Dominical and Uvita

We took a day trip south because we had heard that the beaches south of Quepos were some of the best in the country and a friend of mine has a piece of land near Uvita, near being a relative term as it turned out.
The road between Quepos and Dominical is 25 or so miles of rugged dirt and gravel, crossing numerous streams and rivers on… sort of bridges. I’ll come back to them in a second.
The first 18 miles is through oil palm groves, monotonous at best, but the drive was exciting. I thought I was doing well until I began being passed, left and right, by locals who obviously had no thought for suspensions or kidneys. See, there really weren’t lanes as we would normally think of them…it was a 60’ or so wide stretch of scraped earth, notice I didn’t say ‘graded’, that would have been a vast improvement, and you just choose the best path through, what ever side of the ‘road’ you think that is on. Made for interesting driving especially when you came to a bridge. The ‘road’ narrows at the bridges to what will be the standard 2 lane width when the road is completed. The adventurous part is that they don’t tell you it’s narrowing until about 50’ before it does, and there is nothing in front of you but a short fall and quick stop in the river. I was fairly sure the insurance wouldn’t cover that so I drove reasonably, but still quickly enough to raise yelps from my companion. Faint heart.
And the bridges themselves….
Generally several feet wider than a small truck, say an F150, made of railroad track laid horizontally, with NO guard rails. None. Zippo. Exciting in the rain and at night as it was on our return trip. This is not a good road to drive under an altered state. The best one was a suspension bridge that an SUV would have had trouble fitting on and swayed when I walked across it. My partner refused to ride in the car and walked it.
At Dominical the road abruptly becomes paved, great quality 2 lanes road. Go figure. We didn’t spend much time in Dominical, just a quick stop for a cool one after the dusty ride. We stopped at several playas or beaches in Belleno National Park, a long stretch of park made up of beaches and an underwater reef system.
Arriving in Uvita we were just in time for lunch and the grand opening of a La Corona market, a 3000 square foot store that is now the biggest thing in town. Music, dancing, people still stocking the shelves.
My friend said the mail address of her property was Uvita so I thought we were close. Silly me. 40 some kilometers further down the road we got to the turn off according to the instructions, went the 200 yards to the left turn at the school, a two room building, from there it got a little ambiguous, “go straight until you get to loto de cielo”. Hmmm, 6 km later we were deep into beautiful country, on a single mud track, with no sign of ‘loto de cielo’. Too far? Not far enough? I’ll never know. Just another adventure. Great views though…jungle on one side and ocean on the other, with the occasional 300’ waterfall to add spice.