Eastwards To The Caribbean

The time has come to move on and bid farewell to La Fortuna and its imposing, looming volcano, and farewell to all of the great things that the Arenal area has to offer.

Our week in La Fortuna has been so full of experiences and activity that we’ve barely mentioned how settled we’ve felt here. This town may be a popular destination for visitors to Costa Rica, but for us it’s been just the right blend of plenty of options without being over cooked. 

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Recommendation wise, our favourite restaurants have been Snapper’s House with its fabulous seafood, a sumptuous family run Peruvian restaurant named Chifa La Familia Feliz, and a Mexican influenced place where the delicious food belies its dreadful name of Spec-Taco-Lar. Two bars ticked our “regular haunt” boxes: Nanku in the main street with reasonably priced cocktails and attentive friendly staff, and Fusion-Latino (Johnny Herrera’s place) where it’s fun to sit on the lofty bar chairs at the pavement counter, drinking beer and chatting to staff.

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And the best La Fortuna coffee bar in this land of glorious coffee has to be Arabigos where the frapuccinos are something special.

After our less than enthralling bus journey from Quepos a couple of weeks ago, we take the “shuttle” option to make our way to Cahuita. Scheduled buses are very cheap, long distance taxis outrageously expensive, so the shuttles are an in between option, being 12-seater minibuses with no fixed timetable but a rough idea of which route runs on which day – as long as there are enough passengers. 

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It’s a bit like a DHL for humans as the shuttle network gels: we’re picked up from “home”, dropped off roughly half way at Guapiles bus station and loaded on to a second shuttle which has come from San Jose, where the three of us from our shuttle join nine other passengers. It’s also door to door, so there’s no messing around looking for our next digs.

Mountains give way to flat lands as we make our way eastwards across the country on what is effectively a continuous construction site as the Highway is undergoing a hefty upgrade all the way from capital to port. The colossal scale of Costa Rica’s fruit industry unfolds before us, not just in the mile after mile of plantation, nor in the constant stream of giant trucks moving in each direction, but even more in the quasi cityscapes of huge container yards, hundreds of containers stacked high amongst the lush greenery waiting for shipment. Many of the plantations display the famous “Del Monte” logo. The man from Del Monte obviously said “yes” an awful lot of times round here.

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On the way we pass Siquirres, a town with an unfortunate claim to fame. Until a law change in 1949, this was the furthest point west that blacks from the Caribbean were allowed to travel, beyond here it was whites only. In the days of the railway, even the train staff would disembark and return to Limon whilst a white crew took over from this point on.

Our new base of Cahuita has a more palatable history, being the very point at which the first Afro-Caribbean settler, a certain William Smith, made his home in 1828 – his descendants apparently still live here. Cahuita also has a reputation of happily retaining a real laid back Caribbean vibe despite increasing tourist interest in this stretch of coast.

Wandering along Cahuita’s dirt roads – there is little asphalt here – really does bear out that reputation. We’ve not yet visited the West Indies, but Cahuita is exactly as we picture those islands, even down to the fact that every house seems to have a rocking chair on the wooden veranda – usually with some old guy or old lady contentedly rocking back and forth while the world passes by.

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As first light creeps in through the windows of our new home on the edge of the Cahuita National Park, we are awakened by a thrilling dawn chorus with multiple bird calls usurped by the grating growls of the howler monkeys. Part of the troupe is moving through the trees right next to our house. Hummingbirds sip nectar from blooms right by the door and the yellow-tailed oropendola makes its unusual mechanical sounding call. It’s a wonderful waking soundtrack, a cacophony of jungle sounds right by the house.

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Of course the animal world doesn’t know where the park boundary is, so the garden of our house, unusually large and private for an airbnb, is as good as a mini reserve, so much do we see without moving anywhere. Our first hike through the trails of the Cahuita park rather wonderfully adds a crocodile to our list of sightings, gliding stealthily through the waters of the creek.

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Our first ever dip in the Caribbean Sea completes our first Cahuita hike, though the pounding waves put us on our guard – somersaulting Michaela into the water at one point, prompting her to say that the waves are far more dangerous than the zipline was! 

One unmissable aspect of the culture shift is prices; from our first beer there is an obvious drop from the prices we’ve been paying elsewhere in Costa Rica. An Imperial beer here is 1,300 colones, whereas 4,000 has been a common price in previous towns, and, given that this is bottled beer we’re talking about and therefore exactly the same product, that’s a bit naughty.

And so our time on the Caribbean coast begins with beautiful sunshine, multiple exotic wildlife sightings, great hiking and some paradise beaches which could make the cover of any glossy brochure. And cheap beer. So far so good in Cahuita.