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.

Making Memories in Malaga

On our first visit to Malaga six years ago, we took an excursion to historic Granada, an incredible destination that should be on your bucket list.  In addition to the remarkable stories of the monumental Alhambra, we loved the cultural feel of Granada.

For our return to Malaga, we initially thought we might simply seek out the local attractions in the port city.  After all, about 25 years earlier, Julie's mother Edna had returned from a Costa Del Sol packaged tour with glowing reviews of her extended stay in Malaga.

A friend's photos of Ronda, however, tempted us to instead book an excursion to that hillside village.  At the last minute, our tour was cancelled.  We were given a free replacement tour of Malaga as a consolation prize.

So, following what proved to be our usual cappuccino and light breakfast throughout our port-intensive Mediterranean cruise, we headed out early to meet up with our group, despite rain.

Rather than waiting for a shuttle bus or taking a taxi, we walked the long pier causeway and then through a beautiful park, sheltered by our umbrellas.

The cloud-cooled morning temperature wasn't uncomfortable.  We arrived at our meeting point before anyone else, apparently. Disconcertingly, we couldn't find anyone in the general vicinity who had an answer other than "no" when we asked about our excursion.

We tried other likely places, including a tourist information center where a small crowd huddled together, to no avail.  We finally gave up on finding our tour guide and group.

With map in hand, we decided to explore this beautiful seaside city on our own.

The rain only occasionally subsided completely, but it did not pour to the point where we were unable to appreciate our stroll.

Would it have been better on one of those sun-drenched days for which the "Sunshine Coast" is renowned, as we had always found on prior trips to Spain?

Of course, but you can only live in reality or wait until next time.

We chose to live.

For a modest ticket price, we gained admission to both the Alcazaba de Malaga --- a sprawling Arabic Palace built by the Moors --- and El Castillo de Gibralfaro.

These are five-star attractions that would be well-worth touring with a guide should you visit Malaga.

We passed many such groups as we wandered through.

A downside of visiting El Castillo in the rain was that Spanish tiles of walkways became very slick.

I took a hard fall when my shoe soles completely failed to grip on a particularly steep downward slant, and despite going down on my butt, I somehow ended up ripping the knee out of my new green pants.

My mother Mary would have known that kind of tear well, because when I was in elementary school, I often came home after school in new pants with the knee similarly slashed after slipping on tiny pebbles which for some reason were present on the basketball court, making for slippery changes in direction.

Sliding in baseball and playing football also took their tolls on my pants.

This was the first time I had torn my pants in a long time, although it did bring to mind another vacation where I slipped on rain-soaked smooth stones, falling into a lagoon in Hawaii.

Despite my fall, we carried on with our day, enjoying panoramic views from the hillside as well as the lovely grounds of both the Alcazar and El Castillo.

With their strategic coastal location and normally appealing weather, it's no surprise that Malaga and the hill on which the Alcazaba and El Castillo are perched attracted civilizations before and after the Moorish caliphate and Spanish Reconquista.

Included with our ticket was admission to the Roman Theater, another very impressive piece of history surviving from hundreds more years earlier.

Over the course of the day, we sometimes had sunshine.  Had we not gotten off the ship early to meet the tour group that we never found, we could have missed the worst of the rain.

However, the Alcazaba and El Castillo advertised free admissions for after 2 PM on Sundays, which probably would have meant it would have been considerably more crowded later in the day.

The queue was building rapidly as we left, so we were happy we arrived early, even if it cost us a few Euro.

Malaga is a beautiful city where you can enjoy a port stop or longer stay.  Most days in prime travel months you will find sunshine rather than rain.  I strongly recommend visiting.

More of Julie's Photos

More of Wes's Photos

Bonus!  Mike and Linda's Photos