Guanajuato is about 70-80 km away from San Miguel. There are two ways of driving. the longer passes by a town where Mexican revolution started. but this time we didn’t visit it. The road goes up and to tell the truth – it was a scary drive, to many time you have to drive on a very steep edge. But you enter Guanajuato via a perfect side, close to downtown, plenty of spaces to park on the streets. Still I preferred the not so beautiful drive back because it was shorter and not high up on the ridges. This time we didn’t sleep in G., just walked around and came back home to “Life Path”. We wanted to compare both of those magic towns. but it is hard to compare. i thing Guanajuato has more museums, both of them are perfectly colorful and beautiful. G. has more culture expressed on the streets, I would say – much more. But it is amid some hills, an old mining town and not so convenient once you decide to drive out. It is also significantly dirtier. Whereas San Miguel is very clean. The world knows Guanajuato mainly because of its exhumed poor people’s bodies, turned into mummies and placed in a museum, some 110 of them. We don’t enjoy such things, I think it is ridiculous to expose them for peculiar viewing. Only because they were poor and could not pay for their grave site. But there are really good museums, including the birth house of their beloved son Diego Riviera, so we visited this one. Sad as it is – I almost forgot everything I saw there last time, 4 years ago. This time they had an exhibit of some artist, whose name I didn’t write down – he has a peculiar way of creating art:
As you can see the snow was already wet and not much of it. So we rushed:
Wild turkeys-ï¿‚ï¾ it has special feathers hanging from his breast, so it is a male, but still not fully grown up one: 
And some more with the Angel’s Landing in the distance:
A tapir – that was the most interesting creature in the Zoo – he is like a mix of an elephant and a black pig: 
In case yo get interested-ï¿‚ï¾ here the the entrance to the Zoo: 
This is the portico of the National theater – a proof Andrei drove through the main street of San Jose and I took the pic form the car window: 
Here are some more views in San Jose while we walked from the University area where we stayed the last night, the graffiti was wonderful there!
A fruit stand. The peculiar fruits here are theï¿‚ï¾ yellow-orange ones. they are the fruits with a little tail – and guess what is in that tail – a cashew nut! How many fruits have to be grown to have an handful of cashews…
Here is Casada-ï¿‚ï¾ their traditional meal, like a menu dia in Spain. You can choose only the meat or fish or some seafood. But the rest of the plate comes like this and it costs around $5-$8: 
So – that was it, enough of good climate and warmth, back to our never ending house works…
It was this close to the sea on a very quiet street, the only sounds we heard were of birds. Well, one evening there were some loud sounds from across the swimming pool from the balcony – American youngsters were smoking pot – which is considered legal, kind of :-). We didn’t investigate thisï¿‚ï¾ in-useful info for us. 
And those wonderful sunsets on the Pacific! Jaco beach had a lot of surfers-ï¿‚ï¾ the waves here are of the right size! 
But as I was expecting crowds of peopleï¿‚ï¾ ï¿‚ï¾ -there were none. A little more than in Samara, but never too many. Maybe becasue we came on Sunday evening and were not envious to the cars going back from Jaco to San Jose on the other lane-ï¿‚ï¾ the traffic jam was literally for the whole 30 km from the bigger highway…A lesson can be drawn – never leave Jaco on Sunday.ï¿‚ï¾ 
There are some higher buildings in Jaco, not so many palm trees as in Samara. but there are a lot of green spaces there. they are fenced, not for people to walk on them – mostly for the cows or for just a small house in the middle of a big park. 
And we didn’t see any prostitute at all.ï¿‚ï¾ Mostly American and Canadian families with kids or just elderly people. Lots of restaurants, lots of shops. Te whole spectrum of prices. There are also casinos, night clubs. But that is not our world. We were happy to have a spacious and cool room for the heat there is rather humid and not so pleasant. We left in two night there the day before our flight and stopped on the famous Crocodile bridge. And yes, there are unbelievably many crocodiles:
There is a trail and a national park by that bridge, but we didn’t have time for a hike.ï¿‚ï¾ Again – from the car window the views were perfect!
But as we had no time to stopï¿‚ï¾ – I took pictures form the car window. The next one shows their way of making fences – they stick a branch into the soil, evidently during the rainy season – and here you go, it starts even growing! Then they prune their fences:
Once we got to the place, which is in Nicoya peninsular – we ran to see the sunset and that wonderful evening glow: 
Then in the dark already with a flashlight walked 25 min on the beach North to Samara to get to some restaurant fro dinner. Our B&B owners were also cooking dinners, making cocktails if someone wanted-ï¿‚ï¾ but we wanted to get a glimpse of Samara:
Those were several restaurants starting on the beach sand and going deeper in a more regular interior. We liked the restaurant “El Gusto” with floors and sofa’s and on some evenings – with live music:
Then the walk back, on a super dark beach, lit only by the Milky Way! It wouldn’t be so pleasant if there were more people walking because you could bump on them – but there is very few people in Samara. Most of them stay in town. As we saw plenty of restaurants and souvenir shops there. Our B&B had only three bedrooms, quiet and homey:
Very few people on the beach and the water was awesome!ï¿‚ï¾ No wonder some people just go to Costa Rica coast, stay there and fly back home. The waves are of the right size, the water is so warm that even me with my slim body didn’t get cold at all. And you can see a line of rocks in the sea – they are not a coral reef, but solid lava form long ago. When the tide is low – is is fun to walk to them through shallow waters and check for some sea life.
Sea urchins: 
The sun is very strong there-ï¿‚ï¾ definitely wear clothes or SPF: 
We were lucky that the tide was low at 10 am and at 11 am the next day – it was still not too hot to do the hike. When the tide is low during the midday -ï¿‚ï¾ it would be hard. The heat is hot there :-). 
The first morning we went to the tide pools-ï¿‚ï¾ we saw three very colorful puffers. Butï¿‚ï¾ we didn’t take the camera, were not sure how deep we would have to walk or swim in the water.ï¿‚ï¾ the next day we took the camera-ï¿‚ï¾ no fish…:-(. On the whole-ï¿‚ï¾ not many wildlife in this country, not much sea life. And the sand is not white. far from it. it has a portion of ashes, I think. because it is hard to wash it. Well – it was better in Samara than in Jaco. That is for sure. And here is Andrei waiting for breakfast:
Our B&B hidden in the palm grove: 
Though the humidity on the peninsular coast is much lower that the southern coasts of Costa Ricaï¿‚ï¾ -it is still very hot. But we could sleep without AC, there is some breeze from the ocean. The second sunset we enjoyed tremendously:
there was another adventure in Samara the last morning. I went to swim peacefully in the sea before breakfast – there was a neighbor’s big black dog running around. It didn’t dawn onto me that it can be dangerous. I went into teh waves- the dog behind me and started jumping on my naked skin…scratched it and also scared me to death. So be careful. because the woman owner is very careless and she just laughed when I told her what happened. it was my husband who saved me. Otherwise I don’t know how it would have ended. We still managed to hike to another town more south from Samara – Puerto Carillo, which seemed even better for solitude and rest:
And then, bye bye to Samara, we drove for half of the day to Jaco. The roads are not so bad as we presumed. At least we didn’t drive on dirt roads and the paved ones were paved. But they are so narrow, you can’t pass a car is the driver of it decides to do some other activityï¿‚ï¾ in the car than driving and goes to a slow motion…In conclusion – driving in Costa Rica no pleasure at all! So we decided – if we ever come there for the warm sea and the waves of the right size-ï¿‚ï¾ we will take a bus form San Jose.
The churches in those little towns were mostly of modern type – no old buildings there. This one had a peculiar sign inside-ï¿‚ï¾ to me it was an unusual sign for a church: 
Those trees are mostly without leaves but they have flowers of some bright color. But we never stopped close to them, so no pics… 
But we stopped in one nursery still by the lake-ï¿‚ï¾ and enjoyed the colors of their plants:
Lots of houses are for sale there, locals said they are in real estate crisis. That does not mean that the houses are cheap – their prices are comparable to USA real estate prices in good areas. In several hours we reached our destinationï¿‚ï¾ -the little town Bijahua and our Air B&B on a mountain there:
This house is comfortably built with two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. the owner Carole was super hospitable! She met us with a big plate of fruit, local eggs, bread, other foods. But the weather didn’t love us there at all. Rains and winds almost constantly.ï¿‚ï¾ The valley with Bijagua town was down below – but we could hardly see it. Low clouds, rain and wind…
The owners have a big field and not many trees. So they built a temple: A temple for love, she said. Aren’t all religions for love? 
This is the view from our porch: 
This is one of two trees still left and not used for furniture: 
The plant looked very much like “the thorns of Christ” as we call it. but this one without any thorns! 
Those looked like impatients, but on tall bushes: 
The hostess Carole: 
So why did we go there? it is a good place to start a day’s trip to Rio Negro, where they write you can hire a boat and see a lot of wildlife. But it was too rainy to reach the river-ï¿‚ï¾ the road is a dirt road. And close by, only in some 15 km there is a national park of Volcano Miravales-ï¿‚ï¾ there are trails in that park. As we had to do something even in the rainy day – we went to the park, paid $12 each for the trails and managed to do only the first and shortest one-ï¿‚ï¾ to the waterfall and the blue lagoon. The trail is called Rio Celeste:
My face is tense here-ï¿‚ï¾ I was worried to get off the path – the crowds that went there were unbelievable! Like on the busiest day in Zion NP.ï¿‚ï¾ And the rain was pouring…We looked at the lagoon and decided not to go down to it-ï¿‚ï¾ too many people, too much brushing each other.
This one is to show how crowded those steps looked like and we had to wait to get Andrei on the stairs alone! 
So yeï¿‚ï¾ -we did not manage to do the other trails though we had energy for that – they were plain in mud, climbing up among roots, sliding and turning into a mud person. No pictures from trail, teh rain became so strong, it was impossible to take outï¿‚ï¾ our cameras. Here is the only peculiar bird we saw in those two weeks of traveling in the Kingdom of Wildlife:
Here we are going towards the Pacific coast – the skies cleared up, because strangeï¿‚ï¾ as it is-ï¿‚ï¾ there is not a drop of rain there on the Northern coast for 6 months of what we call our winter and they call summer. But then the next months the monsoons are huge! Whereas deeper inland among the volcanoesï¿‚ï¾ ï¿‚ï¾ -it is raining always. 