Today was a total failure, but they can’t all be perfect travel days, right?!

After three days of relaxing on the beach, we were ready to put the 4-wheel drive to use and explore Palo Verde National Park – home to birds, monkeys, crocodiles and other Costa Rican critters.

We carefully planned, consulted the concierge, plugged the destination into the GPS, and had a map for back up – nonetheless, after hours of driving on pothole filled, unpaved backroads, we hit a dead end at the river we intended to explore, but there were no boat guides or park entrances as promised.

After looping around every possible path on the conflicting directions of locals, we finally gave up and decided to check out a surfing beach with a cool little bar we heard about…

…several hours and several thousand potholes later, we arrived at the cool little bar, which was closed for the season. Ugh! Time to turn around and go back over the unpaved roads.

Finally, we decided just to go to Tamarindo, the most populated beach point in the area, to have some lunch.

When we were almost there, the car started making a funny noise. We gave up and drove back to our hotel. Tired, hungry, and disappointed, we wait the car rental company’s arrival with (hopefully) a replacement vehicle.

Eh, it’s all part of the adventure!