Once we got back from surfing Punta Banco the next morning, Jerry and Monica began the long trek back to his house. Jennifer and I contemplated staying in Pavones another night, but decided to move on and drive around to the other side of the Gulfo Dulce, to the Osa Peninsula. To say that the Osa is “wild” is a bit of an understatement. National Geographic declared it the most biologically intense place on earth. We were excited to see it for ourselves.
Our route took us back through Golfito, around the north shore of the gulf, and then down through Puerto Jiménez. This drive would be sort of like going from Ruskin, up through Tampa, around the bay, then down through St. Pete, except on a larger scale and with some seriously bad roads. We stopped to eat lunch at the only restaurant around before eventually making our way out to the very tip of the peninsula, Cabo Matapalo. We first missed the road to get there and had to backtrack to the restaurant to confirm where the road is. “Missed” isn’t entirely accurate; we saw the road, but didn’t possibly think that it could be the right way to go. It wasn’t so much a road as it was a narrow, mangled path through dense jungle. Jennifer got out in places to make sure I wasn’t going to smash our rental car up as we rock-crawled through creek beds and massive mud holes. It was slow going, to say the least, but the mighty Bego was up for the challenge.
Once we finally made it to the end of the road, we got out to explore the beach for a while. Like Pavones, the surf at Matapalo was nearly nonexistent, but the beach was beautiful. We checked out the two homes/hotels in the area, but decided to head back to civilization in Puerto Jiménez; the lack of surf and places to eat made it an easy call. After checking out all of our options, we settled on the Corcovado Beach Lodge on the outskirts of town. We let Cooper and Brooks play in the mangrove-studded flats before eating dinner in town and calling it a night.
The next morning, we drove back up the west side of the Gulfo Dulce before turning north on a dirt road towards Sierpe. I knew of this road from a previous motorcycle trip, and thought the kids would get a kick out of the ferry that we’d have to take across the crocodile-infested river. Like many dirt roads in Costa Rica, the views from this route were incredible as we wound our way high above the coast. As for the ferry, it’s seen better days. To get a ride across, you pull up to the shore and beep your horn. Someone then hops in a panga (boat) that is lashed to the side of the ferry and starts across the river to come get you. It looks like it takes serious skill – and lots of practice – to maneuver the ferry across the currents of the river, spin the whole contraption around, and steadily hold it against the shore so that a car can drive on without plunging into the river. We had our windows rolled down and seatbelts off just in case we had to make a quick exit. From Sierpe, we drove through the oil palm plantations to Palma Sur, where we let the kids play on an old steam locomotive that was used to haul bananas back in its heyday. After that, we began backtracking on the same roads we took to get Pavones a few days prior.
With no real destination in mind, we planned on doing the usual routine of driving until we were over it and then find a place to stay. I knew of another neat stop along our route that I wanted to show Jennifer and the kids: the El Pavon waterfall and tilapia farm/restaurant. We were only on the road for 30 minutes or so when we turned off the highway towards the restaurant. There is another, more well-known tilapia farm/restaurant further up the road, but the little one we stopped at has more character and is much less crowded because it is further away from the main waterfall. The family that owns the place lives under the same massive wood-shingled roof that houses the restaurant. The property is pretty amazing, with multiple pools for the shrimp and tilapia that are raised there. The water for the ponds comes to the restaurant via a pipe that is stuck upstream in the creek that borders the property. The pipe dumps the water into an electricity-generating waterwheel. After that, the water flows through tiny canals that feed the first pond, which overflows in the second, into the third, et cetera, all the way to the big pond at the bottom of the hill, at which point the water flows back to the creek from which it came. A lot words to say that gravity moves water throughout the property. Pretty cool, but super simple. The whole place is really well landscaped with all sorts of exotic looking plants and trees, most of them edible. As I was still deep in my mamón obsession, I helped myself to a bunch from their tree. Though you can try to catch your own lunch there, we opted to have them do it for us while we hiked up to the waterfalls and wading pools on their property.
After eating a delicious lunch of whole fried tilapia, we drove up to the other restaurant and parked in their lot to access the El Pavón waterfall across the road. There were a lot of cars there, but everyone must have been eating as we had the waterfall to ourselves the entire time we were there. Untold years of erosion have cut the waterfall deep into a massive rock shelf, creating the illusion of two separate rocks. The really cool part, though, is the huge egg shaped boulder that is wedged at the top of the waterfall. The rock walls are covered in algae and orchids, the varying shades of green continuing way up into the jungle canopy. The whole “picture is worth a thousand words” concept definitely applies here. The water level was low when we were there, which meant teal-tinted but crystal-clear water for the kids to play in. Cooper and Brooks had an awesome time sitting in the water, playing with rocks, splashing, laughing . . . being carefree and full of joy. It is another of those places that Jennifer and I made a point to look around and take mental notes – to let it all soak in – and to smile knowing how fortunate we were to be there to do so.
After our time at the waterfall, we motored up the coast towards Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica’s most famous park. To get there, you must first drive through the city of Quepos, which was a sprawling mess that we couldn’t get out of quick enough. On the upside, I scored another 2 kilos of mamon fruit out of some lady’s trunk. It’s easy to see now that Cooper, Brooks, and I had become junkies; scanning the streets for the next fix every time we ran out. There were many hotels, restaurants, and tour operators to choose from on the road from Quepos to Manuel Antonio. Eco-tourism creates a lot of development, which creates a lot of irony. We checked out a few hotels before finally haggling an acceptable rate at the Hotel Villa Roca. We thought about going to the ultra-touristy El Avion restaurant for dinner (a bar and restaurant built in and around a C-123 Fairchild cargo plane left over from covert US operations in CR and Nicaragua during the Iran-Contra Affair), but after reading the many “it’s over priced” reviews online, went to El Wagon Pizza instead. Copying the lure of the airplane-in-a-restaurant concept, the El Wagon had an old train car that you could eat inside of. We chose a normal, not-in-the-train-car table for our dinner, but let the kids run (and scream) through the car on our way out. I think they only mildly annoyed the folks inside trying to enjoy their meals. Choo chooo, suckers!
We got up early the next morning to get the park right when it opened, which proved to be a wise decision. There were many guides and tour companies set up at the main gate persuasively asking you to use them for a guided tour. It seems that most folks do, and there is certainly a lot of upside to having an experienced guide tell you about the park and to point out animals that the untrained eye would never see. Being cheap, arrogant, and stubborn, we passed on their offers. As mentioned, getting there so early worked out great. We were able to hike all over the park and saw less than a dozen people, but passed hundreds of people coming in on the main trail as we walked back out. They were in large groups, each one being led by a tour guide carrying a massive spotting scope on a tripod. Seeing the big groups reaffirmed our decision to go it alone. If it weren’t for the guides, however, we would have never spotted a sloth high in the trees, which is something we really wanted to see while in the park. Check. As we were looking at the sloth, a troop of white-faced capuchin monkeys made their way towards the beach via a highway in the sky that passed directly over our heads. It was really cool watching them swing from branch to branch, making leaps much larger than we would have guessed possible. Cooper and Brooks absolutely loved it.
After grabbing our things from the hotel, we continued our trek north. We ended up pulling off the main road and into the town of Esterillos Este. There weren’t many lodging (or dining) options there, which was fine with us. We stayed at the Hotel Pelicano, and once again, had the place to ourselves. The property managers were an American couple not much older than us, and they were great hosts. We enjoyed food and drinks by the pool for most of the afternoon, returning for dinner and entertainment later that evening. Cooper and Brooks enjoyed playing with some toys that were squirreled away in the corner and with the hosts’ yellow lab, Molly. Molly is completely blind from getting into rat poison when she was a puppy. Understandably, her movement was slow and cautious while inside the restaurant and cluttered hotel grounds. She brought us menus in her mouth, navigating to us by the sound of our voices. It was a trick she repeated long after we had any need for menus, but we let her do it anyways as she seemed to enjoy it and the scratch behind the ears that always followed. Later, her owner Mike brought her down to the beach where we were hanging out before dinner and told her she was “safe.” She sniffed the air once or twice as if to make sure he wasn’t tricking her, and then took off in a full sprint, cutting a big arc in the dark sand of the deserted beach. No longer worried about treading lightly and proceeding with caution, she ran and ran, undoubtedly happy to be doing it – really doing it! Without getting too deep (man), Molly’s time on the beach was a bit of a metaphor this time in our lives. Unencumbered…and all kinds of fun.
We hit the road the next morning, continuing our trek to places north.