Southern Pacific

NatureAir has groovy-lookin planes

A couple weeks ago it hit me that I really don’t have much time left in Costa Rica, and there are still so many places I’d like to travel to!  One of them is the famous Corcovado National Park on the southern Pacific Osa Peninsula, which National Geographic called “the most biologically intense place on Earth!”  I realized that if I was going to make it there this trip, it had to be that week.  So after a couple busy days of planning, I had an admission permit and airplane ticket reserved so I set off!  I flew on NatureAir, one of the domestic airlines with beautiful airplanes and a relaxed feel (they don’t even have metal detectors) from San José to Drake Bay, a remote town of 1000 on the western tip of the Osa Peninsula.  Like Tortuguero, Drake Bay is so remote that the best way to get there from San José is to go seven hours by bus and then take an hour and a half boat ride, which is why I flew, which took one hour.  And what a pretty hour it was!  A teeny tiny plane with about eight people total, and we flew mostly along the coastline, so I got an aerial view of the whale’s tail sand formation that juts out into the Pacific at Ballena Marino National Park, our destination later that weekend.

 

part of the Osa Peninsula

the sprawling Drake Bay airport.

Drake Bay

Some background information on Corcovado National Park and the Osa Peninsula: it is the largest Pacific rainforest left in the Americas, and home to the largest population in the world of several endangered animals: the scarlet macaw (Scarlet macs we call em down here), the Baird’s tapir (related to the elephant), squirrel monkeys, and all six of the wild cats found in the Americas (jaguar, puma, ocelot, margay, jaguarondi, and tigrillo).

Well it didn’t take long to start seeing scarlet macs: upon returning to my hostel after lunch, there were three in the tree right outside my tent room, and I continued seeing more all day while exploring.  One of the interesting things about scarlet macaws is that they mate with only one partner for life; if their partner dies, they remain single for the rest of their lives.  They are so loud, though, squawking all over the place!

scarlet macs

Anyways, the next day I signed up for a day tour of the national park, so we left in a boat at 6AM for Sirena Ranger Station in the heart of Corcovado, seeing dolphins on the way!  Our small group hiked with a guide for a few hours before lunch, and then after they left in the boat, I hiked until sunset, when I was very grateful I had paid extra to reserve dinner from the kitchen.  Here’s what I saw in the park: tapirs, toucans, great currasows, all four species of monkeys, peccaries (wild pigs), coatis (like raccoons), agoutis (rodents), manta rays, and some crazy-lookin bugs.

tapir

tapir chillin in the mud

great currasows have crests on their head just like Reggie Bullock

squirrel monkey

peccaries

Was thinking about taking my family to Corcovado when they come to visit, and my first day made me think that would be wonderful.  Until bedtime.  The accommodations are rudimentary dorm rooms with bunkbeds and no fan, which is rough on the Pacific coast, where it’s usually hotter than 90 degrees during the day.  Additionally, I had failed to bring a mosquito net for my bed, so I had bugs crawling all over me all night (thankfully not biting bugs).  That experience kinda ended my serious thinking about taking my family there.  It was neat though being in the absolute middle of nowhere, with nothing to do after dinner except go to bed (around 8PM) and where everyone got up early (around 4AM) to start hiking again.

Sirena Station

the Sirena landing strip.  Only two pilots are brave enough to land here.

Despite not sleeping very well, I felt great the next day, and after breakfast made the 20 kilometer hike out of the park to the small town of Carate, where there were even more scarlet macaws than in Drake Bay!  The only way from Carate to the nearest real town is a two-hour ride in the bed of a cargo truck with no seat belts on some of the bumpiest and dustiest roads I’ve ever been on, but we eventually made it safely to Puerto Jiménez, where I spent the night for $8 in a room on the second floor of the house of some lady named Fanny Lu!  And thanks to a cold shower and a fan, I slept great despite the heat.

part of my hike along the coast

Then Friday I rented a car and drove a beautiful four hours up the Pacific coast to meet Caroline in the port city of Quepos, where after eating we hiked in Manuel Antonio National Park, which is known for its monkeys, but we think it should be known for being a tourist trap.  Anyways then back south an hour to Uvita, a tiny Pacific beach town which is famous as one of the best places in the Americas to see migrating whales during the right time of the year.  And what a sense of humor God has: right there on the beach is a sand and rock formation exactly resembling a whale’s tail at low tide!  The first night we had an entire Spanish restaurant to ourselves, where we had paella for the first time and continued our vacation splurges on drinks, this time on sangria!

the whale's tail doesn't look quite as good at high tide...

seafood paella (with crab, shrimp, oysters, clams, kalamari, and fish)

Uvita is also home to one of the coolest hostels in the country, called Flutterby House, which is where we stayed!  I won’t bore you with all the details, but it has almost everything you could possibly want, including TREEHOUSES!  Unfortunately the only treehouse still available when we booked only had one bed, so we each spent one night sleeping in the hammock on the porch, but we loved it :)  Saturday was the chillest day ever.  Many of our weekend trips have definitely not included as much downtime as some people might like, so this was a change.  When we woke up, our stomachs felt a little funny (somehow we didn’t realize it might be connected to the local water.  Although in our defense we had had zero problems with the tap water anywhere else in Costa Rica.), so we skipped breakfast and walked along the beach to the whale’s tail before settling in at a friendly hole in the wall restaurant for brunch.  Because we hadn’t been sure if we were going to get in the ocean or not during our hike, I had only brought $10, so we had fun milking the menu for the maximum amount of food we could get for that much.  Aw man it was so heavenly sitting there outside but in the shade, just relaxing and talking, that we stayed there two hours.  Then returned just a couple hours later for lunch (with a lot more money), which again lasted two hours as we enjoyed talking and met some of the staff.  Oh yeah and the fact that when we ordered brownies and ice cream (what can I say, we are good at vacation), which they said yes of course they had, the dude hopped in his car to go buy ice cream for us from the grocery store haha oh Costa Rica.  Enjoyed surfing at sunset, but by then after a whole day of drinking the tap water, we were feeling a little sick, and didn’t sleep so well, but thank God (literally because I had been praying all night), at 5:30AM when it was time to get up to drive back to Heredia for church, we both felt almost good as normal!  Nothing like being sick to make you appreciate feeling good, a trend which would continue the next weekend… Church was great as usual and we eventually got Caroline home to get started on her homework!

our treehouse!