If you missed part 1 of our road trip, you can find it HERE.
Our new home in Playa Junquillal Guanacate for a few nights couldn't have been much more of a contrast from the crowded surf city of Tamarindo. We took remote dirt roads for over an hour that were so crazy I was surprised the GPS even listed them for us to navigate. The area we ended up at was very quiet and the tiny hotel we stayed at was a few minutes walk to an expansive black sand beach. The beach was almost completely empty every time we went and it had some of wildest waves and best sunsets I have ever seen.We spent most of our time relaxing while having picnics at the beach, watching the epic sunsets and enjoying dinners at the amazing hotel restaurant. We also had the chance to go zip lining one afternoon. It was my first time and it was so fun! The guides even put Dave and I UPSIDE DOWN together one of the longer ziplines which was probably one of the craziest things I have ever done.
One night we were hanging out at the beach waiting for the sun to set. We noticed that the normally empty beach had a group that formed a little ways down. We decided to investigate what everyone was huddling around and I am so glad we did. This beach is known for its volunteer sea turtle program and they were about to release a TON of baby sea turtles! We heard some interesting facts about sea turtles that night. The male turtles never return to the beach but the female turtles will always return to that same beach they were released on to lay their own eggs. It was such a magical experience watching the sun set and all the baby turtles make their way out to the ocean to begin their lives. I am so grateful we were in the right place at the right time to witness such a cool thing. (Oh, and for all the other Bachelor fans out there - this happened to be the same week that Lauren and Ben released turtles in Jamaica which I thought was a pretty funny coincidence when I saw it on the show a few nights later!)
It was all paradise except for one memorable event we experienced our first evening there...
We stayed at a hotel which was a small, one level building with doors opening to the outside. When we arrived, the door was left wide open. We noticed the doors were always left open frequently when they were vacant. This would explain the 2 little visitors which had made themselves at home on the walls of the hotel room. 2 geckos quickly hid upon us entering. After much assuring from Dave that they wouldn't bother us, I decided to try to let it go since there didn't seem to be much of an option for getting them out. After dinner at the AMAZING hotel restaurant just a few steps up a hill from outside our room, we quickly passed out and I tried to get the fact that there were still 2 geckos sleeping in that room with us out of my head. About 5 minutes after we were both in a deep sleep, we awoke to a terrifying noise I have never heard before. I don't even know how to explain it other than saying it was a mix between a very loud tapping sound and animal clicking. There are geckos EVERYWHERE in Florida and neither of us have heard that they make noise. A few minutes later we heard the strange, loud sound again. I ran outside the room to the hotel restaurant to get help from the hotel workers since I had no clue what could be making a sound like that in our room.
It didn't help matters that another worker mentioned something in Spanish about SCORPIONS which we then found out do, in fact, make a noise. I was terrified thinking that there could be a scorpion in our room making such a loud noise. They searched our room and got the geckos out. Even though they assured us no scorpions were to be found and it was probably the geckos that made the sound, we decided to move to the room next door that was available. Thankfully, we were not woken up again. The next morning, we you-tubed the sound geckos make and sure enough, it was most likely our little friends who woke us up. Such a funny memory looking back that was anything but funny while it was happening!
