OUR RETIRED ADVENTURE
qUEREMOS VIVIR AL SOL
KSha
Costa Rica is amazing! Beauty abounds.
Panama is "home" for now. Loving life!
South America is next! Columbia here we come.
Costa Rica is amazing! Beauty abounds.
Panama is "home" for now. Loving life!
South America is next! Columbia here we come.
The trip to Karahe Hotel was for the most part, normal. We past through Parrita, which Sharon had wanted to investigate and was a great deal larger and populated than we had imagined; it had a stop light (which was the third town that we found one in it) and well established neighborhoods. We then hit Quepos, which is on the ocean, but was very tightly packed and seemed full of tourists/people and was almost too much of a lot of everything; and we were happy to get through it. We then got back to "normal" roads that went straight up and curved every 500 yards as we drove the last half hour to Karahe. Check in went smooth and we got to our room on the 2nd floor with a nice balcony that looks over a cool garden area, then the pool, then the restaurant and then beach to the ocean. The room was hot, so we turned on the air and went to the restaurant to let the room cool off before we set up shop. It was early afternoon and we were pleasantly surprised to find "happy hour" in full swing. Pina coladas were "on sale" and we had 2 brought to our table as we checked out the view of the trees to the beach. About half way through the first drink for each of us, we both heard a large "crack" of thunder and then looked at each other with wide eyes wondering if the other was shaking the table. We both realized that neither of us could have made the floor of the bar swirl in a circular motion for about 5 or 6 seconds. Two other couples in the bar confirmed that they had felt that same sensation. Well that was really weird! We decided to return to our room a little while later; and then weird went wild. Upon returning to our room we found the temperature had only dropped a few degrees (from the outside temp of 88) and as we started to unpack we found that sweat was rolling down our backs. This was not going to be sleepable conditions and we needed to go back to the front desk. Luck was (kind of) with us and we were given the room next door to us--so we repacked and moved next door (only after verifying that the AC unit was fully functioning--and then we ran out of luck). We had a great batch of cribbage games in our room with beers we bought at the local tienda before we arrived. Just a quick update: Kev was holding a commanding lead of 24 wins to Sha's 12 wins at the start of the evening, before Sha made a big comeback to make it 26-18. Licking my wounds, we hit the hay to get ready for the beach. I believe it was 3 AM when we both sat up and said, "What the *&#@ was that?" There was a distinct scratching sound in our ceiling. Not just a scratch or two... but scratching that was moving around the ceiling-there was something up there! Hearing a moment of silence, I wished upon sleepy eyes that I imagined it, but was quickly denied as the critter continued to scratch his way around the ceiling. A sandal tossed at the ceiling didn't scare it away, so I headed outside to find the security person for some assistance. The front desk was on the other side of the road, so I had to pass out a gate to cross the road. As you can imagine, the office was dark and there was no one in sight...darn, and double darn! I headed back to the gate I had just used and then realized the room key was needed to reenter...this time I got to triple darn! Luckily I remembered the code to use to get into the secured parking area about 50 yards down the street and got back to the hotel that way. I returned to the room with no help and no answers on how to solve our "critter" problem; which by the way was still actively scratching around. Befuddled, tired and frustrated we heard voices outside the door. I quickly looked outside our door and found two girls out of the room next door to us looking scared and heading out-not normal at this hour and in their PJ's. We briefly spoke and they said that they thought some animal was in their room and they were going to get help from someone in their group. After confirming hearing similar sounds they went to find help. I was hoping they would have better luck than I did. Girl power prevailed and they brought back the security guy! With flashlight and a pole he searched their room as I stood outside, "ready to come to the rescue." No animal was found in their room and then I had to get some answers. I figured out with some translation assistance from the girls that he was telling them it was geckos that might be in the ceiling...hell no my friend (not sure how that translated) as I told him "no pequena, es grande" that's in my ceiling! We eventually figured out that he would come back in the morning to investigate and get rid of the "geckos." Great, just great! Shear exhaustion was the only way we went back to sleep. No scratching was heard upon awaking today, but there was no way we were going through that again. We headed for breakfast before we hit the beach for our morning walk (and then to the front desk!). We had a wonderful walk and believed we walked to all the way to the Manuel Antonio Nacional Parque, which has the famous "whale's tail" peninsula (7th pic is part of that peninsula). After returning to our hotel grounds, we got back to the restaurant and the waitress was pointing up in the trees...NGG sprang into action and she documented our first sloth! Before returning to the front desk, we ran into the couple at the restaurant we sat near yesterday. The husband had done his due diligence and checked on our "swirling bar floor" event and informed us that that had been an earthquake we had felt! It occurred out in the ocean near the Costa Rica/Panama border and was a 6.8 magnitude! NGG later continued the research and found that CR has an average of 350 earthquakes a month/~12 per day, (obviously the majority are imperceptible)! With that news, we headed for the front desk to discuss our "scratching problem." Long story short, we got an upgrade and were given a room on the top floor (3rd). So we went and turned on the AC in the new room (3rd) and showered the sand and sweat from our walk off in our 2nd room. Verifying that the room was cooling, we packed for the 2nd time and moved into room number 3 in Karahe. Thus concludes our first 24 hours in Hotel Karahe...let's recap. Moved into room where AC didn't work, went to Happy Hour and experienced a 6.8 magnitude earthquake, repacked and moved into room #2 that had the flight of the Iguana going on in our ceiling, exhausted, met the new day with a walk on the beach and a sloth sighting, to later repack and move into room #3. Then it started raining...and at the time of this posting, it hasn't stopped! Oh no...there's a drip coming from the ceiling...
4 Comments
7/23/2021 08:19:21 am
Thank goodness this didn’t happen at your very first hotel!!😩😂😩
Reply
Sharon Seibel
7/24/2021 06:47:04 pm
Yes after our long flight delay hotel issue would have been too much!! Thankfully hotel mangaby was awesome.
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Jen
7/23/2021 01:52:50 pm
Yikes! An earthquake! I didn't realize they were so common there! Hope the animal in the ceiling issues are all done! Miss you guys! Keep up the awesome updates :)
Reply
Sharon Seibel
7/24/2021 06:49:12 pm
Us neither!! Miss you all and blogger boy is updating now. Love you
Reply
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