Costa Rica Cahuita

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We didn’t spend long in Costa Rica, rightfully concerned about the cost. At the border we bought our most expensive breakfast and bus ticket yet. This took us to San Jose where we walked for the best part of an hour in circles with our big bags, looking for the bus station. We arrived just in time to miss our bus.

Luckily we only had to wait two hours for the next bus to the Caribbean coastal town of Cahuita and passed the time easily eating the sandwiches we had made in San Juan del Sur and playing numerous games Gin Rummy. The bus journey itself went smoothly. When we arrived however, everything seemed to be closed. Eventually (after several hours of touring the town with an ageing Rasta, seeing a giant coral snake up close and being offered copious amounts of weed) James found us a great hostel, ‘The Secret Garden’. It was complete luxury compared to what we had been used to. A large immaculate family room with marble floors, comfortable beds, French doors leading out to the garden, en suite shower and toilet and large fluffy towels. We were even accompanied by a large crab although James efficiently ushered it out while I stood on the bed pretending to be of use.

The following day we took ourselves off to the nearby reserve to stroll along the jungle path which follows the coast line armed with a 5 litre bottle of water (the cheapest way to buy water) and the blunt machete James had bought on Ometepe. We walked about three kilometres, regularly seeing crabs and other interesting insects but not anything larger (we were hoping to see sloths), before stopping at a quiet spot for a swim in the ludicrously warm Caribbean sea. James then put his new (but still blunt) machete to use cracking open a coconut. We continued our walk for another kilometre or so and stopped to watch some local fishermen out at the reef line. Just as we were questioning the morality of this (fisherman appearing to be spear fishing in a protected area) we saw a spider monkey jump down from a nearby tree, dig into their bags, take out a pack of ‘soda galletas’, jump back into his tree and proceed to open the pack and start eating the biscuits (just as you or I might). It seemed appropriate that the beasts of the jungle do the judging so we left the monkey to continue to work its way through the fishermans’ lunch.

The next two days were wet and rainy. On the first day we went swimming on ‘Playa Negro’ and, impressed by the surf, inquired about renting surfboards the following day. And the following day we did just that, battled for several hours with 6 foot, far too frequent, waves with no sun to lift the spirits. We gave up way under our four hour allotted time. That evening, we rewarded ourselves with a relatively posh meal and a bottle of wine at ‘Coco Rico’ and stayed on to watch the film ‘Australia’. The next morning we left early for Boca del Torro in Panama.

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