Cindy Southgate's Travels

February 13

For breakfast we enjoyed some cereal and yogurt on our patio while watching the tide slowly come in.

After breakfast we went to check out the bikes that Cabinas Jimenez had for guests to borrow. We were told if we headed down the main road we would eventually reach a beautiful beach where we could walk. It would be about 8 kilometres round trip.

Even in the village there was very little traffic. The road was extremely bumpy so we had to navigate around the giant potholes very carefully. We came to a bridge that crossed a small river. We chose to walk our bikes up as it was quite steep and rocky and impossible to build up speed on the approach due to the condition of the road. On one side of the bridge we saw some cows enjoying the water and shade.

We found the small road that led down to the beach. All the beaches in Costa Rica are public so there are often access roads in between the hotels or houses. We stashed our bikes beside some trees and made our way down to the water.

We had Playa Platanares almost to ourselves. We could see one woman in the distance and met up with a man at the end of our 4.5 km walk.

We biked back for lunch and then headed to our cabin to prepare for our big hike the next day. We had to organize and pack all of our things for the days we would be in Corcovado Park. We also wanted a bit of downtime to rest because we would be hiking over 50 km over the 3 days.

Unfortunately we had some trouble with people smoking at Cabinas Jimenez. Its against the law in Costa Rica to smoke on any resort property but the staff there refused to stop the people in question. I was very disappointed because it was a perfect place to stay on either end of a Corcovado hike and I would have recommended them otherwise.

Later in the afternoon we had an appointment at Surcos Tours to go over last minute instructions for the hike.( surcostours.com )

From there we walked over to Adventuras Tropical for an evening snorkel tour. ( TropicalAdventurestravel.com )

We were joined by a couple from Hungary for the tour. Our guide Pierre led us out beside the mangroves and then we headed into deeper water toward the main dock so we could watch for dolphins. There was a buoy there that he tied us too so we didn’t all float away from each other. We saw a few dolphins but they were too far away to get any good pictures.

After that we paddled over to the beach on the peninsula and watched the sunset. Our guide prepared some pineapple for a snack and showed us how to open a coconut with only a stick.

The highlight of the tour was going in the ocean once it was dark to see the bioluminesense of the plankton. Our guide gave us some cloth to wave through the water to catch some and it was really cool to see all the glowing spots. We paddled back in the pitch black evening. (It gets dark here by 6:30 pm)

After the tour we decided to have dinner at the tour operators restaurant. Even though we hadn’t made a reservation they said they could make our dinner but we would have to wait a bit. They only charged $10 for our meals which included dessert.

We also asked if they could call a taxi for us. While we were waiting we noticed one of the women removing a car seat from her car. After a very good meal we discovered that she was driving us back herself. This tour company went above and beyond our expectations and I would highly recommend them.( http://adventuras tropical) They were struggling to get back on their feet after losing business during the first 2 years of covid and we were very impressed with how hard they were working.

After making sure everything was ready for the big hike the following day we headed to bed.