The turnoff for the house was a very small dirt road going up the mountain. By the time we found it, got to the house, found the neighbor's house (to get the keys) and unpacked, it was dark. It also was pouring buckets all afternoon/evening so it's not like we were going anywhere.

Day 2 we went to visit the Nauyaca Waterfalls. It was quite the hike-4km to the falls, and then 4km back. It was pretty brutal, especially since the girls put flip flops on, and I didn't notice until we got there (after the 30 minute drive), so they had to hike in them. It didn't turn out so well. Amaia ended up breaking both flip flops, and we had to rig them with a hair tie and a stick....

Right as we got to the falls, I had the first "encounter" with a poison dart frog. I was way behind because I had stopped to take some pics, and I heard this chirping noise coming from a tree. Turns out, it was this adorable Strawberry Poison Dart Frog. I tried to take a pic with the nice camera, but it was too dark in his little hidey hole. I ended up using my phone instead. Not great, but at least there's proof! This guy was probably the size of a nickel:

And then, for the falls themselves. Remember how I said it rained buckets that first night? Well, it turned the serene little waterfall, complete with swimming at the bottom, into a raging whirlpool of "get-in-and-die". In hindsight, we should have known better than to go when we did, but oh well. For reference, here is a picture of the falls from all the promotional stuff (aka, how it looks in dry season):

And, here's what it looked like when we went:

As you can see, TONS more water coming over that thing. So much water pouring down so fast meant lots of mist and spray, which made it that much harder to take pictures. And it was LOUD. Like, yelling into the ear of the person next to you so they can hear you, loud. Here are the top part of the falls:

And the bottom part:

We only got one good pic down here, and here's why: Not only was it super misty (hence Solia's fuzzy face)(my poor camera), apparently on the way over to this spot, Solia slipped and almost fell. She was terrified she was going to fall in and die, but we had to get a picture for the 52 project! So we told her to just "smile, gosh darn it, so we can leave!" and this is what we ended up with :) Poor thing.

Day 3 we visited Playa Ventanas in Uvita and then went wandering around some random beach in Dominical:

Random Beach:

Day 4, we went back to Playa Ventanas first thing in the morning. That view of the R side of the beach up there? turns out, there's a pair of tunnels that go all the way through to the ocean at low tide, and we had to go check it out. Hard to take pictures of, but we did our best:

After that, we visited Marino Balleno National Park in Uvita. They have this beach called Whale Tail Beach, which is two large curved beaches that converge at a point that flares out just like a whale's tail:

We entered the park about 1/2 of the way down that right hand beach, and walked all the way to the spot before it flares out. We didn't bother going all the way out to the water's edge though, since we were all in sandals and it was chunky rock and hard to walk on. Supposedly, whales actually hang out around there and breach, but we were too tired and hungry to hang around and wait. We did, however, find about a gazillion sand dollars along the way, so many that I couldn't hold them in one hand anymore: