Shopping for dinner near Fortuna

Mal Pias, on Cabo Blanco

After a week in Montezuma, I had heard so many good things about Cabo Blanco and Mal Pias, only about 20km away. After sharing a couple meals with Alison, we decided to find a truck to take us that way. The trail is very rough, with one serious river crossing....  but we found two other women to team up with and share the cost. The five of us made the journey, and somehow made it to Mal Pias safely. The other two girls only stayed one night, but Alison and I had three excellent days there!

On the roof of the ferry with Heike!
 

Dinner in Golfito with Heike; a big Fish Dinner for $1.50/US
 

We spent a couple days horseback riding, hanging out with the locals, and gathering supplies for our trek into the Park.

The hike into Corcovado National Park was Awesome! We stopped and camped here (not legal or recommended) the first night, since big rain was moving in fast, and we were still a few hours short of the first ranger station. We gathered some firewood, light an excellent campfire, and took a nice refreshing skinnydip. The rain picked up and the fire struggled to keep up with the drenching it was receiving. We gave up on the fire after an hour, and crawled into the tent. During the night we could hear and see several monkeys roaming around near the tent. We were up at dawn for another dip, and saw several more monkeys that were out gathering the fruits that had been knocked down by the rain.
We cooked breakfast over a campfire, and after another nice swim we watched something turbulent floating along, just offshore, carried by the currents and tide. We kept seeing fins popping up around it!   After studying it for a half hour with the binoculars, we realized that it was a dead sea turtle, and that the fins looked almost like shark fins.
Later that afternoon at the ranger station, we asked about swimming. The ranger said "...if you go in the ocean, don't wade in over your knees, or if you do, just get in and out quick. There are usually sharks just offshore...".  He confifmed that we had probably seen sharks trying to munch on a dead turtle.  For the rest of the week we mostly swam in the lagoons, but even there we often had to stay aware of the numerous caimen that would hang out in the water and along the shore!
 
 
 
 

Eating tomatoes for lunch with Heike on the hike into Corcorvado National Park It is about an 8 hour hike along the beach to get into the park, so we loaded the backpacks with a weeks worth of goodies!

The hike up to the Waterfalls near Fortuna is an extra treat. I biked most of the way.  and half way up an old man was selling coconuts, so I stopped and bought a couple to drink on the way up, and a couple more on the ride down.
 

Sirena Biological Station, Parque Nacional Corcovado

Lonely Planet-DESTINATION COSTA RICA

my other Travel pages
| Guatemala | Panama | Nicaragua | Belize | Honduras | Central America |

 My other pages:

     This URL is:  http://www.net1plus.com/users/tdriskell/costarica.html