In the words of Steve, “Finally, a trip worth blogging about!” If it doesn’t involve hours of driving, many of those on dirt roads, at least one throw up, a few tears, and a bit of four-wheeling adrenaline, it doesn’t really qualify for a Schill’s Thrills adventure, so why talk about it? Well, I guess we have something to talk about!
We left Wednesday for Puerto Jimenez—if you pulled out a map, you would see it is on the South Pacific corner of Costa Rica, on the Osa Peninsula. You would also see that it is not very close to San Jose, and if you estimated the amount of time it would take to drive that distance in the U.S., you would need to at least double it for Costa Rica--on a good day. Fortunately (no, I’m not going to do the fortunately, unfortunately game through this, although I could), Steve planned this trip in legs, and Aubree and Brinnan are very good at entertaining Campbelle, so, for the most part, it was a pretty pleasant drive. (It didn’t hurt that the car sick medication we gave them all made them pretty sleepy, too.) Okay, just one—unfortunately, when Steve plans things in legs, he takes the liberty to plan extra side trips, which translates to a lot of extra driving.
The Raber Family accompanied us again on this trip, as it would be economical (on the boat—flat fee for the boat ride), we all were wanting for a big trip, and we have found it convenient to have two cars in times of trouble (although we weren’t risking bringing “His Majesty” on this one).
Our first stop (not including the emergency vomit pull-over for the Rabers) was in a little valley “on the way” called St. Gerardo de Dota. It was about a forty minute detour off of the main road on a dirt road to an out-of-the-way little town in one of the most lush, beautiful areas we have seen. It is known for its bird-watching, quetzals in particular, which are just starting to enter into their nesting season (April-May). We didn’t see any, but enjoyed walking around and admiring the gardens and river and the pretty resorts.
We drove back to the main road and made it to our stopping point for the day, Dominical. It is an extremely small surf town with a lot of Americans bumming around having a beer and waiting for the next good wave. We stayed at a hotel that had surely been beautiful at one point, but seemed to have fallen into the hands of some of those Americans. Our room was small and had that musty smell that old buildings in hot humid areas have, with the hint of outhouse as you walked up to the door. As is pretty typical for smaller towns, the plumbing can’t handle flushing the toilet paper, so you have to put it in the garbage can. The pool would have been really pretty except for the cloudy haze and the fuzzy stuff from the surrounding trees.
After some lunch, Steve, Aubree, and Brinnan took off for the beach while I tried unsuccessfully to put Campbelle down for a nap. I met them at the beach and Campbelle confirmed that she is NOT a beach babe when she took a look at the waves and took off running for her life back to the road (I have never seen her run so fast) saying over and over, “NO—scary!”
We loaded up on some car sick medication at the local farmacia and got up early the next morning to make it to Playa Ventana, a beautiful beach with some cave/tunnels you can walk through at low tide. There is a family that lives close by that runs a business letting you park in their parking lot and they watch your car for you as you go to the beach.
We made it to Puerto Jimenez that afternoon around 1:00 p.m. after driving the last two of the four hour drive on dirt roads. We stopped at a soda (a small café that usually serves casados—a typical Costa Rican dish consisting of a choice of meat, some rice, beans, and a salad, sometimes with fried plantains) while Steve arranged for a dolphin tour. He came here a year ago at the end of a business trip and went “swimming with the dolphins.” That essentially consisted of being towed behind a boat holding onto a board that you could tilt to take you under or pull you up, and wearing goggles, you can watch and hear the dolphins swimming around you. This was the main point for this whole trip, and I have to apologize, because at this point, it is just too tempting to go into unfortunately/fortunately mode, because UNFORTUNATELY, dolphin boarding had since been banned, and the company that Steve had gone with had closed up shop. FORTUNATELY, Steve was able to locate someone who knew the guy who had taken Steve before, and we were able to arrange a boat tour with him. As we came up to the boat, we discovered that Campbelle REALLY likes big “butts” (think “Finding Nemo”) as she said, “Whoa—me too?? Go on really big butt?!” She loved the boat ride! UNFORTUNATELY, our boat guy was familiar with the ban on dolphin boarding and didn’t have a board in the boat. FORTUNATELY, Steve doesn’t take no for an answer, and keeps gently hinting at something until he gets his way, and although there was no board, there was a rope with a tow bar. Brinnan, my no-fear daughter, was the first to give it a try. We had found a big pod of dolphins, which was amazing to see. They were jumping alongside the boat, in front of the boat, behind the boat, doing flips—it was truly incredible. UNFORTUNATELY, the water was too dark and choppy for Brinnan to be able to see them under water, although FORTUNATELY, she was able to hear them a few times which was really cool.
UNFORTUNATELY, as we had slowed down to check on where the dolphins had gone, we noticed a bright yellow sea snake about twenty feet or less from Brinnan—they are very poisonous! FORTUNATELY, our driver got right to it and started to pull her away from it. UNFORTUNATELY, Brinnan couldn’t see the snake or hear us very well, and that was when she decided to let go of the tow rope, because she was tired. FORTUNATLEY, Jennifer did not have a heart attack, although she thought she was going to, and the driver quickly moved the boat between Brinnan and the snake and we pulled her into the boat just as I watched the snake (now about five feet from my side of the boat) dive into the deep blue water. That kind of did me in for wanting to get in the water, but Steve never shies away for an opportunity for adventure, so after we found the dolphins again, he gave it a try. He was out for about half the time Brinnan was before he burned out! (I had to give Brinnan a little plug here!) In all, there were about four spottings of sea snakes that day, but Brinnan had the only close encounter. We did all get in the water (even Campbelle got in) in a shallower area and attempt snorkeling, but the water was too murky to see much.
We stayed at a great hotel a couple of miles out of town. The rooms were good sized and clean, the swimming pool was clean, and there was an open-air restaurant with really great food! Campbelle and Lyndy decided to become buddies while we were there.
Steve got up really early the following morning and drove to Matapalo, a beach area known to have a lot of wildlife and require some four-wheeling to get to, to watch the sunrise and see some amazing wildlife. He got some beautiful pictures.
The original plan was to stay two nights in Puerto Jimenez (my request from our Costa Rica trip two years ago was that if we were going to do that much driving to get somewhere, we needed at least one full day to enjoy it with no driving), but since we were trying to get back before Sunday, there were concerns about doing the full return drive in one day, so after a swim, some breakfast, and a really good rainstorm, we headed out.
Of course, we had another side trip. After about an hour, we turned off on another dirt road and headed toward Drake (drah-kay) Bay. This turned into about two hours of driving on an even rougher dirt road, fording several streams (five or six), or daring to drive over the precarious bridges next to them, then arriving at a very, very small village called Agujita, getting out of the car and standing in very humid heat, while looking around and (at least I’m sure some of us) thinking “Now what?” No, really, it was beautiful, but there wasn’t really anywhere to change into swimsuits, and even if we did, we had the drive back out plus the rest of our day’s drive to be salty and sandy, so none of us seemed to want to hike (did I mention how hot and humid it was) or swim, so we waded a little in the waves and enjoyed the scenery. Steve, always loving to get the local scoop, started talking to a guy who recommended we eat lunch at a small family soda up the street. We were literally eating on their front porch! At one point, one of the women who lived there took a shower in the bathroom that was just off the porch, then walked across in her towel to go to her room which was in a small detached building. The house was up on a hill, and as we walked up the steps, George’s four-year-old daughter Darla commented, “Well, it looks like this place probably doesn’t have an elevator.” It was fun to look at the menu, which they had attempted to translate in English on one side—appetizers were “entrances” and they offered “gassy sodas.” We had a nice lunch of “arroz con pollo” and paticones (fried plantain chips which Brinnan is also very good at making), then decided we’d better head out because it was getting late in the afternoon.
As we started our return trip, we realized it had rained higher up on the mountain we had come over, so the roads were a little muddier and slipperier, and some of the streams were higher, which meant having to brave bridges we wouldn’t have braved earlier. We finally made it back to the main road (which was still a dirt road for quite a ways) and I have to admit I was a bit cranky by then, a situation that wasn’t helped when we found out the hard way that Campbelle’s car sick medication had worn off (think two juices boxes and a cup of milk on top of dinner—we had volume)! After hosing her off with a water bottle and doing some re-medication, we had another three-hour drive ahead of us. Fortunately, as we finally came back into the vicinity of hotels, we had a little taste of serendipity in that the first hotel we came to turned out to be a beautiful, exotically primitive group of private bungalows with a great swimming pool, ocean views, and monkeys playing in the trees outside our porch. We didn’t see them until the next morning because it was late when we arrived, and we actually heard them before we saw them, as they were jumping onto our roof. It was lush jungle right off our porch and watching the white-faced monkeys jumping and climbing was pure entertainment. When I walked back from breakfast, there were four or five monkeys in the trees right around our bungalow, jumping on and off our roof. It was pretty amazing! We enjoyed the swimming pool, then loaded up and had an uneventful trip back to San Jose. The closer we got, the more we saw people in red shirts standing along the roads and on fences waving Costa Rican flags along with big parties going on. Finally we realized there was a world soccer match going on—Costa Rica vs. Mexico—it was like a national holiday!
Well, we laughed, we cried, we were in awe, and we were in a little pain. We survived another Schill’s Thrills adventure and came through mostly better for it with some great pictures, and even greater memories! Tune in next time. . . .
P.S. The day after we got home, I chatted on Skype with an American friend we knew in the Dominican Republic and mentioned we had been on a bit of an adventure. He said, "Ahh, I love dirt roads and remote places." It must be a guy thing.
