We drove straight from Monteverde to Coco Beach where we had a reservation for 6 days. It was amazing to discover in such a short distance (3 h drive) the variety of landscape from the Cloud Forest to the dry Eastern Coast.
We spent the next day enjoying the beautiful beach of Playa Hermosa and relaxed under the trees and as well as in the warm ocean...
We finished our afternoon by going to a second beach - Playa Ocotal - which we had heard had unusual black sand...
Mark decided to act like a monkey and the Costa Rican family which was located right by us got its entertainment... The Grandpa thought it was so funny that he gave it a try too!
We were just having fun communicating in broken Spanish with them when we mentioned that we really wanted to see monkeys... One of the adults replied that there were a dozen monkeys who lived on the other side of the beach! What a gift to watch them eat flowers from that tree...!
Beautiful beach, fun company and great memories!
The next day, we drove an hour and took the short way (on dirt bumpy roads!) to reach Playa Grande where we spent the day and did body boarding...
We socialized with the family close by from Canada and relaxed under the palm trees when we were not in the waves... We got a lot of sun that day... and some sunburns!
As we were leaving, surfers were arriving to take advantage of the high tide... but interestingly, a lot of surfers were on the beach in big groups watching the water... We learned shortly after that a crocodile was swimming in there... You are probably wondering (with reason) how in the world would a crocodile be in the ocean... We found out that Playa Grande has 2 rivers on each side that run into the ocean and the crocodile was most likely trying to reach the other river... We are just glad we did not meet him in the water... =)
