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! :)