We said goodbye to Roberta and staff at the Hotel Casa Del Flores. I’d be surprised if there was a nicer place to stay in Cahuita.
We parked the car opposite the empanada place, where, for a third day, we failed to buy any empanadas. They weren’t yet open today; yesterday, they’d sold out, and the day before, they’d been closed. Anyway, it seemed a reasonable place to park the car.
We walked the short way to the Cahuita National Park entrance. They have a strange system where you make a donation and get admittance for as many people as there are in your group. We’d got our wristbands yesterday when we’d done our snorkelling, which meant we didn’t need to donate again, but we still had to queue and register a name for our “group”.
We walked along a path about 10m in from the beach, but what a different world. It took that little space to be in the rainforest. It was busy on the path, but if you walked slowly, as we tried to do, people soon disappeared and left us on our own. I couldn’t see how we would spot anything on this high-footfall trail. Nevertheless, I dutifully scanned the undergrowth for snakes and the branches above for monkeys.
We did see a racoon. It was sunning itself with such nonchalance that it didn’t seem to count as a wild animal, but I had to remind myself that I’d never seen a raccoon before. It was rather cute.
We caught up with a Spanish family looking into the trees above us. They’d spotted a sloth. Like the one at Tirimbina, it was just a bundle of fur on top of a tree. A guide bringing along a big party behind us pointed for his group up towards where we were looking – his easiest animal sighting of the day.
We went a bit further. The same Spanish family had spotted a group of howler monkeys. The guide soon brought his group along, even more delighted.
The Spanish family headed off up the beach chasing another racoon. They were taking the wildlife with them. We kept to the forest trails but didn’t see much more. We needed them to spot for us.
The trail came to an end where a stream entered the sea. The people who didn’t care about snakes biting their toes were fine, but we had to take our boots off and put our sandals on.
Towards the point, the trail merged with the beach. We took our boots off again to get through some washed-out stretches. Jenny spotted a hermit crab, which made a welcome change to mammals. And in the water off the beach, I spotted a couple of stingrays, so Jenny did get to see them after all.
We reached a point where people had spotted some capuchin monkeys. We got excited because we hadn’t seen them before. The excitement was tempered when we realised the monkeys were here to filch treats off the tourists. This was where the guides did the fruit stop for their tours. We’d heard that these monkeys were the rascals of the jungle. There were a lot of them, and they were pretty brave. The park has a strict no-food policy to prevent the animals from getting used to humans, so why were the guides allowed to do fruit stops?
The racoon had caught up with lunch, too. It bothered a group of American youngsters who didn’t like it when it went for their bags. One of them prodded it away with a six-foot-long stick to much acclaim from his compatriots. Do Americans not think racoons are cute?
Rounding the point, I could finally clinch the photo I’d wanted since reaching the Caribbean: the classic palm tree leaning across the beach scene.
Once around the point, the other side of the park had a different feel. The path followed the shore closely with lighter vegetation and more palms. Where were the mangroves? We saw pelicans fishing in the sea, which was a real treat. The last of the flying dinosaurs!
At the end of this stretch, the path turned inland. We had a break, put our swimming costumes on, and went swimming. Like yesterday, the water was so warm it felt like bathing in a lovely warm flotation tank.
From this point on, the walk was the strangest yet. For 2 km, the trail went across boardwalks above a swamp.
It should have been perfect for seeing crocodiles, but there were none nor any living thing we could see in the murky water.
Up above was different. We saw two separate troupes of howler monkeys crossing the trail. They make a real fuss in the trees, so they are hard to miss when they move. Unlike the capuchins, they disdain humans and live in a treetop world of their own.
Finally, we emerged back into the real world – a car park where a big party of German tourists, possibly off a cruise ship into Limon, were boarding coaches.
We had to walk to the main road and weren’t sure how to return to Cahuita – a bus we hoped. Passing a run-down-looking bar, the owner accosted us. He was stopping everyone walking by, offering them a taxi ride for the price of the bus fare. And, of course, we could buy some drinks from him and use the bathroom, too.
He was holding forth with some Americans he had grabbed before us. It was interesting hearing him talk about how he had bought his place for $4,000 in 1990 and how an American hotel company wanted to buy him out for $700,000. He didn’t want to sell. He didn’t want the Costa Rican Caribbean to be commercialised the way the Pacific coast had been.
Back in Cahuita, we had a late lunch: Caribbean coconut-flavoured chicken for Jenny, grilled tuna for Sarah, and fried chicken for me; a simple enough but delicious meal. We had some more beers, but that was it; we had run out of time for the family part of the trip.
Now, there was nothing to do but go to the bus station to wait for Jenny’s bus. It was going to be a long journey for her. Because of the roadworks on the main road, the bus was going to divert into the mountains and wouldn’t reach San Jose until 11 pm. We said goodbye and hoped she would have an uneventful journey.
Sarah and I set off on our own for the first time. Our next stop was even further down the coast at Manzanillo, the last village before the roads disappear and the coast is uninhabited until you reach Panama.
We found our accommodation fairly easily. We were booked into the Dream Nature House, which we’d found on Airbnb. It looked like someone’s beach retreat cabin, but when the contact details came through, it turned out to be part of the Congo Bongo Eco Resort Village. As a result, we weren’t quite sure what to expect. We weren’t disappointed. It was a delightfully quirky place, as these guardians to our entrance showed.
The house had an enclosed, insect-proof bedroom with a kitchen and living space outside. It was rather lovely.
With the outside fans blowing the insects away, the nighttime felt quite friendly despite the jungle all around. After our late lunch, we opened some beers and ate some nachos, which was all we wanted.
That was when the bombshell hit: Jenny had left her passport with us. We all felt terrible, the evening ruined, dream house turned nightmare!
It had been back at the airport that I’d suggested she put her passport with ours – keep all our valuables in one place. Disaster! Ultimately, it was her responsibility of course, but it felt like a major team failure. What to do? A difficult problem to sleep on.