Pam's Blog

I headed to Playa Conchal this morning with two objectives; to wander into the Westin to inquire about the possibility of hosting a yoga retreat there and snorkeling. The beach entrance to the Westin is for guests only and the security guard would not let me in. If I wanted to talk to a manager, I’d have to walk the two or three miles back around to the main road. 

Instead, I rented fins and a snorkeling mask from a guy on the beach and headed into the water. The waves were bigger today and, not being a strong swimmer, I didn’t stay in long. There were a bunch of fish with black stripes and one sort of colorful one, but there weren’t many or anything else colorful to look at. I was glad I did it, though. It was one of the things I wanted to do here in Costa Rica. Probably better snorkeling if I took a boat trip but I don’t feel up to motion sickness for a chance to snorkel.

I got in the water further down the beach to body surf in the waves and found both the waves in and out extremely strong, surprisingly so! It is a blistering hot day so I put my towel in the shade and sat for a while. It such a nice relaxing way to spend a couple of hours. Ahhhh!! Just what I was looking for to escape the cold and shoveling.

The tour company dispatches a couple of vans to rendezvous with a larger bus, taking that bus to the park. When I got on the van to Palo Verde, there four two Canadian couples on the van. Fran and Joe and here staying with their friends Muriel and Rod. Muriel and Rod are here for  a month and have a rented a condo from vrbo.com. We had some conversation on the van, bus, and then had lunch together. At the end of lunch Muriel invited me back to the villa for a swim and then ou to dinner at a fish place. It was a really nice afternoon with lots of conversation. They have been using a guide here in Brasilito and on the way home from the restaurant we spotted him at his wife’s smoothie stand. They introduced me to him, thinking he might come in handy to help me in the future if I want to bring a yoga group to Costa Rica. 

When they dropped me off, they extended an offer to,drive me to Playa Grande Sumday morning. I had mentioned earlier in the day that it was my next stop and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get there but I would figure it out. I think I figured it out!!

Palo Verde is a National Park and forest. Tours include a zip line and crocodile tour. I opted for the crocodile tour.

On the bus ride there, we saw men and their individual boats “harvesting” the sand from the bottom of the river. It is illegal to dig up the sand with machinery, so they do it by diving under the water with a bucket and dumping it, one bucket at a time, into a small boat. Then the empty it from the boat onto an Ox cart. Then off to market it goes. 

We also saw cantaloupe fields and sugar cane fields. There were workers in the fields harvesting the sugarcane. Our guide told us ninety percent of the sugar cane is harvested by hand. Lots of hard labor going on in Costa Rica.

After a lot of driving on bumpy dirt roads we came to Palo Verde Park. We got on the boat and took off. The brackish water (a mix of salt water and fresh water) looks muddy/dirty. The tide moves in and out, making it look like the river is flowing one way at one time of the day and the other direction another time of the day.

The boat captain was great. This was not his first time out. He knows where the animals hang out and has an eagle eye. Our first stop was to see a crocodile. We weren’t out of site of the dock, and there it was. I was really hoping to see a crocodile and I lost track of how many we saw. Maybe about a half a dozen. We also saw many iguanas. I had my binoculars with me and I had a really good close up look of them. We also saw a Jesus Christ lizard named as such because it can walk on water.

At the beginning of the trip the captain pulled out some shrimp. I’m not sure if he caught them or brought them along. For show, he let the shrimp hang off the sides of hi face sort of like earrings and walked down the aisle of the boat. Then, the shrimp was thrown out to the boat to the iguana on the bank.

The highlight, in my opinion, was when we came to the group of white faced monkeys, or Capuchin monkeys. The group was close to the bank and swinging from branches and walking in the trees. They are smart enough to know that with the boats close by the crocodiles will stay away and it is safe to come down to the river and drink. Some will swipe their hand or tail near the edge of the water, sort of testing for crocodiles. Some of the younger ones haven’t learned to do that yet and just hang down and put their face right to the water. At one point one monkey came right on our boat!!!! It walked the edge of the boat a few rows and the jumped back into the trees.

There were four or five howler monkeys in the tops of some other threes. Howler monkeys don’t usually come close to the ground. Our guide said they eat leaves and fruits and get their liquid from plants. We saw the nesting area of the iguanas, some birds, and a spider orchid. It is the dry season so there weren’t as many birds as our guide said they sometimes see.

The only disappointment was we didn’t see a sloth. The monkeys made up for that, in my opinion!

Bev returned to the USA today and I took the Interbus, a van service that picks up and drops off at hotels, to Brasilito, on the coast. The drive was quicker than in a big bus and the roads weren’t nearly as  hilly or winding. I was picked up first so I got my choice of seats and I picked up front with the driver. There is a better chance of not getting motion sick sitting in the front, which was exactly the case for me today. There were six others on the shuttle, a Costa Rican couple celebrating their 37 wedding anniversary, a couple from Germany, and a couple from Sweden. The male in that couple had been here 52 years ago at an 18 year old in the army. 

About half way we stopped for a bathroom and snack break. In the trees behind the restaurant was a private house with a couple of penned in areas with a peacock in one and a couple of Toucans in another. There were also monkeys in the trees above the parking lot along with a Scarlet Macaw! They are free to fly and hang around because the owners of the house feed them! How cool would that be to have them visit your bird feeder!

It’s hot in Brasilito this afternoon. I walked on the beach with my feet in the water. It’s almost deserted – there were three other women heading back to the hotel and one family on the other end of the beach. It looks like at least two groups use the beach; four wheelers and horseback riders, judging from the tracks in the sand. I’m glad I paid the extra $5 for a/c in my (very) basic room. I can cool off for a few minutes before going back out in the 90 degree heat.

About half the group went on to Manuel Antonio yesterday and the other half of us returned to San Jose. After checking into the very same room at the Radisson, we wandered downtown to find the post office and explore. I have to agree with the guidebooks. San Jose isn’t much to look at. Most of the buildings don’t have any character. The downtown area is a hustling area. People, taxis, buses, and, in one square where we sat for a few minutes, a lot of noisy birds. 

Almost our entire group gathered for dinner at an Italian restaurant. We took up four tables in the place and had some decent food (I had pizza). One of the women at my table has been on four other Gate 1 tours: Egypt, Greece, Central Europe, Thailand, and now Costa Rica. Later this year she is going to Russia. She finds them affordable and easy to work with. 

I liked almost everyone on this trip. With the size of group it was hard to get to know everybody. It was nice to have people to hang out with, get to know, and share experiences with. I would do this again and would book another trip through Gate 1. I am sorry I’m not going on with Ricardo and the group to Antonio Manuel tomorrow and don’t look forward to all the time in the bus tomorrow or the next day to get to the coast, but this is the way it is, traveling in Costa Rica.

We ate lunch at the coffee plantation and once we were finished with the meal we took the tour. We first learned a little bit about chocolate and tasted a roasted bean, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and best of all, chocolate covered coffee beans. 

Our guide took us through the plantation, showing us the plants at different stages of growth, gave us the history of coffee in Costa Rica, and showed us where the beans were roasted. They also have a machine that squeezes sugar cane and two of our group members volunteered to turn the handle and squeeze sugary goodness out of the cane.

We had an opportunity to taste the coffee, light and dark roast, and then make some purchases in the gift shop (or as Ricardo calls them “TT’s, tourist traps”).

Selvatura Park is home to zip lines, hanging canopy bridges, butterfly park and an insectarium. About half the group opted for the zip line and the other half of the group opted for the hanging bridges. The zip line folks also had the option of the Tarzan swing, a terrifying thing that is half bungee jumping and half gigantic swing. 

Nelson, a 77 year old member of our group, did the zip line AND the Tarzan swing. He earned some huge cred from the group for that!

We opted for the canopy bridges and walked with Ricardo almost the entire time. He found things in the cloud forest we wouldn’t have seen or known about on our own and how is funny to boot. On our ride over to the park we stopped at a bakery where Ricardo picked up a couple of bags of bread and other treats for the workers at the park. He takes them food because they help him out and sometimes they are so busy they don’t get a chance eat.

As Ricardo would say, ir was a perfect day in the cloud forest. That is to say it was cloudy and, in fact, raining. We saw a beautiful rainbow in the morning, when there was a break in the clouds. The windy is stronger than Fargo’s wind and the rain was going sideways for a while. The walk through the canopy was about three kilometers, all well paved with not too many steps. 

There are eight hanging bridges varying in length and height. A few were in the lower part, some in the middle, and one above the canopy. I liked the one above the canopy. It was quiet and being quite high we found that the rain had stopped and we were in the clouds. The wind was still blowing and we could hear the water dropping in the forest beneath us, sort of a soft golf clap kind of sound. 

I would not say open heights are my thing and there were a couple of times the bridges would sway or the wind would blow quite hard and my stomach would flip or a panic would set in. After a while I got my sea legs, so to speak, and it wasn’t a big deal.