Category: International (Page 1 of 6)

You know the problem with a central hotel? It’s central and has traffic all night long. We did not get a restful night of sleep unfortunately, so we headed down to breakfast at around 7:30. But before we did, we managed to spot some birds getting colourful berries out of a tree just outside of our window.

Pretty Tree

Has pretty berries

Pretty bird

Eats pretty berries

And flies away

Breakfast was nice, but the itching on Manjas sand-flea-bites had gotten a lot worse. So after breakfast we went straight to a Pharmacy, but when we got there it was closed… Even though google and the concierge had said it should be open. Nearing tears from having her legs covered in super-itchy spots, Manja none the less kept her cool and walked all the way back to the hotel. I asked the concierge again, and he pointed us to another one, which was a bit further away. We walked all the way back into town (a 10-minute walk) to this other pharmacy. At one point I may have taken a wrong turn, and Manja got a little testy for some reason…. but we found the place a short time later. They gave us a cream which was supposed to help. It didn’t help immediately and we headed back to the hotel in double step. As we packed Manja tried to keep mostly still, because movement seemed to aggravate everything. Eventually the gel started to work and changed the itch level from “OMG I want to cry” to  “bearable” – not gone, not good, only “bearable”. I’m so proud of her for resisting to scratch her legs open!

With our luggage packed and Manjas itching remaining at a level of  “bearable”, we stored our bags and went for a walk through town, hitting a couple of souvenir shops, leaving them disappointed while aiming at the San Jose Municipal Craft Market. We expected to see a variety of hand-made crafts, but instead got overwhelmed by mini souvenir stores all selling identical items at prices too low to not be mass produced. The good news was that we could now identify things which were mass-produced because everyone was selling them, and walked away without wasting our money.

Eventually we headed over to a cafe which was recommended to us. There we had a smoothie and iced coffee, re-applied the anti-itch cream and decided on a route back. As we were about to leave we got a message telling us our plane was going to be delayed – from 22:00 to 23:00. Given that we were going to return the car around 17:00 we already knew we would be spending more time at the little airport than we really wanted. Ah well, could not be changed… We did upgrade our seats to allow us to leave the plane early so we would hopefully not miss the connecting flight.

Yuca Anyone?

Birds

Cool Buildings

Iglesia la Soledad

Chat with Lennon

He was a little stiff

Street Art

Flag in full flight

Yellow Corner

Smoothies

Do not climb fence

We walked on, and one of the places we visited was the National park which had this great statue, I just could not resist a photo.

Evolving

Hey! No touchy!

We temporarily debated visiting another Museum, but decided that we really wanted to spend the last few hours in the sun, even if we were walking around town. As the anti-itch cream was not really doing a fantastic job, we decided to visit another couple of pharmacies to see if anyone had a better remedy. Turns out they all sell stuff with the same ingredients, which made trying them pointless. The oral medication is supposed to be better, but Manja decided against this, arguing that any sort of reaction she may have to medication would be bad on the plane… Fair point!

Pretty Statue, but hard to see from the ground!

Trees of Green

Yellow flowers too

Palmtree shade

Map of the remaining indigenous tribes

Shops

Power cables

By around 3 pm we went back to the hotel to pick up our car and bags, and hit our final destination – a little cafe we wanted to visit on Day 1. When we tried it back then, it was closed and it happend to be on our way back to the airport. When we got there we had some light lunch and spent a bit of time chatting.

Waiting for lunch

Drinks are here!

And a light lunch too

As we talked, Manja noticed that she had lost the anti itch cream. Only one thing to do: head to another pharmacy. By now it was around 16:30, which was apparently the start of rush-hours, which seem to start at 16:00 and go to about 19:00. The pharmacy right around the corner had no option for me to safely park nearby, so we opted for the Walmart pharmacy a 10 minute drive away, figuring they would have parking. And they did, and they also had the cream we were after. Shortly later we drove to a nearby petrol station and already noticed the traffic getting intense. By the time we left the petrol station I had to drive through the most mad traffic, through the weirdest intersections, during dusk. It was only a 15 minute drive, but I was soaked with sweat and super stressed by the half way point. Manja kept a cool navigators head and got us to where we needed to go.

I have to give a quick shout-out to Alamo Car rentals – they made it super easy, which it is not always in Costa Rica. 10/10, would use again. Within 10 minutes we were in the shuttle bus, driving us back to the airport. At normal times, this would be a 5-10 minute drive, which took 20 minutes through the traffic of the hour. When we got to the airport everything went smoothly and we killed a few hours looking through the souvenir shops and updating my blog.

A Sloth and a big statue

Massive Toucan

Pro tip if you ever travel to Costa Rica: If you want souvenirs, buy them on-site where they are made or just wait to buy anything else at the airport. The best souvenir shops around were all present here, with no significant price difference we could tell. Just be early, they don’t open late and are past the security gates. By the time our plane was ready, we were ready to fly too.

Thanks for joining us on our little trip!

Flight position

Entertainment set

Hello Paris, hello Eiffel tower!

Because we had an early night yesterday, we also woke up early, but feeling well rested. After a nice breakfast, we began packing everything and sorting two piles: one for “Stuff to take” and “stuff to ditch”… The latter pile was pretty small. Once done, we decided to walk to town and drop off the postcards at the local post office – along the beach again of course. Somewhere along the line we saw this cute little woodpecker.

Path to the restaurant

Smiling breakfast

Woodpecker

Red headed woodpecker

Pecking wood

See his nest just to the left.

Flower

Flower with bee

Early morning swim for the hotel dog

Bird in search of breakfast

Elegant hunter

Power supply to house…

Cables

Some of the buildings look a little run down

The “Post office” was unspectacular – a tiny little booth with a post officer in it, accepting mail and money. Luckily for us he spoke English too 🙂

With the postcards sent, we walked past a place we had seen on our first day here and wanted to try out, so we decided to spend a few minuted to try out a smoothie and play a couple of rounds of Uno. As it turned out I accidentally ordered the nicest smoothie we had on the trip, a combination which I would have thought I would hate: Coconut water, Ginger, Mint, served in a coconut! Even better: No plastic straws! Totally worth it 🙂

Smoothie stop

Coconut smoothie

Happy Simon! Metal straws too!

The place

Nice quote on the ceiling

We had luck with the weather and walked back in the morning sun along the beach, making it back juuust in time for our 11 am check-out. During check-out the host accidentally charged us Colones instead of US Dollars, meaning that we would have paid the equivalent of about $1.50 for the accommodation… Luckily he realised just before we drove away. We corrected everything and he paid us back in a deck of cards of Costa-Rican animals, which we had been eying elsewhere but always found too expensive. Score!

Suizo lodge : Highly recommend

Really pretty and professional

Birds nest in the restaurant

Doggy cooling off on the tiles

Happy doggy

Today’s drive would take us right back into San Jose – something we both dreaded a little. The city is terrible for driving. As it turned out, the drive was okay – not great but not as bad as we imagined. Along the way we ate some of the foods which we still had left over, including one very large banana. It was quite tasty – somewhat different to the type I’m used to, and was utterly filling, meaning we had no need for lunch. Along the drive we once more saw the massive container harbours which export tropical fruit from the island, and Manja was fascinated by the old-school trucks driving around. Crossing the mountains was okay too, a bit of fog but not too bad.

Going past the container harbour

So many containers of tropical fruit!

Mega Banana

Typical road stop

Classic truck

Older Truck

White truck

Orange Truck

Fog

The hotel meanwhile was very central, right across from the park where we took the wing photos on day one! One slight problem… we had no idea how to get in. We found the gate, but it was just closed and I was sweating bullets as traffic started to queue up behind me. Just as I was about to keep driving, the gate suddenly opened. Turns out there is a security guard inside monitoring it the whole time. We parked our car, checked-in and brought our stuff to the room. Tonight we would have to sort everything ready for the flight tomorrow. We had spread into about 8 bags and had to re-contain this into a suitcase and 2 backpacks. We managed to do this quite quickly and then went down the street for some dinner at a place called “El Stiefel” which is the German name for “Boot”. Turns out it was a craft beer place, which also served snack-sized food.

Dinner!

Tacos

Craft Bar

As we walked back Manja started to seriously itch on her legs. We put on the anti-mosquito-bite-gel we had, which was awesome the entire trip. Unfortunately it did very little. When we returned to the hotel we did some research – turns out that sand-flea bites itch 48-72 hours AFTER the bite. Damn! I’m lucky to have genes or blood type or some sort of genetic defect, because most biting insects don’t itch on me. Manja is not so lucky. We walked down to the nearest pharmacy, but the place was already closed. The internet suggested cooling, so we tried some Aloe-Vera which allowed her to at least get some sleep.

We had a bit of a disruptive nights sleep, with a car alarm on the neighbouring property going off at around 3 am. Startled I raced outside to check our car, and had relief washing through me when I saw it was untouched. Unfortunately, the alarm continued to go off every 5 minutes, and while we put in earplugs to try to sleep, it kept us half awake for most the night. By the time the kitchen of the bakery started up around 5am, Manja gave up on sleep but was kind enough to let me try to keep sleeping until around 6:30. We dragged ourselves out of bed to make ourselves a nice breakfast – an omelette with all of our leftovers, including carrots and some local version of sweet potato, as well as avocado dip. Turned out utterly delicious! I also decided to try the coffee we took along from a previous accommodation, and to my surprise it wasn’t terrible. Not good, but I just expected terrible and was thus pleasantly surprised. We had to check out around 1pm, so decided to just spend the morning chilling out and reading in the hammock. Hard life! Just before we went we also re-heated yesterdays left-overs from dinner for lunch. Between the breakfast and that we were stuffed for the day!

Leftover omelette

Happy Hungry Simon

Breakfast of delicious

Reading position

Living the hard life!

When it came to check-out time we threw our bags into the car and drove back to Suizo loco lodge. Manja had foreseen how much we would like the place and booked us another day on the return trip, to reduce our overall driving time.

When we got there our room was already ready and we decided to use the afternoon to go to the beach one last time, even though it was a bit drizzly. The property dog, of course, decided to join us!

On a whim we decided to check out the beach the other way, and it turns out that there are turtles on that beach sometimes! We didn’t see any, of course (wrong season, not there at night) but it was nice to walk along the beach anyway. As we were walking we noticed these tiny creatures, no bigger than two grains of sand, jump onto us from time to time, but walking into the ocean made them disappear. We thought nothing more of it, but as you can tell from this subtle hook, we’ll pick up on that later.

Rain set in as we left

Hotel Cat saying hi

Room was ready

I decided to try and play with the dog, grabbing a stick and trying to play fetch. The dog did not get it, having been a street dog and never having learned it. So I tried to teach it, by throwing the stick and then bolting after it to pick it up. The first time he was uninterested, the second time he raced me and got excited when I picked up the stick. The third time he beat me to the stick and got so excited that he jumped on me when I got there, knocking me flat on my arse. Which would have been fine, on the beach, but there was a tree trunk behind me and I seriously bruised and twisted the heel on one side and my wrist on the other. I got up slowly, sure that I broke something as pain was shooting through me, so I limped to the ocean to cool everything off. Manja hadn’t even noticed until I was limping and I may have unfairly berated her. Sorry babe! As it turned out nothing broke but my ego and my willingness to teach a street dog how to play fetch. Luckily Manjas camera was also fine – it was on my back when I fell! We slowly made our way back to the lodge and our room where we rinsed off the sand, only to find that we both had hundreds of little, totally non-itchy, bites on our legs. Some googling later we found out that the little grain-of-sand sized buggers are probably sand fleas. We were totally lucky that we only reacted a bit and didn’t have massive itching.

TURTLE BEACH!

Doggy came along

Someone was combing this beach for something…

Tiny bites!

Pretty plants at the lodge

Flower

Flower

Flower

Flower

Tired dog and sleepy cat (find the cat!)

Reading Simon

We used the afternoon to write post-cards to a few family members, realising that we probably should be sending like 100 postcards to cover everyone. If you didn’t get one I apologise – we simply can’t send one to everyone. Question though: Would you have enjoyed a printed postcard of one of Manjas fantastic photos? We found an app from Australia and Deutsche post which would allow us to do this easily, but couldn’t decide if this was a great idea. Your thoughts?

In the afternoon the sun had come out again, so we walked along the beach to town to have dinner at a local place. Fajitas for me tonight, while Manja had a traditional vegetarian quesadilla. We walked back in the dark, chatting the evening away. We finished up the evening with a swim in the pool before dropping into bed.

Dusk Time Beach

Pretty waves

Colorful trees

Beach

Tropics

Dinner!

Cahuita town center

OH NO! GIANT BIRD

Lols

Tadpole turning frog!

Luckily the party on the street was really just something that happened on the weekend, so we slept really well. We woke up around 7, got ready slowly and had breakfast at the bakery downstairs as people had raved about how good it is. I think they mean that they make some really nice sweets, because the breakfast we had was nice, but nothing to write home (or rave in a review) about.

Coffee and a smoothie

Breakfast burger

Breakfast waffles with super-sweet cream

None the less we were well fed when we headed over to the Jaguar Rescue Center. We signed up for the 9:30 tour and by about 10 we were on our way through the center with our guide, who happened to be one of the foremost authorities on Sloths, having moved here to study them and writing her PhD on Sloth behaviour. She had heaps of interesting stories to tell, and I learned a lot about sloths, only some of which I previously knew. Here are some key facts, because I know you all want to be more sloth-expertly.

But first, a super cute picture of 3 baby sloths:

• There are two types of sloth, but they are less related than we are to Monkeys.
• The sloth names are two and three FINGERED sloths, the misnoma of two and three TOED sloth is a mis-translation from the Spanish names.
• Neither sloth is nocturnal, but their eyesight is extremely poor. This means that they don’t really care if they move at day or night
• It’s normal for sloths to fall out of trees, usually because a branch doesn’t hold their weight. This isn’t usually a problem for them, they have 48 ribs and are designed to just bounce. It IS a problem if you are standing underneath them when they fall, one woman tried to catch one and broke BOTH her arms. The sloth was fine.
• Sloth have a loop in their throat, allowing them to eat upside down. Downside: They can not vomit.
• They eat dirt from the jungle floor regularly and draw some nutrients from this.
• Sloth get extremely stressed by being touched.
• Baby sloths are located by their mothers using sound, should they be dropped or get lost.
• Sloth hair has unique fungus which grows in it, allowing them to camouflage even better. This fungus does not hurt them.
• Sloth poop once a month, loosing about 1/3 of their bodyweight when they do. They come to the ground to do this and have an unexplained and odd dance-like ritual when pooping.
• No one knows how old sloths get. The information available about this which says 20 years is a completely made-up statistic which was used in a National geographic article, and has been cited ever since. The foremost experts on sloth agree that they do not know, but many agree it may be up to 100 years. At least one sloth on record is 50 years old, and still looks like it has not aged. There are no physical characteristics which seem to indicate age.
• Leading causes of sloth injury/death: Electrocution on the un-insolated components of Costa Rica’s power network. This is slowly being fixed, starting with the locations where most issues occur.
• A sloth is not the laziest animal. The average sloth sleeps around 8 hours a day, though mentioned before, not at a specific time. The title of laziest mammal goes to the Howler Monkeys – also a native in Costa Rica – who sleep for up to 18 hours a day. They howl to avoid interacting with other monkey tribes as fighting takes energy, making them very docile. They are tired in part because they only eat leaves, which have little to no nutrients.

Okay, that last one wasn’t strictly a sloth fact.

Tropical sinks

Admission by cause and taxon (The big one is sloth)

Survival stats at the sanctuary

Electrical cables are one of the main causes of injury of sloth and monkeys 🙁

A playful patient

Being pretty

Blind Bird

Young sloth coming in for food

Fooooood

Baby monkey nursery

Hi Hooman

Cute monkey is cute

Baby sloth

They cuddle together only because they lost mums. Normally they do not cluster

Three in a row

Peaceful sleeping

Turtles

Turtles

Parrot house

Cool leaf

Croc in sanctuary

Deer

Deer

Want to know how baby sloth sometimes get re-united? Listen into part of the tour 🙂

We enjoyed the tour, even though they can not show any wild cats (such as jaguars or Ocelots) because these animals can not have human interaction if they are to be released. They know this because they made this mistake with one, who is pretty much a homing pigeon now and will return even when released several hundred kilometres in the jungle… Though it killed a whole coop of chickens on the way as if to prove that it was a bad idea to abandon him in the jungle. We managed to get a few nice pictures of him. It’s an amazing cat, which can rotate its paws to climb up and down trees without a problem, and generally lives in the canopy of the rainforest.
This specific type of Ocelot (Margay) has the ability to mimic certain baby bird calls as part of their hunting techniques…. Clever girl!

Pretty Kitty

Say hello

After our visit we did some shopping for dinner and returned to our room before heading over to the beach. Against my suggestion, Manja wanted to walk to a further away beach, because the one directly across the road was a beach right at the city. I reluctantly agreed, and we were bickering about this a little bit when I suddenly jumped – there was a fur-ball at the base of a tree we were passing. That fur-ball turned out to be a sloth with a baby, eating the jungle floor. We very slowly and quietly approached. The sloth didn’t get disturbed, it didn’t even seem to realise we were there. Being certain that we didn’t disturb it, we carefully and quietly took some pictures.

Sloth Mama having soil lunch

A sloth and a human

Cute family

After its snack, the sloth decided to head across the footpath and climb into the beachside canopy to relax. In the process of doing so it caught the attention of some other passing tourists, some of whom started to literally squeal with delight, grabbing their phones for photos and were about to run up to the poor thing. I calmly told them to be really quiet to not stress the poor animal, keep a safe distance and move slowly toward it. They complied, so I must have made my point with some authority. Good deed done for the day!

We headed over to the beach and jumped in for a bit. It was extremely choppy today, with some serious rifts. Even in the shallows of the beach you could feel the retreating waves pull at your feet, threatening to throw you over… It was kind of fun, even though it was a bit rough, probably because the water was warm!

Bins made out of bottles

The sign of a local cafe

Choppy beach

Looks inviting

Funny looking dude going into the water

View from the shade

Eventually we dried off in the sun before dropping by the local chocolate manufacturer to check out their wares. It wasn’t bad, but nothing appealed to us in the sense of being above average – though we may just have been spoiled by our visit to Charley’s chocolate factory in Queensland last year. Instead of buying a chocolate bar Manja decided to have a smoothie while I gave their Mocca (Chocolate and coffee mix) a go. It was okay, but again, not fantastic.

Nice looking outdoor cafe

With beachside rocking chair… cat

Mocha and Cold Chocolate

The local program includes Yoga and Dance

These signs really gave the place a cool feel

As we headed back, we walked past this little oasis where someone had placed a swing on a palm tree over the water. It gave us a very romantic setup for some photos.

Beautiful lady on a seaside swing

Pretty as a picture

Just perfect

Monkey see monkey do…

Monkey on a swing.

We walked back to the room and relaxed for a bit, spending a bit of time making contact with friends and family. As the sun started to recede we made dinner… A LOT of dinner. It was super delicious and we were both stuffed after. A blog post later, we dropped into bed.

Sure, that’s a seat

Bruscetta

Delicious pasta and Tomato Salad

We got up after a rough nights sleep, between the Saturday night party on the street going to around 3 am and the bakery preparing bread from about 5 am. Even with earplugs we struggled.

We made some Avocado-egg-foccacias using some freshly baked bread from downstairs to give us some strength for the day.

Made of Yum and Energy!

Charged up we decided to drive over to Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge, basically a national park near here. Being a Sunday the Manzanillo Beach was completely filled with locals, all taking advantage of the beautiful weather to have a day at the beach.

Arriving at the Refuge, we were ushered into a car park by a volunteer providing security, before heading to the entry where we had to pay a donation of our choosing to enter. No set price.

We walked through the park for a bit, quickly realising that it was crowded too. There are some beaches within the park, and these were filled with people, while the paths were extremely muddy.

Pretty Bird was watching us

Standing on one leg

From the lookout

Heart-shaped rock in the sea

Rock through the palms

Loved the view

Just looks like a pirate cove!

More shrinking plants 🙂

At this beach there were also hundreds of hermit crabs… and unfortunately tourists flouting the rules and collecting shells – which are their homes. We even got to watch some crabs try out new shells. Unfortunately we also watched some local boys pull a couple of crabs out of their shell, but at a harsh look from Manja they stopped and left. I even attempted to help one crab which was struggling to find a large enough shell, but could not find anything for him myself.

This one was already too big for its shell

desperately searching for something bigger

This one found a shell

But a challenger interfered

And grabbed the shell for himself

But he decided it was not big enough

Using the chance to move

Moving

Done!

Now with a new home

Based on our prior reading, we expected the area to be a bit rougher. So, when the paths started to split off in many different directions and inviting the casual wanderer to get lost, we decided to turn around. No use getting stuck in a jungle-maze!

Big Fly

Little Lizard

Schools of fishes

Swimming in the shallows

The first beach of the park

Bridge into the park guarded by a troll

Back at our car a short time later, the “Volunteer” suddenly expected 2000 Colones (about €3) for watching our car and keeping it safe. It wasn’t worth arguing about so we just paid it and headed off. We had hoped to drop by a local smoothie place recommended by lonely planet, but we could actually not find the place, even after walking the street to inspect every house. As this was the beach promenade, we decided to walk back along the beach and spotted this beached ship…. Which was reachable in the low tide right now. We ceased the opportunity and climbed aboard!

Probably not great for nature but cool to look at

View from the deck

Simon on deck!

Had a crane at some point

View from the shore

Locals enjoying the tropical beach

Walking back to the car along the beach we felt like we were getting cooked so headed to the shade of the nearby palms, still arriving at the car well sweated through. As we drove out of town we spotted the smoothie place, *technically* on the same road, but around a bend some 500 m further along. We decided not to stop and just head back to our room instead. We waited out the mid-day heat, which was oppressive and humid today, in the hammock on the verandah. As the afternoon drew to a close, we headed out to find ourselves a place to have dinner. We wanted to try a highly rated place just down the road, but when we arrived they told us they were closed and are going on holidays from tomorrow. Guess we won’t eat there… So we watched the sunset at the beach, which had another beached boat. Seems a trend here.

Pretty sunset

Everyday!

After that we checked out a few restaurants in the area before settling on an Asian place, which made a really nice veggie green Thai curry, served with a Mai-Tai. Manja and I had a great evening chatting away about future plans over dinner before looking through some souvenir shops. By the time we returned to our room it was already way past dark, and given the poor nights sleep last night, we dropped into bed early.

Thai dinner

With Mai-Tai!

We really loved this accommodation and the surrounding Cahuita and Cahuita National Park. If you are ever down this area, spend a few days at the Suizo Loco Lodge!

After another really nice breakfast, we headed off. Today’s destination was Puerto Viejo and a nice apartment above a super popular bakery, one of the few accommodations where we can cook for ourselves 🙂

Ants having a flower breakfast

“Made with love” I guess?

The Hotel Cat

We wanted to be there early to check out the farmers markets, but our Airbnb host wasn’t responding to confirm that we could drop our bags off early, so we chanced it and just drove to the bakery. Once there our host said that it was no problem for us to drop off the bags, but the room would not be ready before 2pm. No problem for us, we would just explore the farmers markets. After following googles directions for a bit we decided that the market was either canceled, super well hidden, or that the directions were just plain wrong. Regardless we did not find the place and decided to walk along the beach to the edge of town and then back via the promenade. By the time we returned it was a bit past noon, so we decided to order some drinks (Pineapple for Manja, Watermelon for me) and plan our next few days. Once our room was ready we moved in, then headed to the ATM and the shops for supplies for dinner. The first supermarket was sketchy, and included a very loud car with speakers advertising the Mega Super Market. We went in, looked around, and left. Later we saw reviews that this place apparently likes to put things on the bill you did not order and just give you back incorrect change. Bullet dodged! We went to the smaller supermarket near our accommodation instead and got everything we needed with no fuss. We decided to spend the afternoon relaxing in the hammock, reading and processing photos – you can imagine who did which of those activities 🙂

Capsized ship on the shore

Poison Dart Frog

Toxic only when stressed

Takes toxin from bugs it eats and stores them for defence

Cricket

As the mosquitos came out it became obvious that it was time for dinner. We cooked a really nice pasta which was slightly too spicy thanks to a fresh, large habanero chilli, but still delicious. Full of food we continued our lazy afternoon throughout the evening.

Dinner!

We woke to the sounds of Howler Monkeys and Toucans just before our alarm. We quickly got ready, packed for the hike and went to have some breakfast.

After breakfast, our guide Freiman, was back perfectly on-time at 8am. We drove down to Cahuita in our car and took a Taxi to the other entrance of the park. A short ride and a park fee later, we were on our way. Freiman was awesome again, same as last night, sharing his extensive knowledge of the lands, the flora and the fauna while spotting things we definitely would have missed every few minutes. The day started with some Howler Monkeys at the entrance, and some lizard and birds which he pointed out for us.

View from our breakfast table

First Monkey spotted. Just hanging around

Pretty Bird – hard to see the colors here

Small lizard says hi

Another bird

Howler Monkey family

With little ones

Curious about us

Found some food

Yummy!

Is there more?

Oh yes there is!

Strong and being strong

Ladybug without spots

Butterfly on crazy flower!

Local Wasp

Dragonfly

Metallic Beetle flying

Metallic beetle sitting still

Cool Flower

Jesus Lizard

Another cool flower

Red Dragonfly

Cool Fungus

Metallic Ant

Looking cool

And metal

Strong Ant bringing home a flower petal

Cool Insect

Flying off

Sloth!

Moving Sloth!

Eventually we got to a boardwalk section where he suddenly spotted a baby sloth climbing up the support of the walkway. The little guy had made it all the way to the top but was confused that the post stopped. He was waving his arms defensively as we carefully approached.

Getting a nearby ranger (it is illegal to touch a sloth!), operation “rescue the baby sloth” got on the way. The ranger and guide worked to grab him from behind, so that he could be placed on the tree quickly. I was permitted to help by forcing the little guy to release his foot claws. The plan went awry though, when we realised that the baby sloth moved a LOT faster than an adult, and it was able to swipe at my hand. I managed to get it out of the way just in time to prevent my hand from being impaled to the post. Second attempt included a distraction manoeuvre, with success. The little guy was on a tree trunk at the same height, able to move up the tree himself.

Importantly we took no videos or photos of the action to ensure that no one gets the idea to touch a sloth on their own.

It turns out that sloth frequently fall, and usually just climb back into the tree. Their whole body is adapted to deal with the fall. The only problem for this baby was that he had fallen into the water – so he quickly grabbed onto the nearest tree – being a support of the boardwalk.

All three of us – our guide included – were elated by the experience.

Halp!

I’ve Fall.

Stay away or I scratch

Happy now

So happy

The rest of the walk was fantastic too – we saw an abundance of animals, most of which we would have missed on our own. Manja took just under 1000 pictures, the selection of the best is below.

This pretty lady with a flower in her hair walked infront of me all day.

Capuchian Monkey – these guys are cheeky and smart!

A Hermit crab of decent size. They live around 35 years when they can find shells big enough!

Beach

Coconut

Spot the bat!

Plant growing out on a limb…

Voulcher

Just waiting for us to pass

Dragonfly

Poisounous snake

Close up as she sleeps

Hard to spot for sure.

Unicorn bug!

Another poisonous snake – this time in yellow (eyelash viper)

Ant being ant strong

Lizard

Lizard on a leaf

closeup

Another lizard, on another leaf

Happy Simon is happy

Yo! Some privacy please? (Mating Grasshoppers)

Disgusting looking edible fruit

Dangerous spikey tree. These guys drop exploding spikey fruits to propegate

Butterfly

A root which was used as rope, super strong

Would not have been able to get out of this.

Super Pretty Butterfly

They loose a meter of coastline a year to the rising tides

Male Spider (right) and female (left) sharing a meal of butterfly

Did you know hermit crabs are explorers? They climb trees and everything.

Blue crab

Blue crab from font

Green Jesus Lizard

Green Jesus Lizard looking up

Poisonous snake in hunting position

Ready to eat a lizard

Pretty flowers

Once there was a pier here

Walking the jungle

Gray Pelican and local seagulls

sitting on the posts

Grasshopper

Beach bird hunting worms

Cool leaf

Paradise beach

Capucian cutie

Getting into the coconut

Hay hooman!

Mama make me clean

Pappa defending territory

Response to our guide being a bigger monkey

Hierarchy established

Hooomans be nekkid monkeys?

I thinks about that

Waddaya want?

Head scratch

Curious cutie

being photogenic

Photo me!

Example of tent created by tent making bats

Tiny hermit grab

Hermit crab with cool shell

Lizard

Big hermit crab – This one was the size of a brick.

Pretty Bird camouflaging

Becoming more visible

I’m a leaf!

Tent Making bat in tent

Hi There!

Welcome to my tent!

Lunch break

yummy flower

Check out his balance skills

Toucan

Can.

Coati says “Oh hi there”

You got food hooman?

Ah, no food, I leaves

Racoon says hi

Tiny lizard

Bushy tailed squirrel searching

I smell it

I founds! I eats!

Gravity defying bug

Check out that claw!

The entrance to the nest of a stingless bee

There is actually honey inside!

Tree of the stingless bee nest. Well hidden!

Another land crab, this time blue and red

Hello 😀

Pretty leaves

The Eagle watches

Even as we pass.

German exploratory oil well which hit an underground hot spring. It has regular bubbles of gas escaping too, and it apparently warm all year.

amazing orchads

Ibis!

Bats and the start of a wasp nest

They were hard to spot, but all along the tree trunk!

Hello 😀

Bigger lizard

Bigger lizard posing

Scale reference

Don’t swim and feed the crocodiles.

Mumma sloth with baby on its belly – you can see its arm

Mushroom. When not in a national park you can eat these

Hand for size reference!

Well camouflaged Iguana

Less camouflaged version

More hidden bats. You can see how small they are here.

Close up of one bat

Fruit

Racoons. A Whole super-cute family

We stopped here for a while

Could have watched them for hours

So cute

Saying hello

Playing with mamma

Or, maybe with the clicking thing of that human?

Agouti

Another sloth chilling

Lizard in the tree

Going out on a limb…

Sleeping cool bird

Protected sea-turtle nests

All indexed and safe

The shore

Beach bird hunting

Another beach bird hunting

Wait, me?

The other side of the park

My main take-aways, from the volume of information which we were provided with over the 5 hours, were:

• Howler monkeys howl to tell other monkeys where they move, so that the groups can avoid territorial confrontations.
• Nest-making bats cut coconut tree leaves and other ferns to create themselves a temporary cave.
• Venomous snakes in Costa Rica are tiny. Fully grown they are about 1 m and the thickness of my thumb. They also sit on leaves, not just branches.
• Racoons move in groups with a female and kids, because the males have a tendency to kill the young.
• The white sand on the Volcanic island is usually due to coral in the area.
• Soldier ants are fucking vicious: they use special poison to immobilise their prey and tear it apart alive. But they are also known as cleaner ants, because they come by your house and take out all other insects or lizards before moving on. Including wasp nests! They also don’t build long-term nests, instead they find an empty space and come together to form a “ball” with soldiers outside and each layer being comprised of the next most vulnerable. Amazing!
• The local version of a bark-shedding tree does so because it can do photosynthesis on its fresh bark, regularly dropping all leaves when necessary. This is also how they stop other plants growing on them.
• Germany does not have dragonflies, only libellia – the difference is how their wings can be folded when they land!
• Hermit crabs can get up to 35 years old, but only if they have houses to grow into. There is a housing shortage for hermit crabs as tourists keep taking shells from beaches, meaning many die younger.
• The strangler fig literally grows on another tree until it is strong enough to stand on its own, then kills the host tree.

There was a plethora of other information, and I’m sure much will come back randomly.

Walking along the coast

The view from the coastal walk

Our fantastic guide!

A beach

If you do decide to go to Costa Rica, and you are going to Cahuita, I cannot recommend Freiman highly enough. He has a Facebook group too: https://www.facebook.com/Wildlifetourcahuita/

After this fantastic tour we dropped Freiman off and drove back to our accommodation to clean ourselves up before heading out for dinner. When we returned we processed photos and wrote this blog before dropping into bed exhausted but super happy.

Drinks

Dinner and Drinks

The place to eat

Ghost version of photo

We woke up early to the meowing of a cat…. Like 5am early. Later on we found out she had kittens and just wanted to get inside to get some food and peace from her kids… We tried to go back to sleep with limited success. Manja gave up before me, getting up at 6, and I half-slept until around 7.

The Airbnb wasn’t great, but the view was!

We packed our stuff and had breakfast, cooked by the help of the guy running the Airbnb. It was okay – fruit, French toast and terrible coffee. To make me more cheerful, the host chatted to me the whole time about his expansion ideas, and his thoughts on life. He basically seems to be a multicultural trump-loving republican. Besides conspiracy theories he also had “immigrants are bad” (being an immigrant, married to a local) and “people have to be self sufficient” (while employing an illegal immigrant from Nicaragua to “support her and her disabled kid”. Oh, also, the right to bear arms is an important right, even though he never needed a gun while living in “Some of the worst parts of New York” all his life. Make of all that what you will, but we didn’t feel super comfortable with his views – more specifically for me the problem was the inconsistencies and contradictions which you only get when living in an echo chamber. Regardless, we headed out reasonably quickly, and chose to ignore the local advice he gave us about the area, which included “Ignore the roped-off areas of the active Volcano, just step around them and enjoy the spectacle”.

Covered up spa

On second look, place was not clean

I mean…

Just takes a quick wipe to remove this

From here the waterfall looks pristine

Guide dog and the way to transport luggage back up

Looks better than it was

Instagram picture 😉

Mummy cat

Shy baby

Curious baby

Unsure baby

A bunch of these were at the pool

Directly above the pool.

Today drive was part two of the adventurous drive we had to do to cross from the pacific to the Caribbean side of the country. It was fine, with mostly good roads along the whole way. Turns out that the super bad coffee from this morning also gave me a caffeine high for most of the day – appears to have been strong! One of the disturbing things was a cow transport truck, which was taking the corners so quickly that you saw the cows bouncing from one side of the truck to the other 🥺. I know animal rights are not great all over the place, but this just seemed needlessly careless to me.

The Sad Cow Truck

Container city

So many containers

Banana plantation

We arrived at our next accommodation in the late afternoon. Given the semi disaster of the eco lodge of the 24 hours we were a touch apprehensive, but arrived in a paradise like oasis, which is super well run. They even offered really well priced tours, which we booked two of – a night walk tonight and a full day in the National Park tomorrow. To make sure we could pay for all that, we decided to walk to town to get to some more cash out, which was a 45 minute walk along the beach each way. The hotel dog decided to show us the way, and the front desk advised us that he used to be a stray and we can just ignore him. So we did, and he abandoned us shortly before town, only to join us again on the way back. Super friendly animal!

You have no idea how happy we were to see this place

Our next guide stretching on the cool floor

Playing cute

SLOTH!!!

SLOTH!!! and some dude

Guide took us to the beach

Beach guide

Walking the beach

Directions

Town Cat

After a short drive to a restaurant for dinner, we had a nice meal at the beach.

Fish for me

Veggies for Manja

Nothing for the stray cat

When we returned we relaxed a bit before heading back out at 8pm to meet our guide, doing an absolutely wonderful night walk. It was MEANT to be 1.5 hours, and we got back 2.5 hours later, with a camera full of pictures and even more memories. Knowing that tomorrow would be a full day of walking, along with an early start and the bad nights sleep last night, we dropped into bed exhausted but happy. Check out all these awesome pictures!

Toad

Snake hunting frogs

On the edge of a leaf

Red eyed green tree frog

Frog eggs

Tadpoles of various ages!

Another Green tree frog

Grasshopper husk

Leaf eating insect

Bird butt

Bird butt 2

Caterpillar

Clicking frog

Hungry insect

Helmeted Iguana

How cool is he?

Sloth butt!

Stick insect

So sticky

and insecty

Yellow frog

Black bug

Grasshopper actively shedding!

Creepy to watch

Leaves behind its skin

I know these buggers!

TERMITES EATING THE TREE!

Iguana

Iguana

Dragonfly

Moth version 1

Moth version 2

Different black bug

Frog

Leaf like insect

Caterpillar

Noisy clicking frog

Green frog

Moth in formation

Super pretty spider

Well hidden!

Different Frog

White snail

Spider

TRANSPARENT WINGED BUTTERFLY

Insect

Big millipede

Somethings eggs

Clicking frog showing how he does it

Green frog

Little lizard sleeping on a leaf

Big black beetle

leaf insect

The last toad we saw

Today was the day we were going to have to traverse “Highway route 2” which is a particularly windy highway which often suffers from heavy fog. As we left our accommodation we decided to stop by Cafe Mono Congo once more to pick up smoothies for the drive. Just before getting to “Route 2”, there was a car flipped over in a ditch next to the road… Police were on scene and no one appeared hurt, but it didn’t bode well!

The drive itself was very curvy, and we did get stuck behind some trucks, witness some absolutely insane overtaking, some fog and even a brief downpour. But we made it to the other side unscathed just by taking it slowly. Driving through the township of Cartago was another story….

Driving in Costa Rican Cities and towns be insane, sole domain of insane people. Did not like.

Butterfly on the window did not want us to leave

Happy snaps of the vehicle of our host

Open roof

Ready to hit dirt roads

this is their main mode of transport

Pot-holes in the road infront of the airbn

Photo of the “route 2”

But we did make it to our accommodation eventually, a quaint Eco-lodge overlooking a waterfall. The arrival already did not bode well…  after ringing the doorbell a lady came on a quad to open it up and just went straight back down without saying a word. We followed down what felt like a 75 degree incline on a road where the mirrors had a centimetre space on each side.

This was one of the few Airbnb’s we really felt was pretty poor: Expensive a little dirty and not well maintained. Eco, in the “Hippie don’t do no work” sense rather than the “Environmentally sustainable, but with all the creature comforts” sense.

But it did have a waterfall on the property! It was just down a, and a I quote from the host, “zig-zag trail”.
He was even nice enough to give me a walking stick (Manja had her fancy tripod walking stick), and a loan of his dog which has walked this trail so much that it could guide us not just to the waterfall, but to the local ancient church ruins. I wanted to say “No thanks, we like to stop and photograph and the dog will not help with this”, but the dog was already happily taking off and showing us the way.

Now, as the more astute of you may have gathered, I have long had a passion for hiking, and I don’t mind challenging terrain or a bit of bush-bashing. I hiked in Nepal and in all sorts of conditions around Australia. But this “walk” be crazy, dude. We should have taken a machete to clear some of the fallen plants and quick-growing jungle plants. Some of the sections were so deteriorated that I needed the walking stick to give me enough stability to pass, and I caught a good handful of slips on that stick too. Manja meanwhile was following me slowly and carefully, but without complaint. (Except about the Mosquitos, which do seem to love her a little too much!)
She even scrambled through a fallen tree with me, which was a little risky as it was no longer properly attached to anything. Doggy meanwhile, was happily waiting for us on the other side of every obstacle, giving exactly zero fucks about our difficulty.

Eventually we did make it down to the river, which we would have to follow to the waterfall. We were immediately dismayed – there was rubbish absolutely everywhere. But in for the penny, in for the pound. So we did 4 river crossings and eventually made it to the waterfall. As we were getting ready to leave I though “wow that waterfall really throws drops far away” about a second before Manja said “Shit, and now it’s raining”.

The whirlpool for our exclusive use.. and the kids of the host

Yup, there is a path there

Somewhere

In there

Manja found rare solid ground

On the straight now heading to the waterfall

Just across the river here

Past the rubbish

Crossing the river again

Doggy don’t mind

More rubbish. Who does this?!?

Another river crossing

Wet dog considers water

Wet dog decides against more water

Waterfall

Pretty!

RUBBISH 😤

Manja collected a few sticky spikes things

Well done HOOMAN

you can swimz now

Simon worshipping the waterfall

Pretty waterfall

The guide said it was time to move on

This rubbish is… rubbish 😭

It really was everywhere

everywhere

Manja standing in the stream

Hurry up hoomans.

And so it was that we made our way to the town church, by crossing the river another 5 times (all the crossings back and one more) and walking through mud in the rain. As Murphy was watching, the rain promptly stopped when we got to solid walking ground.

We walked over to Ujarrás, doggy still leading us. We bumped into some local dogs, which promptly barked aggressively, then happily and then came and said hello. Ujarrás is a national Monument, so no dogs allowed. Doggy knew this, so went around the back as we signed in, greeting us at the church. Okay, I gotta admit, doggy knows its stuff and is a great tour guide. Church ruins seen and appreciated, we had to make our way back. There was around no fucking chance in hell that we would take the “Zig-Zag Trail” back up, so we used google to find an alternative. There was still some bush-bashing through wet rainforest plants and a steep incline, but it didn’t feel unsafe. Just hard. Eventually we hit the local road, and doggy mostly kept to the side away from oncoming traffic. I only had to push him off the road once 🙂

Ancient church

Simon in ancient church

Cross in ancient church

more ancient church

more ancient church

No dogs allowed… Hah!

If you want more info, feel free to read the sign

Pretty flower

Pretty flower

Our accommodation

Unlike the hike, this was not a bridge too far

This time Simon leads dog

View from the top

Don’t leave rubbish here. Glad they need a sign for that.

After we got back we cleaned up and headed out for a quick dinner before settling in for an early night. As I was writing this a massive huntsman like spider decided to come in through the not properly sealed exterior door to our room. I attempted to help him vacate the premises, but he had other ideas, so by flip-flop finished him before he got into bed with Manja. I have the feeling we will not sleep particularly well. I shall report tomorrow.

Dinner

Was quite nice

The restaurant empty though

Oh yeah, the driveway

Doggy guide was tired

We got up and had a quick breakfast before heading over to the Marino Ballena National Park. The main attraction of the park is the so-called “Whale Tail”, which is a small island connected to the mainland via a sandbank accessible only at low tide. We knew low tide was at about 8:30, so timed it appropriately. We first attempted to get to the park via directions from a travel guide book, which claimed that we just drive past flutterby house. Turns out THAT dirt road just leads to a dead end nowadays. We turned around and put our trust in google, only to get to the main entrance 10 minutes later. We expected the park to be a large beach and some jungle, but it really was a park of a large beach and some hectares of water going out into the ocean. We walked to the whales tail, which was quite a nice walk – you do have an eerie feeling of being surrounded by a beautiful tropical ocean on two sides.

Photo of the Map. You get to take it along. As a Photo.

Palm beach river shore thing

Small tidal river crossing

The endless beach

Simon considering endless beach

Simon walking endless beach

Amazing shore colours

More amazing shore landscape

Walking out onto the Whale Tail

View from the tail

Simon walking along the tail

Beautiful patterns left by retreating tides

More Beautiful patterns in the sand

After our visit, we spent some time in the shade of the palm trees, photographing a few ghost crabs and eagles chasing (and eating!) ghost crabs. It got a bit hot around noon, so we decided to hit a local cafe for some refreshing smoothies. As we got there it started absolutely bucketing down with rain, so we stayed for about an hour chatting and making plans for the next year. When the rain slowed a bit we dashed across the road to a shop which got our attention when we arrived, as it had a chillie as its logo 😋. We stopped for a snack of tacos and home-made chillie sauce. It was delicious and spicy! 🥵

Crab rolling mud ball

Rolley Rolley Rolley

Eagle going in for the kill. Note the crabs scattering in the front of the image

Carrying dirt out of the hole

Why you put a shell on my hole Hooman?

Racoon waz ‘ere!

Some beach rubbish arranged artistically

View from the shaded area

Tropical paradise!

Note the clouds rolling in

My eggs are not the solution, protect the turtles. Or something like that?

Plastic bottle bin… For plastic bottles!

Smoothies while waiting for the rain to stop

potato crisps with home-made chilly sauce. Would have bought if it was for sale!

Taco lunch

We were still in planning mode and the rain started up again, so we headed to our accommodations outdoor area to continue our planning, played darts and read some. As darkness set in we decided to head to a local restaurant recommended by another guest in a review. We walked down some unlit dirt roads to get there, but couldn’t find it. A helpful local pointed us to another restaurant, well, Soda. As we walked there we finally checked google, and the place was closed today. We probably walked right past it in the dark! We slowly made our way back to our accommodation, jumped into the car and hit the cafe we were at earlier because we noticed they had a nice food offering also. After a delicious meal we packed everything ready to move on tomorrow.

Our “office” for the day

The outdoor kitchen we could have used

The dinner we bought instead. Was good!