31st August Speeding through the Jungle

 

Our fantastic little holiday from holiday was done we felt rested and ready to pack the bags again. Incidentally, I think it was quite possibly the best hotel I have ever stayed at! Where to next? The bus rides all the way didn’t seem to really make sense to the boat trip was the obvious connection. It meant an early trip leaving at 10am and a little more expense, but that was certainly worth every penny!
Our boat was full of Spanish and our taxi driver/tour guide hit the throttle hard, as usual. We sped down the river Pacuare running behind the front lines of the islands and then into some much smaller canals and streams. The ride was intense, bits of tree or whole trees not uncommon, but the throttle speed was kept high. The right corners and the racing mode was great fun and cruising through dense jungle was fun. It felt like being part of Apocalypse Now once more copying the river boat going up stream. We didn’t see any monkeys, but every once in a while there were things like turtles and small croc’s to be seen – Caimans which really don’t seem to be very menacing at all. At one point we were stopped by a tree that had fallen across the path of the river and was in the process of being chopped up by the park ranger types and we helped another boat through by nudging it none too gently across.

All in, we were very pleased not to have spent lots of money on a tour as we saw a lot and the driver stopped several times for photos to be taken. The trip took a whole four hours due to the various stops we made along the way for fuel, food and well the tree issue, and of course smaller boats which might be capsized by the wake we created.

There is no way anyone doing this bit of the trip south should take any other route. It was great. Arriving at the largest docks in Costa Rica was nothing special, some very large banana boats loading and a road out. The shared taxi for 70km was $10 each and quite fair we thought. We had no real desire to wait for chicken bus and travel that way just yet! The road winds along the coast and through some more great landscape and when we arrived in Puerto Viejo it was like stepping back in time to the San Pedro bit of the trip mixed in with Costa Rica. Great little place to hang out in. With a little walking and a lot of sweating we found a new Cabinas called Talamanca which wasn’t too far from the backpacker place Rockin J’s (which we couldn’t face) and slightly cheaper too! MT