Costa Rica – Coast to Coast

I had a hard time sleeping last night so I slept in longer than usual this morning. James woke me up around 8:30, and we went upstairs for breakfast. Andrea and Jay were already there and we agreed to meet up later so we could meet Roberto at his school. We made plans with Roberto earlier in the week and he agreed to take us to a Bribri chocolate demonstration and then to a jungle waterfall. Andrea and Jay did their own thing and James and I decided to take Colonie for a walk and then relax on the beach.

Colonie was so happy to go for another walk with us (well, just in general I suppose, but I’ll just pretend it was because he loved us). Rosa decided to follow along and that proved to be great entertainment for us. Colonie did his usual darts into the water to lay down, and again rolled in the sand when he came out of the water. Rosa teased and taunted him by running at him and then cutting away at the last second. Sometimes he chased her into the water and that was really fun to watch. I think she bodysurfed at one point. 🙂 They played up and down the beach and it seemed like they became friends. We went back to the house (it was already really hot by 9:30) to change into our swimsuits and get our stuff for the beach.

Colin let me borrow the boogie board, but unfortunately, the waves were non-existent. I was really hoping for some huge waves like our first day in Puerto Viejo, but the ocean did not cooperate. I was determined to boogie board, so I rode a few baby waves and then gave up. I took a walk down the beach to look for shells and ended up finding a ton of little sand dollars that were bleached white from the sun. James relaxed in the hammock and read for a while, and then we decided to rinse off and get ready for our planned activities.

I called a cab for the four of us and we were picked up around 11:45. The driver dropped us off outside of Roberto’s school (he’s an English teacher) and we waited for him to finish. He picked us all up in his 4Runner, and we were off to the jungle! First stop: a Bribri home where we would see how they make chocolate!

The Bribri home

Cacao Pod – we were able to taste the fruit surrounding the bean inside. It was sweet and very good!

She went through the various steps of how they make chocolate. The beans are dried, fermented, toasted, and ground. We also tasted a bean after it had been toasted, and it was chocolate in its most pure form. It was quite bitter of course, but James declared it “the best chocolate I’ve ever had”. He loves dark chocolate, so it was great for him.

At the end of the tour, there is opportunity to purchase crafts made by the Bribri, as well as small pieces of chocolate. We were able to sample different flavors (clove, nutmeg, mint, vanilla, coffee, coconut, etc) and bought quite a few to take with us. I also bought a small jar of homemade cocoa butter (it smells HEAVENLY), a small basket for my mother, and a small jar of a marinade that smelled amazing with lots of paprika.

Here is the basket I bought for my mother, held by the artist who made it!

The chocolate tour took about 30 minutes, and then we were off to go further into the jungle to see the waterfall. On the way, Roberto pointed out that we were looking at Panama:

We drove for about 20 minutes into the jungle and began the hike to the waterfalls. We passed the big one, but hiked further up in order to visit a smaller falls with pools and a natural waterslide.

The hike:

The big falls:

On the way to the natural pool:

The natural pool with a little slide. The water was deep enough to jump into without hitting bottom. It was pretty cold, but after a hike in the hungle, it felt great! You can see part of the little slide in the 2nd picture.

James’ turn on the slide!

On the way back down to the big waterfall…looking straight down!

Another shot from the top of the waterfall…the jungle was so beautiful!

Roberto, me, and James

Andrea and Jay:

The hike back down was a little tricky…there were lots of roots and things to hold onto, but the roots were also a disaster waiting to happen. Roberto said that another guest tripped over a root and would have toppled down the cliff, but he grabbed onto the nearest tree and held on for dear life. After that story, we were even more careful!

The big waterfall was beautiful! I am so disappointed that my water camera pictures didn’t turn out. James and I stood right under the falls (we had to hold our ears because of the pressure and noise) and swam around for a little while. It was very shallow water and that surprised me…it was also very windy which I found very interesting. Here is a shot that Jay and Andrea took of the falls:

After a little while at the falls, we had to hike back out and go back to Banana Azul. Jay and Andrea were leaving for San Jose on the 4:30 bus, and Roberto offered to take them into the bus stop once we picked up their bags. James and I changed our clothes and grabbed some money and rode into town with everyone. We had to buy our bus tickets for our trip to San Jose the next morning, and also wanted to have a nice dinner and buy some souveniers.

I was sad to say goodbye to our new Canadian friends, but we knew we’d see each other at the airport since our flight to Charlotte was the same. Roberto was so kind to take us all into town…just one of the many things Roberto and Colin did for us to make our stay wonderful!

More about our last night in Puerto Viejo in the next entry….

Tags: Puerto Viejo, Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.