El Pueblo San Carlos y La Playa Palmar

Hey again! I've got to start by saying that I am really proud of myself....3 posts in the last week! I'm on fire!


  When we decided it was time to leave El Valle we spoke to Javier who advised us against Santa Clara and instead recommended San Carlos....so after hopping on a bus ($2.75 each) and taking the 1 hour ride out of the valley we arrived at El Centro de San Carlos. As usual we had no idea about hotels or transportation around the city so we just started walking in the direction of the ocean assuming we would find a hotel.....oddly enough we saw none. There were no ' se alquilar' or room for rent signs anywhere....very strange for a tourist city.  We walked down the central street for about 5 minutes and just to make sure we were on the right track I asked a woman at a fruit stand if the beach was the way we were headed (in my slow Spanish....her non existent English and a spirit always in search of adventure) in the right direction. She said we were going the right way, keep straight and we'd get to the beach. A few minutes later she flagged us down again, as we were all headed the same way. She asked if we had a hotel, we said no and asked if there were any close to the beach in San Carlos. Thats when we learned that no...there are no hotels in San Carlos! We quickly checked trip advisor and saw one hotel listed NEAR the city! She said she would take us to a place that might have rooms or could call a taxi, so we followed her as she stopped at a few more stands collecting the ingredients for her dinner. We stopped at her house and handed the items over to her husband and kept walking. A few minutes later she instructed us to roll up our pant legs and take off our shoes, we'd come to the end of the road and were at the beach. There was a hotel in sight! We had to cross a small stream to get there (it was low tide, during high tide it's another story so we discovered on our way back from a long walk on the beach.) We thanked the woman and booked a room, right on the water! The hotel is the Bay View Resort, the one listed on trip advisor. (There are two other beach side clubs we found on our walk, one looked pretty lame & very family oriented. The other was a private golf resort and they told us we had to walk back the way we came as the entire gounds were private and accessible to guests and owners only.) The room is basic, clean and very average for Latin American hotels. I'd put it in the Econo Lodge class, which is fine with me when the ocean is just outside the door. I think never really understood the term tourist trap though until coming here. Though the city seems so close....the river separates you from it twice a day. When tide is low you still have to be willing to get your feet wet before you walk about a mile through the residential section and into the central part of the city. The only other way into San Carlos is a 1-2 mile hike down the road, which at night is completely dark or calling a taxi. It wouldn't be so bad to stay at the resort all day if the food were better & less expensive or if the items in the gift shop weren't excessively over priced.
  In Bay Views favor is their amazing outdoor patio on the edge of the water. The WiFi is great and the coffee is good. I spent a lot of my time out there reading and writing. The staff are all very attentive and quick to meet your needs.
  There are TV's in the rooms and a good AC...but no hot water, which I am growing accustomed to. 
A taxi into town the morning after we arrived cost $1 and on the way back $2, I didn't get a chance to see what the locals were paying.
  We found two spots in San Carlos that we like for food, the Panderia San Carlos for sweets and the Restaurante El Parque. Both are located on the Via Principal, on the right hand side if you are walking towards the beach (See Photos.) All the other shops are pretty typical, everyone we met was kind and helpful...and patient with our slow and limited Spanish. :-) We are leaving though after only 2 nights as the Pacific seems more geared towards families and surfers. 
  Oh yeah I almost forgot down the road from our hotel there is another hotel called Hotel El Palmar which seems to cater very well to the 20 something surfer community, had I known it was there I likely would have stayed there :-) & though I saw no signs it seems that there may be rooms for rent near there too, or just a lot of forigners who own property.

  Look for another post in the next few days, we are headed to Portobelo and plan to grab a sail boat ride into Cartagena, Colombia from there!