Part 3—The Osa Peninsula

To give you some idea of where we were here are 2 maps they had at the chocolate farm to give you some perspective:

We got off to a difficult start leaving Manuel Antonio.  Took a bus into Quepos to get our rental car and it turned out when we finally found a car rental place that it was the wrong one and we needed to go back to a place that was right around the corner from where we had been staying! 

This baby Blue Morpho butterfly was on the wall at the car rental.

Fortunately they picked us up and brought us back.  Unfortunately the car still needed to be cleaned.  That took over 2 hours so we finally left for our 3.5 hour drive at 1:00 and we needed to stop for lunch. The lunch was nice at the Langoustino Feliz. We fortunately had leftovers that came in handy later.

But by the time we got to Puerto Jimenez it was dark, really dark- no street lights or businesses lit up dark.  Our rental was not in the town but about 10 K outside of it and we had to turn at their sign which we couldn’t find.  They had sent a picture of the sign but since they took the picture of the sign they had repainted it a different color that was hard to see in the dark.  After 4 trips back and forth that 10 km we stopped at the police station and they googled it and said it was about 10 k down the road that we’d been driving. I tried to call and only got voicemail. I finally found an old email from the manager that had a few landmarks on it which we found and turned onto a very bumpy road which led us for ten minutes to the Corcovado Private Villas where we were staying.  Happily someone was at the entrance to tell us where our villa was and shortly after another worker came to our door to see if there was anything we needed.  But it was all worth it  because this place was great. We had a very large downstairs with a full bath, large kitchen, table and couch. Our rooms were upstairs with another full bath in between and we had a balcony with chairs to sit on and watch the birds and animals and see the Pacific.  

Our villa

In the morning we were awakened early by some very noisy parrots and toucans and monkeys. 

View from our balcony

We eventually walked up the hill to where we got breakfast in an outdoor space next to the pool and overlooking the Pacific.  On our walk up we saw a coati

and lots of birds. 

Summer Tanager, Mealy Parrot, Golden Hooded Tanager

At breakfast the Scarlet Macaws and Toucans came to the trees around us along with other birds.  It was such a treat.

Views from our breakfast pavilion

Scarlet Macaws

Yellow-throated Toucans

We came to the Osa Peninsula because it is the one place Denny and I didn’t get to 20 years ago and we always wanted to come back. We wanted to visit the Corcovado National Park but needed a guide for it.  The manager of the Villas had recommended someone who I called and he said he’d be glad to take us but he had to see about tickets to get into the park and reservations on the boat to get there.  While we were waiting to hear from him we did some of our own exploring. 

Some trees along the road we drove.

We went to a store and bought  some food and looked around the small town of Puerto Jimenez. 

We had seen some signs for a chocolate farm so we went to see what that was about.  It was surrounded by a beautiful tropical forest.  We went in to ask about the tour and they said they had 2 a day but it was already too late for that day.  He said to come back for the 9:00 am tour but we could walk around if we wanted.  We did that for a while and found some interesting birds and flowers.  

We finally heard from Diego the guide that we could go to the forest in 2 days so went to the chocolate farm the next morning for the tour and they said they had a private tour and couldn’t do it until afternoon.  So we went to La Playa Blanca.  Not the greatest beach but in the heat it was nice to cool off a bit.  We ate lunch at a place called Soda Leila.  Had to go there since our granddaughter is Leila. 

Then we went back for the afternoon tour of the chocolate farm.  When we arrived we found a group of graduate students from Baylor University there for the tour also.  We joined them for the tour and it was great.  They were there for the university’s annual 2 week trip to learn about multiculturalism.  They were staying on a farm in Rincon where there was no hot water, no AC (it was up to 85 and really humid), and no internet.  They were helping with work on the farm and had spent the morning teaching English in a nearby elementary school.  We also found these bats.

The tour was great.  We not only learned how they took the cacao nuts and made them into cocoa

The cacao nut with seeds which get roasted

but the owner had worked very hard to develop a forest of only organic native trees including 5 different kinds of bananas, star fruit, papaya, noni, guava and cinnamon trees. He gave is some samples. 

This is a noni fruit

We also found a sloth and some monkeys and some nice birds. 

White-necked Puffbird

When we returned from our walk we were treated to a long table with lots of different fruits, chocolate sauce to put on them and chocolate cake.  It was delightful.  We walked around a little more before we left and found a lovely place to sprinkle some more ashes. Denny loved chocolate. 

The next morning we left before breakfast to get to the pier where our boat was waiting to take us to the ranger station for our tour Corcovado National Forest.  The Villa had given us a bag breakfast to eat on our hour and a half trip to the park. It was a beautiful sunny day and hadn’t gotten too hot yet. 

After we got to the Ranger Station with all the other boats we got our small group together with Diego, our guide.  They have a limit of 270 visitors to the Ranger Station per day and we all came at pretty much the same time so we slowly went through the check in and looked around at the monkeys that were also hanging around.  All the guides tend to communicate with each other so we know where to look for special things. We saw 4 different kinds of monkeys — howlers, white-faced capuchins, spider and squirrel monkey.  We also found a few sloths. We saw a collared peccary,

Collared Peccary

coatis, agouti and lots of frogs and lizards and a few bats.  We got  great looks at some new birds, too. 

top: Slaty Trogon, middle: White-whiskered Puffbird, Great Curassow, bottom: Southern Lapwing

We walked until it was lunch time and getting quite hot.  Luckily we stayed mostly on shady forest trails. 

They had a big lunch waiting for all of us which was great.  We had a little break before we had to head back to our boat. David and I saw an opportunity to go over to what looked like a trail that no one was on and walked down it to find a lovely bridge over a little stream.  It was another perfect place for Denny’s ashes.

  As we were returning from that one of the men in our group who was a photographer asked if it was a nice place to take a picture and we told him it was so he went there.  When he came back he was very excited as he had gotten a picture of a Gartered Violaceous Trogon that we’d like to think would watch over Denny.  We were happy to see we picked the right spot. 

On our boat ride back we saw some mating sea turtles, not sure what kind..  

When we returned to the pier Diego offered to take a walk with us nearby to show us some crocodiles. 

The couple who were staying at the same place as we were came with us.  He was the photographer and they were from Italy.  Diego found us much more than crocodiles.  We saw Green and Pygmy Kingfishers making a total of 4 kingfishers for the trip.

  We also saw a Boat-billed Heron, a Green Heron and some other smaller birds.  It was a wonderful trip.  Since it was our last night at the Villas we asked the other couple if they wanted to have dinner with us at the Villa.  It was a very enjoyable evening.

The next day we drove back to Manuel Antonio to return our car and take a bus back to San Jose for our last 2 nights in Costa Rica. We made a stop at this funky place near Uvita.

We got into a lot of traffic coming into San Jose but got to our hotel in time to have some dinner there.  Our last full day in San Jose we went to the Mercado Central

and then on a guided walk where they said “I bet you didn’t know you could see sloths and birds in San Jose.  Come with us and we’ll show you.”  We met at the University of Costa Rica and a young woman biologist took us for a walk for a couple of hours and told us a little about the university, the culture and history and the flora and fauna.

Our guide, Rachel, with a coffee bean.

  We saw 5 sloths, both 2 fingered and 3 toed. 

Because it was a different environment some of the birds were different, too.  There were some warblers, brown jays, tanagers and a dozen Montezuma Oropendola flying back and forth over our heads and making their very distinctive sound. 

This is not a great picture but if you want more, including the sound go to this link: ;ht

Here are a few pictures of the campus: totem. bee hotel, famous discoverer of snake venom, sunflower – their symbol

It was a great way to top off our trip. 

We flew home the next day.  Both of us to Houston then David to Seattle and me to Hartford.  

I think Denny would have loved it all and felt he was there with us.  David was the perfect traveling companion making the trip even more special.  Denny would have been proud.