Riding Costa Rica, Day 6: Horses, waterfalls then on to Jaco
At the time of night it was when we’d finally found this place, anywhere to stay was good, but it turned out, amusingly, the place is somewhat of an ‘adventurers hotel,’ with a ton of zip lines and other activities.
We didn’t care a bit as we had de-geared, but it was pretty entertaining in the morning to see ziplines and quite a scenic view in the morning, including a huge tree rising through the center of the place.
We decided it was fate we wound up there, of all possible places, and to have a non-riding adventure day.
We had expected originally to make into Jaco or Hemosa the night before, but in reality there wasn’t anything ‘must do’ there, just a stopping point for the most part, where we’d stopped her instead. Now that we knew we took the long way, and going out the other way we’d be back to the highway in 30 minutes or so, and then maybe a few more hours to Jaco or Hermosa, we felt like it was worth spending the better part of the day locally.
We decided to do some hiking followed by a guided horseback ride. I’m never a fan of guided horseback rides, as so rarely do they do anything more than walk or trot, but still wanted to give it a shot and managed to gallop here and there, so yay for that. :)
Horseback riding
We went for a few hours, and it was pretty good…got a bit of centering and galloping in, although not a whole lot, but the scenery was very nice.
In retrospect, for those that get monkey-butt or sore from hours on a bike, well, yeah - horseback riding does that as well, especially when doing nothing but walking and trotting. But it was worth it..
On to Jaco and Hermosa
There really wasn’t any specific reason to go to Jaco, other than it was a relatively bigger sized town, known in general as a touristy party town or beach town of sorts, which really didn’t do much for me, other than - hey, we should be able to find somewhere to stay without drama.
So after riding, a rinseoff and packing the bikes back off, off we went. I don’t recall there being anything overly memorable on this part of the trip, but we did make it to Jaco before dark, which was a plus. It was a bit bigger and different than we’d expected, I suppose...
We wound up finding a motel-like place, meaning a pretty much non-descript room, non-resort, that had running water.
I think we found a local place claiming to have wings or something, but I’m not recalling it well enough to make the assumption it was anything more than passable food-wise.
If you can’t tell - I’m just not all that much for tourist traps in general.. ;)
On to Playa Hermosa and Manuel Antonio tomorrow!