On our last morning at Tifakara we had breakfast and packed up. On our way to our next destination we decided to drop past the coffee plantation once more because they showed us a cool retreating plant, which we wanted to film. One of the guides was nice enough to take us out to the farm once more and find one for us.
After that it was a long drive through winding, sometimes foggy roads. Everything was going quite well until we hit Berlin.
No kidding, it’s a town in Costa Rica too! We were so distracted we made a wrong turn, but google quickly got us on the right path again. Eventually we turned onto Via 713. Now things got adventurous. Massive pot-holes, 45-50 degree inclines and mostly gravel roads wherever the incline was not so big that you would have just slipped. Oh and something like 1.5 lanes wide. We were not on the road for a great distance, but it took a while. I only switched between neutral and first gear the whole time as our pseudo-4wd would not have made it up the inclines in any other gear. The Videos Manja took made it look way easier, just remember that she was leaning all the way forward in most of them where you don’t see the dash 😅
Eventually we hit the next major road and were back onto a great road. To our relief this lasted to almost the end of the trip where there was some almost straight dirt road with a few potholes. Seemed so easy after the earlier experience!
When we arrived at our Airbnb we still had a few hours to kill, so we decided to relax in and by the pool for a couple of hours when Manja saw a Monkey run across the grassy hill behind us. We stormed out of the pool to grab a camera but by the time we got there he was gone. Being out of the pool anyway we decided to head over to Crocodile bridge. This bridge is what it says on the tin: It’s a standard two-lane Costa Rican bridge, over a river which has more than a few crocs in it.
Post croc-bridge we pulled up at a random beach, where we proceeded to do the things we do at a beach: Clean up and photograph the wildlife. I got some good shots of the crabs here, even finding two hermit crabs 🙂
Unfortunately the whole place was full of plastic. Given that Costa Rica is known to be more ecological than average, this was really really disheartening to see. We carted off a good moving-box full of rubbish, and hardly made a dent… People suck sometimes. Why do we have to spoil all the naural wonder around us?!? 🥺
To help us cheer up a bit we hit a restaurant recommended to us by our Airbnb host for its excellent view. We decided on a shared vegetarian plate, which was an interesting combination of deep-fried vegetable things. Probably not healthy, but not bad tasting either :D. We also filmed the sunset a bit, but not to complete darkness because the drive up here was filled with potholes again and we wanted to be able to see and avoid them. By the time we got back to our accommodation (about 15 minutes later) it was pitch-black. I stopped just before our driveway because a Toad was blocking the road. Manja used the opportunity to take a happy snap. When we parked the car we got another magical surprise: there were fireflies all over the property. Being notoriously hard to film or photograph, we tried none-the less with limited succcess. Tonight’s accomodation also happens to be quite open, covered only by flyscreens. From our bed we can hear the sound of the jungle, and occasionally the flicker of a firefly which got lost on our porch.
Leave a Reply