Sometimes whatever the plans you have you know it is always going to turn to shit without any trying and this holiday was particularly prone to that phenomenon. The morning we set off we had been shopping the previous night and gotten loads of food and things but when you are trying to shop for food for the coming week and not take a lot with you then it is hard to get what you really fancy so we ended up taking lots of tuna and bread and no bad things as we had hoped for a healthy eating week. So we loaded up all the foody things and my snorkelling things and beach towels and huge beach umbrella. Then Jenny had packed all the little girls things and her own and she had put a load of things on the bed and I could have sworn that she had told me that it was all my clothes for the holiday, I got out the big suitcase and packed all the things on the bed, like beach towels and more towels and things that looked like my swimming trunks and lots and lots of t-shirts. So I was happy, I stuck everything in the boot of the car and we set off with very sunny but fresh weather. It was a fantastic day over the mountains that we have to cross to get to the Caribbean and the mountains are a lush tropical rain forest mix of huge tree ferns and trees that are covered with climbing vines or all types. So as we were coming out of the mountains on the other side I was mentioning something about what underwear Jenny had picked out for me and she gave me a blank stare that could only mean one thing, she had actually packed me nothing for the beach. Nothing other than swimming trunks as it turned out. She told me that since I never let her touch my bags that I take with me when I go away on working trips she had only put out on the bed the swimming trunks that had been sat on the shelves with her swimming costumes. So I was going on holiday without underpants and socks and shirts and anything at all other than what I was sat in driving to the beach. Great start I thought but I could live with swimming trunks in the Caribbean or going commando in my shorts.
This is the end of the rainy season and usually the roads are crap at this time of year as they seem to never do any maintenance over the rainy season and the quality of the construction is appalling. This year was no different the holes in the roads were actually worse than before and they were huge maybe 6 inches deep and sometime were over half the size of the road, maybe 8-10 foot across, not many of them thankfully. The main highway from San Jose to Limon the main Caribbean port was pretty good though easy driving. After Limon it was shocking we had to slow to less than 30 mph to be able to avoid the huge holes and weave, one thing I commented on was this annoying habit the church goers have is painting symbols on the road around religious dates of the year, like Easter and Christmas and we kept seeing this huge yellow square with a large heart inside it and a halo over the top, it was everywhere, like every 200 yards or so it seemed, I was cursing about the goddam catholic church and their crazy painters, we have since found out that it is nothing to do with the church, it is a thing the government have done indicate where a pedestrian had been killed by a car or truck. I was stunned by this as it means there are people being killed all over the place while walking at the side of the road, literally thousands of them, I knew the problem was bad but this is just scary, far too many bad drivers and far too many poor people who have to walk or cycle everywhere and no sidewalks just the road or the ditch, no choice really.We took a little over 3 hours to get to the small tourist town of Cahuita a long beach of about 25 Km and a small coral reef. It has many small cabins and 1 or 2 hotels which are basically for rich American tourists so I stay clear of them. We always got to the quieter cabins and which are more remote with better environments and always much cheaper. We went back to the cabinas we went to the last time we came to this resort and found the owner ever more lazy than last time as he basically doesn’t do anything there anymore even though he lives in the big house in the place.
The only person who was there was the gardener who was not very helpful other than he was saying we could take any room even though we didn’t know the price. We found the same room we had last time but as we only had the small girl with us this time we decided to make a small bed out of towels for her and put her on the floor. I wasn’t sure this was good practice but she can sleep anywhere at any time. We went for a drive up the beach area to check out what other cabins were available just in case he had gotten expensive. We found a place that was on the beach called the Diosa, (Goddess) poorly names as it didn’t look that great and they were charging $120 a night for what they laughingly called a chalet. We walked away with a disgruntled owner looking on, they almost seemed offended. Get used to it buddy, your in dream land thinking that is the going rate. We checked out a new place and found they hadn’t even opened yet and they were rushing to get all the rooms ready for the Christmas period, again typical Costa Rican efficiency. So we gave up that night as we had a room even if we didn’t have the price. That night was surprisingly fresh for the Caribbean and we did have the normal problem of the mosquitoes they were buzzing into our ears and keeping us waving our hands about in the dark trying to kill them all, and at about midnight after we got to sleep the little girl was crying and stood by our bed and the mosquitoes were harassing her mercilessly and sucking the blood right out of her. We ended up all in the same bed, with Jenny pointing the other way as the girl is all arms and legs while asleep keeping everyone awake. So we all got up early next morning and put on our beach gear, well actually I only had swimming trunks and it is nice not to have to wear underpants once in a while. While we were eating breakfast the manager who really was the pool attendant and leaf collector and probably everything else, came and told us the room was $40 a night, which I was happy with, I was happy again and we ate breakfast to the sound of all the tropical birds warbling and screeching and hiding in the trees around the cabin. We went down to the beach and found the waves pounding the black sands and were actually eroding the beach back. I was surprised at the rate as the beach was much bigger a year ago. It was full of trees and debris maybe from some huge rainy season floods that occur every year or even Hurricane Beta that hammered Nicaragua. This year was worst on the Pacific coast and many people were drowned. So we were able to sit alone on the beach as you can see from the pictures, and enjoy the peace and tranquillity as nearly always on these beaches.
It is a very peaceful place only a few hardy tourists come this far and it is not very touristy as there is only a few bars and maybe two clubs and a couple of restaurants. All very average so we eat in the cabin all the time. We would have gone to the clubs if we hadn’t had the little girl with us. So we just took my Laptop and watched the movies I had copied onto my external hard drive. We did see a new guy arrive that first evening and he was Italian , same as the owner and probably a friend from back home, we went to bed with the little girl under a mosquito net this time and I didn’t seem to have many bites this time so we didn’t bother with anything else and I think repellent doesn’t work anyway. At about midnight we were awoken by some horrendous loud rock type music in our cabin group and found the new Italian playing racist German heavy metal while engaging in what can only be described as entertaining the local nightlife on his veranda, she was a young girl about 20 with dreadlocks and very tight jeans over her huge ass. I found it funny that he would be doing this while playing the racist rock. It didn’t last long and we went back to sleep to the sound of the buzzing mosquitoes and of the jungle buzzing and clicking in our ears and wondering what the next day will bring in this poverty stricken paradise.
