Testimonials about Palmmgt Beach Rentals

It's always good to get positive testimonials. One of our most recent guests sent back the following feedback today:

"We had a wonderful time. The staff was very helpful and friendly and the location is extraordinary. A lovely house and a lovely setting made for a lovely vacation. Thanks to all."

The Green Ray at Playa Grande

There's something about the sun over the Pacific that's a little more special than Atlantic settings.

On the East coast, you don't get that picture postcard sunset point of view you'll find at say, Playa Grande, Costa Rica (see right), late in the day, after several Central American beers (with their elevated alcohol levels), and also after the facts of the day, however productive (like a day fishing either off a charter fishing boat, or right from the shore, with no fishing pole) or a lazy day, like the hung over and hammock bound, locked in, gazing into a thick paperback with a simple plot, twisted with gun play, wild sex, explosions, expensive things, extraordinary settings, odd coincidences and working class heroes serving up the poetic justice for which the reader has labored, carrying through customs, raising the stakes to: "damn it, I'm going to finish this thing so I can leave it here!"

Reading like that can eat up a day faster than a fishing boat and a cooler full of iced local beer, that is until the sun reaches the point where the light changes enough to draw your attention to the ribbons of reflected sunlight bouncing off the ocean, and those sprawled out beach readers look up from their murder mysteries and salacious tell-alls to see the sun dropping into the water, and waiting in the hope of catching "the green ray", that last bit of sunlight bending over the earth's curve, turning it green for the lucky few, like the tortured souls in the New Wave film maker Eric Rohmer's U.S. release, "Summer," which featured the green ray in the final 30 seconds.

Rohmer devoted his directing career to making movies without using the Hollywood close up shot, or extraneous musical soundtracks that do not come from the "real life" action within the film, a kind of realism you surly won't see when Tom Cruise straps on for some impossible mission to chase international spies for the return of some deadly micro chip.

Rohmer, who changed his name, was known for the realism and the neurotic romance in his films. As in Jules Verne's book "The Green Ray," Rohmer's, characters spend a lot of time searching out that green ray in the belief it will bestow something on them, but end up missing that green flash because they find romance, looking into each other's eyes rather than obsessed with the sun's final green rays. The characters stop searching the horizon for their better deal when they find what they've been looking for next to them.

But no discussion of the green ray is complete without an honorable mention of Herman Wouk's green ray novel, "Don't Stop the Carnival", which is a love story too, in a way, where a fictional island in the Caribbean basin meets the carnival of American capitalism. "Don't Stop the Carnival" was published in 1965, the wake of two events that precipitated America's existential angst: Kennedy's atomic face off with Cuba there, and of course his murder. "Amerigo", the fictional island, was a place that maybe a Bronx born comedy writer, who worked writing radio spots to sell American war bonds might like to imagine, if there were a Caribbean free from Fidel's false promises, murderous secret police, profiteering and degenerate command economy taking hold from the tip of Fidel's silver tongue, or maybe in spite of such a dictatorial political economy.

On Amerigo, the natives look at America's influence on the Island as a seemingly endless carnival. Jimmy Buffet made "Don't Stop the Carnival" into a musical in 1997 that played for six weeks in Miami, as Bill Clinton and Gore were partnering to do telecom deals in Haiti. In 2000, Buffet played the the White House lawn for Bill Clinton. It's rumored that Bill Clinton and Buffet exchanged green rays on that occasion.

More recently, Disney got into the green ray act, with yet another fantastical, comical look at piracy, where the green ray set loose the souls of those trapped in "Davie Jones locker", sort of like investor and employee victims duped by the 65 billion dollar con artist, Bernie Madoff.

Sunsets in Costa Rica are a great place to search for your own green ray. They say it reboots the system, and if you are able to find the right piece of land to buy from a seller who is willing to entertain your low ball offer, you may be able to generate your own green rays. The fishing has few parallels. But whether it's Costa Rica real estate, coffee for export, a fishing charter, cattle, or timber, it's important to realize what's been done before in search of that kind of green ray.

"The Best Restaurant in Costa Rica"

You know what this is-- you're in a foreign country riding around with your head bobbing and avoiding potholes with a friend who has local knowledge, when he tells you he's got a great restaurant that nobody knows about, that's cheap, with large portions, that's free from "tourists" (as if tourist money is soaked in cat urine) with a waitresses that looks like a TV spokes model. You're thinking, "Here we go".

Situations like this always remind me of a joke in a movie where a guy tells another guy sitting next to him in a bar that he "knows a place where you can go..." and get all you can eat, all you can drink and have as much sex as you want for 2 dollars. When the guy asks him "where", in breathless anticipation, the first guy answers, "I don't know, but my sister goes there all the time." It's the joke I use every time some recommends a great place to eat cheap that sounds too good to be true. It always gets a laugh.

Nevertheless, there I am riding around San Jose, Coasta Rica griping to my driver, Carlito Morgan about the damned mall food we've been eating, and what else is available (Outback Steak-burgers, Hooter's wings, or Subway) when it dawns on him-- he recalls "the best restaurant in the country, and it's a hole in the wall that you could not find with a GPS if you had 20 years".

He doesn't know the name of the road, because the country never named the roads, but he knows how to get there by landmarks. So I expect to walk into a place that looks like the photos here, with no parking, with an alley entrance. No surprise there. But what follow was worth writing about, which is why your reading this.

If I were an Iron Chef, I'd have a lot of descriptive things to say about the best place to eat in San Jose, but I'm not, so I won't. I took pictures, and the food was grand.

I'll just say the food was extraordinary, fresh, tasty, beautiful, and under priced, but for the hard location. I started with Ceviche, and moved on to a soup, and I'll do it again-- every time I go to San Jose. It was all fresh and perfect, and the place was comfortable, friendly and busy enough to mean rapid turnover.

The hole lunch was about $18 dollars for both of us, and we drank beers. So, it's worth seeking out these places if you can get a tip. I don't know the name of this place because nobody I know who goes there bothers to get the name of the place, but if you email Palmmgt.com, where someone can help you find your way to it.


Here are photos of the ceviche, and the soup, and the beer.

"Winter" on Costa Rica's Pacific Shores

Costa Rica's winter is summer. It's really that simple; and you know it the second you walk off the plane, with a sweater, coat or jacket that instantly feels like you are carrying a sleeping bag around.

Obviously, dressing right for the warm climate is a tricky business-- it works pretty well to use layers of light jackets, packed into light luggage that can be popped out when you're back in the cold winds of Kansas. It may take a nap sac, but at least you won't have a parka where it's 80 degrees and sunny. There are a number of tricks you can use to put more vacation fun in your vacation.

Costa Rica actually has 9 or 11 climate zones, depending on who you talk to and what you read. But no matter who you talk to or what you read, you'll find temperature, humidity and sun light and wind speeds vary greatly as you move around the countryside. Even in the capital city, San Jose (in the middle of the country), you can drive from the your hotel or vacation rental where it's nice and warm to the top of a mountain with a giant green neon cross nearby to go have a drink in a bar that used to be a monastery, only to find that you are woefully under dressed to hang around outside where it's chilly and the wind cuts like some disgruntled share cropper's machete (no, I have never met a disgruntled share cropper in Costa Rica, so it's more of a joke than a word to the wise).

If you take a drive west to the North Pacific shoreline, you'll find it hot and dry, similar to Southern California-Arizona in the States. Playa Grande, (near Tamarindo) for example can get so dry and hot that much of the grass and vegetation becomes dried out and brown from December to April. The beaches here make for piping hot sand that will burn your feet if brave them without wearing something. On the other hand, as you head south, toward Panama, past Playa Jaco, toward Playa Dominical and Playa Ballena, you'll find the climate a little less hot and dry. More humidity means that plants and trees remain more woolly and wild and green throughout the year.

Whether you hit the beaches to the north or south on the Pacific, sunscreen is no laughing matter, unless you want to reenact the scene from the movie "The Heartbreak Kids" with Ben Stiller and his sun burned new bride end up with big problems (it's worth a rental). So, bottom line, when we are asked "how do I dress for Costa Rica" in the winter, the answer is it depends on where you are going, but a light jacket or wind breaker in tow is a small price to pay to even out the dramatic climate swings on the skin of a tiny country with 9 or 11 climate zones.