"I think we’re going to need a 4x4"

Adventures in Southern Costa Rica - part 1

Our previous entries recounted some of the highlights of our first 3 three weeks spent in Cahuita, our first home in Costa Rica. Lately, we’ve been moving around a bit more and while that has made it harder to maintain some of the early routines and that sense of peace and tranquility that we’d come to enjoy in Cahuita, it has also led us into a wider variety of experiences and adventures.

Our last evening in Cahuita was spent having dinner and a games night at our friend’s Billy and Rebecca’s. We knew that we’d be setting out to explore much of the rest of country over the next couple of months but the understanding that we’d be back to ‘chill’ in Cahuita again before returning home to Canada made the goodbyes a lot easier to handle. Our sadness to leave was compounded by the news that Billy and Rebecca’s kitten Greg had died suddenly overnight, probably due to a snake bite. It was a reminder that while our adopted country had often been a source of amazement to us in terms of the variety of exotic flora and fauna that was all around us, the exploration and experiences that we had enjoyed thus far also came with risks and dangers to be cautious of.

The next day began before dawn, for Kevin, who was determined to take advantage of the geography of Costa Rica and indulge in a whimsical attempt to accomplish something that few have been able to. His goal was to be able to swim in two oceans in one day and so he began the day by watching the sun rise up out of the Caribbean Sea and took one last opportunity to commune with the waves on Playa Negra, where he had taken the first steps towards learning to surf. Then it was back to pack our little car and head out on the highway as early as possible to avoid the traffic that tends to clog the roads on Sundays all over the country as people who have left for the coast for a weekend of fun, head back inland to their homes to ready themselves for the coming work week.

Our destination was a little town on the opposite side of the country, on the Pacific coast, called Uvita. In order to get there, we had to go back through the capital city of San Jose and then take a (much nicer) highway out to the Pacific coast before turning south at the surfing mecca of Jaco and travelling down the Costanera Sur Route 34 highway south towards the Costa Ballenas and the Osa Peninsula. Using the Waze app on our phones has become a life-saver here when driving, as signage is minimal to non-existent on most roads and it’s nice to given a bit of a heads up by the voice of Siri when it’s time to prepare to turn off one road and onto another.

By early afternoon, we were able to see the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean on our right as we travelled South down the coast towards Uvita. Our drive was much more enjoyable than the last cross -country trip we had taken upon first arriving in the country and the sounds of a ‘learn Spanish with Paul Noble’ audio book were interrupted only periodically by the toll booths on the private highway we were travelling on.

Our one rest stop of note was a doozy though. Unbeknownst to Kevin, Bo had received intel from Rebecca and some online research that it was very much worth stopping at the infamous Rio Tarcoles Bridge and so it was not just chance that caused us to pull over as we approached this bridge. As we got out to stretch the legs, we noticed the crowd of people that were walking back from the bridge with wild looks in their eyes. After getting advice from a local on which side of the bridge was better to walk on, we made our way out and looked down on the deeply unsettling sight of dozens of Crocodiles who could be seen casually loitering about the shallow river bed below. Some were truly enormous and they were extra scary when they moved around in a dinsosaur-like slithering gait. The Rio Tarcoles, we came to learn, is considered to have the largest concentration of crocodiles in the world… and this rest stop was decidedly ‘unrestful’.

The rest of the drive was thankfully uneventful and our views alternated between palm oil plantations and breathtaking coastline until we finally reached Uvita and our home for the next few days. Our place in Uvita came highly recommended on Air B&B reviews and did not disappoint. It was a newer, more modern house than our place in Cahuita had been and although we missed our open air front porch / living room from Cahuita, the modern kitchen and more comfortable bedrooms mostly made up for our loss of the proximity to the jungle. One pleasant surprise was the fruit trees in the backyard that were ready to be harvested! Another welcome aspect to this rental was that it included free access to both surf boards and fancy boogie boards, which both Kevin and Sophie were excited to see. It was definitely hotter in this part of the country and the small but refreshing pool was a popular place to hang out over the next several days.

We found Uvita to be much more spread out and car-centric than Cahuita had been and this kept us from feeling as connected to it as we had been with Cahuita. But our place, though a fair distance from the main part of town, was only 500 meters from the jewel of the area: Uvita Beach, which is contained in the Parque Nacional Marino Ballena. The fact this beach was contained inside the park was both a blessing and a curse (mostly the latter, unfortunately). It meant that access to it was severely restricted and it was accessible only between 9:30 and 5:30 each day, for a price… But the beach itself was arguably the most beautiful (and empty) one we’ve seen in our time here thus far and one that we intend to return to again before our travels in this area of the country are over…

The restricted access left Kevin in a quandary on that first night, however. While we had been within meters of the Pacific Ocean earlier in the afternoon, he had yet to actually swim in it and by the time we had finished getting some groceries and upacking, it was dark out.

His desire to complete the ritual of swimming in two oceans in one day was stronger than his trepidation about heading out into unfamiliar territory and so he gathered his flashlight and off he went in search of a way… Here’s an excerpt from the text he sent to a few people later that night upon returning safe but frazzled, from the ocean:

Success!... but at great cost to my nerves…

Walking through swampy forest (even along a fairly well-marked trail) in the night is unsettling at the best of times… but there is no courage without fear.

An aside: I did come across the most amazing looking crab strolling across my path, with bright orange body and luminescent green claws.

I follow the sounds of crashing surf and quickly find myself tantalizingly close to the ocean but alas, the beach is fenced off as this part is within the national park that has hours of entry.

Moment of truth… I follow the fence line until I come to the access point – a ranger station. The scent of salt spray mixed with swampy forest was thick and with no one in sight, I decide to sneak through the control gate, prepared to play the role of dumb gringo if I’m seen.

Thankfully, I’m able to make it past their station unseen, and come out onto a huge beach made larger still by the fact it was low tide…

Even though it was overcast, the light of a nearly full moon was doing its best to pierce the clouds and left enough light to be able to see the faint contours of a long gently curving beach that goes on for at least a couple of miles. Hauntingly beautiful!

Took a quick dip while hoping my flashlight didn’t attract any unwanted attention from either the rangers OR any ocean inhabitants of the ‘eating or stinging’ variety and voila! I had completed my special ceremony by swimming in two oceans in one day.

On the way back to the house, through a particularly dark part of the path, something huge came down suddenly from a palm tree about twenty yards behind me only moments after I had passed by. My heart leapt and I resisted the urge to run. The flashlight couldn’t make anything out, but I wasn’t about to go back to investigate. I hoped it was a sloth or large iguana, and not some sort of predator…. It’s fair to say that my pace quickened and the walk home took much less time than the walk there had.

Our time in Uvita was marked by a slightly different feel than we had grown used to Cahuita. Now we were in ‘travel’ mode, to a larger extent, and we knew we only had a few days here and with this knowledge came a desire to want to see and do as many things as we could, while there. This led us to venture out one day to a nearby beach that we’d heard great things about: Playa Ventanas.

Ventanas water cave entrances from the ocean side.

The most important thing about going to Playa Ventanas is the timing. It’s best to go during low tide as this uncovers more of the beautiful beach there but also for another reason… here’s another excerpt from Kevin’s journal / texting:

Playa Ventanas is a beautiful smaller beach just down the coast from Uvita, that is tucked in between high cliffs on either side and gives you a feeling of swimming in a canyon… Ventana famously has natural caves that tunnel through one of those cliffs, which can only be explored during low tide. It was unreal.

The waves would enter on the ocean-side cave-opening and then funnel up through these large tunnels bouncing around thunderously and alternately pushing you back or sucking you in as the water surges and retreats...

I got about 85 % of the way through to the ocean side before I chickened out... the water was too deep to stand in at that point and I’d be at the mercy of the strength of the waves blowing in and then sucking out.

Sometimes a decently big wave would enter the tunnel and you could see it coming at you down the tunnel (they’re about two hundred feet long) and it would be a reasonable size, say head height... but then because the tunnels would widen or narrow suddenly, the water would hit a narrow part and all of a sudden it would leap up another three of four feet in height.

I didn’t have the go-pro camera with me and only went in about half way with my phone to try to get a video of the booming sound the crashing water would make as it reverberated throughout the cave / tunnel.

Then I went in again with just my flashlight. Had to tie my bathing suit on extra tight as the water was powerful enough in places to pull your pants off.

Got in far enough to find a third cave branching off of the second one and this part was crazy because the water would be surging through the two different tunnels and converging on you at different times.

It was amazing. And a bit scary.

Sophie and bo refused to come in.

After I’d had my fill of cave swimming, Sophie and I did some boogie boarding on the main beach.

Waves were bigger than in Cahuita...

One wave must have carried me over a hundred feet.

I’d always been able to boogie board on waves while holding my breath until finishing the ride... but these waves were big enough to carry me for so long that I had to breathe while still riding the wave and got a mouthful of sea water for my efforts...

The perfect wave for boogie boarding approaches...

Ended the day up on a hill at a hotel that reportedly had a beautiful ocean view. The reports were bang on.

Got some great pics and a video that allows one to hear what the cicadas sound like here when they get going... they were loud enough to drown out the sound of the ocean in the distance...

What a day.

One thing we learned from that outing was that we were definitely going to need to upgrade our tiny rental car to a 4x4 in the next month if we were going to be travelling in this part of the country… even just getting to that beach was an adventure. The road was a very steep and after turning a corner, we found that it suddenly was cut off by a small river before continuing up the other bank. This being our first experience with driving in ‘back woods’ Costa Rica, we were initially crestfallen and were in the process of turning around until we saw a tourist mini-bus go by and the fellow leading the tour leaned out the window and assured us that it was safe and to follow the path he took through the river…

Rental car insurance is voided by crossing rivers in Costa Rica, so there was a few moments of panic…but as we came to learn over the next week or two, this way of getting around is really the norm in Costa Rica and the subsequent experience at the beach was definitely worth that initial stress.

Over the next few days in Uvita, we fought hard to recapture that sense of casual chill we had come to enjoy in our first few weeks in CR. This became much easier to do once we had secured our lodgings for the coming month and confirmed that we would indeed be able to stay at a place not far up the highway. Knowing this would allow us to still access all the things in the area that we wanted to see and do meant that we could relax a bit more at our lovely rental in Uvita and return to our Spanish and school lessons etc. without feeling like we were missing out on new adventures. The rest of the week was spent mostly in a mix of relaxation and exercise and lots of time was spent by Kevin and Sophie on Uvita Beach. Every day by about 4:00 in the afternoon (after the worst of the day’s heat had passed), we would all head (back) down to the beach, Kevin with his surf board and Sophie and Bo with Boogie boards, and we would ride the gentle waves until the sun sank into the ocean.

Once we knew we would be returning to this stretch of coast and spending a month in the neighbourhood, we subconsciously decided it might be best to rest up for the next leg of our journey. One that would take us further south, down into the Osa peninsula to one of the most remote parts of this amazing country - a place called Drake Bay. Accessible only by boat for large swaths of the year, this place had captured the imagination of Bo and Kevin when they had last backpacked through Costa Rice 15 years ago. They had never forgotten the wild stories of jungle experiences that could be had in the nearby Corcovado National Park: Perhaps the most inaccessible park in the country. While we couldn’t make it there back then, it was at the top of our list this time. If there were any real chance that we were going to see some of the most elusive and endangered animals in the country (Jaguars, Pumas, Tapirs, Macaws and even humpback whales etc.) then this was going to be the place to do it, given it’s relative isolation from the rest of the world.

We’ll save the stories of Drake Bay and Corcovado for the next blog post and leave you instead with final few thoughts and one more excerpt from Kevin’s texting / journaling… This particular entry was written well after midnight on the final night that we spent in Uvita before travelling to the little river town of Sierpe to board the boat for Drake Bay….

As I Write this, I am sitting on a log on Uvita Beach watching the waves crash in front of me. The tide is fully in now and it is amazing how far up the beach the water comes. There is a nearly full moon and so I can see everything bathed in a beautiful blue white light. The few stars that are strong enough to overcome the brightness of the moon are twinkling almost all the way down to the horizon. But amazingly, there is a bank of clouds right on the horizon with flickers of lightning visible every few minutes and it is all together magical.

Things I hope never to forget about this place:

Number one, being able to go out to the yard in the morning and pick fruit off the tree to have for breakfast.

Number two, the beach at Uvita is perhaps the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The sand is like walking on flour. Actually More like chocolate milk powder, given its color. And the fact that there were maybe 10 or 20 people sharing its two miles with us on any given day, made it feel even more special.

Number three, being able to ride a single wave for nearly 100 m on a boogie board with Sophia next to me on hers. The memory of the ongoing competition between us to see who could land further up the beach once the wave had exhausted itself, brings a smile even as I write this. (Despite what she will tell anyone who will listen… it was a tie…)

Number four, the caves at playa Vantana were terrifying and exciting all at once and some thing I want to go back and do again with the GoPro so I can try to capture the experience of having a wall of water barrel down a huge tunnel towards you, on video.

Number five, Being able to surf those aforementioned playa Uvita waves for equally long distances as the boogie boarding, by myself for the first time now I have left my surf instructor and buddy, Billy, back on the other coast. The feeling of riding a wave is definitely intoxicating and I can’t wait to return here next month to maintain what I’ve learned…

Some honourable mentions go to the sounds and smells of this place. First, the lush, thick smell of the jungle and it’s decomposing vegetation was something you had to pass through in order to get to the beach and it was something that became fun to breathe in deliberately while on my long runs in the mornings. Second, the impossibly loud buzzing of the cicadas here that turn on at dusk, like clockwork and those ridiculous sounding birds that lived in the trees around our yard here… they didn’t seem to fly unless they had to and would waddle around and every so often break out into a crazy chorus of quacking /squawking that one can imagine sounded like cartoon Goofie would make if he were drunk. They would start their yammering as early as 4:30 in the morning sometimes, but it was hard to get angry at such a ridiculous sounding bird… (must try to find the name of this bird)

Stories and pics of our time in Drake Bay and Corcovado Park jungle are coming soon…

Take care everyone,

Kevin, Bo and Sophia