Wednesday morning we took a jungle river tour as a last adventure of our trip. Ivan had set us up a return ride with Brian for 2 pm, so not a lot of time for fun stuff as we had to get the scooter gassed up and returned to the rental place and pack up.
Wednesday was probably the hottest and most humid day of our trip. We were looking forward to a hotel with working air conditioning. We also took advantage of the ride a/c as well!
Our tour was at 8 so once again we were on our own for breakfast, it sounds like the hotel would provide some sort of boxed breakfast but Emily walked over to the French bakery and got a few things.
The river tour was set up through the Punta Uva Dive Center, I recommend using their services if you are ever in the area
The tour was about two hours long, very easy trip up the river and back. No real current to speak of, the water was brackish. There was a small creek that was probably fresh water that was at the turn around spot and the rest was sea water that filled the channel probably at high tide.
Big photo drop there. We had a good tour, there are monkeys, a couple of sloths, a lot of turtles and few birds.
We did make it to San Jose and around noon we will head to the airport. It will be a long travel day after that as we won’t be in St Louis until about midnight. I am ready to return to the snow and cold, Emily is not looking forward to the snow and cold.
Neither of us found Caribe Town to be everything that TripAdvisor made it out to be. They were unable to cancel our last day there and refund us even with multiple days notice that we would be checking out early. Nor were they able to do a price adjustment for our promised room with a/c not having it halfway through the stay. They did offer two free days stay within a year and didn’t charge us for the 5 mocktails and one cocktail. We didn’t get two days of breakfast, just the fruit plate and juice. Coffee is at seven but nobody is cooking before 7:30. The place was clean and everyone was very friendly. The furniture was not very comfortable and worn. The pool was a big disappointment as it really wasn’t a swimming pool unless were really short since it was 3 feet deep and was mostly for sitting with stools snd a bench. The concrete in and around the pool was stained, probably needing resurfaced. Staff wasn’t as knowledgeable about things in the area since they arrived at the beginning of November. Overall not a bad place, things do occasionally break, but not someplace we would be very likely to return to.
The area in general was okay, Punta Uva was the highlight for us, easy and safe shore snorkeling. Sadly the best season for water activities in the area is August, September, October and November. All of those fall outside our normal travel times. Our guides from the dive shop indicated that Bocas del Toro, Panama was good all the time. It is another location that includes a second travel day to access, so it may or may not be an option in the future.
Not sure if there will be more posts about this trip or not. I may go through some of the pictures and edit them to show some of the animals better. Possibly update anything forgotten.
As always if you’re interested in coming along feel free to ask about when and where we are headed next and we can see what we can work out. If you just want to meet up for part of a trip we can help get you where you want to be. If you’re interested in somewhere we’ve been and need information please ask.
Don’t forget to sign up for the email delivery of all our new posts as they are posted!!
Be safe!
Traveling with Emily! 