Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
So, it's now Wednesday 28th July, a day before my Central America trip starts! I've had a relaxing few days since the last time I wrote. On Monday morning as planned I went to the Sloth Rescue Centre, which was really interesting. It was about 20 minutes by bus from Cahuita, so once I'd packed my bags and left them with the hotel reception, I went to the bus station with the intention of buying the ticket (in case it got full, stupid idea, they don't get 'full', people just stand!) and then going for breakfast. However there was a bus there (which wasn't on the timetable!) so I got that. Hoped for something to eat at the centre before the tour but they had no food there so I settled for some chocolate covered cashew nuts and pineapple, not ideal for breakfast, but very tasty, though expensive! Anyway, the rescue centre was established by a couple after they 'rescued' a 5 week old sloth. With no parents it was fed and cared for by the owners and "buttercup" as she is called was the first of many sloths to be looked after by the centre. If they can then they get them back into the wild, but with orphaned sloths this is not possible, as they learn how to live from from their parents, and with no parents to learn from they unfortunately wouldn't survive in the wild. Some are injured from power cables, which they hang off, as well as off trees, they sadly sometimes get electrical burns and they are nursed back to health. We saw a range of ages and a mixture of two-fingered and three-fingered sloths. There was a baby sloth which was about 10 weeks old, he or she was tiny. There was another one, which was very small (can't remember the age) which had been found by one of the centre's employees. Luckily for this sloth he/she was found and will now be looked after. They could be held, not by visitors, but by volunteers working at the centre, they seemed quite cuddly. They are strange looking animals, but the babies were especially cute, with very soft looking fur! Ther older ones seemed to have coarser hair, but they weren't scraggly-looking like the one I'd seen outside the restaurant. If I can ever get any photos onto Facebook (it keeps failing) I'll post some pictures of them. They sleep for up to 18 hours a day and spend most of their time hanging in the trees. In case you have no idea what i'm talking about, and i didn't til I saw one, this is a link for info on sloths! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth After visiting the sloths and watching an informative DVD, we went by small canoe on the waterways of the property and saw monkeys and a few different birds. Unfortunately no wild sloths, but the man paddling the canoe went and cut some beautiful flowers for me and the other lady! I couldn't keep mine though since I was leaving to my next destination that afternoon. I returned back to Cahuita, had lunch then got the 2pm bus to Puerto Viejo, the next town along the coast. The bus only took half an hour and then I had to walk to my hotel, which wasn't far but seemed it with my big backpack and in the heat!
Puerto Viejo is a bit bigger than Cahuita, but that's not hard as Cahuita's main centre was based around one main road with another crossing over it. Maximum 5 minutes walk from one end to the other! The hotel here in Peurto Viejo is probably a 10 minute walk (if that) from the 'main' area of town, where quite a lot of the bars, restaurants and little shops are, but they are also spread along the road which mostly runs along the beach. I chose a hotel with a swimming pool, as it's nice to be able to have a dip in the water to cool down! That's exactly what i did after I'd been to the bank, but my first to the cashpoint here was confusing! You can pay in dollars but the currency is Colones, but they come in hundres and thousands, and i couldn't work out how many zeros I needed! Probably just me being stupid but I had visions of loads of notes coming out of the machine so rather than risk it I got 2 separate withdrawals of the maximum pre-set amount, 50,000 colonnes! Anyway, there is a German girl called Marion at my hotel, so we had a chat and arranged to go and have dinner together, which was really nice. Eating on your own tends to get a bit boring and it meant i could eat later, as when i'm on my own I tend to eat earlier and avoid being out late on my own. We had a delicious meal, at a fusion type restaurant, prawns in a really nice peanuty sauce. After we went for a couple of happy hour cocktails :-)
I'd planned on getting the bus along the coast to where the region's prettiest beaches are, but over breakfast the next day (Tuesday) Marion told me she'd already hired a bike to go. Cycling is the way to travel round here, everyone rents bikes, for ease of getting around, not mountain bikes or anything, the type that you sit fairly upright on. So, I decided to also get a bike, and I didn't think I'd say this but I'm really glad I did! It was really good fun and I enjoyed it! We took it easy, no-one goes anywhere fast anyway! Ha ha. We rode 7km to a beach called Punta Uva, which is supposed to be the prettiest beach, it was indeed beautiful! Luckily for the cycling it was not really sunny day, though it remained humid. It was actually pretty overcast, but we still managed a couple of hours relaxing on the beach plus drink and lunch before the rain started....so we rode back in the rain, though it was fortunately not heavy rain. However unfortunately Marion's back tyre got a puncture so she had to walk about 5km of the return journey :-( I cycled very slowly behind her, turned out to be a good thing for me as my knees started to hurt, which always seems to happen wjhen I cycle, although it's been years since I went on a bike! (Possibly Australia, so 7 years ago!!) When we got back we took her bike back and the bike shop owner gave her a new one and we went for a cofffee in the 'town'. I had a Pina Colada after, which was well deserved after the day's cycling efforts! A Costa Rican surfer dude started talking to us, which was quite amusing, kept taking about parties (fiestas) and told us about the surfer lifestyle too. Lots of surfers come here for the good surfing conditions. I think this area is probably quite a lot different to the rest of Costa Rica. It has strong Afro-Carribean influences here, with reggae and the green, gold and red Rastafarian colours. Lots of dreadlocks and the occasional whiff of a joint, which is accepted here. After having showers, etc we went for another delicious dinner, fish (red snapper) this time, very tasty! We were both tired so we went and sat on our veranda/balcony with a beer, I know, unusual for me, but Imperial Silver, a local one, is very light a little like the French small bottled lager. A nice end to a good day!
So woke up this morning to rain. It's been pretty grey all day so far, rain on and off. We might go to a beach further down the coast, about 13kms away, which is supposed to be pretty, but no bikes today! Otherwise just relaxing before i have to get the bus back to San Jose tomorrow. We are meeting a Costa Rican girl for dinner this evening, a friend of a colleagues of Marions, who lived here. Will be good to speak/listen to some Spanish but I am practising as much as possible!
Bye for now!!
- comments
Oana "The real exciting indnfig was that they only slept 9.6 hours a day..." Wow! His life must be as thrilling as mine!I wonder if I have python blood. 'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean?'I mean why would anyone think of studying a sloth to see how much it slept?