Our final stop had us exploring around Uvita and Dominical, the Costa Ballena region. Our first stay was at Vista Ballena, a beautiful hotel up the mountains from the coast with a beautiful overlook to the ocean and the namesake landform. The Parque Nacional Marino Ballena surrounds a sandbar/landform that looks like a whale tail when it's low tide.
Mostly I was excited that they had a pool shallow enough that Parker could swim/play without us having to be within arms reach at all times. Sybil is a strong enough swimmer now that she can venture into the big pool alone with just our eyes on her.
The Vista Ballena view was why infinity pools were created. We were living it up!
To take a break from the beach, we decided to have a waterfall day. We brought suits with the intention of some natural swimming, but El Pavon (not surprisingly with all the rainy season rain) was a bit too powerful/unsafe for us to venture in.
How'd that boulder get there? Nature is awesome.
The girls did a great job managing their disappointment of not swimming, and with our heads up on the way out we saw a waterfall we missed on the way in. This one was perfect for climbing and exploring.
Still at Vista Ballena enjoying a picnic lunch and chips in a can. We had our first grocery stop because our room had a mini-fridge. We had held off on buying any snacks because we had no way to store them in our previous rooms. We quickly discovered you can't leave any food out overnight because it will be covered in tiny ants by the morning. The mini-fridge proved to protect our food for at least 48 hours.
This beauty of a frog was posted up on a column at our hotel sitting very still to wait out the dry morning and the coming of the inevitable afternoon/evening showers. The girls (and me) enjoyed gently petting it.
Back to the beach! In the morning we visited Playa Ventanas for some wave jumping and frisbee throwing on the beach. We came as high tide was rolling in. There are two ventanas (windows) through the bordering mountain of this cove that can be walked through during low tide. At high tide you get a great show of seeing the waves crash through with awesome noise and mist. Other highlights were watching the hundreds of crabs digging holes, sifting through the sand for food and scurrying about. And Sybil and I had a toss with a beach friend from Britain.
In the afternoon, we went for a beach hike to the Whale Tail. Our third national park of the trip!
The best time to visit these beaches is at low tide which allows you to walk out to the whale tail land formation.
Beautiful beach and tropical forest. Every once in awhile the clouds would part and reveal the tall mountains just off the coast. How drastically the mountains rise up from the coast reminded us a lot of Hawaii.
Our next stay in the area was at an apartment style bungalow. The girls have been enjoying downtime listening to The Descendants, Oliver, Wicked, and Encanto songs. During the nap we were woken up by two goats on our second floor porch peeking into our window. The girls had fed them carrots and banana in the morning, and they escaped their pen and they came knocking for more.
Final beach of the trip. Parker and I walked from our final hotel, Villas Rio Mar, to Playa Dominical. We didn't spend much time here, but we hope to be back for a future trip and some surfing lessons. These seemed to be the most consistently awesome waves.
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