Costa Rica Trip Report - Part 1 - The First Night
Bold links go to photos.
Earlier this year we were offered the opportunity to visit our friends’ house in Costa Rica. The house is located on the beach just a few kilometers from Puerto Jimenez. We did a bit of research and discovered that the entire area is relatively quiet and remote. Puerto Jimenez is on the Osa Peninsula near Corcovado National Park. Our friends probably wouldn’t be there, but we could use it any time we needed. As life got more complicated and crazy – a death in the family, the passing of our dog, a new job, and lots of hours in the office – we decided it was time to take a vacation. A beach house in a quiet corner of Costa Rica sounded perfect.
After spending a night in the capital city of San Jose, we flew to Puerto Jimenez in an airplane that didn’t seem much larger or better built than our red 1990 Vanagon. While the weather was decent in the city, it was pouring down rain in Puerto Jimenez. We had been advised to stock up on food, ice, and essentials before trekking out to the house. Our thought as we wandered the aisle of the Super Esquina by the airport was that we didn’t want to be dragging a block of ice around in the rain while searching for a house we hadn’t been to before. Since it was only noon, and we would probably be back later that day, we jumped in a all wheel drive taxi and headed toward Guanabanas and the house.
The taxi driver found the house about 6 km (nearly 4 miles) outside of town. I opened the gate and sank twelve inches into the mud. The entire property was flooded. The house was dry, but all paths to the house were mud, water, or a combination thereof. We hauled our stuff into the house and tried to make ourselves comfortable.
The house is a simple three room home. The front room is the living and dining room. The middle room is a storage room. The back room is the kitchen. There’s a great covered front porch. The floor is concrete and the front and back room has half height concrete walls. The windows and doors are effectively rebar. The roof is metal. No glass and very little wood. We’ll call it an open living concept.
It’s maybe one hundred steps from the porch to the beach. Perfect.
The rain was incessant. It let up slightly and we were able to explore the property and the beach in the mist. The beach was breathtaking. In spite of the rain we could see the glory in this place. As the rain continued we chose to skip heading back into town for supplies or dinner. It was at least one kilometer back to the main road and then we’d have to flag down a car or taxi while waiting in the rain. I found a fresh coconut and was able to crack it open using a large rock and a Leatherman. We had a can of Pringles, some corn flakes, and a bottle of rum. Dinner in paradise!
The sun dove below the horizon shortly after 5:00. We set up the air mattress and the mosquito netting, and then went to bed around 9:00.
Laura woke up at 1:30 a.m. to pee (out in the jungle by the way). Bats were flying throughout the house. “Uhh… Honey…” I got up to investigate. As I entered the kitchen area a bat flew between my legs. The hair on my arms was standing straight up. In the kitchen we found a large bunch of bananas someone had left from a nearby tree. A dozen or so bats were having a feast. We cleared out the bananas and the bats started to disappear. I looked up and … “Uhhh.. Honey…” Laura looked above her head to see two eyes looking down on her. It was a snake – about five or six feet of snake. Over the next hour we watched the snake very closely as it watched us, hunted a bat, and swallowed the bat in front of us. We searched our books in an effort to ID this creature, but the books only tell you about the really nasty poisonous snakes. (A mere 10% of Costa Rica’s 175 resident snakes are poisonous – or so we now hear). We headed toward the front of the house and “Uhhh… Honey…” I point my flashlight toward something that caught my eye above the front door. Just a few feet above our heads and near our bed was a rather large tarantula was laying eggs. Yeah.
We started a thorough check of the house to see what else might be living here. Snake in its place. Check. Tarantula laying eggs. Check. Suddenly a six-inch wide purple and orange crab scuttled across the floor in the storage room. I was able to coax him out the front door using a flashlight and a broom. A few more spiders were found including a fairly large armor-plated looking one. I’ll talk about that later. We let them all be. Snake in its place. Check. Tarantula in its place. Check. We went back to bed. Our sleep was a little restless. Any time either of us woke up, we grabbed a flashlight and flashed it around the room. This happened about every twenty or thirty minutes.
It was probably about 3:00 in the morning when I heard ‘Uhhh… Honey, I think I hear something.’ This was shortly followed by, ‘I see eyes!’ We looked out the front door and the eyes got closer. At this point I think I’m hallucinating. A little gray kitten came into the house, circled our bed, and exited through the same door it came in. It was just checking us out. Snake in its place. Check. Tarantula laying eggs. Check. We went back to sleep.
We woke about 7:00. The rain had stopped and it was looking glorious. Families of scarlet macaws flew into the tree in the front yard. About ten feet from the front porch was the Halloween Crab from the night before. He’d been dismembered, eaten, and scattered across the path. The large bunch of bananas was nearly completely gone. Hermit crabs had devoured it en masse. The jungle is a bit different from Tacoma.
Each and every morning we awoke to an extraordinary sunny Disneyland of beauty and animals. Horseback riding on the beach, iguanas, macaws, toucans, feeding monkeys bananas, eating avocados to our hearts’ content! It was only during the 12 hours of darkness that it became a carnival funhouse or even the House of Horrors! Many perhaps would’ve opted to leave and missed out on many a growth opportunity.
How does that Stones’ song go “You don’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might get what you need.” Yup, not the serene time on the beach we’d envisioned, but perhaps just what the doctor ordered.