After last night’s early night, I was awake at 2.30 am. I’d slept for six hours, and that appeared to be enough. I’d stopped worrying about being eaten by things. Instead, I was listening to all the noises: the chirping frogs, the rasping grasshoppers, the occasional barking dog, and the sound of the river. There is no nighttime silence, no listening to the blood in your own ears like you can sometimes do in the absolute silence of an English country night. The night here is alive, and its noise doesn’t help an insomniac.
I did doze a bit, but by 5 am, I stopped pretending and got up. First thing was a trip to our private bathroom, our half-share of this specially outfitted cabin, the Khazi of Pacuare. Actually, it was perfectly fine. The main difficulty was getting to it across the muddy paths and then all that mud getting walked inside. This picture shows the step after a bit of mopping up.
The weather is usually nice first thing in the morning, and so it was today. Breakfast was at 7 am, early, but about right when you’ve been up since 5 am.
This was the view from the communal area, with the cloud already ominously gathering.
Our transport was due to take us back to our car at 8.30 am, but things were running late. The staff needed to collect all the rafts for transport upstream. We had time to relax – hurry up and wait.
Today’s transport up the track was an Isuzu Trooper. With seven occupants, all our luggage and three rafts towing on a trailer, it didn’t break a sweat while hauling us up the trail.
I took some better dashcam footage today, but it is too big a file to upload, so you will just have to imagine us jumping about while remorselessly grinding uphill, with the driver’s wheel going from side to side to counteract the bouncing wheels.
We returned to our own car, which was a bit smelly after two days cooking up the luggage we’d not taken to the lodge.
Jenny fancied driving again, which was fine with me. The winding mountain road was a tiresome mixture of slow trucks that were difficult to overtake and fast trucks that were all too ready to overtake you.
On reaching Saquirre, we missed that blasted stoney road again. I’d swear I counted it down on the nav this time, but Jenny didn’t remember what type of road it was, nor whether it was to the left or the right. We proceeded further into town to join the Ruta 32 at the main junction. This junction turned out to be tricky, so I got an earful for bad navigation here too. Anyway, we made it onto the 32 and towards Limon, the dual carriageway they are still building. It was roadworks all the way.
We’d decided not to visit Limon; the port town is not on the tourist trail. Just as we got to all the container parks on the outskirts, Waze found a route that bypassed it nicely. Soon, we were on the coastal road, the Ruta 36, heading into the remoteness of the Caribbean coast.
Even though this was single carriageway, the road was straight, the overtaking easy. We drove past endless banana plantations with every tree’s crop wrapped in blue plastic. There were muddy creeks where you could imagine crocodiles lurking, narrow bridges over them where the traffic came to a halt. And, of course, there was our first glimpse of the Caribbean Sea.
At 1 pm, we reached our destination, Hotel Boutique La Casa De Las Flores in Cahuita. It was right on main street, in the middle of town, easy to find.
We’d chosen a lovely hotel with an open plan on multiple layers, each room with a table and chairs to sit at outside in a balcony setting. We were early to check in, but our rooms were ready so we could dump our bags and freshen up.
Now it was time to hit the town, have some lunch, and most importantly, have a pina colada.
This was my first disappointment. Our chosen establishment had no pineapples, so they couldn’t do a pina colada. I suppose I should admire their dedication to fresh produce. I settled for a mango daiquiri – disappointment vanished.
We looked around town for the rest of the afternoon, slightly disappointed by the beach but delighted to find a lovely art gallery that nearly got Sarah purchasing.
The hotel also looked great at night.
What was there to do for the rest of the evening? More cocktails, of course! The next place we tried did serve pina coladas.
When I said I would do this blog, I promised it wouldn’t just be pictures of me drinking pina coladas. Strictly speaking, this is true. At the next place, Jenny and Sarah tried the house cocktail, which was like an alcoholic slush puppy. I can’t remember what I had – something blue.
And that is enough pictures of us drinking cocktails, I promise.