Station Santa Rosa -> Playa Naranjo Santa Rosa -> Liberia -> Playa Hermosa Guanacaste

The next day we continued west through the park to Playa Naranjo (no not the same Playa Naranjo, see Costa Rican names) where we camped on the beach in the rain. There really weren’t many rainy days while we traveled, a lot of half hour showers that almost drowned us, but most of the time it was sunny.

The exception seemed to be when we camped, then it rained almost continuously, day and night. The nice thing about rain on the beach is that you are in your swimsuit anyway and mostly we just ignored it and walked the beach, and hiked an inland trail anyway.

I continued my entertaining interactions with bizarre chemicals while we were on the beach. At the camping area there is a well water shower that while not quite fresh isn’t as salty as the ocean.

After back country biking it takes soap to get the grime off. I don’t like to carry any more than I have to when I’m touring so I just wash my hair with the same bar of soap I use for everything else. This time it felt a little weird, and when I returned to our tent Sue was soon in hysterics.

The soap I had used in my hair was somehow reacting with the minerals, salt and/or tannins in the water and was setting up into a sort of white cement as my hair dried. I looked like a cross between medusa and Albert Einstein. Luckily Sue carries shampoo and that didn’t seem to form the same polymer.

That night the racoons showed us who’s boss.  We’d hung our food as recommended…or maybe not quite as high or far out on the branch as recommended because it was raining like crazy after dinner.  Still, in the middle of the night I heard something rustling around and poked my head out of the tent to check.

At least four pairs of glowing yellow eyes reflected my flashlight back at me from the vicinity of the food bag, and sure enough one of them had dropped down from the branch above and pulled the bag open.  I swear they were cooperating to make me look foolish…one would dart in and grab something from the supplies scattered on the ground and while I crashed through the brush giving chase the others would move in.

From Naranjo we rode to Liberia where we met Quincho again. We drove to Playa Hermosa and treated him to a stay at the beach to try and repay in some small way his generosity as a tour guide and taxi service for us.

We all had a good laugh when Sue came tearing out of the ocean like she was on fire and it was because she was worried she’d seen a huge jelly fish.  Joe was right behind her but I’d seen what they were looking at and realized it was just a mas x menos shopping bag undulating in the waves.