Today started slow, Emily had zoom meetings this morning so I listened to a book and watched the A/C repair people figure out they need a new compressor. He said he could fix it but it would be cheaper to buy a new one. It has to come from San Jose. The other day I watched the handyman take the shroud off the internal unit, he disconnected the wiring and then took the whole shroud off, the repair man took the vent deflectors out, the filter, took the door to the manual controls off and then took the shroud off. He also put it all back together before he checked it. The handyman checked it then put it back together. The A/C guy must get paid per hour on the job.

This afternoon we went to the bank and paid my ticket for not wearing a helmet. $203.25. I will not be an international fugitive, no wanted posters will be at the airport when we try to leave the country.

We did a little shopping and then went to the beach a caught a few waves. I got a couple of tasty waves and some that were not. They were still coming in fast and hard. Probably some in the six to eight foot range. They really have some power. We didn’t stay out too long as we were losing ground trying to get out far enough to catch the waves, every step we took the next wave would knock us back a couple when they doubled up.

We spent some time in the pool after just to keep cool and in the water. It’s going to be a while before we get to be in a large body of water again. Hopefully it will be a good boating season. I still have to repaint the boat and get the carbs cleaned but I’m looking forward to some tubing behind it this summer.

Tomorrow we are going to be heading back to San Jose at two, before that though we are doing a float tour on the river to see what we can. We are using the company that I used for scuba they offer some trips.

I do want to give a shout out to Ivan our driver from our last trip, he set us up with transportation from San Jose and again going back. Our driver Brian from our trip here is coming back, I lost his number so I couldn’t set it up with him directly.

Be safe!

As you probably all read in Bill’s post, yesterday did not go our way. The AC is still broken and I doubt it will be fixed before we leave. We got stopped by the tourist police and now have to figure out how to pay a $200 ticket for not wearing helmets even though half the other people weren’t wearing helmets either. That was a total shakedown. The hook holding the hammock broke and dumped Bill on the floor – at least he had a pillow under his head. I also finished reading a book that I had enjoyed until it ended really badly with all the main characters ending up dead, unhappy, or unhappy and then dead.

On the bright side, I did go for a nice walk yesterday afternoon along the beach. There is a huge coastline here and there is a path along it. Some of the path is on the beach and some in the wooded area along the beach. You can walk to all the beaches here and I might have been able to walk to Panama, I’m not sure, I didn’t go that far. It was a very pretty walk, and I saw some monkeys. I also stopped to talk to an elderly fisherman. On my way past him the first time, he had caught a tiny fish. I asked him if that was for supper and he said yes. On my way back, he stopped to tell me he had two little fish so he had enough for supper and lunch the next day. I hope he had some beans and rice to go with it because they were tiny fish!

Today went much better. We did a Magic Chocolate Waterfall tour. We were close enough to the Panamanian border to see it. It was a tour to an indigenous community to learn how to make chocolate and use medicinal plants. It was a pretty good tour. There are a lot of medicinal plants here that we got to taste and smell. Our guide had is try quinine, which tastes terrible and a bunch of other plants that I don’t remember. If I get lost in the jungle, I’ll probably still die but at least I’ll die knowing that there were plants that might have saved me. One of the elders of the community also showed us how to make natural fingernail polish and lipstick, which we got to try, and we made some chocolate.

Chocolate is surprisingly easy to make. The beans have to be fermented, then dried, then roasted, rough ground with a stone, then ground to a paste in a meat grinder. The newly ground chocolate is bitter but if you add a little sugar and milk it’s magically transformed. Our guide made us fire-roasted bananas with homemade chocolate and some chocolate milk. I bought three balls of 100% dark chocolate to bring home.

We were on the tour with a Swiss family and a French couple. The Swiss family had two kids, a boy who was probably 12 and a girl who was around 10. Both of them had fun with the interactive parts of the trip and their mom translated everything from English to German. The French couple were interesting to talk to. He was a travel agent who organizes trips in Scandinavia and she is a language teacher, French and English.

After the chocolate tour, we went to swim at a waterfall. The water was cold but it was fun and really pretty. It started to rain while we were there but we were already in the water so it didn’t matter that much. We got fantastic pineapples and coconuts with straws so we could drink the coconut water when the swim was over.

This afternoon, we tried to take our boards to the beach but the water was too rough and red flags were up. It didn’t seem that bad to me, but no one else was in the water, which I took as a bad sign. About 1 person drowns here each month, and I decided to try to live another day, so we went to our crappy pool instead. Our hotel is okay, but not one I’d be enthusiastic about coming back to. There are lots of ways they could make it more comfortable.

Tomorrow will be our last full day here. We are going back to San Jose a day early because it’s a long drive and we don’t want to miss our flight. I’m going to look for a hotel with a good pool. I have a Zoom meeting all morning. Work keeps sending me messages reminding me that I have to go back to my real life soon. People have booked next week with meetings and apparently we are getting a blizzard tomorrow in Iowa. We have to figure out how to pay this stupid traffic ticket tomorrow. The officer who stopped us told me I could pay it at the bank, but that sounds sketchy and I’m skeptical about whether that works. Hopefully we can make it to the beach or find something fun to do. I want a new tea cup, so I’ll look for one of those when we go to the bank.

So we are winding down here, the ocean has taken an ugly turn. Red flags as far as the eye can see. Or at least all the beaches we went past that had flags.

Emily did want to try this afternoon just down the way from us but she opted to not be a statistic. We came back and hung out in the cold small pool at the hotel. I am surprised at the design of the pool. It has a large amount of seating even though there is not a large amount of guest space in general. It has a “swim up” bar seating that we’ve seen at the larger hotels where it is mostly partying and all inclusive. Those pools are not what I would recommend swimming in, this one though is not used a lot so I’m hoping that the users do not use it as a lavatory as well.

The big deal for today was going to the Indigenous area and visiting a homestead where they make chocolate for the tourists. We got a brief education on the Bribri culture and a tour of the property followed by a chocolate making experience. We got to see how it was dried, roasted and ground into paste. Per the usual at multiple steps the chocolate was made available for everyone to stick their hands in and get a taste. After our guide made a hot drink with the chocolate. He said it is best to drink with just water but he added sugar and milk for some and just sugar for others. I have heard while here a few times that straight cacao will repel mosquitos.

After the tour and communal chocolate drink we got to go swim at another waterfall. I do have to say the La leona waterfall was a better hike. This was mostly rudimentary stairs taking you down to the river behind some guys house.

River water is cold but it was a good waterfall and I enjoyed the time there. There were a number of other people there. We were told that all the rivers are down at this time. There was a guy who jumped from the cliff into the pool below but he only did it once. As I was considering it is when I was informed that the water was down. Maybe if we come this way again.

As for coming this way again, that remains to be seen. There are a few nice things about this area, the snorkeling at Punta Uva and for me shore diving, and it is about an hour from Bocas del Toro Panama. I would like to visit there, we had planned on it when covid had hit and canceled our trip there. We could go though Panama to get there and that may be the best way, but I am thinking it was going to be a very long ride. Getting here during the day wasn’t too bad as far as I am concerned. It would be another hour on that and it would mean the loss of two days off our fun times. We will have to research it.

Neither of us feel very strongly about staying at Caribe Town again. Someplace in Punta Uva would be a better choice. The hotel in general is nice enough. The furniture isn’t the most comfortable, the chairs in the sitting area are not that comfortable. The espresso machine only does espresso, a coffee maker or even a electric kettle would be a better option. Our room has experienced some issues, the A/C stopped working, the temperature hasn’t been too bad with the extra fan, but the air is moist. Our suits and towels don’t dry hanging up inside or out. This is not optimal. There is nothing to set luggage on in the room to make it easy to access suitcases and off the floor. They had just painted and there is a tv mount on the wall that I have used to hang shirts and swimsuits since there is not tv. We don’t usually watch tv but occasionally we will if the weather is bad or we need an easy day, I will put on a movie. I am unclear is there had been a small refrigerator in our room that went bad or if the owners were just going to put one in, they are in Panama picking one up according to the word around the bar. That will be a nice addition.

Tico time is not one of my favorite things about Costa Rica, this morning it was easy and faster to have peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast so we could make our ride. They have coffee on at 7 but you can’t get breakfast at the hotel until they are ready and that is sometimes after 7:30. Then you have cook time and we had been scheduled to go at 7:45. We also have to clean up after and brush our teeth before going so, pb&j it was. Restaurants here though in general I think cook meals one table at a time before they start the next order. It takes forever to get your bill to pay it. That is a culture thing that is nice for those who want slow as molasses in winter time, not so much for anyone who has a schedule to follow.

Be safe!

Not much excitement went on today. We took a ride over to Puerto Viejo to get a picture of the sign about crocodiles. On the way there we had a run in with the law. Breaking the law… I was given a ticket for not wearing a helmet while driving the scooter. It was an interesting experience, they had to look over my passport, could have went badly I suppose if I hadn’t had my passport. Technically you’re supposed to have it when traveling around. Normally we do not carry them but we had brought the little backpack that locks. We had worn our helmets for a while but then we opted out as it seems half the people do and half do not. The scooter guy told us the regular police don’t usually care and the tourists police do. We hit a tourist police check point, they also didn’t seem to care about some of the riders that went by while we were being talked to. If I don’t pay the ticket they charge it to the scooter company. We will pay it, I’m sure the scooter company will take it from the deposit.

This afternoon I was listening to a book and relaxing in the hammock and the hook broke after I had been in the hammock for quite a while.

Our air conditioner is still nonfunctional. They had it going but the guy who fixed it stuck a screwdriver in and shorted it out, he said that when it warmed up it was too much of a draw on the 20 amp fuse that should be a 30 amp. I think he should’ve left it taken apart and running and kept whatever he was moving around with his screwdriver around from touching.

Sometimes you have issues while traveling, hopefully things will improve with the air conditioning tomorrow, they have a technician coming. Most things are just an inconvenience and don’t really affect how good of a trip you have, you just have to roll with things and enjoy the good things.

Tomorrow we’re going on a tour, it’s to an indigenous community for how the live and make chocolate. There will be a side waterfall swim as well.

Be safe!

This morning we went to breakfast and while we were eating our Air Conditioner stopped working. They are thinking there is a short somewhere. There was a guy that came and did some work at the box and they got it to work again then there was a loud pop from what I was told.

They will have to continue working on it tomorrow, tonight we have an extra fan they use for the exercise area. It’s not been super hot while we have been here, a little humid at times and it does warm up when the sun is out. Hopefully it stays that way.

We went snorkeling again this morning and I stopped to borrow some flippers, I like flippers they help move me though the water. Trying to swim with my arms while holding the camera isn’t the fastest. while there Francisco said he was taking someone out at 2pm and I was able to go. He gave a deal on the dive and didn’t charge me for the flippers.

The water quality wasn’t as good as yesterday.

Not much else went on today. Tomorrow we will have to see what the water conditions are. The swell is coming and things are already cloudy so we may have to start doing some of the land based activities.

Be safe!

We have had two really awesome days of snorkeling, but that doesn’t give me a lot to write about. I don’t take a camera when I snorkel because it’s too much trouble but I did pull some good pictures off the internet so you can see what I’m talking about. Punts Uva is going to be one of my favorite snorkeling locations. The water is safe, the visibility is good and the reef is big, interesting and easy to swim to. I can also go alone so there are no rules and no one to set a time limit on me except for Bill who is in charge of our scooter unless I want to walk a couple miles back to the hotel. I’ve been snorkeling while Bill dives, and it’s super fun. Yesterday, I saw a turtle, a huge sting ray, a small reef shark and a sea snake. The stingray I posted above is a relatively small one. We’ve seen a couple of them. The big one was in relatively shallow water so I was able to swim down and sit on the ocean floor in front of it.

Reef Shark

Green sea turtle

Today, I think I saw the same little sea turtle – it’s not very big so I suspect it’s the same one. It probably lives in the area where I was snorkeling. It seemed less worried about me today and I floated peacefully beside it for a while. As long as I wasn’t moving much, it watched me but didn’t seem too worried. I also saw a peacock flounder, which was really pretty. They have yellow and blue circles so I thought it might be mimicking a blue-ringed octopus. Those are some of the most toxic animals in the world, but apparently they only live in the Pacific, so I guess the little flounder had rings for a different reason. It’s weirdly similar to the octopus though.

Peacock flounder – they are weird little creatures with eyes offset to one side.

I’ve seen a bunch of these sea centipedes. They come in different colors.

Most of the sea urchins here are dark purple and about the size of a ping pong ball, but today I saw a blue one that was baseball sized.

I’ve also seen some interesting little jellyfish. Most of them are also about the size of a ping pong ball. They are mostly clear but some have pink or blue trim or pink frills inside. It’s really surprising how colorful everything is. We’ve seen lots of parrot fish, blue tang and a bunch of other colorful fish. The coral also come in all kinds of different shapes and colors. Brain corals are the most common but they come in brown, yellow, green, blue, and purple.

Brain coral

I have been taking advantage of the French bakery every day. They have really good chocolate eclairs. Last night I had a chocolate mousse with passion fruit filling. It was a weird combination but pretty good. They make good macaroons too. We’ve met interesting people. Bill dived today with a German guy and yesterday with a French diver. I’ve gotten quite a bit of French practice here.

Our air conditioner quit this morning. It’s not that hot here at night but it’s humid. The hotel gave us an extra fan so it should be okay. The repair guy is supposed to come back tomorrow and try to fix it.

My only real complaint with this side of Costa Rica is that everything is crazy expensive and the food is not very good. Every meal, even just pizza, costs between $40 and $70. The pizza we had yesterday was greasy. I had a veggie I burger today that I couldn’t eat. There aren’t a lot of things that I can’t eat, but this was pretty bad. We had really good Indian food and some pretty good jerk chicken from a Jamaican guy with a food cart. The French bakery has good pastries, but otherwise, the food situation is a little bleak. No place is perfect.

Good day everyone!! Today I got to do a shore dive! I have to say I like shore diving more than most of my boat dives. I think some weren’t bad but the water was calm and clear. The difference is a boat dive is where they take you out to where you will dive, you put your gear on and then you basically jump out of the boat in the ocean some distance from shore and you dive. Shore diving is just walking into the water from shore with your gear on and you keep going deeper and then you can dive. It’s usually not as deep of a dive but it can be depending where you are. Here, today I went down 11 meters or 33 feet. I’ve been down around 90 feet when I was in Jamaica.

We really didn’t see much, there was a trigger fish, a whip tail stingray and a couple of lobsters hiding in a hole. The reef was neat to swim though and I enjoyed the formations. There was some bleaching of the corals here. Not sure if it is from warmer water or from being touched. The reef in places is pretty shallow and is good for snorkeling from shore. I was unable to get clear shots of the fish and ray due to the clarity of the water.

Punt Uva is a great place to do diving and snorkeling, the dive season is more August through November. It also sounds like there’s some diving a couple other months but Francisco wasn’t as clear about when. He did stay stop by and check “if it okay, we go!”

My dive buddy today was Cedric, he is here from France with his family. Emily got to speak with him in French at lunch after the dive. Cedric hadn’t dove for ten years and he had stopped in and asked about diving this morning and since I chose to do a refresher Francisco asked if it was okay, which I think didn’t matter since he already said he could. It was good with me though, I told Cedric that I hadn’t been getting a lot of down time and I was around fifteen dives so I still needed to work on breathing and buoyancy control. He was good with that since it had been so long since he dove. It also turned out that Cedric was not certified yet as a diver either. He told Francisco after the dive he hadn’t taken his PADI test yet, I seem Francisco’s face kind of curl up like what??? After I said that Cedric probably should have done the Discover Scuba class, it’s like the refresher but a little longer. In the end though Cedric did fine on the skills and we had no problems. I wonder if he had been certified through a different dive organization besides PADI.

Emily snorkeled the whole time I was diving. Today I got 45 minutes on air from the scuba tank. Francisco said that my buoyancy was good, I think I can use more practice, some of that is controlled by your breathing, you take in a deep breath and you will go up and let all the air out and then you sink. I was glad to have a good dive and I would dive with Francisco at Punta Uva Dive Center. He was fantastic!

After the dive we had lunch at the little restaurant connected to the dive shop, we really wanted their burgers as the smelled great but they had run out of buns by the time we got to order. We had pizza, it was okay, a little greasy, they may have drizzled oil on it.

This afternoon we went back after settling our stomachs and rested a bit. The beach there is very good for snorkeling and we wanted to get our tine in the water. Francisco says that the swell is coming probably Sunday and it’s going to be two meters or six feet. He said that it will just come up. I’m not sure what that will do to our water activities. It may shut us out for snorkeling and boogie boards. Hope not.

If it does we have a few other things that we want to do. There is a Jaguar rescue and a chocolate tour with a visit to a waterfall, hopefully that involves swimming. If we are shut out the lack of a good hotel pool will be more of an issue.

Be safe!

This morning we took a ride on the scooter to get some colones from the ATM and then I wanted to go see about diving. I’m glad I checked, Fransisco said they got a 4 day window for diving and it closes Saturday. He said they may be able to squeeze in a dive early on Saturday. I will be going tomorrow at 11, I decided to do a refresher because I will be going by myself with Fransisco. I still need to work on my breathing and buoyancy so going alone is good. The other nice thing is that it is a shore dive. So max 15 meters I think he said. It will be shallow but it will be good enough to get a dive in. I’m hoping that I may be able to do the 2 pm dive tomorrow as well or if they can do a morning dive Saturday. Our days here are starting to disappear. We are also looking at doing a paddle trip with Fransisco. I would do kayak and Emily a stand up paddle board (SUP).

We finally had McCloud’s for lunch today, we both had the Jerk Chicken, it was good and had a little heat to it. I debated the ribs but I was hungry and figured it would be a two bone serving. The chicken is always chicken quarters, I don’t know if they ever use white meat for it. Just a little FYI for those thinking about ordering it sometime.

I have a bit of a sunburn on my face around the hairline. It’s a little bothersome. I also have some scrapes on my feet from the coral at the beaches. I would still have them even if I had worn water shoes as they happened yesterday fighting the waves when we went snorkeling.

Today we went snorkeling in Punta Uva, same place I will be diving tomorrow for the most part. From here on I will be using my GoPro for underwater photography.

Punta Uva was a very nice shore snorkeling location. There was more sandy beach and sandy entry into the water. Much easier on the feet! The water was calmer in this area as well, there were waves but the rollers broke out a ways so the water was more choppy than waves rolling in.

Emily spotted an octopus and a ray, we watched the octopus for a while hoping it would come out for a visit. It did not, occasionally it would show it’s tentacles and reach out to feed the edge of the coral it was under. We spent a fair amount of time in the water. There was a guy looking for lobsters, he had one in a bag.

I’m looking forward to diving tomorrow, it will be good to get a chance to practice without worrying about other people who have more experience. Emily is going to do more snorkeling while I’m diving.

So far it hasn’t felt overwhelming hot here. There is usually a nice breeze coming in from sea so sitting in the shade it stays cool. This morning it was a bit humid and warm but it did rain fairly well last night so there was water to evaporate.

Be safe!

I still don’t have any pictures, but Bill should be pulling some off of his GoPro. I bought a new Kodak underwater camera, but it doesn’t take good pictures, so I’m planning to send it back. Maybe I’ll get a GoPro too.

We had a pretty fun day. We had errands to run this morning. I needed some Costa Rican money and we had to find a place to get gas for the scooter. There are no gas stations for miles around, but there is a small quick shop that sells bottles of gas. I’m not sure that’s legal and several people I talked to here didn’t seem to know about it, but at least we have a place to get gas. Bill also found a dive shop this morning and set up a dive for tomorrow. The dive season here just ended, but the water is still good enough tomorrow and maybe Saturday. I’m planning to snorkel, and the shop also has a paddle board river trip that I would like to do.

This afternoon, we snorkeled at Playa Arrecife where Bill will dive tomorrow. It was awesome! Great beaches and really good, safe snorkeling. We saw lots of little fish in various colors, some sea worms and I found an octopus! It was really exciting. I never spot anything and I have a hard time with my goggles fogging, but I spotted it under a flat brain coral (they actually look like brains). Bill got some pictures and video and we watched it for a while. We tried to offer it some toys but it wouldn’t come out of its hiding spot. It did keep sticking its eyes out to watch us and it put its arms out a little ways. I love octopuses so it was really fun to see one up close. They are super smart! We also saw a ray. Overall, it was a fantastic snorkel trip.

There is a French bakery across the street owned by a French couple. I’ve gotten stuff there a couple of times. They have really good deserts. They moved here 8 years ago. They decided that the world was becoming too unstable and they wanted a safer place than France to live. They toured the world and considered moving to Thailand but the Thai government changed for the worse so they decided on Costa Rica instead. Their rationale was that even if the world goes to hell, you can still survive in Costa Rica. It’s stable, it doesn’t have a military so it won’t be fighting any wars. You can grow food here all year and keep animals so you won’t starve. They also love hot weather so they seem pretty happy here. They gave me tips on how to move here. It was a short conversation but interesting. I love being able to talk to people from all over the world with lots of different experiences. I kind of wish I was brave enough to leave everything and move to Costa Rica, but I don’t know how to run a bakery, and they probably don’t need American history professors or associate deans. I need a job where I can work from home and have home be down here!

Emily got to use her new boogie board yesterday! The sea was rough!! Waves were tall and rolling in fast! As she mentioned our first location we were waved off due to riptides. They will pull you out to sea and it can be a long swim back. We moved to where there were lifeguards watching, not sure from where though as I did not see one. They did have a red flag up though. The area we went to was in front of the restaurant we had our first meal at after arriving. Green flag is the best but the lady that waved us off said yellow wasn’t bad if where lifeguards were.

We got to do some snorkeling the last couple days. The pictures are from both days. I used Emily’s Kodak Pixpro camera rated for 15m/50 ft underwater. I’m not a fan. It wasn’t hard to use but the quality isn’t great. The ability to zoom is a nice option but the zoomed pictures didn’t turn out well, it’s easier to blow up pictures from the gopro, I think they are less grainy.

The water quality here is better than on the pacific coast. There is still sediment in the water but overall it isn’t as dark or as cloudy. There is also a lot more greenery close to shore on the Caribbean coast.

Some shots of the Caribe Town Hotel. It’s not a bad place to stay. Location isn’t bad, no crazy partying going on here. I would like a better pool and maybe a little warmer. It’s nice to have the pool option after being in the ocean, there’s no bobbing or fighting waves. It’s nice to relax and swim sometimes without all that action! This pool is a salt water pool so no chlorine. It’s not as salty as the ocean. There is a nice area for yoga and boxing. I didn’t see anything for resistance training but I brought my own bands. I did a workout with them yesterday and they worked well.

I had a delay due to needing to charge the camera to get the pictures off of it.

We are getting ready to take our scooter out and about. We need some Costa Rican money and we need to find gas for our scooter. It’s only down to half a tank with all our riding but we still have to return it with a full tank!

Hope everyone is doing well!