Cahuita and Puerto Viejo: The drinking portion of our vacation has begun

Wednesday, Feb 8

We left San Jose yesterday on the 10am bus to Cahuati on the south east coast of Costa Rica.  The bus was very cramped but it got us here in one piece, 4 hours for $9 US.   I got car sick but nurse Val was there to make sure I was ok, she fed me 1/3 gravol.  I slept for an hour and then was fine.  I forget those bus rides on winding mountain roads get me everytime.

Cahuitia is a tiny little town.  I would guess 4 square blocks of restaurants and a scattering of gift shops (still nothing worth buying! the prices are so high). We are staying at a place called B&B Buenes Suerte.  We have a suite, which is just a big room with a huge bed and a crappy fold out bed.  I am on the big bed but I'm not sure it is any better.  Mattresses in these hostel type places are not the best.

When we arrived, we had to wait for our room to be cleaned and several cool birds just stopped  by the tree in front of our room.  I like it here.  No pictures of the super cool neon red and blue birds.  Here are some brown birds.  Unfortunately the boring brown ones are the stay put birds, willing to have their photos taken, probably a need for attention or validation.

I lied, here is a Summer Tanager from the bush in
front of our room.

After we arrived around 2, birdwatched while our room was readied,  we went to dinner around 4.  I really am a senior citizen!  We hit the main drag, a corner basically, and then walked up the one block and down the other block deciding where to go.  There is a place called Coco's here that seemed to contain all of the tourists so we didn't go there.  We found a little place with no other customers and had delicious coconut shrimp with mango sauce.  I also had a passion fruit water which was so good, it was like creamy lemonade.  That sounds terrible but you have to trust me on this one.

Coconut prawns with mango sauce

After dinner we came back to our room but it was only 7pm or so.  We decided to visit one of the many, many bars that serve two for one drinks (all of them).  As we were wandering along, trying to decide, some weird guy walked up to us and asked for the time.  We struck up a conversation with Wallace, who told us his whole life story in about 2 minutes (American, Vietnam vet, all of the cities he had lived in etc).  He offered to buy us a drink and because we are adventurous young ladies with nothing better to do than amuse an old guy, we said yes.  We went to the bar with the cheapest 2X1 (it didn't take us long to figure out Wally was a raging alcoholic) and Val and I ordered mango daiquiris.  Wally wandered off to speak to a couple of ladies at the next table.

The bar was basically empty, us, Wally, the women at the next table and the bartender.  Wally was so brain damaged, he thought we were psychic because we knew all about him (just what he told us but he had completely forgotten).  Wally was having a go at Val so I struck up a conversation with the ladies near by.  They were a couple from North Bay, ON.  One of them, Peggy, had just retired and was staying in Costa Rica for another 6 or so weeks.  Her poor wife, Tam, was heading home to Northern Ontario the next day.  Guess who was having a better time?

Wally ( I just noticed the child behind him,
at night, in a bar)

Peggy, front, another hand talker, Tam behind

We eventually left after two daiquiris (the next ones were strawberry).  We ended up paying for Wally's beers but that was ok because he kept us amused for hours.  He had lots of stories which I am going to collectively call 'how not to succeed in America'.  Unsurprisingly, he also did not succeed in his attempts to woo Val so we got home around 10pm.

We got up super early the next morning to walk through the National Park.  The entrance is only a couple of blocks from our hotel.  We there at 6:30am.  The sun was already above the horizon. We thought we were so early but it was already getting hot.   We saw some birds, again, none of the very pretty ones stayed still for photo ops.

Amazon Kingfisher

Yellow Crowned Nightheron

The hike didn't seem so long on paper.  There are four sections to the park, each a little less than 2km, divided by rivers.  The first was along the beach but it was early so it was fine, very pretty.  To get to the second section we knew we would have to cross a river.  It was high tide so the river was up to my thighs.   The second section was in the muddy jungle but it was getting so hot even under the canopy that my pants dried by the next section.  The next river was just a sand bank. Section three was along the beach again but by now it was blazing.  There was a water station between three and four (a raised walkway through the jungle to the road).  By the time we got there it was so hot and humid, we were sweaty messes.  We loaded up on water, had a snack and them completed our hike.

We saw all three monkeys in the area, Howler, Capuchin, Spider.  Plus, rodents; squirrel, raccoons, and a couple of agoutis (large tailless things which I assume are rodents).

Iguana

Capuchin monkeys

Morpho Butterfly 

Howler Monkey

How come a squirrel is photo worthy in Costa Rica
when it isn't in my backyard

Even more mysterious, the exotic racoom

This yellow blur behind a bunch of leaves is an Agouti

Big snake

Here are some pictures from the hike.

The beach trail

Raised walkway

Failed Oil Well from 1910

We got back at 1pm.  It was a long hike in that heat.  A shower and some laundry.   Then we rested with a beer and some porch birdwatching.

We were getting ready to go out for dinner when we could hear drums.  Cahuita is so small, we could hear them from everywhere.  We got 'downtown' and there was some sort of community drumming event.  Dozens of locals were drumming or accompanying on cymbals or xylophones or whistles or just dancing.  It was impressive, and loud.

Dinner (garlic prawns and watermelon water).  Then back to 'our bar' for a daiquiri nightcap.  This time passionfruit.  The owner bought us another round and now I am sitting in bed, the rain just started, and I am about to end this for tonight.  I will post tomorrow.

Thursday, Feb 9

Crazy rainstorm in the night.  And then the 5am howler monkey wakeup.  Despite numerous interruptions to our sleep, we didn't get up until after 7am.  The hotel offers two options for breakfast, savoury or sweet.  Today we went for sweet, tomorrow we will have savoury.

Casual day today, we took the but to Puerto Viejo, about 30 minutes south of here.  We were told the bus left at 9am.  It was actually 9:15 on the schedule. In reality, we left at 10am.

Cahuita is like I imagine Tofino in the 60s.  Viejo updates that to the 80s.  It is three times as big as Cahuita, so 12 square blocks but Viejo knows how to use their beach better.  The town hugs the water.  In Cahuita, you have to go find the beach.  Anyway, Viejo has lots more tourists and therefore more restaurants, shops etc.  We shopped a bit, I finally bought something.  Baskets because jewelery would be way to easy to pack.  Val who has always been wiser, bought a bracelet.

We stopped by three eating establishments, one smoothy shop, one restaurant for lunch where we had a delicious jerk chicken burrito, and one craft brewery.

Here are some photos of our day:

A restaurant we did not go to but it is photo worthy

Surfer town

There is a shipwrecked barge on the surfer beach

My flight of craft beers

Me enjoying my flight of craft beer

We discovered today that even though we both have higher limits on how much we can withdraw from bank machines, Costa Rica sets a limit to 100,000 colones, about $200 American.   That's annoying, it will increase my bank costs.  We had to withdraw today becuase our next stop, Tortuguera, doesn't have bank machines.

Tomorrow, we have an  8:30am pickup to get to Moin, outside of Limon, for our boat trip/guided tour to Tortuguera on the Northeast Caribbean coast.  It is pretty remote so I don't know what the wifi situation will be like.   We are there for three nights.