25 November 2005
Bahia del Coco, Costa Rica.On Friday, we were up and underway by 6:45 AM to go over to Bahia del Cocos and check into the country. Bahia del Cocos is a small town; it's the first Port of Entry, in Costa Rica where cruisers can and must check into the country. The Check-In process is free. Your 90-day Visas starts with the entry stamps received in Bahia del Cocos.
The town is a tourist hub with the expected trinket shops, Gringos, restaurants and hotels. We were warned to be aware of the timeshare hawkers who linger at the corner. Cocos is a town with one main street, no sidewalks, shoreline restaurants, a small plaza and a few side streets. Ex-patriots own several of the businesses from the United States and Canada, including a Marine Store. There are two hardware stores that we visited and a large, good quality grocery store. In general, we found it a quiet sleepy town.
Between an hour at the bank, and an hour longer than expected at the Immigrations Office, we missed the Port Captain; closed for the weekend. He is only open until 11:30, so after getting some fresh groceries we hauled up the anchor and cruised over to Bahia Huevos, about two hours away. We will go back to Bahia del Cocos on Monday morning to finish the entry process.
We passed by Playa Panama and Playa Hermosa, which are in Bahia Culebra, a bay similar in size to Santa Elena. Hermosa has several resorts and condo complexes on the hill behind the beach. For every local person you see here, there are several Gringos. Small wonder that Caldwell Banker, Remax and Century 21 all have offices here.
Bahia Huevos:
We decided to leave Bahia Cocos to spend the weekend in Bahia Huevos. It's just "around the corner" from where we were in Playa Panama. It has a secluded feeling, there are no structures around. During the day, you can occasionally hear the sound of construction or truck traffic or watch as dive and charter boats from the local resorts come into the Bahia for day use activities. We arrived to watch a fancy wedding underway on a charter boat with a beach side planting of coconut palms.In the morning, we went snorkeling, saw the usual stuff, nothing really new except coral. Unlike the Sea of Cortez, this coral is alive, some vibrant greens, reds and even some iridescent blue. The Captain tried to hunt for some fish for dinner, but couldn't get near the bigger fish. No one is too sure about permits and fishing licenses so we are all a bit careful. Two other Captains were able to bring home Triggerfish for dinner. Yum.
Gaby, Sami and Judy snorkeled close to the rocky reef, at one point we all felt like we were in the tidal tank of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, totally consumed by bubbles and then rushed against the rocky edge and then just as quickly sent back out to the calm waters; we were surge surfing. Gaby is now resolved to the fact that she is a magnet for jellyfish stings. After this swim, she dawned a necklace, bracelet and ankle sting from the string of pearl jellies, even while wearing a Lycra suit. Tough kid.
The next day, six of us climbed into our dinghy and headed for the mangrove and river outlet. One cruiser had spotted a cayman at the entrance to the river, but that was months ago and no one has spotted it since. As we traveled up the river, we found the large mangrove trees roots formed a web like forest and dense. Mangroves are known to be rich habitat for birds and we came prepared with our binoculars to watch. We saw what are becoming the “usual” and noted a few new species to our bird logbook; ringed kingfishers, boat billed heron, great herons and snowy egrets. Most of the time we just let ourselves float with the tidal action, at times just lingering in one spot to check out the bird scene. Although not seeing an abundance of bird life, it was indeed a pleasurable time on this jungle ride. The temperature was in the low 80’s and the bug report, “nil”.
The sunsets in Bahia Huevos are beautiful. They beckon us to return to this little spot of paradise.
We left on Monday morning for Bahia Cocos.
“We are no longer illegal aliens”, announced the Captain. By noon he had finished our paper work and we were officially “turistas” (tourists) of Costa Rica. We spent the night in Bahia Cocos, enjoying a thick tasty hamburger and home fries, at the local restaurant for a mere $3/person.