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.