The next day we hit the beach early. I swim and sun while Patti takes a long walk. It turns out that while it's a good 18 kilometers by car to Tamarindo, you can actually walk there on the beach. However, to get to the Tamarindo beaches proper you have to cross a river that flows into the ocean... and there are alligators in the river. So an entrepreneur has set up shop taking folks over the river in a boat for a dollar. That’s a dollar well spent I’d say, but some dumbasses apparently still wade across.

For lunch we follow the directions of the giant billboard across from our house and take another drive through the unpaved roads in Playa Grande, where we find hidden commercial streets with hotels, bed and breakfasts, and restaurants.

We had decide to eat at The Great Waltini's at Hotel Bula Bula. With a name like that, how can you refuse? Plus their marketing slogan that they are recommended by all the tourist guidebooks (not sure if this was meant to be ironic, but since it was being shouted from a billboard I’m thinking not).

It was a long way down the white gravel road, breaking our earlier promise of refusing to travel unpaved roads, and we actually stopped to consider how far we would go unpaved before giving up the ghost... but there were several signs encouraging us to continue... so we did.

And what a nice surprise.

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