Punta Leona and Los Suenos
We left Bahia Ballena and sailed about 20 miles across the Gulf of Nicoya to a beautiful little anchorage called Punta Leona. It’s a round bay with green water (87 degrees), a beautiful sandy beach lined with palm trees and other lush vegetation. The surrounding hills are green with tropical vegetation as we are getting into the tropical rainforest part of the country. The previous few anchorages along the Nicoya Peninsula were much drier and the hills had many brown dead looking trees. This area is known as the tropical dry forest. So it’s a nice change to be in an anchorage that’s so green and beautiful. As soon as we dropped the anchor Ed and I dove in the water to cool off, as it’s been quite hot – in the 90’s. The water at 87 degrees is just about the perfect temperature for swimming!! This place is so beautiful that we would have been happy to stay here for a week at least! Larry and Karen swam over to another boat in the bay called Mariposa, and after visiting with them, it was decided to move to another bay about 5-6 miles away called Herradura. Los Suenos marina is in this bay and Mariposa is kept there so Roger and Adriana made arrangements with the marina for us to come in and have dinner there, and to get fuel in the morning. Los Suenos is a very expensive, exclusive marina surrounded by Condos and golf courses. The marina is full of big expensive power boats and sport fishing boats. It costs $3.25 per foot per night, so we anchored out in the bay. But we did enjoy a nice dinner with Roger and Adriana at the marina restaurant. In the morning we were able to come in and get fuel and water and while we were doing that Karen went to the little store and bought some more food and Ed went to the bakery and got some fresh croissants and baguettes-yum, yum!