Day 42 - Dominicalito Bay

There had been some pretty amazing thunderstorms the night before, wild storms that knocked the electricity out a few times. This part of the world is still pretty primitive so when the storms come the power tends to go off for a bit. Not really a problem as we had a comfortable spot to chill out and watching the rain, whilst we weren’t riding in it, was actually pretty cool. It was still very humid, even at night, and what little the rain did to supress the heat, was barley noticeable.

After our efforts the day before surfing, we wanted to give it another go. Us old boys got pretty knackered, but it was still a load of fun, so we had some breakfast, made on the stove that was now working perfectly fine (thanks to Adrian and family), and made our way down to the beach with the boards strapped to the bikes again. Our second attempt was better than the first, but we were clearly not going to win any awards for our surfing prowess. Beach time done; we headed back to the house as we wanted to get up to the waterfall again to get some better pictures whilst the sun was up. As we were walking up the track to the waterfall, we were confronted by a monkey on the road, right in front of us. He kind of checked us out and then proceeded to walk right up to us and cruised past us into the jungle. A cool experience to be so close to the wildlife that is just everywhere in Costa Rica. It is an amazing place and full of life and lush green plants. Unfortunately, there were a couple of families at the Waterfall, which was fine as the pool is plenty big enough to swim and share the space with them. But it meant that taking photos was maybe a bit forward, particularly as there were little kids there. Whilst chilling at the waterfall and looking round, I noticed a rope swing that I had missed the day before when we had visited. It was pretty high up, so I clambered over the rocks to find a way to climb the tree where this rope swing was attached, found a long stick on the way over there and climbed up. I found that there was already a long stick carefully located in the tree to help catch the rope to swing from. I managed to get the rope in my hands, but I had no idea how long the rope had been up, when it was last used, and if it could take my ‘considerable’ weight. Looking down from the launch area, there were some very big rocks in the shallow area of the pool that I would need to swing over and if the rope snapped, I was certainly in for some stitches. I did it, and thankfully made it into the deeper area of the pool. Probably not the smartest thing I have done, but exhilarating, and thankfully, Jorik captured it on video, so the evidence exists. Following our activity at the waterfall, we headed back to the house as we had agreed that the dinner the night before of spaghetti bolognaise had been awesome so we would cook again. Another speciality – cottage pie this time. As there had been a power failure when we got back from surfing, we hadn’t been able to open the electric gate and the girls were parked out front of the house on a little bridge that crossed a drain into the parking area. We didn’t mind that the girls were outside, we had taken the boards off them, but they were still outside, and the power was still off by the time we had purchased our ingredients for the evening’s dinner. We cooked up our food, and whilst sitting down to eat, an absolutely massive thunderstorm started. The rain was incredible, next level tropical storm, and the girls were outside getting a much-needed rinse off. However, they were still out in the street, which was not ideal. As there was no power, we were limited as to what to do, the bikes could fit through the single gate, but with the rain as torrential as it was, the gutters and drains were completely overflowing, there was no ways I was going to attempt to move them through the gate in that weather. We settled in to watch a movie on Jorik’s laptop and after about 20 minutes or so, the power came back on. It was still chucking it down, but I jumped up, and wearing just my swimmers, opened the gate and moved the bikes inside the covered area, just in time before the power went off again, the girls were safe and locked up inside, we could sleep easy.