Bahía Drake, Costa Rica

It's one of the most isolated places in Costa Rica but Bahía Drake (pronounced drah-kay) was well worth the effort to get to, especially as a jumping off point to visit Corcovado National Park.

It took us about 4 hours to drive from Manuel Antonio to Drake Bay on a somewhat roundabout route. On the map it looks like the road is right on the coast but in reality we only caught glimpses of it every now and then between palm tree plantations and forests. Eventually the road goes inland to Piedras Blancas, where we turned off (well actually we missed the turn originally didn't we, Shorty!?) back to the west towards Peninsula de Osa. This route took us past Golfo Dulce, but again we only periodically had glimpses of this stunning gulf between the trees. After driving a decent while without seeing much of anyone or anything except for forests, the town of Rincón was an unexpectedly large settlement for Costa Rica but it also saw the end of the paved roads. A quick pitstop for a cup of joe and a fruit shake and we buckled in for the last 20km or so stretch on unpaved roads.

These unpaved roads didn't have any signs and we frequently reached a fork in the road that we'd just have to take a gamble with because even with our google maps on, we weren't really matching up with being where we should be. Terry had to take on three river crossings, for which we were thanking our past selves for doing the research on needing to hire a 4WD. Supposedly in wet season the road becomes impassable and I can definitely believe that. The rivers were still quite deep in parts so it took a bit of guess work on where best to drive. We were just hoping there was no more rain while we were in the area! Perhaps these roads all join up eventually or we have some good intuition but we somehow made it to Drake Bay just before nightfall and managed to get a quick glimpse of the beautiful deserted beach. What is this place!

After driving for so long without seeing signs of much civilisation, it was slightly bizarre to suddenly find the village at Drake Bay. Like other places we've been to in Costa Rica, it was quite small and mainly just one street with a dairy, fruit and vege store, a handful of restaurants, tour companies and the like.

We pulled up to Paradise Lodge, our home for the next couple of nights to find the lovely owner Lucy and our wooden hut (or cabina as they're called here) amongst a lovely garden come forest. For less than the price of a hostel dorm, it was a no brainer to stay in a nicer place and have a private room for the four of us, especially after a couple of nights in the prison cell dorm at Manuel Antonio. Lucy quickly got us organised onto a tour for Corcovado National Park the following morning and then explained about the animals we might see even just in the garden here. In the end we didn't spend much time there in the daylight so only really saw a handful of birds and a rogue toad! Supposedly they saw a tayra (weasel like thing) while we were on our tour though. It still amazes me how many animals there are in this country and the fact that you can see them amongst areas of civilisation so often.

We had hoped to make use of the simple outdoor kitchen and do some of our own cooking but the prices at the supermarket (really just a dairy) weren't great nor was the produce so we figured we'd just stick with going out. We had to succumb to the hamburgesas again. Help. Thankfully the comida rapida (fast food) place we went to also knew how to make a mean fruit smoothie. It's all about balance right...?

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