New Year

Pre-christmas fun!

The holiday season was very calm here in Costa Rica. After an impressive turkey dinner on Christmas day at a restaurant in Puerto Viejo – the turkey was cooked to perfection, tender and moist! – we had a week of clouds and rain and very big waves. Consequently, no surfing for either Paul or I; the waves were really impressive but virtually unridable even for experienced surfers and the surf break was deserted the whole week. Every once in a while though, some people, who undoubtedly came here specifically to go surfing, thought they should try it anyway and so we got to witness some impressive wipeouts!

During Christmas week, the entire coast all of a sudden became crowded with tourists though. Our hotel, which, a week earlier, had only four occupants including us, all of a sudden was booked up (30 new occupants in the span of two days!). And the same seemed to have happened everywhere else. On cloudy days, the beach, which was once more or less deserted, was crowded with hopeful sunbathers, and on rainy days, the restaurants and bars in Puerto Viejo were full all afternoon. We took advantage of those not so sunny days to go on long walks on the beach, hikes, and bike rides.

One of our excursions was to Finca La Isla’s Botanical Garden, near Puerto Viejo, which is both a botanical garden and an organic farm. If one’s interested in seeing red poison-dart frogs, they should go there instead of attempting that at Red Frog Beach!…

The botanical garden is brimming with them! They apparently are attracted to the bromeliads that are grown in several parts of the garden, because their foliage creates natural water pools that provide habitat and protection for the newborns. The bromeliads actually seem to attract quite a few other criters, including big fury spiders… ugh!

Bromeliad criters

The botanical garden also has a sizeable black pepper plantation and a cacao farm, and we got to try some natural, organic, non-preserved, non-processed, but sweetened chocolate… good stuff! J Anyway, it was all really instructive, great fun, very photogenic, and, as expected, very uncrowded!

Rootbeer flower

On New Year’s day, the rain let up and the sun came out: happy new year! And then the rain came back with a vengeance in the following days! The waves also continued to pound on the shore with heights in the range of 15 to 18 feet, washing all the way up the beach and taking the sand away with them. So it seems that bad weather and big (storm generated) waves come hand in hand here. The swell is forecasted to decrease in the next couple of days so hopefully that will mean better weather as well.