- where Sir Francis came ashore having circumnavigated the globe to get there. We have been told that we can do it by taking two buses. It is interesting that the historical perspective here is that he was a pirate and general all-round bad guy. Which is true from this side of the fence, but a bit different from the great explorer and brave sea-faring adventurer bloke from my history lessons. I wonder what the children at home are taught today - in this era of truth and reconciliation?
Like good tourists we wait at the assigned street corner for the bus from 8.15am. And we wait … At 9am I run across to the booking office to check that we are actually at the right place. The woman looks shocked that we are still there, which doesn’t do much to ally our fears that we have missed the bus somehow. The only solution she can give us is to continue to wait. Realistically, we know that we will be OK as long as the bus turns up by 10.15 so that we will make our 11.30 connection. As the roads are so unreliable here it is difficult to know exactly how long any given trip will take. We have had to take the 8.30 bus only because the 10.30 bus, which should be more than enough time for our connection, in all likelihood wouldn’t make it on time.
Eventually the bus turns up at 9.15, with no aknowledgement of the delay the driver loads up our bags and off we go. We arrive at Las Palmas, which looks like quite a nice little village with a couple of shops a pizza parlour and 2 bakeries - there are probably a few local restaurants nearby but they aren‘t too obvious. There are a couple of locals hanging out at the corner where the buses come in and they are keen to make sure that we know we are at the right place and at least 3 people remind us that the bus is at 11.30. It makes a bit of a change from this morning when no-one seemed to know or care whther the 8.30 bus would ever arrive or not.
Las Palmas bus stop
Not long after we get there we notice a young man in full jungle attire, with a good layer of sunblock on his face and various camping implements hanging from his rucksack. He is trying to find the best travel option to get out of the village. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to speak any Spanish, nor to know where he actually wants to go or even what day of the week it is. I wander over to try to help and it turns out he has been in the national park roughing it for 3 days and now what he really needs is to get back to some sort of civilisation. We figure out that he can get the bus out at 1pm and he wanders off to find something to eat and a beer. If he had told us he had been in the jungle for 3 months I would have believed it as he was fairly out of it. We were surprised that he had made it out at all.
We now have an hour of observing the locals come and go while we wait for the bus. We copy the locals and wait in the shade of the pizzeria which is closed at the moment.
We attract the usual curious glances and series of “ola”s and “Buenos”s as people walk, cycle and drive past us. The Ticos are a friendly lot.
The next part of our trip is 30km more or less off-road in a minivan type of bus. The boy driving it looks to be about 12! There really is no real road and, at times, the incline has to be 1:3. We ford little rivers and cross log bridges - each time wondering how anyone who doesn’t know the road would ever make it. Overall, I think I would describe the journey as adventurous rather than arduous though, as it is interesting to be driven through rainforest, past the local farms and small homesteads. There are said to be wild jaguar in this part of the forest, which is mainly protected rainforest at this stage which is a good thing. Some tracts here and there have been deforested but it is mainly virgin forest apart from this. At one point an ENORMOUS iguana runs across the road in front of us a scurries up a tree. It was easily 1.5m long and very portly. I suspect it was a great, great, great granfather/mother of an iguana as most of the others we have seen have only been 1/10 of its size.
In the end it only takes us 1.5 hours to do the 30kms so we arrive at our lodgings in time for lunch.
We have figured out that they regulate the amount of tourists getting into and out of some areas just by limiting the transport and lodging alternatives. In the main, they discourage you from driving here yourself and other than that it is probably only possible for 60-100 people to get here on any given day. There are more lodging options than you first think but, apart from the mega-expensive luxury resorts, there only seem to be 5 or 6 places to stay. Because the area is so remote most hotels only do a package that includes meals - you would certainly find it difficult to do self-catering here. We didn’t even find the one restaurant that was apparently in the ‘town’ and if we had really needed it we would have had a 4km walk to it for each meal. We have booked to stay at the Hotel Ojala which Fred and his family run. Fred is originally from the US and came here 17 years ago. He married a local woman and he built the hotel and started running his business about 12 years ago. It is a lovely wooden, 2 storey building with 2 verandas. There is one main living room and kitchen that the family uses and a large roofed dining area for guests. It has a lovely feel to it and, if you jump up on tiptoes on our lower balcony, you can see over the treetops out to sea.
Fred is a sports fisherman and quite a few people who come here do so for the fishing. This turns out to be a VERY good thing on the second evening when we sit down to tuck in to fresh tuna - both sashimi style as a starter and also ‘blackened’ on the grill. It is the first time that I have had fresh tuna that has been filleted lengthways rather than as a steak - and it is easily the best tuna I have ever had.
This is the tuna that we had for supper ............................. and this was the tuna we didn´t.
We were worried about what the food might be like - hotel catering isn’t always that great - but all our meals are freshly cooked and really delicious. Fred is a lucky man with a wife who cooks so well.
It is easy to see why someone who had just sailed around the world would stop here. It is very beautiful with lush vegetation, great wildlife, fish and fresh water. We opt to go for a snorkeling trip on Thursday and cross our fingers that we might come across some dolphins on the way. We are not disappointed. We spot two different schools of spotted dolphins swimming on the way out to the island where we will snorkel. They are small schools so we don’t get any David Attenborough displays or Disneyworld acrobatics - but it is fantastic to see them in the wild.
Brett snorkelling
The snorkeling is good fun. There are a lot of fish here and our guide takes us through some good areas to spot stingrays, lobster, reef sharks etc. I do love being this close to the fish. At one point I had looked up to check that I was swimming in the same direction as the rest of the group and when I put my head back in the water there were about 50 silvery fish swimming just below me. It gave me a bit of a shock until I realized they weren’t going to eat me, and then I could just enjoy the display as they all sped past me. Isla Cano is a protected reserve now and there are millions of crabs shuffling all over the beaches all the time.
Isla Caño
Crabs with homes ... and those without.
The birds here in particular are lovely. Just sitting quietly in any given spot rewards me with an array of birds and butterflies that come and go.
It is a wonderful place but it is a bit expensive for us to stay for too long so we are off further up the coast. We decide to take the water taxi out so it is an early start for us tomorrow.
A couple of local businesses in one of the towns we pass through; the tailor, the barber and the dentist.
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