Caribbean Coast

Hello, All y’all! Since I have finished both of the books that I brought along for reading material and Marguerite hasn’t, I will be filling in with today’s entry. Again, sorry about the lack of pictures. We have taken many videos and pictures but we haven’t hit an internet connection that will handle the size. I guess you’ll just have to wait to see all the “wild life.”

For now, however, let me regale you with today’s tales of daring do (do, Ha!) We left the booming town of Guapiles around 9 am and drove to the scenic and heavily barb-wired city of Puerto Limon. Limon is regarded by many of the guide books as a fairly dangerous place with nothing redeeming to visit. A recent acquaintance spoke of Limon with fondness and this one caveat: “If you are going there on vacation, don’t.” Marguerite and I have been learning a lot about security and safety here in Costa Rica and we have noticed that this place is fairly easy to read. All you have to do is check out how the locals live: if they have no fences and are generally hanging around and chatting, it’s probably a fairly safe, honest place. If, on the other hand, all of the houses (and churches) have 6 foot high metal bar fencing topped with either razor or barbed wire, then you might want to keep one eye looking over your shoulder. Let’s just say that Limon had 7 foot high concrete walls topped with razor wire around the church and let your imagination do the rest.

But it takes all of 7.5 minutes to drive through Limon and so we were on our way quickly enough. The road south from Limon to Cahuita starts off as many of the CR highways do: The occasional pot hole, one-way bridge, random police blockade, lane striping, and “Velocidad Maxima” sign. After about 5 kilometers, however, the later the items disappear and the prior two become more frequent. But this is really no bother, since driving in CR keeps you on your toes anyway.

Cahuita turned out to be a nicer place than I expected. It was by far the most laid back town on the south Caribbean stretch. The town itself is much like many of the small resort destination places that we have visited so far. A little downtown area with some local dives and shacks, surrounded by an eclectic bunch of B&Bs, Cabinas, hostels, hotels, and tour companies. The guide books suggest that the last five years have seen an increase in crime that has subsequently been stamped out. Making notes on our drive-by tour, I think I would like to go back there and hang out for a while. But I had set my sights on seeing all there was to see of this little piece of coastline and so on we went.

The next notable town after Cahuita is Puerto Viejo. And I gotta tell ya: Wow! Even the traffic in San Jose wasn’t as bad as this! What should have been a two lane road through the middle of town was packed on both sides by parked cars, forcing the hundreds of pedestrians, bicyclists and cars to take turn squeezing through this little, ram-shackled, dive of a town.

There is a chance that we will go back to PV on Monday and all will be back to its sleepy norm, but for now, the place is packed—PACKED—with Ticos and foreigners on vacation. And it didn’t stop there. The traffic (pedestrian, bicycle and car) held out for the next 11 kilometers, coming to a head at the end of the road in a “sleepy hamlet” called Manzanillo. Arriving in Manzanillo was like pulling into the final stretch of parking lot for a Grateful Dead reunion show (assuming Jerry was still alive.) So much traffic, buddy, SO much traffic! And then, to really put the icing on the cake, it started to rain. This completely destroyed any dreams I had of finding a nice peaceful piece of Caribbean beach at the end of a dirt road to chill out on before we are due back at the airport. Somewhat dejected, we sat in the parking for a little while and called the cabinas and hotels in our guide books.

This experience only served to reinforce my flagging interest in Caribbean CR. Not only were the responses to my room inquiries tersely negative to the point of rudeness, but I was on the edge of admitting to Marguerite that she might actually be right about planning and reservations. Since this goes against so many of my most deeply felt travel instincts (okay… maybe just my pride), it was a completely unacceptable situation. So we did the next logical thing; we left Manzanilllo, heading back toward Puerto Viejo stopping at every place that looked like it might have acceptable (yes, I have rather snooty taste) accommodations.

It turns out that for all the hustle and bustle, some of the nice places were fairly empty. We settled on a comfortable little group of cabinas with more bugs, frogs, night time singers (wildlife-wise), and solitude than most of the places that we have stayed. Hotel Kasha has turned out to be just the ticket... so far. Tomorrow we are going to try to start our PADI Open Water Diver certification courses, but time is not on our side. Expect some palm tree, beach-lounging Snuggie shots if we don’t go diving! Or maybe even if we do…

Cheers, Everybody!