I'll have to add some pictures once I get my hands on Shawn's camera (the only underwater one we have), but we took some very good shots. We snorkeled in two locations on either side of a peninsula ... the first was out in the centre of a large bay essentially right behind our Casita in about 12' of water. Many big brain coral heads with lots of different types of fish and we saw an Octopus that I got a good shot of.
Then we jumped back in the boat and headed over to the other side and jumped in. Again with that 90 degree water... very warm. Lots of salt so no problem swimming/floating either. This place had FISH. I've never seen so many large schools of different types of fish. At one point I had three large (more than 200 fish in the smallest school) schools of fish swimming around me... the smallest fish would have been about 15" long. Looking at them, you'd think they were swimming in each other because you could barely see water between them!
We also found a stingray trying to hide in the sand. I did my best Crocodile Steve impersonation and used my fin to sweep away the sand on him so we could see him better (I did keep my distance). He was about 5' long nose to tail and a good 2' across so a good size. I've seen plenty of these over the years and they are pretty timid creatures... but I wouldn't swim down and try to pick one up either! Saw a few poisonous sea urchins and a Lionfish (very poisonous and timid creature as well) but no sharks/barracuda's or anything like that.
I'm hiding... you don't want to step on me! (the Stingray)
After we dusted him off, he swam away to hide again...
No, they weren't photoshopped in there!
A Lionfish... very dangerous
Not photoshopped either!
A Sea Cucumber
Fish for dinner, anyone?
This doesn't do them justice... and only one of a bit of one of three schools within 20'
See the fish?
We then had a fruit lunch (which turned out to be a pineapple they cut down) on the beach at the end of the peninsula where we saw a bunch of small hermit crabs wandering around the sand which gave the kids no end of fun. Then it was back to Cahuita where we jumped in the car and headed back to the pool at the Casita to rinse off the salt. A great day all in all.
On Wednesday, we finally got to fulfill Jen's wish to go zip-lining through the rain forest canopy (they call them Canopy Tours here). We had found a local tour office in Puerto Viejo that sold these adventures and we had thought it would be out of Limon (on the drive back to San Jose) but it turns out they are just outside of Hone Creek (basically the little village next to ours) about 10kms from here... 3 of them on 4x4 "Costa Rican highways"... we had to ford 2 streams but nothing my old Passat couldn't handle if it had the ground clearance for some of the potholes. On the drive in, we were following their 4x4 club cab pickup with about 12 tourists jammed in the cab and the back... when they pulled over. Turns out a sloth was just lying on his back up against some of the local weeds in the ditch sunning himself. Had his arms and legs spread out like a snow angel.
This was the first three toed we'd seen and we got to get right up to him. One of the guides showed us that Sloths aren't always slow as he'd reach for the Sloth's face and that Sloth would swing his claws in a real swoop. I guess they are just careful moving in the trees. Those limbs sure can move quick (and those long claws could do some real damage).
Note the claws!
We get the standard safety schtick from one of the guides about how you should always have your one hand on the cord between the pulley and your harness and the other about 3' back from the pulley to act as a brake and a guide to keep you from spinning... and that you should never set off before the person ahead of you has unhooked from the cable and is out of the way, and that the guide at the end will signal you when to start braking so that you don't get stuck on the line and having to haul yourself in, etc. Then he hops on the cable, immediately lets go of the cable and hangs upside down racing for the other end 200' up in the air over the canyon below! That should have been our first clue...
Then they strap in the first tourist and send her flying... she's barely 2/3 of the way down and they send off the next one! Clearly the other guides weren't paying attention to the safety lecture. I'm thinking... I sure hope that first one doesn't have to haul herself in as her boyfriend is going to connect with her at a serious rate of closure if she doesn't.... but the guide gets her off before her boyfriend comes screaming into the platform. We watched a bunch of these and then it was our turn. Rachel was too light for that first cable (most of the long ones) so she had a guide go with her. As we found out, the heavier you are, the faster you go... the guide was almost as big as me so she must have been flying! After that, she was raring to do it herself and was pushing each time to go it alone - but this is the roller coaster fanatic in our family - and of course the one who broke both her legs by the time she was 6 (on separate occasions doing dare devil stuff).
Shawn also had a blast and learned to go upside down and wasn't the slightest fazed about it. Jen of course loved it. I had the only minor incident. After watching that boyfriend nearly take out his partner, I was always concerned about getting stuck on the line and having the next person run into me so was waiting for the guide to give me the brake sign... when I finally said to myself... there's no bloody way I'm going to get stopped if he doesn't stop me now so I squeezed that cable for all I was worth and still managed to slam into the tree at the end at a decent clip. I would have been fine except that he noticed me coming screaming in and stood in front of me and my leg caught his harness so I got a bit of a cut and bruised the bone a bit (on top of a bruise that I picked up the day before from a slip on the rocks at the waterfall). Nothing serious but it drove home the point not to trust the guides at all.
Nevertheless, we got to rocket between thirteen different zip lines from platforms in the trees as high as 90 metres often across canyons hundreds of feet deep. It was a lot of fun and one of the highlights of the trip.
Mom's having a blast
Shawn on the Tarzan Swing!
Two happy zip-liners!
Shawn's right side up for a change
Yee Haw!
Today, we <sniff> had to leave the Caribbean coast to catch our plane tomorrow to NYC (which we understand will be under a major snowstorm alert... that outta be fun with us with no winter clothes!). We knew that the drive to San Jose would be about 5-5:30 hours so we set out at noon after another morning in the waves at Playa Uva. The drive was pretty uneventful up until San Jose when once again, we got completely perplexed as to how to find our way through a city without street signs and with maps that do not show basic information such as highway names/numbers. We got to San Jose in under 3:30 hours but it took us an additional 2:30 to find the airport! By the time we got near our hotel, I was ready to just park the darn car and walk away from it so we returned it to the rental agency and got them to get us to the hotel. Turns out the directions the hotel gave us wouldn't have helped us find it either... what the heck is so hard about saying take the exit under the second bridge and proceed 1km to this sign, turn right and an immediate left. No.... they can't do things like that. We had absolutely no trouble driving anywhere in CR but San Jose is about as bad as Bangalore. Not fun at all. Next time, I'll make sure to have a working GPS with me. I have yet to see an accurate map of CR. I think there is a unfulfilled niche... but Google's maps are the worst.
We fly out at noon and get into JFK at 11pm (hopefully). I don't doubt we'll have some challenges along the way. Love to all.
No comments:
Post a Comment