It's Sweeter In Cahuita
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2005
1
15
25
Trip End
Jun 05, 2006
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Cahuita,
Costa Rica
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Ticabus, the National Express of Central America, runs from Panama all the way up to Mexico, and had been recommended to us as a splendid way to travel. Alas, our 16 hour trip from Panama City to San Jose did not live up to its billing, sat in uncomfy seats with water dripping on us from the air conditioning, next to a whiffy toilet. Not the highlight of the holiday so far. But on the plus side, they did show some English-language films - Ghost and Shawshank Redemption, which at least made the time go fairly quickly.
Then another downside - the border crossing into Costa Rica. This is apparently the main route for cocaine smuggling from Colombia up to the USA, so our bags were searched and sniffed (by people and dogs respectively) on the way out of Panama, then again 100m later on the way into Costa Rica. And yet we got off fairly lightly with only cursory searches, an American couple on our coach had everything scrutinised - chocolate bars unwrapped, shampoo bottles opened and sniffed, everything but the rubber glove treatment. All this, coupled with lots of queuing for passport stamps, and lots of waiting around, added up to a jolly 2.5 hour border crossing. Fortunately, our championship series of Lord of the Rings Top Trumps continued as we sat around waiting.
The bus arrived in San Jose at the somewhat inconvenient time of 4am, and this was not supposed to be the safest of cities, so we dug in at an all night café until we could catch a bus to the coast at 6am.
We got to the bus station at 5.45am and the ticket office for our bus, although not for the others, was shut.
01 - Pina Coladas, This is the Life
We asked at the ticket window next door if we could buy our tickets there. No, we were informed, but the office would open at 5.30. Slightly confused, and questioning our comprehension of the Spanish, we persevered:"Umm... excuse me. Again. The office is closed, can we just pay on the bus?"
"No," repeated the attendant slightly impatiently "THE OFFICE OPENS AT 5.30"
We looked at each other. I looked at my watch. 5.50am. I was starting to think that we´d drifted into some twilight zone, when I was struck by a sudden thought. "Ask him what time it is now" I said to Andrea, and she asked - 4.50am. An hour´s time difference between Panama and here. Doh!
Feeling like a couple of divs, we sat down and waited. 40 minutes later, the office opened, we bought tickets, caught the bus, got to Cahuita. No problem.
Costa Rica is famous for its two main exports: coffee and bananas. On the journey we ran through the heartland of banana country, passing miles and miles of plantation trees, laden with enormous bunches of bananas. Banana growth was so stimulated that the trees needed to be supported with cables to keep them upright. The biggest name in the area, I was pleased to find, was Dole, followed closely by the Llandre and Tal-y-bont plantations (little joke for the Bow Street posse...).
The sleepy little hamlet of Cahuita was set around a few dirt tracks, and was decidedly Caribbean in it's ambience, more Marley than Merengue booming from the beach bars. We got ourselves settled in at a lovely beachside cabin called Jenny's, complete with balcony looking out to sea.
02 - View from Our Balcony
Perfect. We didn't try to achieve much during the next few days, but did a lot of reading and general loafing.A golden beach stretched south from Cahuita, and immediately behind the sand was tropical rainforest. Through the rainforest, a few metres back from the beach was a nature trail that made for a good walk, so one sunny afternoon, off we set. There were lots of birds and assorted rustlings in the trees, before Andrea spotted a family of white-faced capuchin monkeys. They were making quite a lot of noise, and we even saw little ones being carried by mothers. It was quite wonderful to simply discover the monkeys in the wild, rather than having them pointed out to us on an organized tour.
A little later, as we continued our stroll along the cleared path through the jungle, I noticed a little movement on the ground ahead of us, and spotted a very well disguised snake. Yikes. After leaping back, we composed ourselves and bent down to have a look and noticed that it was coiled up, as if ready to sink its fangs into a tasty pasty welsh calf muscle. We stopped to watch it for a while (from a safe distance) before giving it a wide berth as we continued on our walk.
As we strolled, enlivened by our impromptu wildlife spotting, I mused for a while that maybe there are two kinds of people in this world, one that, whilst on a jungle walk will look to the trees for monkeys, and the other will look to the ground for snakes, and that maybe Andrea is one, and I'm the other. It is clear that a combination of both would be ideal, maximising both the wildlife-spotting opportunities and getting-home-alive chances. Does this explain our trip success thus far in having seen lots of good stuff, whilst still being alive? Who knows, but I realised that I'd better get back to looking out for snakes, and mused no more.
We later looked it up in a book of Costa Rican snakes, but couldn't find it. From what we could remember of its look, it was similar to some of the poisonous ones (and Costa Rica, we then realised with a gulp, has LOTS of poisonous ones). We also heard later about some South and Central American snakes which are ultra aggressive, and actually chase people! This was a possibility that had not run through our minds, secure as always with the "it's more scared of you than you are of it" mantra. Imagine that, spotting a snake, jumping back a couple of feet to discover that it's actually following you. Sweet Jesus. I think we would have legged it all the way to the nearest travel agent for a one-way ticket back to Blighty.
After our David Attenborough walk, we strolled back along the beach, which was nice, but uneventful, except that I carried a small thin-strapped rucksack which left me with a light sun-burn that looked like bra-straps for the next few days, much to Andrea's amusement.
After our taste of Costa Rican wildlife, we wanted more, and that could mean only one thing in Costa Rica - giant turtles...
