Samara adventures

We just arrived in Samara after spending 10 days back in Nosara. We spent the whole time with Marc and I heading to the beach in the morning, he surfed, I body boarded. Then back for lunch, Yoga at 12:30, back for an afternoon hangout by the pool or visiting with Alexa, our neighbour at the hotel, then back to the beach in the evening.
On our last day in Nosara, we decided to donate our yearly travel donation (I give to a local organization on each trip) to a monkey sanctuary. I had met the couple who run the place, Steve and Vicki when I was looking at buying property earlier on. They rescue orphaned howler monkeys after their mom's get shocked from the hydro lines. Very sad. The babies are often burned from the electric shock, sometimes they lose limbs, and they are always traumatized and dehydrated. And they do a lot of work trying to get the local power company to insulate all of its lines. So off we went to give them our money.
Lucky us, after meeting Marc for the first time, Vicki led us into the large rehab habitat to see the monkeys (they also had a baby racoon). The habitat is a huge 15 foot high cage that keeps the babies in and keeps the boa constrictors out. It has numerous trees in it, kennels where the babies sleep and feel safe, places for shade, water, sun and food. It must have cost a small fortune. It had 2 gates that we had to walk through to prevent escape...reminded me of the petting zoo door system that I used to have at the store...I hated that petting zoo, I loved this habitat though!
It must have been because I have dark hair like their now dead monkey mommas had, but the youngsters completely ignored Marc as we entered the habitat and made a bee line for my head. Within minutes I had 6 baby howler monkeys on me, gripping my hair, riding on my back and curling themselves up in my arms. Their fur is sooo soft, and they wrapped their tails around my arms and neck. I was covered. Then the raccoon wanted in on the action and started climbing up my skirt (on the skirt itself, not on my legs). The little raccoon girl was just a gray bundle of trouble with sharp little claws that kept climbing up me. Vicki had to keep trying to grab her as she scrambled out of Vicki's arms and headed my way time and again.
We got to spend some wonderful time in the habitat getting to play with and cuddle the monkeys. Vicki of course asked that we not post the photos up anywhere public as they rarely let anyone into the habitat and they get so many calls from people just wanting to play with the monkeys. They are slated for wild release so they don't want them to get used to lots of different people.
She and Steve do nothing but pick leaves in the wild to feed the monkeys, build bigger habitats, spend time feeding and consoling the orphaned monkeys, holding fund raisers, writing letters to government officials to try to change how the power lines are set up. They are tireless. They need more money. I'll be setting up a collection box at the store for them this summer.

The next day (Friday) we packed up and headed to Samara a beach town just 45 minutes away to see what was there to see. So far the town and beach are less picturesque than Nosara. The paved road that ends as Samara and doesn't continue to Nosara means that there are LOTS more people here. Jet skiis are present, lots of nosiy bars and restaurants. So we'll hang out here for 6 days. We hear that the snorkling and kayaking are great. Then we head back to Nosara for a concert that we bought tickets to with friends that we made. Marc plans on another surf board rental, he was pretty stoked about the huge improvements of his surfing skill in just the week that we had rented boards previously. Don't you just hate talented people. We'll spend our last 3 days in Nosara until we have to drive up to San Jose to catch our flights home...sigh.

Gotta go, got a kayak to rent!
Erin

The Nosara Boomerang

I just left this place a month and a half ago, and yet here we are again.

We headed to Carrillo after our Scuba adventures in Playa Hermosa. Found our way to the house that we had rented for the last 2.5 weeks of the trip only to discover that it was located in the middle of 3 other houses being built. Hammers hammering and saws sawing 6 days a week from 6 am until 5 pm. We packed our stuff back up, got a refund of our deposit for the house and headed back up the road to Nosara. The lovely lady Alexa whose hotel I had stayed at previously booked us in to a studio apartment next door and here we are. We'll be in Nosara for 10 days before heading back to Samara where we found a condo rental with no construction around it.

We spent a 3 hour boat tour on the Rio Nosara. This is a brackish river that leads out into the ocean and is flooded with salt water at every high tide. Mangroves and other large trees protect the banks and the area is a protected reserve. We got to see so many birds, buckets of herons, parrots, hawks, mot mots and the surrounds were beautiful. We even got to see a basalic lizard run across the water (thus their nick names, Jesus Christ lizzards) The boat had a little electric motor so the animals were not disturbed at all. Marc got some great shots.

We also spent a morning walking through the Lagarta lodge's wild life refuge. We got to witness the mating dance of the long tailed manaquin. So fun. These birds are great. The males make friends for life with other males, usually in groups of 2 or 3. When mating season starts, they call the ladies. When a lady shows up, the buddies start dancing for her. She watches them carefully to see who has the best technique and the brightest colours before deciding on a mate. She chooses, they head off the the back seat of a car for a few minutes, then the chosen one returns to his buddies to continue their guy talk. Sometimes animals are so much like humans it amazes me.

Then as we continued on we saw a tree rustling. Our guide thought it must be monkeys so looked up, just as Marc looked down and saw a spotted cat run headfirst down the trunk and away. It was a Marguay. A wild cat a little bigger than a house cat. A very rare sighting. Of course I was looking for the monkeys so saw none of it. Sigh.

I rented a body board here for the week and Marc has rented a Surf Board. A body board is the small child/nanna version of a surf board so is just my speed. Marc heads out past the breaks to catch the waves and I head just after the breaks to catch the white wash. I get ride after ride after ride while Marc paddles and paddles and sits and sits waiting to catch a wave. I love that for once I feel that my lack of skill and coordination is resulting in more fun for me!

We'll be here for a few more days before heading back to Samara for our last week!

Hope that all is well in Manitoba!
Erin

Up high, then down low.

Everything is peachy keen over here. Been too busy to email anyone, which is a good thing. So let me back up a bit and give you the full scoops.

-Pat and Bob and Marc got into Montezuma a day late but none the worse for wear. On their second day at the rental house, Marc and I abandoned them for the day to drive back to Nosara as a primo piece of land came up for sale at a great price. So we drove for 4 hours to get there, looked at the piece of property and put in an offer before heading back to Montezuma. We found out later on that we were being out bid and decided not to start in on a price war. I had been kinda waffling on the buying here idea as during my first 2 weeks here alone I had heard so many stories of second houses being pains in the butt. It was still a dream of Marc's and most probably a decent investment so no worries to buy a piece of property, and wait a long time to build on it. Then over the next 4 days, Marc heard stories from so many people with second houses in Costa Rica. Break ins, people stripping houses of windows, doors, electrical, having to spend half of your vacation fixing up your second home etc etc etc...and he came to the same conclusion that I had...buying and owning a house here is not for us. So, just like that, the plan changed and we were on vacation rather than looking for property! The new plan includes buying a campervan to tour New Zealand, then Australia, then sell and buy another van for South America.

So we spent 2 weeks in Montezuma, our rental house included daily visits from white faced and sometimes howler monkeys. We had 3 resident bats who kept the area fairly bug free, 3-4 agoutis who we fed daily, hummingbirds who fought over the feeder, bellbirds, trogans, mot mots etc etc etc. As you can imagine, Bob and Marc took a few photos.

Pat and Bob had a great time. we headed to the beach, Bob, Marc and I headed off for a snorkling day and we of course made many trips to the nearby water.

So now that we were no longer looking for property, Marc and I decided to ditch one of our weeks in Montezuma and head up to the mountainous Monteverde cloud forest area. Despite colds that both of us caught, we had an awesome 4 days taking night hikes, day hikes, a coffee tour and tours through reptile houses and frog houses. Very cool and so incredibly beautiful. Too bad for us that we had not planned on heading to this much cooler area and each only had one pair of pants which quickly got dirty and remained thus for our 4 days there. A little cool at times, and a sweater would have been appreciated amongst all of the beach wear that we had packed.

We are now in Playa Hermosa. Marc wanted to get some scuba diving in, and this is the place to do it. And, drumroll please, I went scuba diving for the first time in my life today. They have wonderful "discover scuba" programs here where you get an hour of in pool instruction then they chuck you into the ocean. Super cool. I got 2, 40 minute tank dives in, and went up to 40 feet deep. Marc the ever thoughtful decided to forgo his option to dive deeper, as he already has his Padi, to instead dive with me. It was so cool. We saw TONS of sting rays, eels, a lobster, tons of fish big and small, and on our second dive, SHARKS...which I was less fond of but Marc held my hand so I didn't freak out tooo much.

And there you have it. In a few days we will be heading to Carrillo a beach area down the coast and another rental home. There I plan to tackle Surfing. I'm quite excited.

The plans, they are a changing

The plan was. Come to Costa Rica, find a piece of land the same value that Marc got for his recently sold bit of property in BC, and buy it. So for the first week that I spent in Costa Rica, that's exactly what I did. I found some beautiful pieces. Then I started chatting with people about other tiny little details like building costs, maintenance during the wet season, the possibility of renting a house out to other tourists, the costs of a vehicle, equipping said house with kitchen appliances, beds etc etc, and I began to get a little trepidatious.

Onward I headed from Nosara, to the little town of Montezuma where I spent a week playing in the ocean, climbing hills to get to waterfalls and negotiating the local bus system. Marc and his folks Pat and Bob experienced some horrid travel woes and were delayed arriving by a full day, no big deal for Marc but a crap deal for Pat and Bob who only had one week to spend with us here. But they had non the less arrived just a little worse for wear. Just as they arrived, I received an email from an agent who I had been working with in Nosara. The perfect piece of property had come up at a great price! So arriving only the day before, Marc and I headed out to Nosara (a pot-holey 3 hour drive away). We checked out the location, it looked perfect, and even if we didn't end up building on the land, it would be a great investment. We put in an offer and headed home. The next day we found that a bidding war had started so we backed out of the purchase of the piece that we had looked at. Almost immediately after that, Marc came to the same conclusion that I had come to. If a vacation home is what we want, buying here would mean tying up our finances for many years to come and would most probably bring more hassle that it is worth for a place where we would only spend 3 months of the year. So just like that, the plan changed.
We love the rental house that we are staying at. We love the fact that when the light switch broke, the owner had to call an electrician in to deal with it. And we love that when we are done with it all, we just drive away. So after some discussion, we are now entertaining the idea of buying a compact camper van. When we travel it's the car rentals and hotels that kill the budget. And we are now past the age where dragging a heavy backpack on public transport in far flung areas for months on end has lost some of its appeal. A campervan that we can ship around the world seems like a good idea. We'll be looking into it much more when we get back to Canada.

So that now means that we have all the rest of our time here to actually be on vacation!

During the past week that Pat and Bob were here we drove around spotting howler monkeys along the way. We spent a whole day at the Mal Pais beach plsying in the tide pools and water. We headed out to a nearby animal rehabilitation centre called rainsong. They do the best that they can to help out orphaned howler monkeys whose mom's were electrocuted on the power lines, they take in animals that people have poached for pets then thought better of it when they realized how difficult it is to have a wild animal in the house etc etc. They lack any government funding so facilities are bare and they do the best that they can. It's all a little sad as places like this need a serious cash injection to really do some good.

Yesterday, Bob, Marc and I headed out for a full day's snorkling adventure. For the low price of 50 bucks a person, we got a half hour boatride out to isla tortuga (an uninhabited island) where they anchored the boat, handed out snorkling gear and let us explore for over an hour. We saw so many fish! Such bright colours and we were so glad that our little waterproof camera takes videos! Trying to photograph quickly moving fish is a challenge, the video makes it very easy. We had a bit of an adventure where Bob dropped he and Pat's camera where is rested quite comfortably on the ocean floor until Marc rescued it.
I am usually a little trepidatious when it comes to the ocean, but the water was so calm and clear that I had no worries. The only funny thing is that after snorkling for about an hour, I began to get sea sick. I've heard of this happening to some people as there is no horizon to use as a point of reference. No problems though. We were soon all back on the boat, headed towards the island for a lovely beach lunch. After lunch everyone lazed around, swimming, some people took a banana boat ride, and most of us (Marc in particular) spent lots of time petting the island's tame peccary. The peccary (kind of like a wild pig) had quills like a hedgehog instead of bristles like other porky animals. She would see people coming over to pet her and just flop over on her side so as to expose the parts that she wanted patting. It was incredibly cute.

Back on the boat, back to Montezuma, and back to the beautiful rented house for supper. Pat and Bob head back to Winnipeg tomorrow, boo hiss. I hope for their sake that the weather has improved.

Take Care!
Erin

Montezumaaaa

The scenery here is absolutley beautiful. Tropical jungle mountains ending in beach and ocean. I´ve been spending my days headng to town on the bus, walking half an hour to a big surfing beach and alternating between reading, watching surfers, and heading into the water to bodyboard. On the walk back to wait for the bus, I stop in at one of the many fresh water waterfalls that are in the area for a nice cool dip before the bot busride home. Very cool. Pity about the town though. Few people live here so the place has little to offer other than ramshackle hotels and restaurants that blare until late in the night to keep the surfing tourists occupied.

Bats in the belfry

I spent one week in the beachside town of Nosara. There I stayed at a hotel and made friends with the lovely hotelress named Alexa. I spent the week there snooping around town, driving around with real estate agents looking at property, pondering buying property in Costa Rica, heading to the beach, the farmers market and the turtle beach where Olive Ridley turtles were nesting. Very cool. I was in town with no car but the lovely Alexa dragged me out with her whenever she headed out for groceries, to watch a band play etc etc.

So after much pondering over property I am now in Montezuma, on the southern end of the Nicoya Peninsula. I'll quit pondering for a few weeks and actually have a bit of a vacation, one week by myself, and then Marc and his folks arrive so we'll have a week of vacation together!

The 3 bedroom house that we rented here in Montezuma is cool to say the least. 2 Square 2 story buildings connected by decks that link the 2, and the whole thing is topped off with an observation deck at level 3. When the howler monkeys are roaring in the mornings it's good fun to climb up to the top with a cup of coffee to watch them at tree top level.

The yard that the house is in is filled with tropical plants and the flowers are so fragrant it seems like someone must be spraying some sort of tropical perfume everywhere, but no, it's just the flowers. There are humming birds who are zooming around fighting for the feeder, and big guiney pig type things who come looking for food every morning. I have already been warned that the white faced monkeys are somewhat cheeky and will steal a banana out of your hand if you are not careful. I've seen lots of fruit bats eating at the bunch of bananas outside, and lots of regular bats go flapping around the decks as night, eating all of the mosquitos that I attract.

I'll be spending the next week or so just toodling around the area. I want to take a surfing lesson and do that hike to the waterfalls that everyone does around here. I'm saving the bigger things, like kayak trips, scuba lessons and snorkling for when Marc and company get here.

Hope that everyone is keeping nice and toasty warm back home. It's all I can do to stay a little cool over here.

Cheers
Erin

All is well in the world of Rica

So here I am on the beautiful patio of the little hotel that I am staying at. I get to overlook the ocean (Playa Pelada) while sipping my coffee in the cool morning air. I'm a hater of the dead heat, so lucky for me this place only gets uncomfortably hot for a few hours in the middle of the day. From 6 am when the birds wake you up until around 11:30 in the morning moves from cool to warm. Noon to 2:30 or so is dead hot, time for a meal and siesta, then after 3 it becomes downright pleasant again. The secret is not to overheat in the hot hot times, time the walking around correctly so as to not get gross.

The bugs in this area are incredible, grasshoppers that are 5 inches long, huge lumbering beetles, and this morning I saw a praying mantis eating the head off of a bug that looks like a leaf.

I am staying at a lovely little hotel here whose hotelress is an expat american. She has been absolutely lovely. On my first day here she dragged me along with her to find groceries (we have access to use the kitchen), and check out the town. That evening she drove myself and another guest out to Playa (means beach) Ostional to see the turtles. Olive riddley turtles come into the beach by the hundreds, sometimes by the thousands, to lay their eggs in the evenings. Alexa (the lovely hotel lady) said that they come in according to the moon, and she has seen them in the thousands, just hanging out in the surf for a few days, waiting for the moon to pull them in the right way and tell them it's time to lay their eggs. It was so incredibly amazing.

To prevent total egg poaching, the government allows each local family to gather 200 eggs for sale. Their theory is that the waves of turtles coming in means that some of the later animals dig up some of the earlier animals nests wrecking the eggs anyways. Keeping some eggs on the market legally keeps the black market trade down as well. I don't know if these efforts work at all or not, but it was so sad to see these turtles labouring to get up to the beach, working so hard to dig deep nests with their back flippers, laying their hundreds of eggs, covering up the nests, and making their way back to the ocean, only to have their nests raided a few moments afterwards.

The town that I am in Nosara, has 2 beaches that run for a total of about 5 kilometers. In the mornings I've been heading down the hill that the hotel is on, walking up the 2 beaches to get to the main little town. The town has small grocery stores, restaurants, realestate places a furniture shop etc etc. The roads are dusty but as soon as you step behind some greenery, the dust isn't so bad. All stores, restaurants etc have a thick bit of greenery surrounding them to keep the dust out.

One of the beaches here names Guiones is a main surfing spot. Yesterday the surf was incredibly high so was lots of fun to watch those adept as catching the waves. So far I haven't gone out for a lesson. I have too many days booked up with meetings and such so think that I will wait until I head down further south to get into the water for some surfboard embarassment.

I hope that everyone is doing well and staying warm!
Erin

Leaving tomorrow

Thank goodness that the snow wasn't too heavy over new years. Spending time at a cottage on Bird River with friends was lots of fun, but being snowed in and missing my flight wouldn't have!!

I'll be spending the day getting ready for tomorrow's departure. Final packing up, and making sure that my international phone is working and up to snuff.

If you would like to follow Marc and my travels through Costa Rica this winter, and our search for property to buy, check back to this blog every week or so!

Stay warm
Erin