Advertisement
Published: April 30th 2012
Sunset
Sun setting near Pavones.Dear Blog Readers,
As the crow flies, the journey from Boquete to Pavones should be about 2 hours away. However, our metaphorical crow was severly maimed and limped it´s way all the way there. We got a bus out of Boquete after a fond farewell to our German friends who had struggled up Volcan Baru and made exceptional salads and chicken. We stopped over in David shortly before getting a bus to the border with Costa Rica.
The border was ridiculously confusing mainly because of people trying to help us ending up with us going backwards and forwards between each country to get the required stamps. We left the ´balboa´currency for the much less Rocky-themed and bowel-themed ´colones´. The bus to Laurel was 15 minutes late and then we ended up waiting about 2 hours for a bus to Conte. We got chatting to an English guy who had been there a while and said that they were always late running. Finally the bus to Pavones arrived and the rocky road was beautiful as the sun was setting.
Pavones is a sleepy little surfing town on the coast and we actually went past it to the end of
Pavones
En route to Pavones including a bridge which the bus couldn´t get over unless we all got off and walked it! the line to Rancho Burica. This small hostel had only 5 people in it and tonight was pizza night cooked in their own stone oven! It tasted amazing and the pizza´s just kept coming! It was just what we needed after travelling for more or less 8 hours to get there but it was worth the wait!
It seemed that we had brought the English weather with us as shortly after breakfast, the heavens opened with torrential downpours the like of which had not been seen since Christmas apparently. Around noon, a German girl called Laura (not to be confused by Finnish Laura or 80s-mullet-style-blonde-hair-girlfriend Laura), came over to our cabina seeing if we fancied going out for a surf. We were going to get soaked in the rain anyway so we took her up on the offer!
Pavones is renowned for being the "second biggest left hander in the world" which I took as meaning a 9ft man called Pavones with a rather freakish condition resulting in a larger than normal left hand. Alas, Laura was talking about the waves which can join together so you can surf for 3 minutes non-stop. I sat and watched as
Rancho Burrica
The sun setting at Rancho Burrica. Laura and Laura went out and caught some huge waves before the crowds arrived. I had a go on the smaller waves and failed miserably. Laura went further along down the beach to some quieter and smaller spots afterwards. We got back just in time to see an amazing sunset.
We had a refreshingly cool nights sleep and after breakfast we checked out a small waterfall by the hostel. We debated surfing the wave in front of the hostel but decided we´d walk to Pavones and surf there instead. It was slightly ambitious as the walk in the blazing heat took well over an hour but we stopped en route to jump into the sea to cool down every now and then. We got to Pavones and managed to watch the first leg of the Champions League match before hiring a surf board for the last couple of hours before sunset. The surf was really difficult because the current was so strong and it was a reef break (God, I sound like a surfer *shudders*) which basically means there are rocks on the floor which cut your feet to ribbons. I vowed never to surf again after a particularly
Frog
A frog found inside the garderner´s boot! horrifying 15 minutes. I was so tired by the time I got to the wave that I just let it push me back to shore like a beached whale.
Disgruntled, we began the walk back and caught another amazing sunset. However, a guy offered us a ride back to the hostel. After a couple of minutes, he turned off the road and onto the beach and drove all the way back on the beach as the sun was setting. Unforgettable! Back at the hostel, we saw a huge toad, 3 crabs with luminous claws and then we discovered something unexpected in Laura´s bag. It´s a bit like a black hole - nobody really knows what is inside it except that it seemed like an ants nest had decided to take up residence. We cleared it out whilst getting bitten (coconut M&Ms placed in there sometime in the late 1800s seemed to be the culprit).
It was tough to leave Pavones and came as a surprise to the owner, Bas, since most people end up staying there for weeks and months on end unsurprisingly. We discovered that the bus driver slept in the cabina next to us and his
Surfer
Horrible horrible surfing. You can tell I´m happy. emphaseamic cough was used as our alarm clock at 4am. He was probably the most obnoxious man alive which is understandable if he has to drive that bus at the time in the morning. We dragged our things on and attempted to sleep on the way. It was bizarre. He´d be picking up people on the way to work and school and every person came on was smiling and looking joyful. I looked down at my watch and it was 6am!!
At Golfito, the bus driver shouted "LOS TOURISTOS!!!" which presumably meant, "could the hansome gentleman and his dashing girlfriend from the land of Shakespere please disembark at this particular bus station". Golfito was quite amusing. We located the tourist information which was a bloke sat on a chair under a tree with a dog. He spoke unintelligable Spanish (apparently, Finnish Laura knew who we were on about and when she visited him, he had a partner in crime who genuinely couldn´t speak). We ended up getting information from a homeless man who spilt his coffee all over himself and spoke more English (this is 100% true) than the tourist information. We hopped on the bus and got to
Tourist Info
Probably the coolest tourist info ever in Uvita. It´s inside a whale! Rio Claro where we waited again for another couple of hours before getting to Bahia de Uvita.
We walked to the Flutterby House in the heat of the day and found a small place of paradise. It was beautiful and walking distance to the beach. We hired a board and caught some waves as the sun set. I had a renewed faith in surfing as the waves were great and it was a beach break (no rocks). Basically I´ve narrowed my surfable beaches to being warm water, small waves and beach breaks. There can´t be many in the world. On the way back to the hotel we got destroyed by mosquitos. Current mosquito count - 27.
We woke a little earlier the following day to go to the whale tail at low tide. It´s worth looking at an arial image on Google so you can see what I mean. The beach turns into this amazing whale tail shape and we walked to it and took some snorkelling gear to look around. The views were fantastic and although the beach seemed completely empty, it was actually a hit with the locals too.
We chilled out for the day,
Whale Tail 2
Where the whale tail joins at high tide. went to the supermarket and walked around the small village. In the evening, the hippies really began to shine. One woman started performing some ritual on a bloke lying down using a metal bowl.
The following day we walked a bit further out and ate at an awesome little restaurant called the Dome Burger. It was fantastic. Most places were closed as it was a Sunday. We walked further in and found directions to the waterfall - "200m north, 300m east". This was quite difficult but after a good half an hour we managed to work out where the waterfall was. It was beautiful. We started off jumping off some rocks into a little pool and then made our way to the waterfall. It was about 8m high and after rock climbing to the top, the stone was so smooth you could sit down and slide down the waterfall! It was so good! At one point, Laura´s bikini bottoms fell down sufficiently to reveal too much but insufficiently that she noticed. One Canadian summed it up perfectly, "well it gave us all a good laugh".
We had planned to do some surfing in the evening again but some
Waterfall 2
Laura not quite making a graceful landing. Americans took all the good boards!! We ended up with a rubbish one but it was still reasonably good fun. Laura is yet to have found a truly good wave for her to surf yet though so she was getting frustrated. I was more frustrated by the mosquito count - now at a worrying 63. It was probably time to get moving on...
Tink and Laura
Advertisement
Tot: 0.094s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 14; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0588s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Dan Bodey
non-member comment
Costa Rica
Hi Guys Loved the updates - especially the mosquito count! The surfing sounds disappointing though..... it sounds as if the waterfall surfing improved morale! I am hoping to go to Guatemala soon which is sort of in the same area - not looked fully at your plans yet, are you heading that way? Keep the stories coming... Dan