Merry Christmas from Costa Rica!

So now we are back in Costa Rica, in the Puerto Viejo area on the Southern Caribbean side of the country.

Coming back into Costa Rica from Bocas went well except for the pouring rain; this time the boat crossing was really smooth and we got to travel through canals built by the banana plantations, which were very cool. After the boat crossing, we made our way from Bocas to Puerto Viejo in vans through miles of banana plantations both on the Panamanian side and the Costa Rican side. The border crossing between the two countries was done on foot on a former railway bridge across a wide river; the bridge was all wood and metal and the crossing should not to be attempted on a drunken day or you might just end up in the river below! ☺

We are now settled in a hotel about a mile away from Puerto Viejo town, across the street from the beach known as Playa Cocles. Apart from the property manager of the hotel, who is a loud obnoxious American that talks and drinks too much, the place is really quiet and secluded and all we normally hear are the crickets and the frogs. A couple of times now we’ve been woken up at 4 am though by the property manager creating havoc in his own hotel after a night of drinking in town! ☺
So the hotel’s good enough and we’re getting a good deal, which around the Christmas season apparently is hard to get in Costa Rica; but the area around us is, well, really stunning… a little jewel of clear blue waves, pristine white sand beaches bordered with palm trees, and miles of beautiful rainforest behind the beach, so tall still and so healthy looking… So in conclusion, it’s a really amazing place here.

Playa Cocles - looking north

Playa Cocles - from the same spot, looking south

And the people are also generally very friendly and mellow. A large portion of the population is Afro-Caribbean and so there is kind of a Jamaican feel around (well, as far as I can guess…) with plenty of Rasta guys hanging around at the beach and surfing, or selling red, yellow and green knick-knacks; and reggae playing everywhere.


So this is the place where we’ll be spending a very non-Christmassy holiday season, but I think it will be pleasant anyway. ☺ I hope everyone has a great Christmas as well and a Happy New Year.

Bocas Town

Yep, we're OK :)

After two weeks on Bastimentos, we returned to the main island in Bocas Town for the last week in Panama. Bocas Town is definitely faster paced and more touristy than Bastimentos but it was still very pleasant and more convenient for most things.

Paul showing his skills :) on a break off of Isla Bastimentos on a very nice smooth day

Hardly anyone in the water...

The first day back on Bocas, we thought we’d rent bikes and go check out the rest of the island (this one has roads and cars). At the time we rented the bikes, clouds were starting to accumulate but “ah well, nothing better to do, don’t feel like staying in the hotel room, and maybe it’s a false alarm…”… so, as should be expected, we got on our bikes and it started to rain… Pretty soon we were soaked, and cursing that we had worn (yet again!) our slippers (which get so slippery when wet…); but at least we comfortably cool!
The bike ride was nice and easy (the island is virtually flat) until we took a turn onto the unpaved coastal road. The road became a series of pond-sized puddles spanning the width of the road and often a couple of feet deep (I’m not exaggerating!). The game was to decide which option was best: go right through the puddle and hope for the best (since the water was cloudy, there was no way of knowing how deep and how bumpy the ride would be), or attempt the “sidewalk”: around the pond, less water, more mud and more rocks… After stalling ankle-deep in mud on a few “sidewalks” (and again almost loosing my slippers!), I often preferred the ponds: better to stall knee deep in water than ankle deep in mud! All in all we faired well though: no falling face first in a puddle, no broken bike, no lost slipper!
As for the coastline itself, well it was nice but somehow we were pretty sure we weren’t going to come back that way!
When we got back to town, we were, again, caked in mud all the way up our backs this time… and we were all too happy to jump in the shower… ah, but no water! The neighborhood was out of water while they were repairing a line and it never came back on until the next morning. And that’s when you realize how pleasant it is to have utilities… ☺

Nice bruise! Nope, not from surfing or trekking in the mud but from a bad slip on the boat dock...

After that we decided on more relaxed and predictable activities for the following days: a snorkeling tour and surfing, and it all went smoothly and mud free!

Dolphins encountered during the snorkeling tour.

Pretty Bocas...

Isla Bastimentos

The following morning was the first time we actually got an idea of the place where we had landed. From the lanai outside our room, we got a good impression of the area: pockets of jungle rising from the sea all around, and a the foot of the hotel, the little village along and encroaching on the water, a little run down (the storm didn’t help, it got the best of a couple of wooden docks and houses on stilts) but colorful.

View from the hotel

The village had only one concrete footpath from one end of it to the other and, faithful to what Lonely Planet said, no cars!... There were kids everywhere and people just hanging out, taking it easy… so we did a lot of that too during the two weeks we spent on the island!

View from the hotel

We tried surfing at Isla Careneros a few times; the arrival at the surf spot was the best: the water taxi dropped us off right in the water outside the surf break, which was at the point of the island, and hardly reachable by land. The surf break itself was a bit beyond my abilities really: the bigger waves were scary because of their size, and the smaller waves scary too because they broke closer to shore, near a nice shallow reef with lots of coral heads and fans just below the surface…
I learned that lesson quickly when my butt brushed against the coral… and then I didn’t come close to shore again! (If anyone was wondering, I am definitely NOT turning into a daredevil surfer hehehe… no braving the reefs to get the “perfect barrel” for me!! ☺)

We also hiked around the island a few times… First hike attempted: short hike across the island to go to the scenic Wizard Beach which also was supposed to have some good waves… pretty hike through the jungle with plenty of butterflies and… mud! Since it was short, we just wore our slippers the first time we went and almost lost them in the mud pools! The beach itself was really pretty but windy, and the waves were just rough chop so forget about surfing, swimming, or snorkeling around there.

Wizard Beach

Second hike: this time going farther to the famed Red Frog Beach – famous for the stunning white sand beach and the poison dart frogs… The mud pools of the hike to Red Frog dwarfed the ones we had faced on the way to Wizard Beach! Good thing this time we had proper attire, but we still ended up with mud caked all the way up our legs! As for Red Frog Beach – we saw neither the frogs nor the beach… The red frogs, while we heard them loud and clear, were hiding high up in the trees though, and the only frogs we saw were little brown ones that camouflaged in the dead leaves on the ground.
Wait! Actually we did see a red one: in the hand of a local kid that was trying to make money by letting tourists play with it… aaahh, nature!
As for the praised beach, it was no more… the storm waves from a few days back pulled all the beach sand offshore up to the tree line and several palm trees had their roots out in the open.

So the rest of the time, we decided to do like the locals: relax and enjoy the wildlife right outside the porch! We got closer to hummingbirds in the hotel, which had several feeders, than we could ever have in the forest! :)

The Longest Day

Trip to Bocas

The goal: San Jose to Isla Bastimentos in 1 day.

We got on the bus Thursday morning at 9, all our luggage including the surfboards fitting just fine in the cargo, for a 6-hour ride from San Jose to Changuinola, on the coast in Panama. We crossed the border easily but never actually got to Changuinola: stormy weather (uh oh!) was preventing the boats from leaving Changuinola to the islands of Bocas so a shuttle brought us to another harbor, Almirante, where we got on the boat.

The boat, a wood with fiberglass motorboat meant to fit about 16 people, was packed with 20 people and their luggage. And so we embarked… on a Disney ride that painfully lasted a little over a half an hour… the motor of the boat was very powerful, and the sea VERY choppy. About midway through the ride, the guys in the back were getting so wet that the tarp protections had to be brought down around us from the canopy… so we did the rest of the rollercoaster ride enclosed in the dark!! It’s really lucky that no one got sick in that musty atmosphere…

We arrived safe and sound on Isla Colon – the main island – but we still needed to get to our final destination: Isla Bastimentos. By then, it was dark already and I wasn’t all that keen on doing the rollercoaster ride in the pitch black night but Paul didn’t want to lug our stuff around another day… so back on the rollercoaster we were, in fresh air this time, and only for 10 minutes…
The only slight issue remaining was that the storm had damaged the underwater electric cable linking Bastimentos to Colon and so the island was pitch black with the exception of a couple of stores with generators. So we found our hostel and room at the light of a key chain flashlight!! (and if it weren’t for Paul’s all around readiness, I would have been crawling on all fours up the stairs to find the place! :D)

But we made it! Ten hours after leaving San Jose we were on Isla Bastimentos, from the capital city to the island with no cars….

San Jose

Before moving on to the Pacific side of the country, we decided to spend a few days in San Jose. Enough time to see some of the major sights of the city, receive the new lens that Paul got shipped from the U.S. (one of his older lenses did not withstand the muggy weather of Tamarindo and grew mold on the inside… everything we had seemed to have sprung mold actually by the time we left… clothes, bags, books, wallets, belts…), and figure out how we were going to make our way down to the coast.

First nice surprise: the hotel… impressive! I have never seen so much effort put into the decoration of a place… it was like a dollhouse with feminine touches in every corner! The place was run by a single mother of three and was kept in neat order; but it was especially amazing for the explosion of colors on all the walls, hanging decorations, mosaics, etc…

...lots of colors...

The place was also run like someone’s house, and the rules were strict and plentiful! “no noise between 8pm and 8am, no serving yourself at the breakfast table until it is completely ready, no slamming the doors, no putting your luggage on the bed, no using towels to remove make-up”… the list goes on! I thought the mixture of personal touches and conduct reminders all over gave the place a really nice homey feel!

our shower

So for a couple of days we wandered the streets of San Jose, the older neighborhoods with some really nice looking houses left from the colonial era, the pedestrian center of town always busy and great for people-watching, museums, and mercados. The museo nacional was inside an old fort and had plenty of historical info on the country as well as a little butterfly garden… great for photos!!

The Museo nacional fortress

Precolumbian gold

Museo Nacional butterfly garden

The Mercado Central was probably the most fun place to visit: the market is inside one city block and is made up of meandering narrow alleyways between all sorts of shops and food places from butchers and spice shops to shoe stores, tourist souvenirs… You could probably find just about anything in there! The Mercado is also famous for pickpockets but with our unfashionable semi-grungy looks we didn’t have a problem with that!

on the wall of a colonial house

Bringing Paul’s lens into Costa Rica ended up being a bit more complex than we had first anticipated. On Tuesday, FedEx left us a note letting us know that we could either pay an extra $75 to get it delivered at our hotel or go pick it up at the shipping agent near the airport directly and only pay $7… Since we have more time than money, we decided to go pick it up ourselves…

More mosaic art in the street

So we got on a bus to the airport on Wednesday noon… 15 minutes later, the bus ran into an SUV, smashing in the rear bumper, trunk, and rear window of the car, and loosing its own bumper in the ordeal… uh oh… bad start…
Well the bus wasn’t going to go much farther in that condition so we got herded to another bus and made it to the airport, then a cab to the international shipping Co. Over there, it was explained to us by an other customer in a mixture of English and Spanish (the lady working at the shipping company did not speak a word of English) that we were to return to the airport, get to customs, find Mr. Joaquin Arrieta, get registered in the computer, then come back but hurry up because the place closes in 2 hours. So back on the cab to customs, got made by the $&^%$! driver: the usual “I have no change” scam, found Joaquin, got registered, got back to the shipping place without getting scammed (hehe, learning!), waited around while people stamped away at paperwork while nice English-speaking customers let us know what was going on and… got the lens before closing time!! Stressful day and mostly Spanish-speaking with the authorities so my rudimentary Spanish lessons back in Hawaii really paid off!...

Our last day in San Jose, we were not about to look for more trouble so we just took it easy before the trip to Bocas del Toro.

Road Trip End - Volcan Arenal

During the last couple of days of our road trip bringing us back from Tamarindo to San Jose, we went on the road through the mountains and around Lake Arenal instead of taking the highway back into the city. Once past the "30km Monteverde road" that we had to pass on the way into Santa Elena already, the rest of the way was actually on a well paved road.


Stunning views all the way from Santa Elena to La Fortuna - Rolling lush hills, hills covered with coffee plantations (did i mention the coffee here is reaaaallly good!), Lake Arenal... the artifical lake is huge, at the foot of Volcan Arenal and you have to go around it to get to La Fortuna.


Too bad the clouds covered the volcano during our drive to La Fortuna but, when we got up in the morning, the perfectly shaped volcano was visible again.


After some more driving in hills covered with coffee plantations and other cultures, we got into San Jose's suburbs and then San Jose proper... driving in San Jose is like driving in downtown Honolulu except streets are not as well marked and drivers have no patience.... ugh!! hardly any 2-way streets so we end up going in circles quite a bit to get to our hotel and then to return the car!! but it all happened without incidents!...

Road Trip - Monteverde Region

Wednesday morning, off to Santa Elena. The first half of the road trip was on paved roads and went quite fast. The landscape changed slowly from semi-dry land to lush hills. Along the way, we did notice that Costa Rica seems to be doing well with renewable energy: two big hydroelectric plants and one wind farm… Pretty cool.
Once we hit the town of Tilaran, the road took a turn for the worse: the last 30 km to Santa Elena and the Monteverde area was a rough dirt, mud, and rock road winding around the hills… definitely, the 4x4 wasn’t superfluous! By the end of it, Paul’s mood had taken a turn for the worse as well because of the stress of driving in such conditions… but I must say, the passenger did get an awesome view though! The landscape reminded me a lot of New Zealand with rolling green hills spotted with cows and horses, and lush forests; it was really stunning.
By the time we got to Santa Elena, we were in the clouds and in the rain (expectable from a cloud forest region). In contrast to the very sparsely populated hills we had just passed, Santa Elena was a surprisingly busy little tourist town. That many people would be interested in doing rainy ecotourism??
So the next morning we set out to see what all the buzz was about. In order to avoid the crowds, we went to the Santa Elena reserve instead of the more popular Monteverde Reserve. When we arrived, we were virtually alone. We rented rubber boots and set out into the forest.


In addition to the cloudy/rainy weather, what sets cloud forests apart is the epiphytes - plants that grow on other plants and trees but not as parasites, like moss and orchids - that strive there because of all the water present in the clouds. The result is stunning, magnificent, unreal!... It is like the perfection of the enchanted or haunted forest from children's books...


Everything about it is both eerie and wondrous somehow... each tree is entirely covered in mosses, orchids, ferns etc. which also grow on top of each other, and the mist gives the whole scene a supernatural glow.

Plenty of wildlife - met a pig on the trail

To complete the picture, even the bird songs have a strange metallic tonality. Really amazing.

...find Paul...

Road Trip – Rincon de la Vieja

Coati

On Tuesday morning, we set out bright and early on the road to Liberia: we had a long day ahead and a car upgrade to a 4x4, which we did not want to see reverted back to the mini we paid for… ☺ As it turned out, the 4x4 ended up being rather handy.

After dropping off our luggage at the hotel in Liberia, it’s time to set off for Parque Volcan Rincon de la Vieja, an active volcano in the northwestern part of Costa Rica, about 25 miles away from Liberia. 5 miles of the way are on a highway, and the remaining 20 are on an unpaved rocky road going through alternating landscapes of tropical dry forests and prairies with cattle and horses. So many horses! And usually looking so healthy… apparently, no shortage of grass!
So after the bumpy car ride, a nice long hike sounded like a good idea. We started on a 4-hour trek to a waterfall. The first part of the hike was through a rainforest; the trail resembled Hawaii hikes like those in the Pali or Maunawili, crossing rivers and meandering through the forest. Some differences from the Hawaiian trails: the cool butterflies (the big blue one with black fringes that you always see in the books), the agoutis (dry land mini-muskrats), coatis (look sort of like pig-nosed lemurs), and the river water was crystal clear and smelled of sulfur.

About midway along the trail, we exited the forest and started in a drier, rockier landscape of tall grasses, shrubs, and aloes… and that is where we started climbing… The view as we were going was awesome, but I didn’t think I was going to make it to the falls!


The more we went, the steeper it got and the dryer the hillside looked… no gurgling noise to indicate we were nearing water and to encourage us… but we did it! At the top of the hill, there was a canyon that separated it from a taller hill, and a waterfall in between. We could have walked down to the bottom of the canyon but by then I didn’t think my legs would take me back up if we went all the way down; besides, the view was definitely more breathtaking than the waterfall! ☺




Nice hike! That night, we went to sleep before 9pm!!

Leaving Tamarindo

That's it for Tamarindo. The last night is tonight. It's been an interesting love-hate relationship with this place: the hotel where we stayed at was really great despite the noisy mornings; the "pans de chocolate" at the bakery will be sorely missed (at least till France?); the waves were good at least half of the time (for me! i.e. no larger than shoulder high and light winds... mid-day onshore winds though, which turned the waves to mush were a bit frustrating at times...) and the daily routine definitely helped me get much better; the slow rythm is definitely very pleasant as well once you get used to it.... but we never really got used to the rampant construction that is disfiguring the town so rapidly (the residents apparently are just as appalled as we are and cannot believe how fast it is happening), and the daily whistles from the construction workers... All in all though, I think it was a very good way to get into the rythm...
Now we are off into the mountains and cloud forests for a few days on our way back to San Jose before we go on to the Caribbean coast of Panama for our next "extended" stay.
Stay Tuned!

All better

So we're all better... Paul, the weather, and I.... I did have a chance to take a couple photos of the torrential rains before they calmed down a bit... it's nice to see the ocean ocean-color again! so we are back to our daily surfing/reading/drawing/interneting routine...

mud river outside the hotel
rain in the trees

We have made new friends, with the local cat, who whined every day in the kitchen of the hotel until finally he cracked everyone and got milk and food. So now he's become the hotel cat and has his assigned bowl, and sleeps on the chair on our balcony... I guess we feel familiar since we've been there so long. The other night he fiercely protected us (and especially his kitchen territory) against a healthy-looking racoon (raton laveur)... the racoon was easily 1 and 1/2 times the size of the cat but he hardly put up a fight...

sunset surf session

In other news, we got our mosquitoe-repellent coil stolen the other night from our lanai... probably some hotel guest who was too lazy to go to the store himself.... our grungy rash guards were hanging outside to dry that same night, but somehow, the coil seemed more valuable.... (OK people, you paid for a trip all the way here, I'm sure you can afford the mosquitoe repellent)

Rainy season

Well… Paul finally got better… but the weather got worse!... the rain has not let up for almost a week and a half now, almost all day long every day. So the dirt roads have turned into mud rivers, which prevented us from leaving Tamarindo to visit some of the inland parks (which probably got even more drenched than the coast. The sea has also turned a nice thick chocolate brown which really isn’t very appetizing. So we have stayed in quite a bit, occupying ourselves painting, reading, and watching movies…
We tried braving the brown waters to go surfing a couple of days ago... I knew that wasn't a good idea... First, I couldn't help picturing the biggest and most monstrous beasts beneath me since i couldn't even see my own feet in the water; and then the waves were a little too big and disorganized for my abilities... so I didn't stick around too long... coincidentally I got sick that same night with a mysterious headache and fever which stuck around for a couple of days.

Latest photos

There you go… more photos!... as you can see, keeping busy… well not thaaat busy ☺!

In the latest news, stomach virus has hit Paul on the day we were going to drive out to Volcan Rincon de la Vieja three days ago and he hasn’t been feeling well since then…
Other than that things are pretty good if a bit repetitive; but as soon as he gets better, we get to go venture inland to some of the nature reserves.

Since it’s the low season right now, visitors only seem to come out for a couple of days over the weekend; so we get the hotel virtually to ourselves during the week and it’s about ¾ full on Friday and Saturday night… most of the visitors are young American dudes (oh, did I mention this town is overcrowded with men?) and once in a while a Tico family or a couple of young American chicks. The other day, two girls, Lucy and Lena, were put in the room next to ours. They quickly made friends with a group of dudes and quickly started playing drinking games… the discussions become very flirtatious (well, not the best kind of flirt, the drunken flirt…) and louder as the night goes. They then go out to likely drink some more and we get to sleep… We are then woken up in a fright by the wailing cries of Lena “Lucyyyyyyyyy!!!!......” “Luuucyyyyy!!…” and then crying loudly and some guy trying to calm her down but, “Lucyyy!!... where’s Lucyyyyy!!”… and my first annoyed reaction “well, Lucy’s getting lucky and you’re not so shut your mouth and go sleep” but then the wailing went on for so long I started to wonder if something didn’t really happen to Lucy, after all she was drunk in a town full of guys…
An hour later (maybe? Maybe less?) woken up again: this time Lucy’s yelling “Lena! Open the fucking door!!”… and more yelling… then Lena opens the door and the two girls start yelling at each other at the top of their lungs (at 4am)… and doors slamming and all the appropriate words in such a dramatic scene… in the end I believe Lucy slept elsewhere…
In the morning, their balcony was a mess of beer cans, cigarette butts, bras and jeans (??)… and Lucy (I think) was sitting on the floor, looking painfully hung over… after some quieter bitching and crying the girls were best buddies again…
Well, that was one of the most colorfully entertaining dramas we got to witness but they weren’t the first or the last young American tourists to be loud and obnoxious… so Paul is starting to think he’ll tell people he’s Canadian ☺…

Surf, sun, and read…

So we are settling into our daily habits here… ummm… get up, surf, rest/read/paint, dinner somewhere, sleep, and start over… we’ve also ventured quite a bit around town to see what the area was like; to the south, Playa Langosta is just south of Tamarindo and is a pretty beach but forget getting in the water there… rough rough surf and rocky outcrops everywhere… Playa Langosta also seems the more exclusive alternative to Tamarindo… again, plenty of condos just inland from the beach, either built or in construction, but all very fancy, gated, and guarded (and no messing with security guards… since the police is almost non-existent, security guards come armed with shotguns… ☺)

Tamarindo bay panoramic

Inland from our place in Tamarindo, we saw mostly just more construction… it looks like the town is attempting to double its size by the beginning of next year… construction goes on everywhere and real estate agents make up about 50% of the stores in the town… the restaurants, like the hotels, tend to be owned by foreigners so the culinary variety is impressive: French, Italian, Chinese, sushi, Cuban, Mexican, Pizza Hut, Burger King (no McD!)…. You name it… even Costa Rican restaurants! Those are not on the main drive though…

Let’s see some other things we’ve learned about Tamarindo… your regular pests seem virtually non-existent here… haven’t seen a pigeon or a rat and only two small roaches in the entire town!... there’s hardly a stray cat either… the usual criters here are BIG lizards (“iguanas”), semi-stray dogs, dragonflies, and lots of birds (pelicans, egrets and hummingbirds are the most common…) and mosquitoes. Also, pelicans like to keep you company and fish while you surf, and sometimes, eagle rays do also… since the water is usually cloudy, you only see them if they jump out of the water!

For a change of pace, we had our first escapade by car a couple of days ago, to visit areas south of here, and to look for a place to stay a bit more secluded and quiet… You only need to be a few miles away from Tamarindo to already feel like your in the countryside: lots of pastures and forests and a few houses along the road, some people on horses. Lots of macademia nut plantations also (owned by Mauna Loa… in case you thought your chocolate covered macadamias were grown in Hawaii….).
We went to two coastal areas “Playa Avellana” and “Playa Negra”, both with very little development… Playa Negra was really pretty, very wild, very rocky… the surf was ummm… scary… big barrels ready to crush you on the rocks (and yes, there were surfers)… but the water was so blue, and so clear… so it’s looking like that’s where we’ll be in a couple of weeks.

Playa Negra surfer