It’s actually a coffee, chocolate and sugar tour, get it? Well, I laughed, at any rate. That aside, with all the wandering around nature reserves and zip-lining, it was nice to take a chill afternoon and work on getting a pleasant sugar/caffeine buzz.
The tour was mostly what you might expect. You wander around a plantation with a guide who explains the process of making coffee, chocolate, and sugar. The view from the coffee fields was pretty impressive, I must say:
View from coffee fields with the Nicoya Peninsula in the background. Taken by Elani
Then the guide shows you the machines that are used and explains the processes. I’m not going to go into that, since if you actually want to know, I’m sure Wikipedia can do a better job than I can. Of course, they’re generous with the samples throughout the tour. It was the first time since our trip to Bali that me and Elani got eat raw cacao, a favorite of both of ours. The bean themselves are quite bitter and not great to eat at this stage, but they are surrounded by a sweet pulp that tastes more like lychee then chocolate. It’s very good, and a rare treat (for us at any rate).
Cacao pods on on the bush Taken by ElaniCacao pods and beans set out to ferment Taken by Elani
My favorite section was probably the sugar. We got to taste raw sugar cane, which was very tasty, sweet with a taste sort of like how fresh cut grass smells. They gave out samples of the Costa Rican version of moonshine – made from sugar cane juice. It was…um…bracing. They showed us the pressing machine, both the new high-tech water wheel type, and the old school oxen powered one. Then they had us try mixings the boiled-down syrup into sugar. To do that, you stir the hot syrup with a wooden paddle until it cools and crystallizes. The warm sugar was my favorite sample, it basically tasted like molasses, but fresher and sweater. Awesome!
Me turning syrup into sugar Taken by Elani
Finally they gave us a cup of coffee and for some reason a taco filled with a root vegetable called aracha – which was very good, Elani’s favorite actually. Then they drop you off in the gift shop where they have more coffee samples. At the end of the tour we were thoroughly satisfied, if a little over caffeinated.
Well, of course we went zip-lining in Costa Rica. How could you not? That’s sort of like going to Venice and not taking a gondola ride. There are zip-line tours all over Costa Rica, but Monteverde is definitely one of the premo spots for it. There are several companies that run zip-lines there. We went on two of them: 100% Adventura (which translates into English as “100% Adventure,” in case you were wondering) and Selvatura.
Both tours began in pretty much the same way. The shuttle bus picks you up from your hotel along with a bunch of other folks and drives you out of town to the zip-line park. Then you’re fitted with a harness, helmet, and gloves and given a brief safety lesson. Then you queue up and wait to get on the first line. People tend to spread out after the first one, so wait times drop off after that.
The first of the tours we did was 100% Aventura. It was highly rated in fun and safety and supposed to be one of the more thrilling ones. We started by climbing a flight of stairs up to a little platform in the tree canopy. The first one was pretty much for practice, only a couple hundred feet long. The operator stationed on the tree top platform hooks your pulley on the cable and attached you to that with a carabineer, and off you go. The gloves have a thick leather pad glued over the fingers and palm that you let slide over the cable to keep yourself from spinning. On the shorter cables, you were in charge of your own breaking (done by pulling down on the cable), I pretty much figured if I wasn’t being told to slow down when I was approaching the next platform, I wasn’t going fast enough.
When I was in my teens, me and a buddy set up a zip line between two trees at my parents’ house. In that version, of course there was no harness, you just held onto the rope, and there was a little plywood seat you could sit on, and there was no fancy platform to set off from, you just climbed to the top of a ladder and set off from there. It was thrilling for a few brief seconds, and then you were at the end (if you were lucky and jumped off the ladder a little, you could hit the hard stop). The first couple cables were an improvement over the home built variety in every way, higher up, better scenery, faster speeds (you wanted to break before the end instead of seeing how fast you could get going). But they were basically that same experience taken to the next level. After a few runs, they changed things up and let you do a rappel down from the canopy. They asked you how fast you wanted to go. I said fast because why not. A quick drop before the guy handling the line starts putting on the breaks, a bit of an adrenaline rush, then you’re back on the ground again, and a short walk and stair climb later, it’s back on the cables.
Elani on one of the mid length cables at 100% Adventura Taken by Geoff
The cables started getting longer and longer, and with that, they gave you the chance to relax and look around. As the zip-lines got longer, they stopped having you slow yourself down and used a breaking system instead. It was actually quite nice, since it gave you look around and enjoy the scenery without having to pay attention to speed. Now this was more like it, whooshing through the treetops, enjoying the view, bit of a rush. Ahh, yeah. Then came the big lines. On these, you had the option to “superman.” That meant that they they turned the harness around so you were hanging from your back, laying flat, looking down. There are two lines that you ride like this, and they are LONG. As 100% Aventura proudly points out, they’re the longest in Latin America. The longest of the two runs comes in at just about a mile. Now this was something completely different from the zip-line I made in my youth.
To start out, you lay flat and take the slack out of the lines to the pulley, then the operator lets you go and you start to pick up speed as the ground drops away from you. At least for me, this is where primal fear of falling to my death kicks in, but there’s plenty of time to relax and let that go. Then you can look around and enjoy the feeling of cruising along in midair a couple hundred feet above the ground. It is somewhat like flying, if you could only fly in a straight line and had no control over your speed. So I guess it’s like flying badly. You get going quite fast – judging by the wind speed, probably around 25 mph. Fast enough that the mile long trip doesn’t take that long. The day we went, there were pretty heavy cross winds so you swayed back a forth a little on the trip. Then you approach the platform and hit the line break and come to a fairly dramatic stop. It slows you down from cruising speed to a complete stop over about 20-30ft – if you were stopping that fast in a car, you’d leave some rubber on the pavement. Here’s a line to a quick video of Elani at the end of her run:
After two long thrill rides soaring over the tree tops, the tour was almost over. Just one more ride, which they called “the maga tarzan swing” and presumably added to the park because they don’t like repeat business. It was optional, but of course I did it. On reflection, I’m not sure I made the best choice. It’s probably worth noting at this point that I’m a bit afraid of heights. It’s not so bad with I’m attached to something semi-solid that prevents me from hurtling toward the ground in free fall. My fear of heights at this point in my life is at a level that the zip lines were more thrilling and fun then terrifying, but the maga tarzan swing was not. I walked out on to a bridge built on four steel cables stretched across the valley I’d just zip=lined over. Well, part of a bridge, it went a couple hundred feet out and terminated in a platform with a gate. Elani went first, and I was walking out as they rigged her up and let her jump. She screamed, then the whole bridge swung violently as she hit the end of the lines. It was not confidence inspiring. The two operators reeled in two large, heavy bungee lines and attached them to my harness. They pulled me up against the little gate that was the last thing that kept me from falling. Then, before I was ready (though in all fairness, I might not have gotten to “ready”), they opened the gate and shoved me out. Then there was a long moment of free fall, too long. I know my brain was doing the math and about how long with would take to hit the ground and how long I had been falling and those numbers seemed too close. There was no reassuring jerk of a line going taut ether, they were bungees. So, they didn’t provided a lot of feedback until the direction of travel changed and I started to swing. Swinging out over the trees would have probably been pretty fun, but I was a bit shell shocked at that point, and was pretty much just riding it out until I was on solid ground again. Okay, that might have been too much adventura, I guess I needed more like 95% adventura. But, when I wasn’t being forcefully reminded of my own mortality, the zip-lining tour was amazing.
A few days later, we decided to do another one of the zip-line tours. We chose one of the other companies in the area, Selvatura. The rides were a bit less “extreme”, but they traded more on views of the forest, and they did not disappoint in that regard. Selvatura’s park was located just outside the Santa Elena nature reserve (if you want to read about my experience there, check this out), so it was located in beautiful, dense cloud forest. Appropriately enough, the forest was covered in a thick fog the day we went.
Me on a cable at Selvatura park Taken by Elani
The zip-lining itself was a pretty similar experience. The combined cable length of this park was at least the longest in the area, though the two longest rides were a bit shorter than the last one. There were mid-length runs, which was nice, because as I mentioned the scenery here was great. The second longest run was done in tandem, with two people on the same cable. Of course, I went with Elani. They rig you both on the same cable, with one person in front of the othe. The front person (Elani) holds the other person’s ankles under their armpits. The view as the back person wasn’t great, which is especially inconvenient as the person in the back does the breaking, but not until the operator signals. Which of course you can’t see, because there’s someone directly in front of you. There’s also a cable break, so it’s not that important, and there’s good odds the whole thing was set up to amuse the folks running it. The longest run was done “superman” style again. The fog was thick enough that I couldn’t see the other end of the cable. It gave a somewhat eerie effect. Out in the middle of the cable looking down I could just make out the tops of the largest trees through the mist. It reminded me of looking down into deep water and just being able to make out the largest rocks on the bottom.
This tour ended with a swing as well, though it was a “tarzan swing” not a “maga tarzan swing,” which I guess meant that it didn’t have the whole free fall/bungee element. This one, I liked. I was just a very large rope swing, and as you hopped off the platform there was only a brief moment of falling while the slack in the rope was taken out and you started to swing out. I got a video of Elani doing this one:
I can definitely see why zip-lining is getting to be such a popular tourist activity. So much of the time tourist activities have a sharp split between hiking and looking at beautiful, unique natural attractions and exciting “adventure” activities that you could pretty much do anywhere, including your home town, and not have to spend all the time and money to get to. Zip-lining is fun and fast and a thrill but still allows you to take in all the beautiful natural scenery around you. Really, if I could do away with all this pesky walking and just zip-line everywhere, I’d be set.
Elani and I went to the two main forest preserves in the area – La Reserva Bosque Nuboso Santa Elena and La Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde. I’m just going to refer to them as the Santa Elena and Monteverde reserves to make life easier. We nicely bookended our trip by going to the Santa Elena reserve on the day after we arrived and the Monteverde reserve the day before we left. Both the reserves are in cloud forest – so named because they’re on the top of mountains and in the clouds a lot of the time.
To get to the Santa Elena reserve, we had our hotel reserve us a spot on one of the little shuttle vans that go scurrying around a few times a day, picking up folks at their hotels and driving them 20 minutes on rough dirt road through the jungle. They charge a whopping $2 for this service. So getting there was cheap and easy.
We paid our entrance fee (the standard $15 that Costa Rica seems to charge for popular parks), then grabbed a map from the front desk and set out to explore. The jungle here is lush. I’m going to say it again for emphasis, L-U-S-H. The plant life is dense and plentiful, emerald green leave of every shape and size pretty much fill your vision in any direction you choose to look, broken up occasionally by a few bright tropical flowers here and there. And the plants didn’t just restrict themselves to growing out of the ground, oh no, they grew out of other plants. The trees were covered with a multitude of other plants. Thick layers of moss on hung off of their upper branches, broken up here and there by bromeliads and the occasional orchid. A wide variety of creeping plants scaled up their trunks from the ground and vines hung down from their canopies. It was pretty intense. Time for some pictures to illustrate my point:
The dense jungle of the Santa Elena Reserve Taken by ElaniTrees provide a platform for other plant to grow on Taken by ElaniA might Ficus tree Taken by ElaniBerries I think – probably best not to eat them Taken by ElaniTropical flowers Taken by Elani
The fauna in Santa Elena was a bit more elusive. It was a pretty wet day when we visited, so some of the creatures may have been hunkering down to stay dry. We saw a couple of insects and several large millipedes. Birds were scares, but made the best showing. The most impressive (and certainly the easiest to photograph) was the black guan, a chicken-sized ground bird that seemed pretty much indifferent to our presence.
A brightly colored beetle Taken by ElaniA millipede Taken by ElaniA black guan Taken by Elani
The final stop was the lookout tower. Not only was it fairly rusted out, it was fairly poorly constructed in the first place. It hurt me a little as an engineer. Is it really so hard to make a decent welded structure? I’ve had that thought several times in Costa Rica, but this was definitely the worst example. Oh well, we climbed anyways and were rewarded by quite a good view of the trees from canopy level and the surrounding hills.
Seriously WTF Taken by ElaniGreat view, terrible tower Taken by Elani
The trip to the Monteverde reserve was a bit less convenient, but equally cheap. There is one large bus that runs from the center of town to the reserve, but the real issue is that there is a bus at 7:30am, then no more until 1:20pm. Which is to say there isn’t a bus at the time when a sane human being would want to go there. But whatever, we had to wake up early to see breathtaking natural beauty, boo hoo. Much like Santa Elena, Monteverde is a lush dense, jungle. The crowds were a little larger, and we had to pick our way past a few clusters of people on guided tours, but once those cleared out, it wasn’t so bad. There were a few more attractions in this park, including a waterfall, a lookout platform (with great views of the surrounding hills), and a hanging bridge (which was an excellent way of getting a view at canopy level).
A bloom in the jungle Taken by ElaniTropical flower – Monteverde Reserve Taken by ElaniTree fern flower/fruit? I don’t know tree ferns are weird Taken by ElaniFern tip unfolding Taken by ElaniView from the lookout platform Taken by ElaniAnother view from the lookout Taken by ElaniWaterfall at Monteverde Reserve Taken by ElaniElani on the canopy bridge Taken by GeoffTrees as seen from the bridge Taken by Elani
The animal life was a little more active in Monteverde, I think in large part because the day we went had considerably more sunny stretches then our day in Santa Elena. Several varieties of colorful song birds were out, insects were more plentiful, and some mammals made an appearance. We saw a couple of aguti (a large rodent that looks something like a cross between a rabbit and a guinea pig) and a coati. Though that was after we popped out for lunch at the nearby hummingbirdcafé. So I was kind of “coati-ed out” at that point. If you want to know how our lunch went, read this post.
Yellow song bird Taken by ElaniOne of the most colorful damn bugs I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen a lot of bugs Taken by ElaniAn aguti Taken by ElaniOh great ANOTHER coati Taken by Elani
Even though the jungles may not have been quite as teeming with wild animals as I would have liked, being able to wander through dense, vine-covered jungles and catching views through the mists of the vast rolling hills of full of trees fading off into the distance was a truly amazing way to spend the day. If you ever find yourself in that part of the world, I recommend making the trip to one – or preferably both – of these wonderful nature reserves.
Perhaps the title gave it away, but I’d say they’re closer to the latter. In my experience, most animals have a certain mystique about them, whether deserved or not, until you get to learn about them first hand. Until actually being in Central America, a coati was something I’d only seen in zoos or on nature documentaries. My first sighting was a brief glimpse from a shuttle bus as it pulled away from the Santa Elena Reserve parking lot. I remember thinking how cool it was to see one and hoping that I would run across another one while I was in Monteverde. Well, turns out wishes do come true. Elani and I had taken a break from hiking in the Monteverde Nature Reserve to grab coffee and snacks (the bread pudding mentioned in the title), and as the server was making our cappuccinos, a coati casually strolled pasted the front door. Well, casually trundled, coatis definitely trundle as their main mode of locomotion, but I digress. Anyways, I exclaimed, “Coati!” and me and Elani dashed out the front door, camera in hand like this might be the last chance to ever see one. I’m sure the server thought we were a little nuts. But hey, we did get some decent pictures:
OMG is that a coati Taken by ElaniYep that’s a coati alright Taken by ElaniWho does this coati think he is anyway Taken by Elani
After the Coati wandered off, well, trundled off, we went back, paid for our coffee, and took a seat outside to watch the hummingbirds at the feeders outside the café:
Three hummingbirds and one impostor at a feeder Taken by Elani
It didn’t take long before I heard rustling in the tree behind me and turned to see a coati climbing down the branch that overhung the bench. We got up and moved out of his way. Seemingly unfazed that his master plan had been thwarted, he then proceeded to climb down and attempt to trundle into the gift shop next to the café. In response, the guy at that counter good naturedly shooed him off, and when he was persistent, came out with a bucket of water and splashed the little guy with some to get his point across. He gave us a smile and shrugged: I got the impression that this was not even close to the first time he had had to do that. So we sat down at another bench to watch some more hummingbirds and it wasn’t much longer another coati came up to Elani, looking very interested in her coffee. After she pointed a finger and sternly told the coati, “no!” several times, it finally got the idea and wandered off with a slightly disappointed look in search of a less well-guarded snack, stopping on the way to lick the spilled sugar water off the railing below the hummingbird feeders.
Coati scoring some sweet sweet hummingbird food Taken by Elani
Well, there you have it. After an hour-long coffee break, the coati had moved in my mind from being an exotic animal from a faraway locale to being basically a more mild-mannered and slightly dopier version of their cousins from back home – the raccoon. We ran across another coati when we got back on our hike in the cloud forest. Though, since we didn’t have any food, this one seemed to have very little opinion as to our presence one way or the other.
Oh, speaking of raccoon relatives, another one made an appearance at the hummingbird café, the more dainty and agile olingo (kinkajou). It was a bit more wary of us human than the coatis. It seemed to mainly be interested in raiding the smaller feeder for sugar water, which it managed to do with style and grace.
The crafty olingo Taken by Elani
All in all, the hummingbird café was actually one of the high points of our stay in Monteverde (even though the coffee and bread pudding I would say earned a solid “okay” rating) and had a greater density of animal sighting then either of the two cloud forest reserves.
So as not to let any time go to waste, we signed up for a night walk on our first night in Monteverde/Santa Elena. Night walks are guided wildlife tours through the jungle that happen – as you may have guessed – after dark. The shuttle picked us up from our hotel and dropped us off at an office on the edge of the forest right after sunset. We paid and then waited around with a group of about a dozen other tourists to start. The guide gave us the spiel (don’t wander off, no flash photos, blah blah blah…). Then he handed us each a flash light and we set off.
This was, I should say, not in one of the nature preserves or anything. I’m pretty sure some company bought a piece of undeveloped land a little outside town, made a few paths, hired some guides, and started making money.
The wildlife density was quite high. The highlights reel included: toucans, frogs, onlingos (small lemur – like relative of the raccoon), a tarantula, a tree viper, and a sloth. The photo opps were, well not great. Our guide stressed making sure everyone got a look before we busted out the cameras. Good advice, since night time photos rarely come out that well. Here’s one of Elani’s better ones of a toucan:
Toucan spotted on the night walk Taken by Elani
Though seeing all these animals was great, the encounters felt a bit – well – scripted. The guides seemed to know where everything was almost a little too well. At one point, he hopped off the path, grabbed a specific leaf next to a stream and turned it over to reveal a tree frog. He had some good facts about that species of frog – including that it’s endemic to Costa Rica. Not that I’m complaining, it was a cool frog, and I enjoyed seeing it, not to mention it is easily the best picture of the night (in part because the guide took my phone and he was a master of cell phone photography):
Costa Rican tree frog at night Taken by a night walk tour guild (who I’m afraid I don’t remember his name)
As another example, we saw one of the real crowd pleasers – a young two-toed sloth – as the last sighting on the way out. It seemed like a bit too good of timing to be purely coincidence. I’m not sure how they did it, though all the guides (there were several groups) had radios and were talking, and I’m sure some of the animals have their favorite spots that the guides all know about. It did detract a bit from that marvelous feeling of running across an animal by chance in the wild. Despite that, it was still a great way to see some animals in the wild and at night when some were more active. All in all, a great way to spend our first night in the cloud forest.
From Playa del Coco, we took a shuttle bus to Monteverde. We decided not to brave the public buses on this occasion because catching a bus at 7:30am and getting to the hotel after dark didn’t sound fun. In a particularly un-Costa Rican fashion, the bus arrived 25 minutes early – rudely interrupting a nice breakfast we were having with our AirBnB host. So we got our egg sandwiches to go and hopped on the shuttle. It was still about a 3 hour trip, including a stop to stretch our legs and get a nice view of some scarlet macaws. One thing I’m learning about Costa Rica is that there’s some amazing wildlife, and some of the best sightings are where you least expect them.
Scarlet Macaw at a bus stopover Taken by Elani
I’ve heard a fair number of complaints about the roads to Monteverde, and yes they’re bad, but so are all the roads in Costa Rica, and the scenery was nice. The shuttle driver pulled over for a quick rest and photo op:
On the road to Monteverde Taken by Elani
So we made it there without incident. Strictly speaking, we were staying in Santa Elena, not Monteverde. However, you could reasonably be confused by the fact that half the businesses in Santa Elena have “Monteverde” in the name. Monteverde is sort of a separate town about a whopping 15 minute walk away. Santa Elena is the slightly larger of the two and has the majority of the shops, restaurants, and inns, whereas Monteverde is a little ritzier and has the high end hotels, a couple restaurants, a lot of handmade craft shops, and best of all, some true amazing views of the Gulf of Nicoya. But the whole area gets called Monteverde, oh and there are the Mondeverde and Santa Elena nature reserves, the most famous of which is Monteverde, which is probably why the whole thing is named the way it is.
View from Monteverde of the Gulf Nycola Taken by Elani
The first thing I noticed about the area was the lush greenery, emphasis on lush. The jungle is a “cloud forest,” meaning that clouds roll through and mist the area a couple times a day. On the ground, there was a lot of emerald green plants with huge leaves, and the trees usually had a healthy coating of moss, bromeliads, and vines. The jungle comes right to the edge of town, and sometimes spills out on to vacant lots.
Santa Elena is definitely a tourist town. It’s littered with hostels, hotels, restaurants, and little shuttle vans delivering visitors to the various activities in the area. There are a few pretty good restaurants around, and the high point, at least as far as ambiance goes, was the “Tree House,” which was actually a restaurant built around a tree. Very cool, but a little pricey, so that was definitely a sometimes treat.
Tree House restaurant Taken by Elani
There were also a few coffee shops selling locally grown coffee, and a beer house and taco bar that featured local craft beers, which was a nice change from the standard fare. Anyway, plenty of places to keep you fueled up for whatever adventure you were off to or returning from. But that’s really the point of staying there – going out and exploring. While Elani and I were there, we hiked two of the cloud forest nature reserves, did two zip line tours and a night wildlife walk, and went on a coffee/chocolate/sugar tour to relax. All of them were great. I’ll go into those more in future posts. Monteverde was a pretty action packed stop!
Costa Rican lager line up: Bohemia, Imperial, and Pilsen Photo taken by Elani
The moment you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived – the moment when I pit the three big Costa Rican lagers against each other in a three way blind taste test. The contenders – Imperial, the official beer of Costa Rica; Bohemia, the cheapest beer in every supermarket and convenience store; and last and quite possibly least, the beer you’ll find in every store that sells more than three beers, Pilsen.
Okay, let’s get one thing straight. If you’ve ever had a mass produced lager, you know pretty much everything you need to know about these beers. If I handed you a red cup at a party and told you it was Corona or Pacifica and it was actually any of the above, I highly doubt you’d question it. They’re lagers, and not great ones, but they’ll get you drunk slowly while keeping you hydrated on a hot day.
I will say that when you line them all up and drink them back to back (with a sip of water to clean the palate of course, I’m not an animal), there are noticeable differences. Enough that (and this surprised me even more than it did Elani) I was able to correctly tell which one was which. More than that I, did have a pretty clear preference, so here goes:
3rd place: Imperial. Well well well, look who thought they could just rest on their laurels. Turns out some unemployed bum who thinks he’s a beer snob and has a blog that a handful of people read has judged you. And he’s found you lacking! Does that hurt, yeah, I’ll bet it does. Anyways, Imperial hits all the notes you’d expect, it’s light, and fairly crisp, with a bit of a inoffensive yeast smell on the nose, like being downwind of the Wonderbread factory, and it’s basically like sex in a canoe . But there’s a bit of a bitter taste that settles in the middle and lingers. And then, on the finish, a slight metallic aftertaste. A beer like this isn’t complex or deep, it’s light, and should fade away into background leaving only a pleasant buzz like a nice sunset on a warm night. Not like a nice sunset on a warm night when you just cut your gums flossing.
2nd place: Pilsen. True to form, Pilsen comes in the least noticeable place. Which is actually ironic, since it probably has the most going on: like the others, it hits the lager notes, but it has a bit more bitterness. In the Imperial, the bitter just kind of made you want to switch to a fruity cocktail, but the Pilsen’s has a more intentional taste that borders on the edge of richness. Then there’s a bit of a sour note that comes in the middle and makes you go “huh,” then fades away unobtrusively. But here’s the thing: I’m from craft beer country. When you’re in the Pacific Northwest and you do an interesting beer, it’s bold, it’s flavorful, there are hops and who knows what, and it’ll leave an impression. Pilsen is not that. It’s still just a lager, and a little something in the middle isn’t enough to take it to the next level, so it just clutters the experience of sitting around on a hot day and losing yourself in thought. Which brings us to the winner…
1st Place: Bohemia. Yeah that’s right, little unpretentious Bohemia. It basically won this round by not screwing anything up. It’s light and crisp, very mellow, and just a hint of bitterness to remind you that you are in fact drinking a beer. If you’re sitting in a hammock watching the waves (as I must say I’ve been lucky enough to do on several evenings this trip) it’s not going to pull you out of the moment, and that’s okay, because hey, it’s a cheap lager: if its manages to get your undivided attention, it’s probably not for a good reason.
My previous stop, Playa Copal, really had one purpose – kiteboarding. After two weeks of that, it’s odd to wind up in a place like Playa del Coco, that really, whole-heartedly embraces doing nothing. There are things to do there, like deep sea fishing, diving, and getting shuttled out to the host of adventure activities that folks expect from Costa Rican destinations. But people mostly just seemed to be hanging out on the beach or drinking. For the more adventurous, there was the option of both hanging out on the beach and drinking AT THE SAME TIME at a slew of beach front bars. That was some serious master-level shit though, so me and Elani usually stuck to one at a time.
View from Coco Beach Taken by Elani
Coco was definitely a tourist town. Walking down the main drag, I heard more English, French, and German spoken then Spanish. Lots of decent places to eat with a good variety cuisines represented and even a high end grocery store. At 33, I’m fairly certain I was well under the average age of the folks vacationing there. Mostly, the younger tourists either were families with young children who were looking for a easy time on the beach, or the occasional young couples that looked just slightly out of place, Elani and I fit neatly into the latter category. However, if you take a walk and get away from the main street and beach front bars and hotels, there are pretty sizable Tico (Costa Rican) neighborhoods. It was nice to see that foreigners haven’t complete overwhelmed this little beach town.
For us, it was a great place to chill out, give Elani that chance to catch up on some work with decent internet, and enjoy being able to walk to a variety of grocery stores, or restaurants if we didn’t feel like cooking. A nice change from Playa Copal where our food choices were, well, I guess the polite thing to say is limited. Another bonus was finding a free standing two story apartment on AirBnB for under $40 a night. There were a couple days we didn’t get very far out of the house – I have no regrets. Oh and did I mention it had a view of the bay? No, well, here’s a picture from the front steps:
Coco apartment and hills beyond Taken by Elani
The one downside of the place was that it was about a half hour walk to the beach, but since it was fairly flat, we usually just walked it instead of bothering to find a taxi. One particularly aimless day, we made the walk to beach and continued along north until we ran out of sand and continued along the rocks that were exposed by the low tide. The rocks had a number of tide pools containing a host of little fishes, crabs, urchins, sea slugs and other critters. Past those, the rocks curved around and gave a great view looking back at the town:
Looking back at Coco Taken by Elani
On our way back, we stopped and watched the sunset. It usually sets behind the hills in most places in Coco, but here we could mostly see it get to the horizon. The cruising sailboats all lined up on their way back to harbor to catch the sunset as well:
Sunset from Playa del Coco Taken by Elani
Two of the more standout activities we actually went out and did were snorkeling and eating at a hilltop bar aptly named “The Lookout”. The snorkeling trip was honestly a bit of a letdown. The last time me and Elani went snorkeling was in Indonesia, and its crystal clear shallow waters and abundant marine life set a high standard. We went with a local dive company that took us (and a bunch of scuba divers) out to some of the rocky islands off of Playa del Coco. The waves were reasonably rough, so we couldn’t get too close to the rocks and that combined with cloudy waters made it a bit hard to see. It was by no means a terrible experience, there was a large school of sleek sliver fish that was neat to swim through, a barracuda swam by, and there were a couple other neat fish. Here are the closest shoots I was able to get with the GoPro:
View of the reef Taken by GeoffTropical Fishes Taken by Geoff
Actually, the best wildlife we saw was from the boat. A herd of devil ray were breaching a couple hundred yard out. It was great to see them hurtle themselves full speed out of the water. Elani was very excited – it’s something she’s wanted to see for awhile.
The Lookout on the other hand, exceeded my expectations. Let’s just start with a picture:
The Lookout (no I’m not being paid for this…but maybe I should be?) Taken by Elani
That gives you most of what you need to know. And, in case you were wondering, yes that’s craft beer (for Costa Rica none the less), which is a vast improvement from the canned loggers widely available in most of Costa Rica. But I digress, let’s have a little better look at that view:
View from the restaurant Taken by Elani
Okay, but how was the food – good. Elani made a perfectly reasonable choice and got a poke bowl. I made a less reasonable chose and got something called “tuna poke nachos”. Why? Because it sounded ridiculous and people kept mentioning it, in a positive way, in google reviews. It was ridiculous, and it was delicious. It consisted of a giant plate full of deep fired wan tons covered in tuna poke, mango salsa, sliced jalapenos and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting. I just managed to get through it, with some help from Elani. I’m lucky our apartment was downhill from the restaurant.
All in all, Playa del Coco was a good place to chill for 5 days and enjoy some good food and beer and some beautiful views. It provided a nice relaxing contrast to the adventure coming at our next stop – Monteverde.
All in all, I’d say there are really three things to recommend a stay in the Salinas Bay area: the kiting, the views, and the wildlife. Which is by no means a criticism. Usually, Costa Rica is associated with lush tropical rain forests, but the northwest coast is actually quite dry, giving it a more deserty feel. There are plenty of cactuses interspersed with trees. I’m going to go through some of the critters my trusty photographer Elani and I saw on our stay there, focusing mostly on the one we have pictures of.
Birds were probably the most visible and stunning of the creatures we encountered. There was a host of marine birds. Magnificent frigate birds were quite common, though very hard to photograph, and it was quite common to see the pelicans diving for fish right off shore.
Pelican fishing party. Taken by Elani
Of course, there were inland tropical birds as well. I went on in some length about the parrots in this post. So I’ll spare you any more other than to set the record straight and say that they are actually parakeets, not parrots. There were also a goodly number of magpie-jays flying around and making weird and varied noises to each other. One landed on the railing of our deck and is now getting his fifteen minutes of fame.
Magpie-jay Taken by Geoff
A species of small dove was quite common as well. This one had made a nest and was raising up an adorable little family in the cactus hedges that lined the road up to our room.
Tiny dove on nest Taken by Elani
Speaking of nests, on a walk, Elani and I found a whole colony of what we’re pretty sure (after a bit of internet research) are montezuma oropendolas. Very beautiful crow sized birds with bright yellow tails that make hanging basket nests. Unfortunately, the birds don’t come through very well in the photo, but the nests were quite impressive.
Montezuma oropendola nests Taken by Elani
The mammals were a little less prominent – or possibly more sneaky – than the birds. We saw some sort of possum one night, and heard the raccoons digging around in the trash on a number of occasions, though we only saw them once, in the trash of course. There was an interesting type of lanky squirrel that Elani was able to photograph.
Costa Rican squirrel Taken by Elani
Of the sea creatures I saw, the rays were most impressive. I only saw them while out kiteboarding, though, and didn’t get any pictures. In the time I was there, I saw five eagle rays, and four of what I’m pretty sure were cownose rays. Crabs, though not quite as impress as the rays, were a bit more cooperative photography models. Elani ran across a rather photogenic specimen at low tide. This is actually my favorite of the wildlife pics she got.
A crab in a tide pool Taken by Elani
This hermit crab was a somewhat shier subject and it took a bit of patience to get him to come out of his shell – figuratively and literally.
A shy hermit crab Taken by Elani
The lizards made a good showing in Playa Copal as well. Of course there were tons of geckos, including at least two making their home in our room. They were fairly plain, light gray and around four inches long including their tails. And they were noisy! I’m not really sure how a lizard the size of my index finger can make so much noise. Anyways, they only come out at night, so getting a picture of a roughly wall colored lizard in low light was kind of a fool’s errand. There were two species of lizard that frequented the road down to the beach; a little red cheeked one, who you’ve see before in an earlier post , but I’ll include again, because, well. he was quite a looker.
A fancy little lizard! Taken by Elani
And secondly, a little variety of skink. This one we found warming up for the day right by our front door.
A skink Taken by Elani
Then there was the iguanas. Back home in the Pacific Northwest, it’s such a rare surprise to see even a tiny lizard that to see regularly see lizards measuring well over a foot scurrying around the walkways to my room kind of blew my mind. This one was particularly fond of sunning itself on the roof of the pool hut, which could be seen from our back porch.
Iguana on the roof of the pool hut Taken by Elani
But really, you didn’t have to leave the room to see pretty interesting animals. Of course, there were the scorpions I found in the shower. They were some of the more exciting and less fun of the creatures that made their way to our room or back porch. There was also a tailless whip-scorpion, which I was actually pretty excited to see, but Elani was less enthusiastic about.
A tailless whip-scorpion Taken by Elani
To give a sense of scale, his body was a bit over an inch long. She warmed up to him once I named him Heraldo Rodriguez (there no joke to that name, I just like it). Also, Heraldo was chilling on the ceiling about 10 feet off the ground, so there was not much to be done about him. Some other visitors included several large green grasshoppers, who could have passed for leaves if they didn’t insist on flying full speed into windows and deck chairs, this friendly praying mantis…
Praying mantis Taken by Elani
…and the largest insect we saw, by length but probably not by weight, this walking stick insect. We were sort of amazed that something so spindly didn’t just blow away in the constant gusts of wind there. But it looks like he managed. We agreed to both make stupid faces for the picture, but he coped out last minute. Moral of that story is don’t trust a stick bug.
A walking stick insect Taken by Elani
Well, that pretty much covers our animal adventures for our two week stay in Playa Copal. Costa Rica is known for its wildlife so I’m sure there will be more from our next stops. Stay tuned.
And they like to live in showers – evidently. I found the critter pictured above on the shower curtain while I was washing up after a kiteboarding session. I’m not usually too squeamish about sharing space with invertebrates, but I must say I wasn’t too keen on having this little fellow hanging out in the shower with me. So, after getting my wife to thoroughly document the occasion, I got a glass, caught it, and released it outside, well away from the door to the room. After all that excitement, it was finally time to get all the salt off me and enjoy a nice scorpion free shower. Well, no such luck! There was a second one hanging out behind the inline hot water heater in the shower. It didn’t come all the way out, and at that point I was pretty much ready to just finish up and get out, so I didn’t bother to do anything about it. It didn’t come out again. In case you want a better sense of scale, here’s Elani holding her hand up (sort of) close to the first one.
