Our first impressions of Costa Rica!

Leaving Nicaragua, the bar crossing was much less dramatic than our entrance, and nothing compared to the pictures of us leaving El Salvador. Still, not for the faint of heart. Took a full 24 hours to get to Bahia Santa Elena in northern Costa Rica. Caught up to a couple of friends and a couple of other boats that were already there. Absolutely one of the most beautiful anchorages we’ve ever been in and the several days that we were there it was extremely calm even though we had to switch sides of the bay because of a Papagayo wind that blew for several days. It did little more than spin us around our anchors as we were well sheltered and our part of the bay remained flat calm. Sooo nice.

Had a great day on the beach with everyone celebrating Kyle’s (SV Jubel) birthday, and after we floated all day, we had everybody over to our boat for pot luck. Three people brought instruments and entertained us all for a good long time. Great fun! Couple days later, we all hiked to a waterfall, almost 9 miles round-trip. The three dogs had to turn back due to heat but four of us made it all the way. A large riverbed but only a small waterfall at the time. Saw a beautiful lizard, wild pineapple and king vultures.

Left and came down to Playa Coco to formally check into the country. Had an extraordinarily heavy thunderstorm right as we arrived, lasted for several hours. Took a full seven hours to check in the next day as we had to go to the police station/immigration, Port Captain, wait 1/2 hour for the bus to the airport that drove away 15 seconds before we got there, wait almost 2 hours for the customs agent to come out and deal with us at the airport, another half hour wait for a bus back, and then to the Port Captain again for final papers.

We’ve managed to solve one of the great mysteries of life on our boat – the nonworking solar panel. After weeks of investigation and buckets of sweat, it has been narrowed down to electronics in the panel itself and I believe we are going to get a new one under warranty! Of course, I’ll have to pay an extra bag fee and probably get tagged import customs, but it will be “free“!

Also discovered that, despite our best efforts, we are totally unable to kill our water maker! This time it wasn’t working because it sucked up an entire bush into the line between the intake and sea strainer. Took a long time to figure out the problem and even longer to fix it. Will be making further modifications in order to maintain it more easily.

Have come to the conclusion that even with all of our solar and battery capacity we just don’t get enough sun (this being the rainy season) to get close to full. So our dream of being able to use the air conditioner overnight at anchor has gone poof! Tess is still coming to terms with this…

Enjoying the cute little town of Playa Coco, got lots of provisioning done, did five loads of laundry, and made water on the boat today. The sticker shock is real in Costa Rica! Everything is about three times more than we have paid anywhere in the last year. Really quite shocking, even though we knew it was coming. Lots of gringos here and Costa Rica is far more prosperous than any other Central American country.