Jaco and the Macaws

Our delicious meal in Monteverde the prior evening had been the farewell dinner for about a third of our tour group.

After breakfast, we rode a couple of hours to a traveler's rest stop, most notable for dozens of incredible carved hardwood sculptures.

The long stop allowed plenty of time for restrooms, gift shopping, perhaps grabbing a snack, appreciating the woodwork and bidding farewell to tourists who a week earlier had been strangers but had become friends, like Steve and Maureen with whom we'd dined the prior evening.

Those folks splitting would return to San Jose to catch homebound flights.  I would guess they all enjoyed what felt like a full vacation, in most cases taking advantage of the bargain-priced, air-inclusive special from an airport near their homes. As they departed in a large van, the rest of us returned to our bus, which now had more seats available.

Our contingent soon reached "Croc Skywalk," at a river known for crocodile-spotting.

We all looked out the bus windows for the beasts, holding phones in hopes of capturing the perfect picture.

It wasn't exactly Captain Hook's worst nightmare on that day, but we saw a few croc heads pop up, if not exactly chomp at our tires or the limbs of any tourists walking in the vicinity.

Definitely the most significant part of our drive came when we stopped for lunch in Jaco.

Leo said that the modern high-rise condos on the beach sell for a million dollars and up.

He said most residents of those deluxe properties were from the USA.

As we drove down the town's main drag, Leo pointed to restaurants and stores, giving brief opinions about what might be the best choices.

He was always quite clear to say these were not recommendations, possibly reflecting concern about reviews of him as a guide from someone who inadvertently had a bad dining experience, as can happen anywhere.

Julie and I reasoned that if we had just seen the ocean, there must be a restaurant on the beach that Leo hadn't pointed out.  We walked a long block and found Oceano, a gorgeous beachfront hotel with an open-air restaurant/bar along the sand.

Julie ordered a Coke Zero, while I had the "premium" beer choice, Bavaria.

Perhaps because it had silver foil by the bottle cap, I wondered if it might be the Latin Ameria branding name for Löwenbrau, a beer with similar gold foil that I used to have in my refrigerator over forty years ago.

In my mind, I thought those beers tasted the same, but it had been a long time between the tastings.

Upon looking it up today, I learned that Bavaria is made by Heineken, whereas Löwenbrau is brewed in Munich under strict historic purity standards.

We ordered a cheeseburger in paradise, and it was delicious.

After we finished our meal and lingered a bit longer talking to another American couple who sat down next to us, we walked back to the main street to buy a bottle of wine to take to our hotel. 

When we crossed the street beside a delivery truck, I was paying too much attention to crossing traffic without looking down.  What peripherally seemed like a grassy patch of asphalt turned out to be a deep hole.

I tumbled down, skinning my knee, though not with as much bloodshed as I had in Hawaii a few years ago when I slipped into a pond.  Julie applied the Band-Aid from the mini-first-aid kit she keeps in a backpack for such medical emergencies.  If you look close at the next photo, you can see the Band-Aid.

We bought our wine but still had time to spare, so we stopped for reinvigorating iced coffee at a nice little niche coffee bar in the shade.

Back on the bus, we drove along the beach, initially glancing back at Jaco, thinking it would be a nice place for a beach vacation.

Our next stop was just outside of town, where scarlet macaws had rendezvoused in the trees.

From there, we had about another hour or so to Manuel Antonio and the hotel that would be our home away from home for the next three nights.

If there was a band called Jaco and the Macaws, they would cover at least one Jimmy Buffet song.