A Rousing, House Shaking Welcome to Playa Coco

After three nights in Liberia we decided to get out of the heat and go up into the hills by Tilaran. Our one day excursion to the Rincon de la Vieja park had shown us that the climate up higher was much more pleasant. But instead of going directly, i.e., east and north, we decided to take a look at the the beach in Playa del Coco in the Papagayo district as it was only 20 miles away. About halfway there is Liberia's international airport. We'd learned, to our great surprise, that there are direct, almost daily flights to Miami, Atlanta, and Houston. Our guess was that this indicated a lot of retired Americans in the area. We hadn't met any in Liberia and thought the beach areas might be swarming with them.

Beach at Playa del Coco

Playa del Coco turned out to be a very quiet place, about two blocks by two blocks in the center. It faces a bay with about a mile of beach marked off by hills, maybe 100-150 m high, at the end. Maybe all the Americans lived up on the hills with fine ocean views?

We'd left early in the morning, before our usual breakfast of fruit and cereal in the room, planning to "test" the town with what we imagined would be a good American breakfast. But in coming into town we didn't find any Denny's nor even a McDonald's serving breakfast. Were all the Americans at home cooking their own stuff?

We decided to go over and take a look at the Coco Palms Hotel, run by two German brothers, according to the Lonely Planet. There we found an open-front restaurant that seemed to offer the atmosphere and quality we wanted. So we ate, and so it was. The restaurant is part of the hotel and after breakfast we looked at the pool in back. It was great. So we decided to look at a room in the hotel. That was nice, at least much nicer than our cramped Liberia room, so we decided to stay a night or two.

Coco Palms Swimming Pool

That gave us a chance to take a walk along the beach in the late morning and swim in the afternoon. Late in the afternoon we took a walk to the supermarket. It has an interesting history: it was housed in a small place next to the hotel. As the town has grown in the last few years (and we suspect, more Americans are buying more) it moved 500 meters away from the beach to quarters that seem to be 2-3 times as big. The vacated space was taken over in March, less than two months ago, by a "collegio" - a public high school. From early morning to late in the evening we could hear the noises of kids there from the swimming pool. Until March they had to take a school bus to Sardinal, about 8 km away.

At the super market, besides buying a bit of fruit and other stuff for a simple dinner we found an ad for a house for rent. This turned out to be "the one that got away." We called the owner the next morning and found that he was an American! At last we had spotted one. We met him at the bus stop, which is across the street from the post office, which is two blocks from our hotel. With him was another American. Were we in for a "deja vu all over again"? Where, as in Yellowstone, we were excited to see a moose from 1000 ft, then more excited when we saw one from 500 ft, and within two days were bored by how often they walked through our campsite?

Eddie's Swimming Pool

Eddie took us to see Coco Yoho, the house he'd built about 14 years ago. When we'd called he'd been initially reluctant: his posted ad was "for rent, $600/month". When we proposed that taking it a week at a time was good for him and us — he'd get immediate income while he waited for a longer term tenant — he wasn't sure. When we saw the house we weren't so enthusiastic either: it was scruffy and didn't have a beach view or pool or anything special to recommend it. Why stay here in the heat? Anyway we asked about the pool that was pictured in his self-made ad. That was up the hill about 200 m. We drove there in his air conditioned 4WD and found the pool and view were enough to make the house more palatable. So we made an offer, $25 a day which was a pro-rated $20/day on the monthly rental and $5 for utilities. He wanted to think it over. That night we spoke to Eddie by phone and, somewhat to our relief, he turned down our offer.

While waiting to call Eddie we'd made our dinner in the room. As we were sitting there eating it the place began to shake. This was a side-to-side motion that really astounded by its extent. Talk about deer in headlights being frozen — we just sat there thinking "Are we imagining this? What should we do?" By the time the simple thought "run" was in our heads the shaking had stopped. We ran anyway. But there really wasn't anyplace to run to. We were at the end of a long enclosed hallway. We looked at the roof of our room and the hallway and were glad it was wood construction. If it had been arched bricks as are used in Iran and Turkey we would already have had the roof on our heads.

While we were doing this we heard screams, which we are pretty certain were from the school next door. After all the shaking was over we walked over to the school front door and saw, like our hotel, there was no visible damage. Later the papers said the quake was centered in Papagayo and registered 5.5 on the Richter scale, with 20 after shocks. After we went back to the room we experienced two of these. As nothing seemed like it was going to fall down we went to bed early and must have slept through the other aftershocks. But just as a precaution, Jan made sure her handbag was very close to hand.