Second night sleeping in The Dream House, and it began living up to its name. I had a much better sleep, waking up only at 5 am when the howler monkeys began their murderous racket. After that, a slow start: a bit of reading, breakfast of fruit (adopting the local ways), some rather dry pastries from yesterday, nice coffee from the filter machine.
We weren’t sure what to do today, but walking down the beach to investigate Manzanillo felt as good a way as any to start. The dog followed us, all the way out of the resort and onto the beach.
“Stay!” I said, hoping she understood more English than I knew Spanish. She “stayed” for a while, then started following again. We picked up the pace and lost sight of her before she could catch us. I felt like an irresponsible dog owner. “Not my task”, said Sarah, messaging the owners. They said not to worry; her name was Pingping.
We reached Manzanillo, an end-of-the-road sort of place that really is at the end of the road: the coast road ends here, the road to Panama being further inland. This picture shows all you can see of the village from the beach – not exactly overdeveloped.
What there was could have done with a little development. The few places that looked like bars all looked dilapidated, and all were shut, though, to be fair, it was early on a Monday morning.
Beyond the end of the road was the beach car park, and beyond that was a ticket office for the Guanacaste-Manzanillo National Refuge. This was unexpected. We couldn’t remember the guidebook mentioning a park. We could tell quite a few other people knew about it because the car park was already busy.
We couldn’t think of a better way to spend the morning than another forest walk, so we paid our donation, registered our party (the two of us) and entered.
The park sat above an area of exposed, eroded coral reef, making it rocky terrain. There was supposed to be a cave, but the signs weren’t great, and we missed it. The coral sand meant the paths and beaches were on golden sand, which made a pleasant change from the grey of Cahuita.
We followed the trail, looking in the undergrowth and looking in the trees for any wildlife. We didn’t see much. We no longer had Jenny with us – our spotter-in-chief with young eyes. We had to rely on other people seeing something, then shamelessly join them to have a look.
An English father and son had spotted a toucan, the type with the black bill, yellow on top. The toucan was really hard to spot until you saw it, then it was obvious. This next photo shows why a decent telephoto lens is essential for wildlife pictures; a phone camera only works if the quarry is about three feet in front of you. Anyway, here is a nice picture of the trees. I have no idea where the toucan is.
And some of the trees are worthy of pictures in their own right – truly monumental. The big, successful trees become scaffolding for all the climbers and epiphytes. The latter aren’t parasitic; they simply grow on the trees. Some of the hosted plants will drop roots all the way to the ground to get nutrients, as in this next picture. This is a clever strategy: let some other plant do all the hard work against gravity, then send down a runner to get food!
The trail went on a bit; you had to choose your spot to turn back. There were side trails down to little beaches, pretty enough spots but very shaded, with trees right up to the water line with lots of debris and crabs. Sarah got very good at spotting little hermit crabs.
The return was quicker. When we got back to Manzanillo village, it had livened up a bit.
We found a little soda, busy because it was the only one near the beach. It was a bit of a run-down-looking place, with a tin roof, painted block walls, and a tiny little kitchen, but the man running it was friendly, and the customers looked pleased with the food – big portions.
We only wanted a light lunch, but the light options, like the salads, were all “off” – no salad delivery! We ordered some rice dishes, shrimp for Sarah, chicken for me, hoping they wouldn’t be too big. While we waited, the lettuce delivery arrived.
The food was very good and very generous, more of a large lunch than a light one. Sarah joked with the owner about the lettuce delivery arriving too late for her green salad. She did this without using a word of Spanish – remarkable. A short while later the man presented her with a shrimp salad, her original choice. It was on the house! Our light lunch had turned into quite a big meal.
After lunch, we spent some time on the beach. The sea was quite rough today. Little breakers were crashing on the beach. We both went for a swim. Sarah hates rough seawater, while I love it. I could jump up and down in the surf all day.
It was fascinating watching the fishermen messing about with their boats. One fellow was relying on a friend’s old lorry to drag his boat up the beach. The truck was on the road at the far end of an alarmingly long rope. It wasn’t heavy enough to get traction on the sandy tarmac. It took a lot of wheel spinning and rope stretching before the boat complied with the laws of physics and bounced up the beach.
We returned to The Dream House for a break from the heat, to shower off the salt and sand, and have a bit of a siesta. At 5 pm, we went for a sundown walk along the beach. The pelicans were flying again but not fishing so much as yesterday. Perhaps the rougher water puts them off.
We walked as far as the next lodge. Sarah wanted to walk to the end of the point but it looked too far away for tonight. It was dark when we returned to the house; sadly, there were no fireflies this time.
Neither of us felt like we needed dinner. We had some crisps, opened a bottle of wine and spent a nice evening chilling. Sarah had a sleep on the hammock. I waited eagerly for the moment she would fall out, but it never came.
The saga of Jenny’s return trip continued and not in a good way. She spent the day calling airline helpdesks trying to rearrange her return flights. She had the onward connection from Madrid to worry about. Of course, there were no Iberia staff at the airport to help. She got her tickets, but the weather was not looking good. San Jose was fog-bound again. Why hadn’t Iberia got the flight out first thing in the morning when the weather had been fine?
Time went on; the flight got delayed, then once again cancelled. This time, there was no help from the airline with hotels. Worse, because so many flights were grounded, all the hotels were full. Near midnight, Jenny finally messaged to say she had got to some accommodation. At least she could get a good night’s sleep with the whole rigmarole to look forward to again tomorrow.