Friday 6th October 2017
We left Caroline’s at 7am to drive to Orlando Airport, drop off the car and catch our flight to Cost Rica which left at 11.30am. We followed the I – 4 all the way but had not contemplated the Toll Roads. The last time we were in Florida was just after Hurricane Irma and all the Tolls had been suspended. We managed to pay our way through two tolls and then ran out of change. This became a huge problem at the next toll because it was unmanned and required 50 cents in coins. Worried we would be fined if we passed through without paying Jacqui jumped out of the drivers seat and flagged down the next driver to come our way. This driver kindly supplied us with the 50 cents we required and we all went on our merry way.
We arrived in plenty of time. Having collected our boarding passes we headed straight for passport control only to be told that we qualified for the fast-track pre-check-in and could go and join the significantly shorter queue, which we happily did. As we entered the airplane our eyes were drawn to the white vapour that was flowing down from the overhead compartments. We concluded that this was some kind of bug repellent! We landed in a cloudy San Jose and were met at the airport by Julio – our taxi driver – who drove us to our hotel. We were to stay at the Fleur De Lys for the night before heading to Cahuita tomorrow.
Before arriving in Costa Rica Jacqui had been researching the weather forecast and discovered that there had recently been a tropical storm which had closed many roads due to landslides. So after settling in we went to talk with the receptionist and discovered that the road we needed to take tomorrow was closed. She suggested we wait until the morning before making any changes to our schedule, so this what we did.
We walked through central San Jose looking at the National Museum and walking through the market.
Heading down Central Avenue we stopped for a bite to eat at ‘Chelles’ restaurant and bar which we were informed was over 100 years old.
We walked back down 1st Avenue calling in on ‘China Town’ which was very tiny and had very little to support this accolade. Heading back to our hotel we decided to sit on the veranda of our hotel and partake in our free glass of Cas whilst listening to the hotel entertainment – a guy singing and playing his synthesised music.
Saturday 7th October 2017
Jacqui was awake during the night [she has a habit of doing this if she is feeling anxious about something] and discovered that the road to Cahuita had been reopened so we would now be able to catch the bus as planned.
The bus took us North out of San Jose, through a rain forest/National Park and over the mountains. We then headed East towards the coast at Limon and finally down the Caribbean Shoreline to the small town of Cahuita. The bus journey took four hours and by the time we arrived we were extremely hot and sticky as there was no air-con on the bus, so the swimming pool was our first port of call, followed by a walk to get our bearings and some tea. We had an early night ready for some excitement tomorrow.
Sunday 8th October 2017
Julie was awake at 6am, and feeling too excited to stay in bed any longer, persuaded Jacqui to join her for a walk along the beach – Playa Blanca. Although the sun was not quite up it was still hot. We headed for the National Park, paid our entrance fee and enjoyed a beautiful two-hour walk along the white sand. We had the whole beach to ourselves. We walked as the sun rose high in the sky, the pelicans fished for their breakfast and the small white, almost translucent crabs cleared their burrows and waited for some unsuspecting creature to walk past. It was a magical way to begin what was going to be a very hot day.
We had met two other girls [Heather from Australia and Kieren from Canada] who were travelling together, at the coach station yesterday, and we bumped into them again after breakfast. They had heard that fishermen sold their wares off the beach between 10am and 11am, so we agreed to join them on their quest to find some fresh fish for tea. Walking through the town we came across a fruit market where we purchased sweetcorn, a tomato [they’re huge], carrot and onion at a fraction of the price we had paid in the supermarket. After some scouting around, we found a fishermen selling the few mackerel he had caught that morning off the back of his small boat and purchased two. We watched as he filleted them for us, popped them in a bag and charged us $7.
After a restful few hours swimming and lounging around in our personal hammock hanging outside of our room, we headed back to the beach for a swim. Being on the beach there was a slight breeze which we enjoyed. We had arranged to meet up again with Heather and Karen for an evening stroll which turned into an evening swim. We walked around the bay, finding a different beach with darker coloured sand – Playa Negra – and swam as the sun began to retreat.
We cooked up the mackerel with the vegetables and called our creation ‘Gumbo’ – a mixture to everything we had bought earlier that day together with a soup stock – it was delicious.
Jacqui spent the evening researching flights and visas for Australia. The internet connection is not the best here and keeps disconnecting itself BUT it is better on one side of the room than the other. So we both sat on one side of the bed for a couple of hours.
Monday 9th October 2017
We got up, had breakfast and left our hotel at 8am ready to walk through Cahuita National Park. As we began our journey we became aware that there was hardly anybody else in the park. The path ran about 6 metres in, and followed the shoreline for around 8km. We managed to walk for 4km, took a rest and a swim and then walked back again. The journey took us around 5 hours to complete.
Although the path was close to the beach we still felt like we were in a forest.
As we walked we looked out for anything of interest. We saw: monkeys, raccoons, pelicans, spiders, some kind of gecko and a huge number of ants and termites.
We rested for a while and bought some lunch from just across the street in a shop called ‘facefood’ – a beautiful baguette filled with ham, cheese, salad and some kind of fried Courgette and aubergine.
At round 4pm we had arranged to meet Heather and Kieren for a walk along the coast in the opposite direction to the National Park and towards ‘Playa Negra’ – the beach with black sand. Once there, we swam in the warm sea and talked together whilst watching the sun go down over the horizon – we just cannot get enough of this sight!
Returning before sun down, we cooked up the rest of our mackerel and the four of us sat down to enjoy tea together before we retreated to the comfort of our hammock hanging just outside of our room. As we were relaxing Jacqui said she could hear some sort of drumming noise somewhere in the distance so we left and followed the sound. As the sound became louder we walked into the darkness and towards the outskirts of the town. We discovered a group of young people playing vertical xylophones and drums of many different shapes and sizes with a group a girls performing a fairly simple but traditional dance whilst banging cymbals. It did not appear to be anything other than a practice session, but we enjoyed it nevertheless.
Tuesday 10th October 2017
With a later start than yesterday, all four of us went to buy tickets for the bus to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca- a slightly bigger town 16 km further down the coast. We arrived at the ticket office at 9.30am to find it open but abandoned. Someone who appeared to be a local, told us that we could buy our ticket on the bus and that it left at 10.15am. So we began to walk back to our accommodation to wait by the pool, only to meet the ticket office attendant who told us we required a ticket and that the bus left at 10.30am. Our ticket cost 750 colones each which is about 1 pound, the only cheap thing we have discovered so far in Costa Rica. With a wait of about 20 minutes we caught the bus successfully. This town is a little bigger than Cahuita and has a few more shops and restaurants so we had a good look around. The shop pictured was a cafe!
We then indulged in our favourite activity of eating ice-cream – We indulged in proper ice-cream in ‘Gelateria Deelite’ – Italian Gelato (Julie – Italian Cherry, Jacqui – Caramel, Heather and Kieren – Passion fruit and Chocolate). It was delicious.
Keren asked for some lunch time recommendations for traditional food and was told to look out for ‘Lidia’s Place’ – all the restaurants appear to be named after the owner. We decided to walk off our ice-cream and go and look for it ready for later. After asking a couple of times for directions we found the restaurant and decided that we would eat there later on. We walked the short distance to the beach where we swam using our goggles for the first time. The coral reef was sadly dead or dying due (we think) to an earthquake some years ago that caused the sea level to recede and expose the coral reef to the sun. However, there were still some fish to be seen and we enjoyed our first experience of using our camera underwater.
Lunch at ‘Lidia’s Place’ was gorgeous. Costa Rican food is generally served with rice and black beans. Julie had the vegetarian option, Jacqui the chicken and Heather and Kieren the curried shrimp. It was all served with deep-fried and battered plantain and fruit juice. We headed back to the bus stop via a supermarket where we bought fruit and vegetables for the next day – it did appear to be a little cheaper.
Arriving back, our accommodation appeared to be full of Russians cooking tea and chatting together. We relaxed in the pool for about an hour before retreating to the comfort of our air-conditioned room. We did some research for tomorrow about a couple of places we could visit by push-bike (The tree of life – a wildlife sanctuary which had great reviews but is closed for the month and ‘yesland mini golf’ which also had great reviews but is closed permanently) – not very helpful.
Wednesday 11th October
We got up and left our accommodation by push-bike at 6.15am. We decided to ride the coast road North out of Cahuita, past ‘The Tree of Life Rescue centre’ and towards Talaji – a nature preserve – 5.6km along a very stony path. We had rented our traditional Costa Rica fixed wheel bikes out of our accommodation. To stop you had to peddle backwards – a very alien concept – but something we got used to very quickly. We enjoyed the ride in the relative cool of the morning, stopping on the beach to rest on a suspended wooden bed made of pallets and watch the dragonflies flit around in the sunlight.
We joined Heather, Kieren and some of the Russians around the table for breakfast and then settled down to do some admin. We needed to:
- Apply for our Australian Visas
- Book our accommodation back in San Jose for the night before we fly to Los Angeles
- Work out how we were going to get back to San Jose and find the accommodation
- Book our fights out of Los Angeles and into Fiji and out of Fiji and into Australia
- Book our first nights accommodation in Los Angeles
- Book car hire for our road trip out of Los Angeles
By the end of the day we had accomplished 1 – 4 and felt really pleased with our choices.
During the day we became aware of someone driving a car down our small road with a loud-hailer and shouting something in Spanish. Heather went to investigate and returned with armfuls of fruit which she had bought at a fraction of the cost of the supermarkets. We [Jacqui and Julie] headed out to do the same and returned with: a papaya, bananas, mango, potatoes, onions, carrots, peppers and tomatoes all for 15000 colones, about $3 or £2. A real bargain in comparison to what we have been paying in the supermarkets.
Thursday 12th October 2017
After a lovely breakfast of watermelon, pineapple and papaya smothered with yoghurt and sprinkled with granola we walked the short distance to the bus station. Today the four of us were to travel to Punta Uva – 25km further down the coast to do some snorkelling. The ticket experience went much smoother than last time and we boarded the bus on time. When we reached Puerto Viejo de Talamanca there was a huge traffic jam due to road works which held us back for around 20 minutes.
Unfortunately, we were not sure where Punta Uva was, and with little indication on the road side and nothing from the driver we travelled straight through without any of us realising. We ended up 5km further on in Punta Manzinallo – another small town right on the coast. Finding a sandy place to enter the sea without having to climb over rocks we donned our snorkels, goggles and wet shoes and swam out towards the reef. Unfortunately, the reef was in no better a state than last time – dead or dying coral where the water is too shallow and much too warm. We did however, have a good time spotting fish and practicing using our snorkels without getting sea water inside.
We decided to eat out once again together and chose a restaurant called ‘Soda Mima’ just off the beach. We ordered our meals and drinks and one by one our drinks arrived with about a 5 minute wait between each one. We waited for a further hour for our meals to arrive – we almost lost faith! They were, however, really good – rice and black beans with salad and fried plantain with either fish or chicken with a sauce.
We had decided to stop in Porta Viejo de Talamanca for a repeat of our ice-cream experience in ‘Deelite’. However, the italian cherry that Julie enjoyed and the passionfruit ice-cream that Heather was hankering after was unavailable. So we settled for: Julie – strawberry, Jacqui – coffee, Heather – blackberry and pineapple, Keren – blackberry with a slice of chocolate brownie. Heather was most disappointed that she had missed out on her first choise of Passionfruit.
Arriving home we decided to go and sit on the beach for a while and Heather said she would meet us down there. A short while later, Jacqui saw Heather calling us from the balcony of a bar close to the beach. When we got over to her we saw that, hanging from the balustrade of the bar, there was a ‘three-toed sloth’. It had climbed across from the National Forest looking for food. We watched it stretch across to the nearby tree and eat.
Friday 13th October 2017
Having looked on the internet to see if there was anything else in the area we could do cheaply and finding nothing we decided to have a lazy day by the pool and on the beach. We chatted to family during the late morning by ‘WhatsApp’, puzzled, read and updated this blog. We indulged in a lovely lunch from ‘FaceFood’ – prosciutto, cheese, salad, zucchini and aubergine and ate it by the pool.
After lunch we took a walk to buy Jacqui new flip flops – her other ones had broken earlier in the day – and Julie new sun glasses – Julie had stood on them a couple of days ago and twisted them. We also booked our tickets to go on a snorkelling trip tomorrow. We walked to the beach for a swim and, once again, watched the three-toed sloth eat his supper in the same tree as last night.
A few things about this accommodation:
- It is over-run by Russians
- The pool is more the size of a jacuzzi and quite shallow
- The kitchen is small with few utensils
- The hosts are extremely nice people, happy and always willing to help
- The rooms are basic but functional, clean and air-conditioned
- The outside area is a sociable place to sit in and the gates are locked in the evening
- We spent much time socializing with Heather and Kieren which was lovely
- It is perfectly located for many things: the National Park, the beach, the supermarket, the baguette shop [facefood] and the bus station.
Kieran had discovered that ‘The Reggae Bar’ on the outskirts of town had live Raggae music, and so the three of us went out to listen. We could hear the music getting louder as we walked into the semi darkness [thank goodness for streetlights – however far apart they are]. The ‘music’ was being created by four Costa Ricans – a saxophonist, a guitarist, a bongo player and a single stringed double bass player. They never appeared to be playing in the same key and although they began and ended at the same time, appeared to be playing from different song sheets. This said, it was a very happy sound and the dancers that joined them were fascinating to watch. The locals took great pleasure in engaging the tourists in their dance routines.
Saturday 14th October 2017
We rose early ready for a guided snorkelling trip in Cahuita National Park. The coral reef is protected and nobody is allowed to snorkel without a guide. Our guide was Ramon and his 8-year-old son, Alfredo. Ramon fitted us with fins and then Alfredo led us down to where the boat was stored, just before the shoreline and resting on two logs just above the waterline. Ramon singlehandedly pushed the heavy boat into the water and we all hopped in.
It was only a short journey to our first snorkelling site where the boat was tied to a buoy. We all donned our snorkels, goggles and fins and jumped into the fairly shallow, warm water. Neither of us has done much in the way of snorkelling before so we were learning by watching Alfredo and Ramon. We followed them onto the reef where we saw many different types of sea life including a reef shark, sea cucumber, ray and many other fish we cannot name (although we will do some research to find out).
The sea was really warm and quite shallow considering how far off the shore we were. Both of us were able to practice our ‘duck dive’ technique to take photos and see under rocks. We found it a complicated manoeuvre which took a few attempts to get to grips with because we kept surfacing sooner than we hoped!
We clambered back onto the boat using the ladder and journeyed onto another site closer to shore. This time the water was much deeper, colder in places and a little more cloudy. You could watch the plankton being pulled along by the current and this made keeping up with our guide much more challenging. Ramon continued to point out some unusual types of coral and sea life and was able to find a sea caterpillar which became much more colourful when Ramon rippled the water above it.
Ramon pulled the boat onto the shoreline where he cut up a fresh pineapple for us. As we were eating Alfredo called out “sardines” and immediately swam out with his snorkel and goggles to see them. It was a beautiful sight to watch as shoals of young sardines swam by. Our last treat of the day was to see a stingray feeding close to shore with a large number of other fish feeding around it.
A couple of Spanish-speaking tourists managed to cadge a lift back to town with us and we were all dropped off on Playa Blanca beach. We walked back exhausted but exhilarated – the trip had been well worth while.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing and reminiscing about the wonderful sights we had seen. We packed our bags ready for our journey back to San Jose tomorrow and exchanged Facebook friends with Heather and Kieran.
Sunday 15th October 2017
We all got up early ready to catch the bus back to San Jose at 8am. The bus was on time and, apart from the many stops the driver made to buy things, it was an uneventful 95 mile journey costing 4755 colones [£6.25] each . We listened to Podcasts all the way – desert island disc interviews by Kirsty Young with Sir David Attenborough, Sandy Toksvig, Sir Terry Wogan, Martina Navratilova and Clare Balding. We enjoyed them all and it made the four-hour journey through the mountains of central Costa Rica tolerable.
We arrived in San Jose ready to find our own way across town to Alajuela by bus. We managed the 10 mile journey without incident and it cost 575 colones each [75p] – what a bargain. Our accommodation for the night is a four-bunk all female dorm in ‘backpackers hostel’, Alajuela.
Two Judo Girls One Adventure 
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