A Day In Our Life In Paquero On The Nicolay Peninsula

A post about our daily life in the small town of Paquero near the tip of the Nicolay Peninsula.  Along with seeing the Curu Wildlife Preserve and a day of Kayaking we tried an Alltrails hike, a bioluminescence tour at night and enjoyed the restaurants and people of the local neighborhood.  We have found in our travels that it is good to avoid the resorts and tourist areas in general. Of course there are some major attractions we must visit but, seeing life as the locals live it and conversing with them regarding their views on life is priceless.

Our first night in Paquero found us hungry so off on foot to find one of the many 'sodas' they call their family run restaurants around here.  As we waited for our food we watched the guy in the background smoking meat and cleaning the dishes from previous customers.  Very interesting set up.

We do not usually post food pictures but this is what a typical dish looks like here with rice, beans, salad and a protein.  There fries are actually pretty good too.

The next day we thought we would take a drive and find a restaurant on the beach that was advertised in the form of a menu at our Airbnb.  We thought this road looked a bit suspicious for one that is leading to a 'nicer' and fancier restaurant.

Things were looking good as the road opened up to nice views of the ocean after a while like the one above but still no sign of what looked like an oceanfront restaurant.

We decided to leave our car and walk the road for a while to get a feel for the seaside community.  All the neighbors were friendly with many 'holas' shouted out.  Not sure the power companies back home would approve of all the makeshift wiring we came across or the laundry being hung to dry on those power lines.  We finally gave up on finding the restaurant but agreed that we did enjoy our excursion into a small seaside neighborhood.

On our way back toward town we had to stop and get a close up of this very odd looking dairy cow. At least that is what we think it was.  Huge ears along with all sorts of skin folds added to the mystique.  We did not name her as we might usually do with one of our neighborhood cows back home but she did seem to enjoy some attention and the obligatory moo we sent her way.

We added this signage to our collection of road signs we have taken pictures of over the years.  'Cruce de Fauna' means wildlife crossing.  We figured the animal in the middle is a deer and guessed the other two were pictures of monkeys? Nice to see the wildlife using the crosswalk in an official like way!

We found a nice lunch spot just outside of town.  It apparently was a newly opened 'soda' and was the first place we found that did not take credit cards.  The owners were very hospitable and made a very nice fish dish as well as a good fruit smoothy.  Note the painted tires used as decorative landscaping.  We have found that Costa Ricans reuse and repurpose just about everything.

This is something you definitely would not see in the States.  A family of three all getting on a motorcycle after eating at the table next to ours.  No helmets either.

For our bioluminescence tour at night we did not know what to expect so we left our phone in the car. It is our lifeline around here for GPS and Whatsapp as it is how all the locals communicate.  Google Maps does nowhere near as good a job in Costa Rica.  Interesting leaving our car here for a few hours but, when in Costa Rica, do what the Ticos do.

Just at sunset, around 5:30 here near the equator, this guy showed up in a boat to take us on our tour.  Glad we left our phone in the car!  He was actually very knowledgeable, safe and fun at the same time.  Even though he spoke no English, our Spanish studying for the last year helped a bit.

We lifted this picture from Google Images to show you what we saw as we waved our hands around under water.  Pretty darn cool! Bioluminescence is an oddity of nature where algae, when agitated, light up in the water.  We dove in with mask and snorkel and swam around waving our arms to make all the algae light up.  There were a few small jellyfish too that did hurt when they stung.  Around here folks talk about how much a bite or sting hurts in percentage of bee stings.  These were about a 10% bee sting.

We got our first true hour of seeing toucans do what they do best....Eat and make noise.

Here are a few of them munching away at whatever nut this tree is growing.  The colors on their backs are really vibrant, even for us color challenged folks.

Above is a video we captured of some tucans doing their thing outside our living room window.  They are loud, obnoxious sounding and very messy eaters but, boy are the pretty to look at!

One day we decided to find a local hike not in an official park.  Alltrails app to the rescue....almost.

After driving through a small neighborhood, noticing the locals looking very strangely at us as we headed toward the end of the road, we reached the 'parking area'.  Did not know if we should park next to the free standing wall of dirt?  It looked like we were going to walk right up a driveway but Alltrails said we were on the trail.

Not sure if you can get a sense of the grade here but after all our experiences hiking and building trails we would estimate it at 40%  Probably the steepest section of dirt we have ever climbed.  It went on for a half mile too.  It ended at a barbed wire fence with no apparent way around so the hike was aborted.  Still pretty cool and a good bit of heavy breathing was had.

This is probably the first video we have shot simply for the sound.  On our way back down the steep hill we heard a howler monkey close by.  Could not find him but the sounds were fabulous.

Back closer to home we finally got a picture of one of these bicycle cart contraptions we have been seeing.  They don't move fast but they do carry a lot of stuff.  Many times it was a landscaper with his weedwhacker etc on it.

Here are a few shots of 'cultural' interest.  How folks do things a bit differently here:

Our house advertised a washing machine and we got one. You fill the tub with water from a loose hose before setting the cycle to wash.  Then you set the cycle to empty.  Then you transfer the clothes to the bin on the right to spin them out.  Not many places have dryers in Costa Rica, much like in New Zealand, as electricity costs are very high.  We must say it worked well.

We thought the brand name of the pita bread we bought was very appropriate.  Pura Vida is the Costa Rican vibe of feeling that everything is going well.

There is generally no hot water in Costa Rica.  I am sure the resorts have hot water heaters but we have not yet stayed in a place with a hot water heater.  This is called a 'suicide' shower and OSHA would not have been happy with the DIY job the owner here did.  If you turn on the water only a little, the wire you see provides the electricity to heat the water as it is flowing through the shower head.  Actually fairly efficient in our minds but when I went to adjust the angle of the head I got a pretty good shock!