On one of our first days at the RIU Palace in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, we started hearing other guests talk about a secret beach. It was referred to as obscenely beautiful, with lots of shady spots to be found under the palm trees. The more we heard about it, the more we decided we wanted to see it. Everyone said to just walk left, down the beach, go around the cliff and you will be there.
One morning, after lunch, me, hubby, and our travel buddy Paula set off for this gorgeous beach. We turned left down the beach and a little while later came to the cliff. Apparently, none of us had heard the complete instructions for going around the cliff.
It jutted out into the ocean that was filled with a lot of rocks. We made the executive decision to walk around the cliff the other direction.
This way took us up a small footpath, around the cliff, and we came out on a gravel road. We could tell others had been back there on foot and on horse. This is where our Waiting For Godot story begins. The play by Samuel Beckett (buy it here), is basically a play in which nothing happens. It has the characters continually wait for Godot, but they come to no definite conclusions. This is how I felt about our hike to the secret beach.
We walked. And we walked. We walked uphill, we walked downhill. We walked for what seemed like forever. We walked up another hill, thinking the beach had to be just on the other side. It wasn’t.
When we had started out that morning, while still on the beach, I had pointed at a ridge and joked that if we found ourselves on the road that was visible way up near the top, we had probably gone too far. When we reached a stretch of that road that allowed us to see back to our beach, we realized that’s exactly what happened! We were almost at the top of that ridge.
We turned around and began walking back. It turns out we walked about 6 miles that day, but only really needed to have gone 2 to get to the secret beach. The crucial instruction that we missed was that we were supposed to go during low tide, when we could easily have walked around the front side of the cliff to the secret beach. I suppose that the next time we decide to go find the next secret beach, we will know to get better instructions AND pay attention to them. Or, we’ll just need to return to the RIU Palace in Costa Rica now that we know how to find their secret beach.
More Costa Rica–RIU Palace
A couple of years ago, we caught an end-of-season sale on Apple Vacations to go to Costa Rica. While we had many options of excursions, we really didn’t leave the resort for much. If you want to see what we left the resort for, you can check it out here. There was so much to do at the RIU Palace!
Hubby and I love getting massages and the first thing we did was get a chair massage poolside the day we arrived. Not a bad start to vacay! We then made an appointment to visit the resort’s spa, which was a Renova Spa. We had a nice relaxing couples massage that also included hanging out afterwards in their quiet community Jacuzzi.
The next day, we discovered the beach spas set up on the beach by locals. As much as we love massages, and when we discovered that their massages were half the price of the spa, we reserved time for two more massages each, for later in the week. It sounded so relaxing to have a massage on the beach. During the beach massages, when you can hear people walking by, laughing and chatting, and the massage ladies are recruiting their next appointment from passers-by during your time, you realize that it maybe wasn’t as relaxing as it sounded.
In hindsight, I preferred the spa massage more even though it cost more.. The quiet and serenity of Renova Spa, was just what I needed on vacay.
On the beach, we were also lucky enough to have vendors who were peddling all kinds of souvenir-worthy wares. You could find anything from wood-carvings to pottery, from dresses and cover-ups to jewelry. I had a particularly good time shopping with the jewelry lady. She had so many incredible pieces, and sometimes finding the matching sets in what she had, became challenging. It took quite a bit of time to stock up on sets for my friends, but it was worth her while. I ended up buying a LOT of it!
So much, in fact, that she threw in a wood-carved vase for free! She was such a sweetie!
Later in the week, we discovered there was going to be a poolside class on carving fruits. One of our travel buddies, Paula, and I showed up for it. Wow! Could these guys carve some incredible designs!
And they did it so fast and made it look so easy! But here’s what mine turned out like:
I’m not the craftiest one in the bunch, but I’ll keep practicing…
If I haven’t mentioned before how incredible the food is at a Riu Palace (oh wait, I have here) I must bring it up again, since we spent a lot of time dining on resort with our friends. We had a sushi restaurant where I could get Sake—I love the stuff! The Papagayo, which was the steakhouse, gave you the options of steak and lobster. It was so good, we went back twice! Saving the best for last, our themed buffet restaurant had seafood night the last night we were there.
The line for lobster tails stayed 20 people deep the entire time we were there for dinner. Luckily, hubby made friends with our waitress who admirably kept going over to the cook for more lobster, so we wouldn’t have to stand in the line. I believe he polished off 8 tails in the end. I might also add, that was ALL he ate. He loves lobster so much, he said there was no room for sides.
The last thing I discovered at our resort, that I really took a liking to were Cassava chips. Cassava is similar to a potato, but is actually what tapioca is made from. While I’m no fan of tapioca, I really enjoyed the chips.
The next time I go to Costa Rica, I do vow to leave the resort and experience more of the culture and environment. However, for this trip the Riu Palace was a great experience.
Monkeying Around in Costa Rica
A couple of years back, we found a steal of a deal on a trip to Guanacaste, Costa Rica because it was the last non-stop flight for the season. Costa Rica had been on the “list” for a long time, so we couldn’t pass up going. This trip was to a RIU Palace, which is one of our favorite resort brands. We like it enough that we got married at RIU in Negril, Jamaica. What we didn’t realize in Jamaica, but we learned in Costa Rica, is that the “Palace” side would have been slightly more upscale–better food, premium drinks, and adults only.
Costa Rica is known for it’s population of monkeys, and in doing my research, I discovered a place called Monkey’s Bar just down from our resort where guests would go to watch and feed the monkeys. Much to hubby’s chagrin, I made him get up so early on a number of mornings that it wasn’t even light out, just so we could go down to Monkey’s Bar. It wasn’t open in mornings, but it looked like a pretty neat place to grab a beer in the evening.
Some people would feed the monkey’s bananas and strawberries. We didn’t. Most mornings we could barely see them, and only once did our friend get to see one up close. They were really cute, but reputably vicious.
We hung out a lot with our friends on this trip, but one afternoon we took a snorkeling and sunset cruise excursion. We went out on a huge catamaran, the Vision, and toured the Gulf of Papagayo.
The crew served a really tasty light lunch and there were fun cocktails available.
We stopped off to do a little snorkeling and then continued over to Monkey Head Rock. Who knew we’d even see monkeys in the ocean?
Shortly after the big rock, we ran into some dolphins swimming along side our boat. They looked like they were having as much fun as we were having, yet looked so graceful.
We then witnessed one of the most beautiful, albeit cloudy sunsets ever before being returned back to the RIU.
I may just have considered it to be so beautiful, because we had just had one of the most relaxed, fun days ever. It was a day that will make me always consider Costa Rica a wonderful, beautiful place!