Next is Drakes Bay and the Osa Peninsula. This was a little restaurant we stopped at on the way.

This is the road to Drakes Bay. We heard from several people how bad it was but there has been a lot of work done to it lately. The paved part from Chacarita to Rincon has mostly been repaired. There are still some potholes left so you have to be careful but we had no problem driving the whole way at 60 Km p/hr. After Rincon the road is all new - all the way to Drakes Bay. Not one pothole.

Drakes Bay is just starting to develop. There is not much there right now but you can see that it's coming. There are towers already for cell phones and ICE (the utility company in Costa Rica) is bringing a powerline in.

We stayed at the Mirador Lodge, above is a picture of their dining hall. They really feed you good there! We met some very nice people there.

Next we drove back to Rincon and turned South to Puerto Jiminez.

It was so hot this day!!! You can see Julie is really happy to be in the nice cool breeze here! This is the Cabinas Jiminez, nice big rooms and a really nice deck overlooking the harbor. The bathroom made me a little nervous. The electric showers are typical all over Costa Rica but this was the first time I'd ever seen a breaker in the shower with you. When I turned it on I figured out right away why it was there, the shower got WAY too hot when it was on.

It was nice and cool in the evening but later on, when the wind died, there was no way to stop the bugs. We got so bit up that night!

The first stop, once we got to Zancudo, was to go have a beer with Dar at Arena Alta. Ever, the guy on the right, is the bartender. He's cool. Dar found a great guy for me to go fishing with, it's cheaper to split a boat with someone. John, I never got his last name, got a really nice Sailfish, which we released, and I got a nice Snook that we ate for dinner. We really had a good time fishing, and afterwards, Julie and I went out with John and his wife Anita for dinner at Macados and lots of beer at Bar Sussy.

One of Dar's boats

Mar y Sol (not to be confused with Sol y Mar) has the nicest furniture!

This is the inside of our cabina at Andrew and Susan's Los Cocos - our favorite place in Costa Rica.

We did have one scare there - this spider was hiding behind the toilet paper one morning. Julie came back from using the bathroom and told me there was a spider as big as her hand on the toilet paper. I didn't believe her because she was so calm about it. This is what I found when I went to investigate - YIKES!

Here's Julie relaxing in the hammock. This is pretty much all we did for 6 days in Zancudo :)

A nice send off the night before we left Zancudo

We left early the next morning so we could get to the river right as the ferry was starting. For a while that morning we thought we may be staying longer than planned - the engine that runs the ferry doesn't start too easy and we were on the wrong side of the river. It took us about 7 hours to get back to the Clara de Luna in Alajuela, and that includes being lost in San Jose for an hour. It's almost hopeless trying to get around in San Jose, there are no street signs so your map is pretty much useless and traffic is brutal there to say the least. I think it would have been easier if we'd had a compass but we made it.