It is 1:30pm on Thursday so almost caught up on blog. It will be a lot easier when head to the eco-lodge north of San Jose on Saturday. We leave for beach at 2pm. It was really sunny this morning but now windy and cloud layer dropping. Surfing in rain is fine but wind makes the surface choppy and unclean and more rough out past lineup.
Nice sun Wednesday morning. Good news since heading out for a long boat ride. I took a Dramamine2 and put on a Scopolamine patch and wrist SeaBand acupressure bands. I get only mildly seasick but worried about thunderstorms. Travel tip, don’t put Scop patch behind ear for water sports. I noticed it gone when I got home, probably pulled off by swim mask straps.Said goodbye to the chef before heading to my taxi (pickup truck). I ate a banana and a bar for breakfast and packed some diet cokes and food in my waterproof backpack (from Xterra for SUP or kayaking) which I was very glad I brought with me to keep some post snorkel dry clothes and my phone in.It was about a 40” drive to Uvita which is south of Dominical and next to the huge maritime national park. Uvita was full of surf and adventure sports shops and restaurants and bars. We passed one serious road cyclist on the way, i told the driver the man was very brave. This mountain bike seems more the way to go, you can divert into dirt or grass if any issues with traffic.I love the eco details. Like at our lodge there is not paper or plastic cups or bottles. There was a coffee cup and a juice cup with my name for before and after.This was to remind me to mention that the tap water in Costa Rica is safe to drink and tastes good. Their sewer systems are inadequate for all the tourism so they ask to please put toilet paper in the can and not flush it.It would be a 30 mile boat ride to Cano Island.Not my photo but I saw two of these in the morning. Very big.I remembered that in Nabokov’s “Lolita” the blue butterflys are mentioned and that they are rare. I checked and it was not this species he discusses but a smaller one.
Good morning. It is 5:43am on Friday. I went to sleep at 8am yesterday. Was totally wiped out mentally and physically. Did not surf as well as on Tuesday. I good a bunch of short rides on the whitewater practicing my pop ups, but blew all my attempts at green waves (which were a little smaller). I have a massage at 9am and yoga at 11am and will give it my best shot today but my hips and quads are so tight and sore that make pop ups hard work, I may just try some knee board rides or just flat on board which are are really just as fun, like sledding versus skiing. I was up a bit at midnight and shot a brief night video of the rain. It started raining just after sunset as we were loading up the gear (by we, I mean the instructors). I also loaded all the following photos then. If there was a way to automatically load a folder full of photos and then just edit blog around them that would be a time saver for me.
The Sea Bands i wore in addition to the meds I took. I ended up giving one to a French guy after he puked most of the ride out and the other to a German woman who was nervous about the ride back.I was given a wet suit to try on. Of course as a triathlete/surfer I put it on backwards with the zipper in back, divers wetsuits have the zipper in front for easier use, no issue of lying on it 🙂 Was also fitted for fins. Masks most have been all one size as one just appeared in my dive bag on the boat.We walked the few hundred yards down the dirt road to the entrance to the national park. There is no dock in the town or park so it is a beach entry to boats. The French couple is just behind me. He was Mr. Puke 🙂I was tempted to swim across the river and back for the photo op but… safety first.I walked with the dive leader for a while and he said he liked my tattoo but had only done shorter triathlons. I must say that the Costa Ricans were the most knowledgeable about both my IM and Krav tattoos. The whole instructor crew had fun when they asked about my back tattoos and I told them it was a geography quiz. They got Kilimanjaro and Galapagos but closest guess for Iceland was New Zealand. It is weird that they show a manatee on the sign since they are found on the Caribbean coast in a river that empty’s there. But maybe the Marine National park covers both coasts. Snorkeling with the Manatees in the spring waters north of Tampa, FL is on my bucket list.
The tidal swings here are huge (and why we can only surf at high tide). We got to the beach at low tide and it is hundreds of yards from the jungle to the water but when we got back at high tide 6 hours later the water reached all the way to the jungle . The tree with the lifevests on it to the right was in the water. So…don’t fall asleep on the beach at night at low tide.
In fact the dive master said that those rocks forming a natural break wall for this beach , so not a good place to surf but a great family beach, disappear when it is high tide!Each of these boats held about 20 people. A crew of 3, several dive/snorkel leaders and 12 tourists. Our boat had 5 scuba divers and 7 snorkelers. Looking at the water inside the break wall they looked great. Maybe ? 40 feet, they had twin 300hp outboards that tilt out of water for backing boats into 2 feet of water for walking up steps at back.Just off the beach we all look happy and calm as we are told to not standup, put hands over side, etc. We are to wave to captain if we need to pee off side or have problem on the hour and 20 minute ride out (would only be an hour on way back with the swells pushing us).Here they have cranked the engines up, my Garmin watch said 30mph. And it was very windy and bigger waves than expected based on previous surfing day. The boats bow would go way up in air and slam down. I had to hold a bart and my seat to avoid being tossed up and down. I was very glad for my triple sea sickness Rx. The French dude waved his arm after 30 minutes and was led to back of boat to puke and stay near the crew. We slowed down twice more for him to puke. He would stay at the ranger’s hut for our first snorkel trip but joined us for the second one.
It was a super fun boat ride but 30 minutes would have been better than over an hour. It was like splash mountain thrills for me until the pouring rain started and pelted us like hail at the boats high speed. I was glad i had my sunglasses. Also it would have been nicer to have actual seats and not just a bench facing sideways. We saw one dolphin keep us company for awhile and many brown boobies, they had yellow legs and are relatives of the blue footed ones I saw in the Galapagos 4 years ago .
As we approached Cano Island, it is a 1000 acres, it looked like the scene in King Kong where they arrive at skull island. Pristine jungle, the higher land shrouded in mist, this hut the only building on island, the one (or 2 if a couple) national park rangers live here. It is called Cano island because it has several fresh water springs that make small streams that cut through the sand on way to ocean and make small channels in the beach.
The “bathroom” is a rocky hilly trail into the jungle. I used a nearby tree. The island was never inhabited but the native people did use it for some ritual burials and it has several of the stone spheres these pre-Colombian peoples made. But only ones up to 2 or 3 feet in diameter. There are bigger ones on mainland of 6 feet in diameter but too big for the natives boats. Near the mainland there is a line of underwater spheres showing attempts to get a big one out to the island that was eventually abandoned.
It was nice to set our feet on land. At first it looked like parts of the sand were sliding somehow but on closer inspection there were thousands of hermits crabs on the beach in an infinite variety of homes, shells of many sizes and colors and shapes, few bigger than a golf ball though.
Some were just randomly wandering but groups were feeding on coconuts, unidentified dead things and in one case a sea turtle carcass. If you grab a shell they hide inside but if you wait a little they come out and scamper on your hand. WordPress doesn’t let me use “live” photos from iPhone but these are all cool on video.One of the guides took a coconut over to a metal spike and split it open and gave us small chunks of the meat after he drank the milk. I had my water proof backpack, Diet Coke, some power bars; the island had fresh springs and no mammals other than bats, no poisonous snakes , a few boa constrictors though. I could have camped over night and cooked some crabs over a fire. All i needed was a volleyball for company like Tom Hanks had.
WOW, already 7am and didn’t even finish this post. Part of the issue is that the WordPress app seems to get really slow and clunky once I have more than a few photos, I think it is an issue of too much data it is trying to constantly “save and upload”. Doesn’t happen on computer at home. I will play with it and Google some help but I think that after I head to Peace Lodge I will make an effort to make every entry short, and just do more of them.
Drift snorkeling, boat drops us and then we drift, kick in direction of current, boat follows at a distance and then collects us at end. I shot a lot of video and photos with my GoPro7. I just took screenshots of a few on the iPhone app. There were a few more really good ones that I didn’t come by in my quick review last night. Once home I will download it all and make a 20 or 30 minute iMovie and load to Vimeo to share. The guide told us the names of the larger fish. The turtle was a hawksbill. I’ll use the guide poster to make captions for video.
The first hour of snorkeling had better fish than the second. We were right around the larger rocks that protruded from water so the colorful fish were very close to surface. And i could put my face mask just inches from the coral to see the huge variety of smaller colorful species.
But it was choppy and every minute or 2 my snorkel would fill to water to the point that I had to surface and tip back my head to blow and clear. They didnt have the fancy valve snorkel that i own . After the hour I asked the Canadian couple if it was hard for them and they said, choked every few minutes. With the fish so close to surface on protruding reefs I started just not breathing when when viewing the fish or shooting video.The biggest fish I saw was this 3 foot long Blue Jack, the Stingray was longer but mostly tail and the shark only 2 feet.The afternoon session the water was deeper but it was less choppy so easier to snorkel . This one fish in the school electrified and I could see its skeleton, video is awesome..Our boat was called La Diabla, which means she devil (or whore) but refers in this case to the devil rays. We saw them jumping beyond the surf our first surf day .
The boat ride back was much easier and only an hour, I would have slept if in a real chair. When we got back I had to buy a rash guard from the shop because it has the same turtle i saw there.
My taxi was right there and I was back at the lodge by 4 giving me time to drink a Costa Rican beer in the hot shower and then get a 90 minute nap before dinner (my only nap of the week).
Contemplating tomorrow’s activities Amazing appetizer.Not sure if I saw this fish but it was delicious, very light lemon, dill sauce !Don’t move CY! Praying mantis!!!
Last 3 photos are of other people’s excursions on break day.
