4. The Sand Yeti, the Pelly, and the poo…

My final day in the rainforest lived up to its name with torrential rain for most of the day. Fortunately, all my trips on previous days had been dry and my plans to frequent cafes, restaurants & souvenir shops weren’t much impacted by the rain. I found some excellent goods for sale, including the whole nativity scene portrayed inside a boiled egg shell. It is a catholic country after all - there was one shop that I steered clear of as it didn’t feel it was for me. I got the ‘inter bus’ shuttle back to the coast & as we dropped away from the volcano and forest, the rain and mist seemed to clear within seconds to blue skies and sun! My luggage had been loaded into the back by the driver who commented ‘Ooh, heavy, lady’ as he lifted it. I’m not absolutely sure if he was referring to my luggage or passing comment on my build! I didn’t like to tell him that my dive gear is currently being stored at the dive shop in Coco beach so really bag is at its lightest. All my excellent souvenirs must be quite weighty.

On the first leg of the journey, a family with young kids were on the bus. The kids were mostly asleep and very quiet while the Dad spent the 2 hours conducting a loud exchange of voice messages - listening at high volume on speaker to each one he received then recording his response in the style of an announcement to the minibus. He was entirely wrapped up in his own existence … right up until his son woke up from his sleep, looked out the window for a few minutes before turning to look at his father and projectile vomiting all over him.

We stopped again at the services for bus changes (thankfully very soon after the sickness incident) where there were even more massive macaw parrots squawking in the trees, watched by monkeys who were also playing in the trees or collapsing for little breaks whenever they tired themselves out!

Driving in Costa Rica continues to be mostly safe, with seat belts in all vehicles. There are a few elements that I’m not entirely clear on, including the use of hazard lights. These seemed to be used in the event of breaking - any breaking where there is something causing cars to slow, such an another car slowing to turn or the requirement to go round something blocking the road. In the event that drivers race up behind slower moving traffic, necessitating breaking to avoid hitting them, back off slightly then repeating the process, hazard lights are not required. There are a few dual carriage ways nearer main towns, the speed limit of which is 90kph max. Interbuses tend to travel at around 120. In general, faster vehicles use the left hand lane of a dual carriage way and can overtake in that lane. That is unless there is a very slow moving cargo truck, a ll of which inexplicably use the ‘fast’ lane as standard, then it’s totally ok to swing into the right lane and undertake them. Again, hazard lights are not required; just over-confidence and a propensity for risk taking. Fortunately, we all made it back to Coco Beach in one piece and I was back to my hotel and greeted by some interesting towel art, which included a misuse of counter for maths resources! A quick pop to the shops for essentials (milk) and I was all set. My extensive supply of tea bags os still going strong, which is fortunate as although they do sell proper English tea bags here, they’re priced at £6.50 for a box of 25 a bags - or 26p per tea bag, in fact! Only slightly higher than Twinnings like to charge in England!

The next event I should now be regaling you with tales of would have been my day trip to Nicaragua, the boarder of which is only an hour away and you can pay a typically exorbitant price to visit. However, what actually happened is that I dragged myself out of bed at 4.30am and was sitting at the hotel entrance from 4.50am waiting for my 5am pick up. At 6am, I gave up the wait and went back to bed. Some time later, I visited Sean at the tour operators and ensured he understood, in minute detail the level of my dissatisfaction and every element, beyond just an unnecessary early start, of the inconvenience and irritation that his failure had caused. Unfortunately, trips to Nicaraguan don’t run during weekends due to increased issues with boarder crossing so it’s a country that will have to remain on my ‘to go to’ list and without a little gem on my world map for a little longer!

My final few days here have been full relaxation. Aside from the last day in Fortuna, these are the first series of days when I haven’t had an alarm set and a trip, diving or transfer booked that requires a ‘get up’, so that’s been nice. I have filled my days with walking on the beach, frequenting cafes and restaurants, lounging by the pool, reading multiple books, people watching and sitting on the beach watching the massive pelicans swoop about and dive for fish. I’ve not yet spotted the pelly’s giraffe, monkey or small human boy friends or which windows they’ll be off cleaning so I imagine they’re always on a break when I see them. The locals tends tend to head to the quieter end of the beach where they wade out to line fish. The pellys and frigates tend to hang around near the to try and grab a snack. They seem to know not to bother the overweight, sunburned tourists up their ankles in the water with fishing lines while swigging on cans of local special brew at 10am. Presumably no one has much success with actual fish there!

There is a statue of the beach of a musician singing to his sweetheart. This commemorates a song written in the 1940s called ‘Amor de Temporada’, which translates to seasonal love. It’s largely credited for solidifying the Guanacaste region and Coco Beach in particular as a desirable tourist hotspot. The song was quite the national hit and led to many Costa Ricans heading to the beach to holiday and experience their own magic.

One day day was really windy with gusts from all directions. It made my beach walk less pleasant as it led to the odd abrasive sand blasting experience and mouthfuls of sand being whipped up so well and, despite having sunglasses on, I several times ended up staggering about, blinded by sand to the eyeballs. Even I followed the ‘shower before entering the pool’ rules that day as I’d returned bearing significant resemblance to some kind of sand yeti. Once rinsed off and pool dipped, I returned to reading on my lounger.

A panicked screech of ‘Noooo, no, don’t do that!’ alerted to us to all to some kind of notable incident unfolding. This one revealed to be another dad in charge of a child who had waded into shallow kids’ part of the pool, pulled her pants down and done a large poo. The Dad was beside himself trying to work out how to deal with the child and her poo. He went for rushing into the pool, still screeching at the child, picking her up under the armpits, carrying her at arms length to the shower where it was made clear to all of us that she was expected to remain. He then literally ran about around the pool flapping his arms about looking like he was desperately attempted to actually take flight to escape the situation he found himself in. He eventually flapped over to the water dispenser with the pile of plastic cups, collected himself a cup and went and fished the poo out the pool. He proceeded to walk around for quite some time with his poo in a cup before carrying both the child and its poo back into their room, presumably for the mother to far more sensibly deal with.

One day at the hotel, a photographer arrived to take updated photos for the marketing. It was all ever so clean that day and the manager crept out of the office and kept smiling and waving at guests. A delicious selection of food and drinks were produced by the kitchen and bar and much time was spent photographing them with the tropical pool background. Drones are strictly regulated and mostly banned across Costa Rica so the photographer flew one about the pool and restaurant for a while. I wondered how good the quality of the drone was and whether it would capture me lumbering around like a visually impaired, sand monster in the background or if any residual traces of the code brown incident of earlier were still evident.

… and just like that, 17 days in Costa Rica is drawing to a close for me. It’s been an incredible, if eye-wateringly expensive, country. The diving comprehensively provided and the rainforest offered some great experiences too. With the exception of Sean the incompetent tour operator, the locals have been a delight and everything has worked remarkably well. (Just got to hope the journey home goes as smoothly now I’ve said that!). The motto here is ‘Pura Vida’; it’s translates literally to ‘pure life’ but it’s used to express far more than that. It is a greeting to say hello, goodbye, thank you and just a general expression of ‘things are great’. It represent the national philosophy of living a relaxed, positive life style. It’s is, of course, plastered all over every souvenir so presumably also now encompasses the intention to absolutely rip off any visitors. Nonetheless, the marine life, the people I’ve met, the birds and reptiles, all the creatures and the pura vida have certainly contributed to be amazing time I’ve had here. Tomorrow (Tuesday), I shall head to the airport for my first flight to Colorado USA then hope my 3 hour layover is enough to get myself and my bag transferred onto my flight back to London, landing early afternoon on Wednesday.