Left4CostaRica: Creatures

From the 1st to the 4th of February we visited Cahuita, on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. This was the first time we have been to that side of the country. Since it covers 4 days, this is a huge blog entry so you may want to go and get a drink and snack before sitting down to read!

Getting There & Back
We had several options for getting to Cahuita, including hiring a car or using one of the tourist shuttle services (Interbus or Fantasy Line). We chose to go by public transport as it was significantly cheaper. The bus from San José to Cahuita costs 3900 colones each way. We went to the Gran Terminal Caribe bus station in San José a few days in advance to purchase our tickets to Cahuita. On the way to Cahuita, you are given assigned seat numbers. The Gran Terminal Caribe bus station is conveniently located, for us anyway, just a few hundred metres from the Microbuses Rapidos Heredianos terminal, who run a Heredia-San José bus route via Santo Domingo & Tibas.

The journey from San José to Cahuita took 4 hours in total, including a 20 minute stop (the driver will tell you 10!) in Limón for a toilet break and an opportunity to buy something to eat. We had somewhat of a culture shock, as the majority of the passengers on the bus to Cahuita were English-speaking tourists and we haven’t really been around many tourists since we’ve been here. There were also a few Ticos, and a nun dressed in white. Clearly we thought that the chances of our bus being involved in an accident would be greatly diminished with a nun on board.

You cannot purchase the return ticket until you are in Cahuita, and the earliest you can buy it is the day before you want to travel. Seats are not assigned on the way back, and Cahuita is the last stop before San José so be prepared if you are travelling with someone to sit separately from them. However, the nice Chilean guy who Zoë sat next to offered to swap seats with Colin so that we could sit together. Personally we think the chileno just wanted to sit next to the skinny girl with the long, wavy dark hair that spoke perfect Spanish who Colin had sat next to! Because of the flooding (the province of Limón, in which Cahuita is located, had torrential rain during the time we were there) the journey back to San José took us 6 hours.

Just north of Cahuita is a police checkpoint. On the way back a policeman boarded the bus and checked everyone’s ID. Remember to carry your passport, or a photocopy of the ID page, with you at all times when travelling in Costa Rica (we carry photocopies).

Accommodation
We stayed at El Encanto Bed & Breakfast. This had been recommended to us by a couple of guys we met at Hotel Hojarascas the last time we visited Costa Rica (February/March 2008). We had one of the cabins in the beautiful gardens, which were inhabited by numerous colourful birds and lots of little green & black poison dart frogs.

Each morning we were woken by the sound of howler monkeys in the area. There was also a small swimming pool which due to the torrential rain we didn’t actually end up using (we arrived on Sunday afternoon, the rain started on Monday lunchtime and hadn’t stopped by the time we left late on Wednesday morning). We did however make good use of the covered terrace at the front of our cabin to sit outside in the torrential rain and watch the comings and goings of the wildlife and the hotel guests and staff. It may have been pouring with rain, but at least it was warm!

Cahuita itself is full of accommodation for tourists at all prices from basic cabinas to upscale hotels. We were happy with our mid-price choice.

Eating & Drinking

The small village of Cahuita is packed full of bars and restaurants catering to the tourists and also several more local, traditional sodas. It all seemed a little disproportionate really for such a small place. However, the upside is that the choice provides a lot of really good eating! In just a short visit we couldn’t possibly visit every one of them but here’s where we did go:

Reggae Bar, on the road leading out of the village along Playa Negra (Black Beach). We arrived on the Sunday afternoon while it was sunny and warm (the rain didn’t start until Monday) and went for a walk along the beach/beach road. We stopped off here for a drink. A very rough hewn bar with laid back staff and customers including surfers, Rastafarians and aging hippies from the USA who have probably been here a little too long. Like pretty much all the bars in Cahuita, this one was showing European football on its TV, and playing reggae music.

Restaurante Sobre Las Olas, on the road leading out of the village along Playa Negra, is the closest restaurant to El Encanto. Being on the coast, we wanted to ensure that we got our fill of seafood while we were in Cahuita. So, on the Sunday night we chose this restaurant because it was so close to the hotel and advertised seafood as its specialty. This is not a cheap restaurant. In fact it is by far the most expensive place we have eaten since we arrived in Costa Rica in early December. But the candlelit table on the Caribbean shore and the delicious food made it worth every colón. Colin had red snapper in a Caribbean sauce (coconutty and creamy), which he thought was the best meal he ate while we were in Cahuita. Zoë had a Caribbean-style seafood rice dish, which came with every conceivable type of seafood mixed in with the wonderfully flavoured rice. Quite an adventure to a relative newcomer to seafood! Colin also took advantage of a free sample of local cahuita white rum, it had quite a kick to it.

Pizz’ n’ Love is in the centre of the village. We ended up here because the Sunday night was the night of the Superbowl and we couldn’t watch it at El Encanto because the tube in the television in the communal area had blown that morning. We walked through the village looking to see if anywhere was showing it … we did think that we might have to go and ask at the house that serves as the laundry if we could go and watch their telly, but then we came across Pizz’ n’ Love who were showing the Superbowl on a big screen much to Colin’s (and the large number of Steelers and Cardinals fans who had gathered there) relief. It was a nice atmosphere, the drinks were good, the food looked good (we had already eaten though) and the host was very friendly and seemed to know everyone who passed by and stopped to watch from the roadside for a few minutes.

Coral Reef Restaurant in the centre of the village was our Monday night dinner stop. Delicious Rice and Beans (traditionally Caribbean with a hint of coconut) and corvina (sea bass). Zoë’s was in a creole sauce, and Colin’s in a Caribbean sauce (more spicy and less coconutty than the previous night). We also had postres (pudding) here, both of us opting for a banano flambeado con helado, which was very tasty.

Café del Parquecito is, as the name suggests, right by the little park in the village. We stopped here on Tuesday morning partly to get a break from the rain, and partly to try out the crepes here (“the best in town” – probably the only in town). The crepes were good and so were the hot chocolates we drank. It seemed to be the hangout for the German-speaking tourists – maybe the crepes reminded them of Europe.

Cha Cha Cha, serves cocina del mundo (food of the world) in Cahuita village. We ate here on Tuesday evening and were glad that we got there early as the small restaurant filled up quickly and the food took a while to arrive (it was just as well that Zoë had her natural de mora and Colin his Haitian Zombie cocktail to keep them occupied). We both had the catch of the day – shark fillet in a creole sauce. We were given a choice of how spicy we wanted the sauce – not very for Zoë, quite a lot for Colin. This was Zoë’s favourite meal here. While we waited for our food Colin spotted a strange shadow that seemed to be making its way along a telephone line which turned out to be a sloth. Zoë went to investigate despite the torrential rain, but the sloth was moving too fast (yes really!) and it was too dark to take a photograph. Still it was an interesting sight to see.

Soda Lili, at the bus station. We had quite a while to wait for our bus back to San Jose on Wednesday morning, so we had a nice cup of hot chocolate to raise our spirits at the small soda right next to the swimming pool (OK, it was the bus stop…. but we could probably have gone swimming if we had wanted!)

Activities
On the Monday we went on an organised tour which took us to the Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica, the Uatsi Waterfall and the Tsiru Úe, a family run “Chocolate House”.

Our driver for the day was Daubrin. He didn’t speak much English, and the 8 other tourists we were with didn’t speak Spanish so initially he seemed quite unfriendly and uncommunicative. But when he realised that we could speak some Spanish he brightened up a bit and turned out to be very friendly and helpful. Moral of the story: always try to speak at least a little of the language of the country you are travelling to.

We were picked up at El Encanto at 10.20 am, and driven to the Sloth Sanctuary. Our guide at the sanctuary was Jeffrey, the Las Vegas born and raised grandson of the sanctuary owners who had originally wanted to be an architect until he visited his grandparents in Costa Rica 4 years ago … and stayed. Jeffrey told us a lot about sloths with the help of a large mural, a video and sloth skeletons and then we went to meet some live ones. Each of the sloths at the sanctuary has its own story of how it got there … some were orphaned as babies or found abandoned, others sustained injuries as adults. Unfortunately, if the sloth is orphaned it doesn’t learn how to survive in the wild from its mother and it is therefore destined to a comfortable, but captive, life at the sanctuary. Injured sloths, once healed, are released into the “wild” of the sanctuary’s own private area of forest. Some of these sloths will move on to the real wild of their own accord. We met several adult sloths, one of which we were allowed to stroke, and many small baby sloths. Unfortunately, due to the time constraints of the tour we didn’t have time to go for a walk along the “sendero de los peresozos” (the path of the sloths) to look for sloths in the sanctuary’s forest.

At the Sanctuary we also learned that sloths, along with dolphins, are the only creatures that are permanently smiling .... :)

We were driven to the town of Bribrí, where we made a quick lunch stop, before heading to the Uatsi waterfall. This involved a drive into the Talamanca mountains, which ended sooner than Daubrin anticipated because one of the rivers on the way to the waterfall, which he usually crossed in his vehicle, was uncrossable in his people carrier. Thus our hike was further than anticipated and involved wading across 3 rivers before eventually getting to the river with the waterfall.

The whole experience was adventurous and entertaining (some of the folk on the tour were just not prepared for this) and the reward at the end, paddling/swimming in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall was for Zoë the surprise highlight of the tour. Colin didn’t go into the pool, and Daubrin offered to take him on a little hike to the top of the waterfall; Colin couldn’t think at that moment how to say “I don’t like heights” in Spanish but did manage to comprehend that it wasn't going to be too steep so he followed Daubrin and ended up going to places he would never have usually gone. The view was great, but a bit too high for comfort.

After the waterfall we visited Tsiru Úe. This family from the indigenous Bribrí tribe make chocolate from the cacao trees growing in their garden. They showed us the trees, the cacao fruit at different stages of growth (it takes 6 months to reach the stage where it can be used for chocolate), allowed us to try some of the fruit (very sweet and kind of like mango) and showed us how they processed the seeds into cocoa butter and chocolate before allowing us to try (and of course purchase) the results.

It was while we were visiting Tsiru Úe that the torrential rain, which would last until we left Cahuita, began. We were pleased that we hadn’t booked the tour for the Tuesday as we think that the waterfall trip would have been too dangerous and unpredictable with that amount of rainfall in such a short time.

On Tuesday we went for a walk in Cahuita National Park. We did postpone the start of the walk for a couple of hours in case the rain stopped, but when it didn’t we just resigned ourselves to getting very wet. We were only in Cahuita for a limited time and didn’t want to spend that time sitting watching the rain. We followed the trail through the park from the Kelly Creek Ranger Station (at Cahuita) to the Puerto Vargas Ranger Station. A distance of 8 km, plus an extra couple of kilometres to get transport back to Cahuita.

On the trail we walked along Caribbean beaches with waves crashing to the shore and through jungle where we saw abundant wildlife including blue fiddler crabs, a troup of capuchin monkeys and two bocaracás (bright yellow venomous snakes which apparently aren’t often seen in the park). Although we didn’t go swimming in the Caribbean (it looked just a little too rough for us) we may as well have as we were absolutely soaked, but we did often paddle along the edges. We had decided to make absolutely no attempt to stay dry as it would have been impossible and instead enjoyed the feeling of wearing shorts and t-shirts in warm rain. This just does not happen in Aberdeen!

At the end of the walk we reached the multipurpose Bar Boca Chica where they have a swimming pool free to use for their customers (somewhat ironic on this particular day), served food and drink, braided hair, sold souvenirs and offered a taxi service. Colin had a warming coffee while we dried out a little under their thatched shelters (we do think that they should add Hot Chocolate to their menu, especially for soaking days like this one!) before we hired the barman to drive us back to Cahuita in his “taxi”. The barman/taxi driver spoke good English learnt whilst he worked for a couple of years in Glasgow about 20 years ago. His Glaswegian impression was also spot on, including obscenities (“for **** sake gies a fag, pal”).

Conclusion
Despite the torrential rain, which we later found had caused lots of flooding in the province, we enjoyed our trip to the Caribbean as much as we had hoped. It was very strange to be among so many English-speaking people, both tourists and locals. We had read the odd bad report about Cahuita, but everyone we met was very friendly and we didn’t experience any problems. All-in-all, Cahuita was the relaxed, quiet getaway we wanted.