Finally some crocodiles in Jaco, and leaving CR

We left the nice and relaxed town, Puerto Viejo to Jaco. We had few reasons to switch place and one of them was crocodiles. Jaco is known of its massive crocodiles! The second reason was that our favorite hostel Kinkaju closed its doors for three days. It was a long drive to Jaco, around 5h but it felt quite easy thanks to good roads and we drove non-stop except for our stop over at the crocodile bridge. We had been told that there are tens of crocodiles hanging around the river bank under a bridge. It sounds a bit weird that some animal would just be in one place all the time, but when we came there, it was a quite amazing sight. There were crocodiles in the river, on the river bank and in between. Biggest crocodiles were close to 5 meters long and in every way massive. Luckily the bridge is high enough above these fellows, but Edda thought that the bridge rail is way too low :p We saw around 36 crocodiles from the bridge, and all of them are living freely in the wild, it’s  not any zoo or farm. We came to the bridge in the last minute. We had around 10 minutes to check out the crocs before a big thunderstorm came on us and we had to run to our car.

I'm not fat! Just big boned! 

This was the closest Edda let me to the crocs :P 

The fence was a bit too low... 

Just a few hanging around

Do not go swimming here!

The storm that came on us at the crocodile bridge

We continued driving to Jaco and our hotel Green. When we arrived to the hotel, a really lazy looking receptionist, who didn’t speak a word of English checked us in. The speed was about the same as the sloths had in the movie ‘Zootopia’ ;) The room itself was nice but we were wondering from where the name green comes from!? Probably the color of palm leaves? The “Green” name is not referring to ecological in any way in this hotel, even though it advertises itself as a ‘sustainable, eco-friendly’ hotel. The poor service was kept at the same level for our three night stay and in the end, probably the manager, just shouted to us, “give me the key, thank you, good bye!” His rude behavior was a result from us ringing the doorbell too many times… He shouted that he hears it but he had to walk a longer way so no need to ring it so many times. How were we supposed to know that it even works when previous times no-one came to the reception when we ringed the bell… We had booked the room through Airbnb and house rules prohibited parties and events. Well, the hotel staff had their own party there and were shouting till late at night. You can’t always be lucky with the accommodation… :p

But then something positive :) We found few nice restaurants in Jaco. One of these was Graffiti where we had our 12-year anniversary dinner <3 The place was cozy, superb service and good food, or Edda thought the food was out of this world. Edda had mushrooms in some sauce and bruschetta. Markus had a steak from the grill with chocolate-coffee sauce! Who could resist the sauce? ;) Before our dinner we went to see the sunset, but it was a bit cloudy so it wasn’t the best.

 Sparkling vine on our 12th anniversary <3

We were the first ones at Graffiti

Another good place was a local restaurant, Soda Marea Alta. We were the only tourists there. The food came fast and it was delicious. Of course Edda found an artisan ice cream place, Marsican Gelato Lounge that make their gelato at the spot and from natural ingredients :P They had several different tastes and they were done from real stuff e.g. fruits, nuts... and delicious!!!We saw few times the nice red parrots but they were flying so we couldn’t get a photo of them and one day we went to the beach, but more than that we didn’t do or see in Jaco because Markus was a bit sick there so we just took it easy. 

The local Soda (soda=local restaurant) 

Cheap and delicious 'casados' at Soda Marea Alta 

Edda's favorite "restaurant", Ice cream :D

Our beach ;)

From Jaco we drove to San Jose to return our monster car that took us around CR on challenging roads without problems. We stayed one night in a room we booked through Airbnb because we had our flight to Dominican Republic the next morning at 7.40am. This time our experience was very positive – our host Krissia even prepared a fruit bowl for us so we could eat something before our early flight. And so it was time to say Goodbye CR and Hello DR.

Over and out... Thank you CR (our Airbnb in Alajuela SJ)