Day 4 (April 6) - Driving Back

Our Drive

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving back to the hotel. Eric asked around which way is a better route to take since the road that we took the day before was really remote and bumpy. The road home today was less bumpy.

Before heading home, we went back to the town of Santa Elena to have lunch.

Earlier in my posts, I mentioned that the streets have no name. Above picture is a typical directory of the businesses in town. Because there is no street numbers, the Ticos use meters for directions. You better know how far 300 meters is or you will be lost in this little town. 

This is the local gas station. It is a full service gas station. It's nice not to go out to gas up. Eric says it was $50 for a full tank of gas. 

The view from the gasoline station. 

Locals in this town is using the glass bottom to decorate the walls. 

I think we are ready for lunch. 

There are a lot of "Sodas" here in CR. Sodas are not the same sodas that we have here in the US. Sodas are like mom and pop restaurant. This soda that we went to is owned by the same owner of the B&B that we stayed in last night. 

 This is a typical menu of the restaurant. I think it's still pricey. 

Most of the places here accept US$. 

Kids are busy doing their art work while waiting for their food. 

Here's the owner and the cook preparing our meal. 

It's almost ready. 

This is a typical Costa Rican Meal. They call it Casado. This is what we typically order. The kids like the beans and rice the most. 

I guess someone did not like their meal!

The plate is clean!

Meet Toby. Toby is the Soda owner's dog. 

Can we take him home? 

Here is a map of St Elena. It's avery quaint town. 

 This is a typical street here in Monte Verde/Santa Elena. Very rustic - dusty and unpaved.

Fin Del Pavimento! Here is the warning sign that the road is unpaved. We will be taking the unpaved road again for the next few miles. 

A couple miles away during our drive, we have "sigalert". Who knew that we will be stuck in a sigalert in he middle of the mountain. We'll we did. Since none of us speak fluent Spanish, we did not dare to ask what the problem was. We won't be able to understand their explanation anyway. All we know is that other drivers talk to the by-standers and they go back to their car and wait. Not one of them left. So this is typical. So we just waited, and waited and waited. 

This was the culprit! Road work ahead. 

After that was cleared, then off we went. We drove miles and miles of unpaved road once again.  It was dusty every where.

We found a lot of drivers would overtake on a curvy blind spot roads. They scare me! 

Oi!

We often see "skinny" cows roaming around the road too. The cows here are really skinny - just skin and bones. The cows milk are probably low fat already! Hahahahaha!

View while we were driving. 

Another cow on the road!

We see a lot of tourist bus. They call it "Turismo" bus. 

We finally reached paved road. What a big difference!

This is also typical that you see people waking on the side of the road. 

More paved road. 

Below are sunset pictures that were taken while the car was moving. Eric does not want to drive in the dark so we have no time to stop and take pictures of the ocean. Pictures my be blurry since the car was moving, the sunset colors still look pretty. 

That's it for tonight. We have another big day tomorrow. I need to get some sleep. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow when I am able. 

Good night all!