Rewind: Osa Peninsula

Unfortunately, I am writing this blog 4 months after the event and the old memory isn't what it used to be..it is, well, old. However, with the use of ample photograpy, I believe I can reconstruct the wonderful four days we spent in Costa Rica's beautiful Osa Peninsula.

The Osa is in southwest Costa Rica and, as the previous blog described, it is not easy to reach.

We arrived at the beautiful La Paloma Lodge, and were delighted to find our friends, the Discenzas happily awaiting us. After some catching up, we set off on a short hike around the property and were delighted/scared to have our first bit of wildlife be this venomous Fer de Lance. (Click on that link to go to a Wikipedia page on this snake). Cindy almost stepped on it.

He was not a big guy, perhaps only 12" long. But, our guide explained that it is the small, baby fer de lances that often do the most damage. Unlike the adults, the infants have not yet learned to control their venom and if one bites you, it is likely to unload its full supply of poison. An adult, however, holds some back for later usse.

We said hello to the snake and walked politely by, our eyes from that point on focused a bit more on our foot placement!

A highlight our our stay at La Paloma was that the owner had an eleven year old daughter who became fast friends with our kids. Here is Starr, with Baker.

Now, had I written this blog earlier, the following photos would have more detailed captions, but alas...in any case, they were all taken on the property of La Paloma, during our initial walk.

After the fer de lance, the next creature we saw was the famous Osa Long Eared and Giggling Jungle Hare!

Riley finds a bright green lizard.

The five intrepid explorers: Starr, Mikaela, Baker, Riley and Kendall on the hanging bridge that spanned the croc-infested river close to La Paloma lodge.

Starr was a regulary Pippi Longstocking and knew how to live in the jungle. She found this fruit that we all tasted.

She also showed the kids how to make facepaint from the mud...

...Baker really enjoyed that!

I made this picture extra large in the hope that you can see the sloth...this guy actually moved around a bit, not so slothful!

Awww, isn't he cute? This white faced (or Capuchin) monkey was very cute, as were his many friends. They were also a wee bit agressive, hanging from trees just above the trail and baring their teeth as we walked beneath.

The next day, we ventured with Randall, our guide, into Corcovado National Park, the highlight of the Osa Peninsula. We again had to travel by boat, south along the coast, to reach the park headquarters where we found a small exhibit of the bones of some of the animals that live in the park. One, in particular, mad a great mask.

The Monster of Corcovado lives!

Our walk through Corcovado, while lovely, was not as rich with wildlife as I had hoped. We saw birds, and a few monkeys if I recall, but that was about it. Lots of interesting trees, including of course the matapalo, which I imagine I have written about earlier. The matapalo (translation "kills tree") is a vine-like tree that wraps itself around another larger tree, slowly suffucating it and taking its place in the forest. They are quite beautiful and it is a thing to see when they have destroyed another tree and it has decomposed, leaving the matapalo standing with a mostly hollow center, where the other tree was previously. 

While we did not see a lot of wildlife, we did see this track of a tapir. (Wikipedia link). These are large (500lbs) pig-like animals. I recall Randall saying that it is good not to find one as they can be aggressive if they are surprised!

The hike throuch Corcovado led us eventually back to the beach, alongside a medium sized stream where we had a rest and an unplanned adventure. We set off upstream a bit and found a beautiful swimming hole in the stream, complete with a small waterfall to massage our backs.

Mike and Cindy near our unplanned swim stop.

Kendall on the beach.

Tara and Tae walking the beautiful rocky shoreline.

Good friends.

My two favorite girls!

We left the beach and headed back into the forest and quickly came into a very beautiful and very wet section of jungle...

After a great lunch break, Randall led us (and carried one of us!) to another waterfall, where we had a fantastic swim and some small cliff jumping!

See that splash? That comes from one of the kids (now underwater) jumping off the waterfall. That is Randall looking on.

Mike looks happy after his plunge! Pura vida, baby!

Back at La Paloma lodge, if you looked in one direction, there was nothing but green...

...and in another direction, nothing but blue.

The next day brought another adventure. Cindy unfortunately took ill, but the rest of the gang headed down the coast on horseback. It was a remarkably treacherous course. The horses walked on a path that was often no more than two feet across and which fell--no kidding--forty or fifty feet on one side to the rocky beach below. If the horse slipped or got spooked, it would not have been pretty.

But, of course, they didn't and, as a result, it was very pretty. A truly beautiful horseride. When we were on wider terrain, we let the horses run a bit. Baker's horse threw him. But to his great credit, he "got back on the horse" and continued on--Tara and I were both very proud of his ability to do that.

We stopped at the local Drake Bay school for about a half hour and had a futbol match with some of the kids. A great time under the hot Costa Rican sun.

Afterwards, the Casagrandes plus Starr continued on while the Discenzas went to check on mom. We had another unplanned adventure (the best kind!). A bit farther down the coast, we came to another stream and a small camp run by a German woman. She rented kayaks. We ordered up four kayaks--one for each of the big kids and one for Tara, Tae and me. With a guide, we made a short paddle upstream and then tied up at a spot that one would never have found without the knowledge of a local. There was a small waterfall draining down a rock face into the stream. We tied the kayaks there and ascended up the rockface, which the kids loved climbing and Tae managed in my arms.

Up and up we went until we reached a swimming hole and...up and up we went some more until we reached a second, larger swimming hole complete with great cliff-jumping. Baker, Riley and Starr had a ball jumping from the heights as Tara and Tae and I looked on. Of course, Tara and I each took our turn too. It was a magical experience.

It came time to say goodbye to Osa and we headed out to the Drake Bay airport--really just a dirt field with a bus-stop sized terminal. We had a private plane--didn't plan that, but it worked out that we were the only ones on board and a nice flight back to San Jose. Osa had been a great adventure! Pura vida!

Tara and Cindy at Drake Bay Airport.

About to board our private plane...















Arriving to the Osa

After our cross-border adventure from Colombia to Costa Rica, we still had a rainstorm, a swollen river and stormy whitecaps to get through before we could meet our friends the Discenzas at our hotel in the Osa Peninsula. It was an exciting day!

We were met at the Costa Rica-Panama border and driven about 90 minutes to the banks of the Rio Sierpe and a wonderful little restaurant, where we had a beautiful lunch of casado con pescado. (If I haven't written this elsewhere this year, a casado is a typical Costa Rican meal consisting of rice, beans, a little salad, fried plantains and either fish, chicken or less often beef, usually grilled. It is delicious and healthy.)

At the restaurant, we met Randall who would accompany us to La Paloma, our hotel, and would later serve as our guide in Corcovado National Park. Randall gave us each a pancho and we boarded a longboat, captained by Diego. This thrilled Tae (and all of us really) as it gave us the chance to say "Go Diego Go!" (Parents with small children get this; others may not--sorry).

The ride started off simple enough. The rain drizzled down lightly. We passed secondary growth forest and pastures, occasionally seeing deeper jungle. Very little in the way of people or settlements. After about 25 minutes, the rain picked up considerably and with a strong wind, began to blow sideways rendering the boat's roof rather useless. I for one, incompletely covered by my pancho, was completely soaked. I think Tara was similarly drenched. Baker, Riley and Tae only a bit less so.

We approached the boca (mouth) of the river and the open ocean. White caps came storming into the river and the boat began to rise and fall. Randall explained that we needed to get out past the whitecaps, and then motor along the coast about ten minutes past the small town of Drake Bay and then come back in to our hotel. Diego pointed us straight to sea.

As we crashed up and down, we all roared with laughter and smiles. Perhaps we were remembering our adventure in Bocas del Toro, where a somewhat stoned boat captain toured us perilously close to gigantic rocks as whitewater crashed around us.

As the boca became wider and wider, it's left side became more dominated by very large rocks--the size of three or four story buildings. And, curiously, rather than heading straight ahead into the ocean, Diego headed straight for the rocks, each being smashed every fifteen or twenty seconds by the power of the Pacific.

"Well, fine. He must know what he is doing. Surely, he'll head towards the rocks and then turn out to sea and around them," I said to Tara.

But, he kept heading towards them and it became clear that, specifically, he was headed towards a small channel--perhaps 3 boat widths wide, say 30 feet--between two enormous rocks. Fifty meters from the rocks, Diego paused and we bobbed in the swell watching the whitewater pound the narrow channel--which, it had now become undeniably clear, was our passage through.

Then, as a smash of whitewater leveled out in preparation for the next, Diego pushed the throttle forward and off we zoomed through the channel, rocks close by on either side of us. We made it through easily, the next wave smashing only after we were well passed. Well done, Diego!

As we cruised along the coast, the ride smoothed out and we appreciated the deep forest of the Osa. After about 10 minutes we came to a clearing in the forest and could see perhaps a dozen buildings that were the heart of Drake Bay, the small town nearest our hotel. We passed Drake Bay and then pulled into the mouth of a small river, with fishing lodges on each bank. We went 100 meters upstream and then docked, as Randall pointed out a crocodile fifteen meters from us, whose head just stuck out of the water.

"Later, if you like, you can use a kayak and paddle up this river," suggested Randall. After a year in Costa Rica, the idea of paddling on a croc-infested river rolled right over us.

"Sounds fun!" we replied.

We climbed a nearby stairway and then went along a path, to a little paradise of a hotel - La Paloma lodge.

Rewind: Leaving Colombia

Perhaps this blog title would make a good movie title, like Out of Africa or something. And our story of leaving Colombia has made for a good tale as well.

After a beautiful 24 hours in the Isla Rosario National Park, we boated back to Cartagena in a launch just big enough to not capsize in the rough and tumble open waters. We stalled once and the boat captain duly got us going again.

A quick souvenir-buying stop in Cartagena and off we went to the airport for our flight back to San Jose, with a stop in Panama City. In San Jose, we would be meeting up with our friends the Discenzas to go to Costa Rica's spectacular Osa Peninsula.

The check in clerk at COPA Airlines took our passports, issued our boarding passes and then asked just one question: "May I see your yellow immunization cards that show your Yellow Fever vaccinations?"

"Huh?"

Turns out that Costa Rica passed a law in 2009 requiring all visitors to Colombia returning to Costa Rica to have a Yellow Fever immunization. This was the first we had heard of it. After much back and forth and much pleading, the Copa clerk would not yield. It seemed that our choices were to get a shot and then remain ten days more in Colombia while the vaccination took full effect or...well, that was all she really said we could do.

At last, however, she agreed that we could fly to Panama City since Panama did not have the same requirements. She then, rather incongruously, offered to merely change our flight from Panama to Costa Rica by one day and suggested that it would be perfectly acceptable to fly the very next day from Panama to Costa Rica. While this sounded promising, it didn't exactly make sense and, fortunately, we did not take her offer, which would have cost $575 in change fees and, we found out later, indeed would not have worked.

Instead, we boarded our flight to Panama. As we flew, we conjured the plan of landing in Panama, racing through immigration and getting a Panamanian entry stamp, then running to get new boarding passes in the hope that because we were now officially in Panama, and not in Yellow Fever ridden Colombia (by the way, it's not...), we might get through. This was essentially a variation on the plan offered up by the Copa clerk, except that we would not wait even on day. We would just try to board the flight as if we had been in Panama all the time, not just for five minutes.

So we hustled. A great immigration attendant in Panama quickly and courteously got us into the country. We had speedy bag retrieval. Kids performing at top level--as a side note, our kids have become terrific travelers. Baker and Riley, in particular, can get their shoes off, backpacks onto the conveyor belt, metallic items placed just so, assist with Tae, gather their things, put everything back on, and keep moving down the concourse in seconds flat.

It was all working for us. Even when we arrived back at the COPA desk.

"Hi," I said with a smile and in lovely Spanish. "Here we are in Panama." I paused to emphasize our location as being not in Colombia. "We are late for our flight to San Jose. Can we still make it or do you have another flight?"

The clerk said we were too late but that there was another flight in a couple hours that we could make and not pay any change fee. Yes! She took our passports, issued our boarding passes and asked one question: "Can I see proof of your Yellow Fever immunizations?"

"Huh?"

"My computer says you were just in Colombia and you need...yadda yadda yadda." You know the story.

So, we were again turned around. One thing we have learned, however, through Tara's Canadian citizenship and her US residency, and through the experience of a good friend in the States who is a Bolivian citizen, is that immigration services are consistent on just one principle: inconsistency.

The COPA clerk made a few calls and then explained: The Costa Rican authorities at the airport will be real sticklers about the Yellow Fever immunizations. But, if you drive across from Panama, nobody will ask about it.

And, there was our solution. We found a hotel for the night in Panama City and, in the morning, hopped a 45 minute domestic flight to David, a medium sized city in the north of Panama, an hour from the Costa Rican border. From David, we caught a cab to the border. I had called our hotel in Osa from Panama City and they arranged a taxi to meet us on the CR side of the border. So, we walked across the border, the Costa Rican immigration officials slammed their welcome stamps into our passports directly beside the Colombian exit stamps (no kidding!) and we were back home in Costa Rica and on our way to the next adventure.