Tag Archives: Laconda Hotel Playa Samara

Last Day in Costa Rica.

So today started off weird. We got up and were excited to have a fun last day. Don was sitting on the bed and he picked up a pair of his pants that had been hanging on a chair when something black and pretty big scurried out of the pants and under the bed. I did not see it myself but Kelsey did and immediately she decided she was going out to the lobby to have a coffee. They were pretty sure it was giant spider. Don and I were freaking out. We got a flashlight and looked under the bed we believed the mysterious creature went. I didn’t see anything. Don thought it was size of the palm of my hand. We looked every where under the bed and under the mattress. We couldn’t find it. It was seriously creeping us out. We knew we had to switch rooms tonight so I started packing things up and putting them on Kelsey’s bed. Everything on Kelsey’s bed was safe because it had been packed up and checked. We checked under Kelsey’s bed also and nothing. We even checked the bathroom. We could not find any trace of this “spider”.

After about 20 minutes of searching and packing I was ready to go out and talk to the front desk about moving rooms. So I left and Don stayed in the room. We couldn’t stay in our current room tonight because it was already booked by someone else. Kelsey and I had talked that morning and said we should stay at the apartment tonight instead of the room that would share a bathroom. Unfortunately we should have made that decision yesterday because the apartment was booked yesterday. The guy told me I could see the other room that had a shared bathroom and decide so I went back to the room to tell Don. When I got back he said he had found the culprit.

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It was a crab! A freaken crab! How in the world did a crab come in the hotel room and hide in Don’s pants hanging on a chair? We will never know. What we do know is a scared crab falling out of clothing looks insanely close to a giant spider. We also found out that crabs are very good hiders in hotel rooms. I don’t know how this guy got to the other side of the room and behind the night stand without us seeing him but he did. I wanted to take him outside but he would not let us near him so who knows if he is still living in our hotel room at Rancho De La Playa.

I told Don the news about our only option for tonight at Rancho De La Playa was the room with the shared bathroom. He was upset because he thought I told the front desk yesterday that we wanted the apartment. We had a miscommunication and he really didn’t want to stay in the room they were offering. I didn’t really want to either but I also just wanted to relax and enjoy our last day.  We went outside to show Kelsey it wasn’t a spider, it was just a crab. We had a laugh and packed our things into the car. The guy at the front desk said we could see the room now so we did. It was a fine room and the bathroom looked okay but we really didn’t want it, especially since it wasn’t much cheaper than a room with a private bathroom. So we told the guy we were gonna do a walk and see if we could find anything else and we would come back and let him know.

We first stopped at Laconda Hotel, the place we had breakfast at the day before. The woman showed us the only room available. It was very nice but no AC…the windows were the same as the ones at Casa Papaya and Kelsey was not ok with this. I couldn’t imagine sleeping without AC so we declined. The next place we went was Villas Kalimba but they had no vacancies. Next was a place called Samara Tree House Inn and it looked very cool, but we would be staying in a tree house basically. It wasn’t really in a tree, it was just an elevated room that overlooked the beach. The problem was it had a giant window with no screen, so this was a no go. We were about to give up but we tried one more place, Casa Del Mar Hotel. It looked very cute and the woman at the front desk was very nice. She had one room available with AC for only one night. We took a look and we were very happy with it. It was definitely an upgrade and it wasn’t expensive, $80 a night. The stay came with free breakfast and Casa Del Mar has their own beach chairs on the beach. The place was great. We went back to Rancho De La Playa and told the guy we would not be staying and we checked out and moved to our new place.

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Our room at Casa Del Mar Hotel.
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Common area at Casa Del Mar Hotel. There was a small pool that isn’t in view here.

Once we moved we saw we were right across the street from Gusto Beach, the place we had drinks last night. We decided to have breakfast there and we could have those amazing iced coffees with ice cream! The breakfast here was good. I loaded up on iced coffee. During breakfast we discussed the plan for the day. Did we want to attempt the snorkeling? Kelsey and I were okay with it or just staying here and relaxing, so we told Don to decide and we would be okay with whatever. He loves to snorkel so if he really wanted to I didn’t want him to miss out. He said that he really didn’t feel like it though and thought it might be better just to have a relaxing day here. We found out we could come back  in sit in their beach chairs at Gusto Beach if we wanted.

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The amazing iced coffee with ice cream at Gusto Beach.

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After breakfast we went back to our new room. I really liked it. We got ready to go to the beach. Don said he wanted to relax a bit in the room so Kelsey and I went ahead. We decided to just hang out at Gusto Beach.

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After about an hour Don showed up. We all swam and had drinks. It was awesome.

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Around 2 or 3 pm we were getting hungry and nachos sounded good. We knew the place next to us had tacos so we decided to move over there. The place was called Lo Que Hay Bar Taqueria. We got some beers and steak nachos. The bartender brought us over free shots. I think they were just extra pina colada but they were delicious! We really liked the bartender and waiters here, they were much more attentive than those at Gusto Beach.

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We hung out here for awhile and debated if we should just have dinner here and stay all night. Ultimately we decided to go to the place Don saw last night so we went back to the room to get ready. The place was called El Lagarto and it looked pretty cool. The food was great. Kelsey had steak with lobster tail.

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Don had steak with shrimp I believe.

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I had the churrasco, of course.

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The food was amazing. We were very glad that we stopped being lazy and came out for our last night. After dinner we wanted to go out for our last night so we went back to Lo Que Hay. We really liked the atmosphere and service here. We did have a spider incident here but it turned out okay. Kelsey didn’t even scream, must have been the drinks.

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Next we went to a small bar that had caught my eye the night before.

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The place was called Microbar Samara. It was much different from anywhere we had been so far in Costa Rica. They had many different Costa Rican craft beers, so that was cool. It also had a hipster feel to it. Kelsey and I enjoyed it, Don was done though so after one drink he went back to the hotel. We were determined to stay up past 10 pm and have fun on our last night in Costa Rica. I think we accomplished that.