Costa Rica, Part IV

French Quarter Becomes Oasis of Wary Calm Simultaneously depressing and uplifting, somehow. It shows how fortunate I've been that to me that reads like something out of a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel.

Also, I haven't posted the last part of my Costa Rica log yet.


After Tortuguero, I spent another night in San Jose before heading down to the Southern Caribbean to hang on the beach. One trip to the beach my first afternoon yielded nice swimming but managed to embed sand in my towel that would remain till I got home and washed it twice. It was a pretty beach though – white sand ([Bad username: ”Mishou”], do you still collect sand? I brought some back for you) lined by jungle. There were also hundreds of little crabs that jumped into sand holes as soon as you got near them, which were fun to torment observe.

The next day I signed up for a snorkeling tour. The snorkeling wasn’t great – the water was a bit muddy and the sea life was limited, but I never get tired of watching schools of fish swim in rapid formation, so I enjoyed that. The Swiss and German couple on the boat with me and I had the boat guy drop us off at a beach about an hour and a half’s gentle jungle walk back to the village. They sweetly pressed some of their lychee fruit and banana chips on me, which was nice, and also their insect repellant (I hadn’t counted on them swarming in the middle of the day).

There was yet another troop of Capuchins who had apparently learned that gullible tourists were happy to give them fruit, so we and the other snorkeling boats that had stopped off there were mobbed. Well, sort of. Surrounded is probably the better word. But except for some more strategic teeth baring and hissing, they mostly ignored us. They also spent a lot of time chasing and wrestling with each other. Again, evil but adorable.

In the stupid moron department, someone gave a monkey a lollipop, which it sucked on with the little stick coming out of his mouth. Okay, yeah, cute, but come on people. In what world does wild animal + lollipop = good idea? Seriously, now.

We hiked back and a zillion little lizards scurried out from under our feet. The big blue butterflies called blue morphos were pretty prominent here too. The trail was alternately sandy and muddy, and eventually we took off our shoes and walked through the mud barefoot.

That made a swim in order, so when we reached the beach near the town we spread our stuff out under a tree and dove in. We got out again, though, when we realized that some people were standing under our tree pointing up. Sure enough, a family of howler monkeys had climbed down into some of the lower branches and was watching our things very intently. There was even a baby performing acrobatics. Still, we made sure nothing was unattended after that.

The extra couple of hours of unexpected beach time outlasted my dutifully applied sunscreen, so I got a bit (or very sunburned), but it was as fairly mild inconvenience, or will be until I get skin cancer in twenty years. Eventually we made it back to the village, and I filled basically my entire shower with sand (is that bad of me? I left a nice tip for the hotel cleaning people), and had dinner with the couple I had met earlier.

The next day it was time to head back to San Jose, do my souvenir shopping, and head home on the super-early morning flight. I think I could have stayed longer. I would really have liked to go south to Panama, and I’m determined that that’s the next trip (almost everyone I talked to told me how wonderful it was, and I read this fascinating book about research scientists there. Plus, canal – cool. And it’s in both South and North America. Fate, I tell you!)