Sandeepa Dey
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An extraordinary location where you find low hanging clouds, rolling hills, greenery, sand and warm ocean waves, all in one frame !
The parking was a tad difficult to find and eventually we turned onto Rd. to Playa La Colonia and drove down to find the park’s bonafide lot next to Playa Chaman. The beach access is right next to the lot, and is lined with a region of dense coconut trees running right along the shore. During our walk to the Whales Tail, we spend some time walking on the sandy beach and some time through the coconut grove.
The sandy beach is full of marine diversity. We found myriads of crabs and mollusks running around. The crabs are bright red, small and rather shy, darting into their sand holes as soon as they feel human presence. The beach is also full of shells of bright and unusual colors like pink, purple, shades of yellow and bright orange, the kinds I have not seen elsewhere. We also found a lot of sand dollars (skeletons of burrowing sea urchins), milk white to deep grey in shade. Interestingly (and pleasantly), there are hardly any sea weeds anywhere, leading the beach to look a lot prettier than the ones that are strewn with weeds. We came across a couple of streams along the way, flowing cool and crystal clear water to the sea.
The coconut grove is majestic and though I have seen a lot of such trees before, never quite in this density and number. The tall ones reach way overhead and form a cool canopy to walk under when the sun is too strong. There are coconuts lying all along the path and there are some interesting species of endogenous plants with colorful leaves or flowers interspersed between the coconut trees.
The beach walk led us to the Whales Tail where during low tide the sandy land looks like a whales tail. The view is best seen aerially but walking down there is wonderful as well. As we waded down the “tail” toward the “tail fin”, there were waves rushing in from both sides and meeting along a center line creating a unique pattern in the water. The “tail fin” is made of large rock formations and homes countless marine lives in shallow tidal pools.
The walk to and from the Whales Tail was about 2.5 hours and worth every second of it. The unobstructed view creates an impression of vastness typical of Costa Rican beaches. Photographs hardly do justice to this stunning nature-scape !
