Sorry for the Delay...

...but the internet (and the power, in fact!) in Drake Bay is transient at best and seems to function only at the most inconvenient times. Here is what I wrote (as a word document) covering the 7th through last night (the 10th). I'll update in a minute about today's adventures!

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The morning of the 7th we started with an early cab ride from our hotel in Montezuma to the Tambor airport, or shall I say airstrip? There is no terminal, just chicken wire around the paved airstrip. Taxi drivers wait when the flights arrive to get passengers, and the two airlines (Sansa and Nature Air) seem to schedule their flights pretty close together, so there were two flights’ worth of people waiting. That’s still less than 20 people, so it wasn’t crowded. For our flight the “check-in” involved a guy in a Nature Air shirt checking our passports against a list he had on a clipboard, weighing our luggage on a portable scale, and then handing us our boarding passes that were clearly printed out in an office somewhere and had our flight info handwritten into the empty spaces. There are no seat assignments as there are only about 20 seats on the plane. For intra-Costa Rica flights, the planes are small, and so only allow a certain amount of luggage on the planes, thus the weighing and charging. However, here it is much less weight that you are allowed – 30 pounds per checked bag and 10 pounds per carry-on! For 1-30 pounds over you are charged $25, which apparently works out to 14,300 colones. We had 20,000 colones, pero el hombre no tiene (I don’t know past tense) cambio (the man didn’t have change), so we scrounged about 12,500 with some change and he said that was fine. No receipt, just him tagging our bags and putting them with the others flying into San Jose.

Uneventful flight to San Jose. When we arrived, we had two hours to kill before our flight to Drake Bay (or Bahia Drake). Since it was a separate ticket, we decided to check in right away to avoid messing with our big bags. The airport is small (there are two airports in San Jose – the international one and the smaller regional one that Nature Air routes everything through), so there is one counter, one arrival gate, and one departure gate. We checked in with a nice young gentleman who weighed our bags, then asked how much we’d paid in Tambor and whether we had a receipt. I asked him what the receipt looked like, and when he showed me I said that no, in fact I hadn’t gotten a receipt, but that we’d paid 14,300 colones (or at least were charged that much, I didn’t say how much we actually paid). He frowned and said, “Hm, I have to call him.” I think the guy in Tambor pocketed our money instead and we just got him in trouble. Oops! Anyway, we didn’t get charged in San Jose, but we did have to weigh our carryons and then go through the motions of transferring some of Beth’s things to my bag to even them out (really, an allowance of ten pounds per person, we are two travelers, my bag was 7 pounds, Beth’s was 13. Can we just call it even? Nooooo, we had to transfer goods and reweigh.) THEN he made us each get on the scale with our bags to see how much we weighed total! How embarrassing! We couldn’t see the numbers (thankfully they were pointed at the guy) so we didn’t feel too badly. But, we figured it was a pretty full flight if they were weighing the passengers, as we’d already been on semi-full flights where no passengers were weighed and baggage weights were given lots of leeway.

When they called our flight and no one lined up at the gate, we continued to wait, thinking there must be other people. The gate agent finally asked us if we were going to Drake Bay, and when we said yes he said to follow him, that we were the only passengers on the flight. We had a private shuttle to the plane (that included the captains of the flight of course), and a private plane to Drake Bay. Got photos with the captain, the captain just sat next to us on the plane to describe safety procedures while I snapped photos, and we were off.

Now, what the hell was that gate agent doing by weighing us?! I think he was messing with the touristas, the bastard.

Anyway, what a stunning flight! Drake Bay is at the Northern tip of the Osa Peninsula, and is the hottest and most humid part of Costa Rica, apparently (excellent planning on my part, really). The “airport” consists of a paved but very gravelly and bumpy landing strip carved into the jungle, with a small covered open-air building. It was rush hour when we got there as there was a Sansa plane waiting to take off and people who had just deplaned waiting for us and our first-class private shuttle…

We landed, deplaned, and there were guys waiting for us who took our ridiculous wheeled luggage (next time = backpacks, seriously it’s all dirt here) and packed it onto the shuttle, which looked like a paddywagon but had no locks on the doors. All luggage on top, all people loaded onto the vehicle through the rear doors. Then we embarked on a 20-minute drive through the jungle that included driving dirt roads through a river and over a clearly-new bridge that the vehicle b-a-r-e-l-y fit onto (seriously, you couldn’t see the bridge when you looked out the windows, the tires were exactly on the edges), and finally onto a dark sand beach where the luggage was transferred to a trailer attached to an ATV and we walked the remainder of the way.

I can’t really describe this place except to say that it’s wild. We are on a lovely calm bay, tucked into the jungle. Our first room was inhabited by hermit crabs (small ones), who apparently make their homes in the dirt hills outside the room as well as on the beach. Beth tried to rescue one by capturing it in her underwear and setting it free outside (Beth would like me to mention that she wasn't actually wearing the underwear at the time, in case you were confused), but we woke to more crabs scuttling across the tile floors. We gave up and welcomed them in.

There is an open-air restaurant where all meals are served; it’s very cruise-ship like in that sense, which is a little hard for me – forced socialization is not my strong suit! We arrived just in time for lunch – there are seats for about thirty people at two tables, with a view of the bay, hardwood everything, little bar (thankfully!) in the dining area… Very picturesque!

After lunch we settled into our room, which only had windows VERY high up on the walls and so no view for us. Plus, it is hotter than hell here. There was a ceiling fan but it was ineffectual and just kind of lazily pushed the air enough to make me crazy and want more wind. We decided to walk ~25 minutes through the jungle to a little beach that was just gorgeous – the beaches here are crazy! It’s jungle right up to the sand, where palm trees finally take over. The water is the craziest mix of colors here – light aqua in some parts, and bright turquoise in others! I want to paint my house in all of these tropical ocean colors! We started putting our towels onto the sand and paused, as it looked like the beach was in motion. Seriously, the large collection of shells on the sand was moving – and it was the largest collection of hermit crabs we have ever seen! Apparently they are everywhere here and it’s like hermit crab cities at every beach. Every now and then one will try to climb over your foot while you’re reading on the beach and you feel kind of bad when you freak out and accidentally fling it in the air.

After the beach we hit the bar – and oh what a happening bar it is! Seriously, they house maybe 30 people here at any given time, and they are not full, and so we were the only ones. The staff is fantastic and friendly, and we’ve gotten to know them. Probably because we are the only ones at the bar a lot of the time. We are also tipping pretty well so our wine glasses are getting really full and the margaritas (with freshly squeezed lime juice!) are getting stronger…

Dinner has been a series of breaded meats – pork, fish, chicken – and veggies, with some homemade bread and dessert… Yummy! Of course, there is no night life here, and after a full day and a full tummy and the sun going down we were ready for bed around 8PM. I know, shocking! Beth is calling this rehab. ;-)

So the staff puts coffee out in the public areas around 6AM, with sugar and milk, so you can just help yourself. The white-faced monkeys (a la Outbreak) know this, and hurl themselves onto the metal roof around the time to steal the sugar packets. What an alarm clock! Loud banging and running noises, and when we stepped outside there were monkeys! Like RIGHT THERE! Beth got some good photos – hopefully I will soon too. It’s been like that every morning – coffee gets set out, monkeys arrive, everyone gets up and moving. They’re kind of menaces and seem to like to steal things…

Full day number one involved scuba! Beth’s first dives as a certified diver! Breakfast was at 7, we got suited up in wetsuits (full wetsuits for 82 degree water? Really?) and fins and BCDs, and we were on the boat by 7:30 heading for Isla Caño (Caño Island) – a 45 minute bumpy boat ride out to a gorgeous tropical island! We dropped the cooler full of lunch gear at the beach and then headed to the scuba spot, where five of us (me, Beth, a couple, and another guy) suited up and fell backwards off the boat into the water. It was a free descent in open water, which was really fun, down to some rocks where a bunch of sea life hung out. Our dive master, Vincent, was awesome – we immediately saw two manta rays hanging out in the sand and they swam away in a cloud as we approached! Also, in no particular order: a sea turtle with a hook stuck in its neck and a long thick fishing line hanging off of it (Vincent found a sharp shell and cut the line to at least make it shorter), white-tipped reef sharks (like four of them! Small and clearly not interested in us…), and tons of fish. When we surfaced the boat was there waiting (I have no idea how they knew where we were or WHO we were!), it picked us up and took us to the island for lunch of ham sandwiches and pasta salad and fresh water and lemonade – yum! Then back into the water for dive number two – also open water but at a different locale, where we saw more sharks, a lobster, and a seahorse! Apparently the seashores sightings are very rare, so were very lucky. As we were all jockeying for position to get a view of it, the couple (no idea what their names were) kicked up so much sand it was hard to see, and in her attempt to get out of the way the women accidentally kicked the seahorse with her fin. They are fragile creatures and it was a big faux pas. When we surfaced this time the lone gentleman was having buoyancy issues (we do a three-minute safety stop at 15 feet, and we weren’t hanging onto anything so we had to pay close attention to our depth and monitor our buoyancy closely) and Vincent had to physically hold onto him to keep him from popping to the surface. Clearly Beth and I were the scuba champions.

Post-scuba, we had a beer at the bar and took a little siesta. Snacks are serve at 4, and Beth and I seem to have a “snack alarm clock” – taking a nap, we will both wake up at 3:45, just in time to walk down to the bar for snacks (and perhaps a cocktail). We moved to a different room – this one with an extra floor fan (that I aim at my bed – Beth gets the big bed, I get to aim the fan at my little twin bed, seems fair, yes?) and a balcony with an ocean view. The walls here are thin – and the bathrooms (I think in an effort to keep them cool) don’t have walls that go all the way to the ceiling. Interesting, and not very private. But, the showers (finally!) are not suicide showers – there are actually two knobs and a showerhead and the water is hot! Not that I want a hot shower, but it’s nice to have the option.

Yesterday was scuba day number two (after the monkey alarm clock of course). This time it was only Beth and me going, and Vincent (after we all talked some trash about the idiot divers from the day before) agreed to take us to another place called Baja del Diablo (Under the Devil). This one was AMAZING! Seriously open-ocean – the boat captain (Junior) and Vincent find it by going a certain distance from Caño Island and placing the boat equidistant between Caño Island and a rock outcropping, then looking into the water at the rock formations (the water is so clear you can see rock shadows at ~100 feet!). We dropped in and the boat took off and down we went!

It felt like we were in an aquarium! Huge rock formations, huge schools of fish, moray eels, an octopus, and we went to ~95 feet and worked our way back up. It was just stunning – clear water, fish not afraid of scuba divers at all and letting us swim right with them… Like swimming through the little rock formations you put into an aquarium – gorgeous! We brought an underwater camera but are not sure how it worked, so we’ll see…

Then it was lunch on the beach again, then dive number two back at the place we went to the second dive the day before. This time we descended and swum a bit away from the rocks to try and see manta rays, and saw one swimming about 25 feet above us! Then, back to the rocks, where we saw more eels, lots of fish, three white-tipped reef sharks who were hunting! We even pet a fish that was hiding in a rock crevice.

We took a little siesta before dinner, and after dinner we had our night tour. I thought this was a night tour of the jungle, which is kind of was, but in fact we took a night insect tour. I hate spiders, and we saw a LOT of spiders. In fact, the “bug lady” showed us that if you shine a light at night into the dirt, you can see the eye reflection from spiders large and small.

They are everywhere.

We saw frogs, toads, spiders galore (trap door spiders, a Bolivian poisonous-as-hell-but-not-interested-in-us spider, HUGE wolf spiders), a boa constrictor, a little semi-venomous snake, and a scorpion! (Shake out all clothing and shoes before putting them on! Duly noted!) We also saw some crazy kind of bug that kills beetles by drawing them into its spiked long legs and eating them alive (called the original iron maiden) – can’t remember the name, but we have amazing pictures of this apparently very friendly bug on Beth’s face. I of course wouldn’t let it near me. Super cool, but now I know there are spiders around me constantly. I don’t like that.

The bug tour ended at 10:30 and we were exhausted. This morning we were signed up to take a boat to Playa Sirena in Corcovado National Park, which meant we were up at 5AM (!) for breakfast at 5:30 (we missed the monkey alarm clock), then on the boat at 6. The park “opens” at 7, but really the boat just landed on a beach (after an absolutely stunning ride down the coast – turquoise waters and dark sand beaches with a row of palm trees backed by solid jungle) and we headed into the jungle on the only available trail. Oh, the jungle – it was lovely in the morning – we saw monkeys galore! Spider monkeys, howler monkeys, and squirrel monkeys (so we’ve officially seen all four monkey species in Costa Rica) – so cute, and so hard to photograph! Our guide, Rolando, was amazing – he would set up a scope so we could see things far away, and then take pictures for us with our cameras through the scope. We saw Macaws, agouti (like a cross between a rabbit and a guinea pig I guess; rodent-like but BIG), monkeys of course, a bunch of really weird-looking birds, and crocodiles. We saw the crocodiles on the shore where a river met the ocean. There is also a river that meets the ocean very near our hotel. Apparently there can be crocodiles IN THE OCEAN at our hotel. (!!!) I got a GREAT photo of the crocodiles thanks to Rolando and his scope.

As the day progressed (like as it got closer to 8AM-ish) it got HOT. Like I didn’t know I could sweat that much hot. Like I wanted to jump in the water crocodiles be damned hot. There were eight of us on the tour, and we were all dying. We had lunch on a beach (opposite the crocodiles, thankfully) where again it was hermit crab central, and we saw the largest hermit crab I have ever seen. In fact, Rolando also said it was the biggest hermit crab he’d ever seen. We all called him The King. We were starting hermit crab wars by tossing little pieces of bread into the sand and watching them fight. Lovely breeze, everyone cooled off, and then it was back into the jungle! Walking into the jungle from the beach is like walking through a door into a completely different world – from sun and sand and wind (and what a freakishly hot sun it is – I can’t stay in it very long at all and you can feel it cooking you) to shade and leaf litter and canopy and the stillest air ever. Without airflow, it’s impossible to stay cool! And the noises! In the early morning we could hear the howler monkeys from so far away, but as it got hotter the jungle quieted down as animals found cool places to hide from the hottest part of the day (who can blame them!).

The end of it became kind of like a death march – just put on foot in front of the other, wipe the sweat off your brow, drink your water, don’t think about how much longer you have! But we finally made it back to the beach, where there was a cooler with cold pineapple and watermelon, and Coca-Cola, Fresca, and Iced Tea (all in glass bottles and the Fresca was maybe the best drink I’ve had here so far). The boat ride back was lovely and cool. We had an ice cold glass of white wine and then took a two-hour siesta before snacks (woke up promptly at 3:45!). We grabbed a margarita and headed upstairs to the deck where we read our books in hammocks until it got too dark, then headed back downstairs for dinner.

Dinner tonight was snapper – caught fresh today! – and mashed potatoes with veggies and fried plantains that looked liked hash browns. Yum! We sat with the other people from the tour today, and it’s kind of like now that we’ve all been through this hardship together we’re all friends! Too funny. An older German couple and a younger Candian (Quebec) couple, all very nice. Beth keeps explaining that we’re sisters, not lesbians, as this seems to be a very couple-y place.

It is 8PM and I am surprised to still be awake – tomorrow we fly to San Jose for one night and then it’s back home. I’m ready for regular bathrooms and a REAL shower! Everything I own smells, nothing dries here (as it’s so humid), and we’re ditching the beach towels we bought here because we think they are beyond hope. Wet for days, won’t dry, smell terrible!

More tomorrow! Internet is awful here so hopefully will be able to post this tomorrow from San Jose!