North of Samara

So all the little towns north of Samara aren't really my kind of vacation spot, not much of a "downtown", it's all spread out. Generally not as spread out as Santa Teresa but no real central location. Now, we didn't drive down every street so we might have missed something. But that seems to be more of the norm around here. Garza was a little town right off the ocean, there was a big Fut Bol (soccer) game going on, but it wasn't a tourist place at all.

We did get to cross a pretty wide river in our little 4x4, I would have been a little hesitant but the littler BoGo 4x4 in front of us made it so we knew we could. Although we're pretty confident the woman in the passenger seat wasn't sure they'd make it (and they waited to make sure we made it). In hindsight we should have taken a picture of the river.

I thought Nosara would be a place I really liked but it was spread out a bit, but there seemed to be a lot there, a lot of "side streets", a lot of isolated hotels (some really fancy looking ones). It was off the main "highway" so that was really nice this town might require some more exploring.

But the cruise "up the coast" really wasn't the case, it was a lot of side roads that you had to take down to the water so you never know what might be down there: public access, a home, a hotel, a farm so that was a little tricky.

Found a nice little restaurant north of Nosara, in the town called Oxtional, just called "Tony Resturante". I think the ocean is just behind here but you can't see it. Nicely shaded, celling fans and just overall clean and nice (especially since they aren't far off a semi-dusty road). I had a delicious "Arroz con Camarones" (rice & shrimp) and Mark had some kind of Thai-ish Chicken entree (Pollo Tailandes) that he loved. And they have Coca-Cola and Fresca is glass bottles (that were mucho frio). They do have a translated semi-English menu if you ask (we couldn't translate Tailandes).

It's not dusty where we are eating, but we've passed a but of "health / dust warning" 20 KPH signs in various towns along here. Overall it hasn't been too dusty today, I think the rain helped.

Technorati Tags: Arroz con Camarones, Costa Rica, Nosara, Pollo Tailandes, Samaa, Tony Resturante