July 26, 2003
Cahuita
Well, we love to plan, but we have an aversion to actually following those plans. Maybe its a phobia. I don't know.
We left Santa Elena on the early bus, with the intention of spending another night in San Jose and then heading to the remote Tortugero to see the sea turtles nesting. On the bus, we talked to a couple of Belgian guys who had really disliked Tortugero. The said it was expensive, and they felt like they were bothering the turtles. The recomended Cahuita, on the Carribean coast. This was on our list but not at the top. We thought about it and realized that we could catch a bus right to Cahuita that day in San Jose without spending the night. That clinched it. Beach time won out over nature watching.
Cahuita is an interesting little town. It is in fact very small (no bank) and is populated by about equal numbers of normal ticos (Costa Ricans), ticos of African descent who speak English with a Jamaican accent, and tourists. There are lots of hotels and restaurants, a couple of bars and a large national park. The roads are dirt and sand.
We used our usual technique of picking a hotel but then going with some random person at the bus station. This works surprisingly well. This time it landed us a Albergue Carlos, run by Mina and her husband Horacio. They are a very hospitable pair, and have a couple of cute kids. Our first activity after settling in was to go on a frog hunt with Horacio, who lovers to show off the local nature. The are quite a number of different types of frogs in Cahuita, and we saw most of them.
The next day he lead us through some of the national park, where we saw two kinds of monkey (a whole tree full of howlers), as well as many lizards, crabs, birds and insects.
There are two beaches, one with white sand, the other with black, and we had plenty of time to visit them in the six days/ five nights we were there. We spent quite a bit of time hanging out with a French couple who didn't speak any English. They had been there for several days already, and are still there now. I'm not sure if they plan to leave.
The big excitement here has been the Copa de Oro, which is a soccer tournament for Central America plus the US, Canada and Brazil. Both the US and Costa Rica made it to the semi-finals, and both lost in the last two nights. They play each other tonight to determine third and forth places. We watch Brazil snatch victory away from the US (ok, it was Brazil's under 23 team) and Mexico pummel Costa Rica at Coco's bar, a nice enough place with 2x1 drinks between 8 and 9. They may have given Vis food poisioning, so they actually get a big black X in our guidebook. We tried to stay quite through the US/Brazil match, as it was clear who the locals were rooting for.
More beach time. We rented boogie boards and caught some nice waves on the black sand beach. Then two nights ago, in the middle of the night, Vis starts feeling bad. Really bad. I'm not going to go into detail, but you know what I'm talking about. Lots of time in the bathroom. We were going to leave yesterday morning, but we decided to put it off. She spend the day sleeping, drinking water and trying to eat some food. Horacio provides a Guava bark infusion which may or may not have helped. By evening she's feeling much better, and by this morning we decided we're good to go.
For good measure, we change our plans again, and tomorrow we are off to the Pacific again, putting off Tortuguro for good this time.