Category: Ecuador, Columbia, Panama and Costa Rica 2017

Today we drove about eighty miles down the coast to Manuel Antonio National Park. The drive had some great ocean views and miles and miles of what I think were date palms.

We are staying at a really nice hotel here called Plaza Yara. Our room has a view of the jungles and the pools.

For dinner we ate at a nearby open air restaurant. As we were eating it stated to rain. The rain on the tin roof was loud and kind of fun.

The food was very good. Duke had a whole red snapper and I had shrimp and steak skewers.

We really liked the little town of Sámara where we stayed last night. We stayed at the Hideaway Hotel. We talked to the American owners as we were eating breakfast by the pool this morning. Coincidentally their second home is in Reno!

The drive from Sámara to our hotel near Puenta Arenas today was pretty straight forward. We are staying at a Hilton Doubletree all inclusive resort. This is pretty unusual type of place for us to stay. It is very nice with lots of families.

It has been so cloudy and overcast for most of our trip that we really haven’t had any sunsets. But tonight we had a stupendous one.

We had a seafood mixed grill for dinner.

Today we moved thirty two miles down the coast to another beach town, Sámara. The road was dirt and quite rough so the drive took two and a half hours.

This afternoon we walked down to the beach.

For dinner we had one of the best meals of our trip. We went into town to an open air barbecue restaurant called El Lagarto. For our first course we had mussels.

Then I had stuffed squid and Duke has red snapper.

Today we checked all the boxes. We swam.

We waded in the surf.

We finished the New York Times crossword. We have gotten in the habit of doing this every day.

We took pictures of bugs and lizards. I assume this is a centipede.

And we had a great dinner.

All in all an excellent day!

Today we drove about five hours west to the Pacific. Along the way we stopped for snacks at Walmart.

The last twenty miles or so was on a dirt road. It was a pretty good road relatively speaking.

Our hotel tonight is right on the beach. .

We went for a walk along the beach. .

They have enormous grasshoppers here. I kid you not they are at least six inches long. The first time I walked by one and it jumped I about had a heart attack!

We had sea bass for dinner. It was delicious.