Adventuras Acuáticas: Capitulo Tres - From El Castillo to Cahuita, Costa Rica

[continued from Capitulo Dos]  The boat again stopped in Boca de Sabalos and, yes, we still very much want to come back to explore this town.  And to see El Castillo again, of course.

But for now, our border run adventure would take us to…

…to… to… (wait for it!) to… okay, nothing too cool just yet.  We just went back to San Carlos for the night.  Check out the Garmin map here.

We noticed on the boat trip back upriver that there was a LOT of debris in the water, especially coming out from the Rio Sabalos.  Our river pilot had to slow down and pick his way through the deadwood a couple of times.  The heavy rain over the past few days had let loose all kinds of detritus! 

The rapida got us back to San Carlos before noon and we walked across town to get checked in at the Hotel Gran Lago, a reservation we had made prior to our trip to El Castillo.  We relaxed in the room a bit, checked the ol' wifi and freshened up prior to heading out for lunch.  We had plans to visit this cool little European place that, by reviews online, seemed promising and a unique change of pace, culinary-wise.  Schnitzel??!  Plus the restaurant is located near the mercado, and you know how we love us some mercado!

Wear insulated gloves when you take energia en sus manos

The market was the usual hustle bustle - we didn't go in, just skirted the edges.  We hit a farmacia for more bug bite anti-itch cream, too.  [Note to Anne and Mike:  I think Bex! is addicted.  We'll talk more when we get back.  I'm thinking intervention.]  We finally arrived at the restaurant - Parador Berlin - only to find it closed and boarded up.  Drats!  We walked back toward the hotel but first stopped at a licoria to buy a bottle of wine from the very surprised proprietress ("What?!  No rum?!").  Still hungry, we figured we'd find a place to eat along the way.  Then we recalled that earlier, at out hotel, while we were checking out the rooftop deck, we heard the magical sound of a cocktail shaker in action.  Right across the street from our hotel is the Hotel Orosco and they have a restaurant on the third floor.  From the roof of our place, we could look right into it.  So we went there for lunch.  

Perusing the menu, I found what I wanted almost immediately, although I only ordered it because the name was funny.  I ordered the Chicken Gordon Blue.  Yes, that is spelled just as it was on the menu.  It was the same dish we'd get in the states under the boring name 'chicken cordon bleu', just with a way better name.  Bex! again ordered pollo jalapeño but it didn't stack up very well to what she'd had in El Castillo.  I admit I was slightly disappointed that the chef didn't come out to check on us and introduce himself as 'Gordon… Gordon Blue.  Damn glad to meet ya!'.

Disclaimer:  This dish is an original culinary creation of Nicaragua and any similarity to other dishes, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The restaurant here is open and airy, with great views.  We played cards (I was still holding a lead, although barely) and enjoyed the fresh air afforded by being up high with all the openness - i.e. no windows.  One thing we noticed from up here was more cannons nearby!  There was a small artillery unit on this hill, sort of a last chance to shoot at any bad guys who made it past El Castillo.  These were aimed at the point where the Rio San Juan begins its journey to the Caribbean.

Now, this here is your standard Type D cannon.  But let me show you the deluxe model...

After lunch we walked to the waterfront to check the boat schedules for getting across the border to Los Chiles, Costa Rica - perhaps the coolest border crossing option in Central America.  Alas, this crossing may go away if Nicaragua and Costa Rica ever get things worked out for the new Puente Santa Fe crossing.  The posted schedule said 11 AM for the next day, which would be perfect.  Errands and food completed, it was time to veg out for a bit.  We went back to the hotel and borrowed a couple of glasses from downstairs, then went up on the roof to take in the breeze, the views and the sunset.  

The rooftop is awesome, although there are no railings of any sort.  Railings are so… USA.  Gawd.  Really, though, I love how the culture in this part of the world is based on 'Don't be stupid'.  I wish the US took this approach instead of, say, removing playground equipment for liability reasons.   But oh well.  The view from the roof was impressive!  We watched the afternoon fishermen returning home and we could see quite a few of the Solentiname Islands from up here.  

My pride still stinging from the 'archipelago' fiasco, I was ever on the lookout for an opportunity to score a win.  I finally realized this victory when I pointed out that way across the lake we could see Isla de Ometepe - our home.  Bex! didn't agree that it was Ometepe, arguing that it couldn't be in that direction.  We debated a bit, discussing the direction we had traveled on the ferry, geometry, how much wine was left, the position of the setting sun, etc. and she finally admitted that I was right.  It was indeed Ometepe.  Score one for me!!  [Bex!'s rebuttal:  Okay, honey.  I'll let you have this one.]  We enjoyed our vino, which  suddenly tasted much sweeter to me.  Mmmm - victory.  And then we hit San Carlos to find dinner.

Ometepe!

Restaurant Kaoma looked neat and had a nice location with good views.  Like most restaurants here, it's up a couple of flights of stairs, allowing for cool views of the malecón (waterfront).  The food was good, nothing outstanding, but certainly tasty.  Their menu also had a Chicken Gordon Blue but I didn't order it.  The thing that made the evening here especially memorable wasn't the food but the Ricardo Arjona music videos they were playing.  This guy is what you'd get if Jack Johnson, Shakira, and sappy-love-ballad era Bryan Adams had a baby.  It was really cool, actually, and we will be downloading some of his music.

Our hopes of falling asleep to crime dramas on AXN didn't pan out.  The TV in the room had crappy reception and only a handful of channels.  But we had AC and hot water, although the pressure was minimal.  I know it sounds a little whiny, but considering where we live, these trips are a chance to spoil ourselves a little - hot water, cable television, etc.  We look forward to these treats; being deprived of them is a tiny letdown.

We had a nice leisurely Sunday morning.  After packing up, we walked the malecón and ate breakfast at a soda on the waterfront next to the dock we'd soon be departing from.  After food, we went to the immigration/customs office and were disappointed to find out that the posted schedule was incorrect.  Our 11 AM departure wasn't actually leaving until 12:30PM.  There was a benefit to the delay - we were still in town when the clerk from the hotel came running over to the customs office.  We had forgotten to return the room key!  Oops!  After that excitement, there was nothing left to do but wait.  We drowned our sorrows in fresh fruit smoothies, playing cards to while away the time.  Eventually, it was time and we got stamped out of Nicaragua and boarded the boat that would take us up the Rio Frio to Los Chiles (see the Garmin map of the day).

Collecting more stamps!

The Rio Frio starts near the middle of the image by the buildings and goes to the left.

Most all of the boats we've been on in Nicaragua have life jackets.  We see them stashed but (thankfully) have never needed to use one, although on a couple of occasions during rough water, I made sure to pre-plan a route to a life jacket and an exit!  We'd never been up the Rio Frio, although we knew it was a smaller river.  It surprised us, then, when the copilot walked down the aisle of the boat, handing out life jackets and telling everyone to put them on.

Um… yikes.

Rough water ahead?  Rapids?  River monsters?  We didn't know, so we followed instructions and donned our chalecos.  As it turned out, the life jackets were only required to be worn juuuust long enough for us to nose up to the Nicaraguan military outpost marking the border with Costa Rica so the pilot could hand off a copy of the passenger list.  Once we were out of sight, the copilot collected all the life jackets and stuffed them into a Hefty bag for storage. Ha!

Los Chiles was much closer than we thought.  We'd read that the river trip takes a couple of hours but we were pulling up to the dock in about an hour.  We heard a large troop of howler monkeys in the trees as the boat docked and kids were swimming in the river, doing cannonballs off the shore.  Everyone lined up at a folding table that was customs for bag inspections.  My honest face got us waved through immediately.  During the boat trip we had chatted with a US expat named 'Bob'.  'Bob' is in quotes because he had to seriously think of his name when I asked the really tough question "What's your name?"  "Um, (think think think) ...Bob."  He had been living in Costa Rica for 10-12 years, I think, and was returning from making his border run.  He seemed burned out on living down here, not excited about much of anything in Central America.  He appeared to be in a rut, much like if he had a drab 9-5 job in the states.  Regardless, he was a big help to us because he had made this run many times.  After customs, we followed him a few blocks into town where we paid a municipal tax; then it was on to immigration for entry stamps into CR.  

To make the jaunt through Los Chiles more interesting, I forgot to mention that it had started raining pretty damn hard as soon as we got off the boat, which added to the urgency to get through lines and onto the next step in the days itinerary.  After waiting for a bit at immigration, we were ready for the bus terminal, which we found out was maybe a kilometer away - and it was coming down harder than ever.  Our new friend, veteran border crosser 'Bob' snagged a taxi and waved us in to share the ride.  He even paid for the short trip to the terminal!  

And, hell, as our travel luck would have it the bus we needed to catch arrived a few minutes later!  We thanked 'Bob' for the travel advice and the taxi ride, bid him safe travels and settled into for the trip to Muelle de San Carlos - or Ciudad Quesada.  One of these towns would be our layover for the day.

[Note:  This is the part of the blog where we would ask our dear friends at the Poás Lodge - Stephan,  Jimmie, Gertie, Don - to just skim down a ways.  We passed within spittin' distance of you guys!  But we were on a mission to see the Caribbean, had limited time - and we hope you can appreciate that!  Don't worry - you're not rid of us forever.  We WILL be back!]

Our backpacks had been stashed below in the under-bus luggage area, so each and every time the bus stopped to pick up/drop off we were watching to make sure our bags didn't get unloaded 'by mistake'.  Hate to be paranoid, but it happens - caution and awareness is always best.  Not knowing how the bus schedules worked on Sundays we decided to stay the night in the first town we would hit, Muelle de San Carlos.  After checking with the driver a few times, he dropped us off at the intersection of highways 32 and 4, which meant about as much to us as it does to you.  We were wondering if it had been such a good idea to get off a perfectly good bus in the middle of nowhere.

At the intersection, there was a grocery store, a gas station/auto shop that also worked on big rigs, a liquor store/minimart and maybe a handful of other businesses.  Hmmm…  We asked a nice young man if there were any hotels nearby and he smiled as he pointed to the logo on his very fancy polo shirt - the Tilijari Resort and Spa.  Yes, he said, the place he worked was close by.  We didn't want to spend a gajillion dollars on one night, so we were scratching our heads as to what to do, when Bex! saw a sign right next to the liquor store that advertised rooms for rent.  Figuring it was worth a shot, the place turned out to be an actual hotel a block off the highway, behind the hustle and bustle, and the rooms were awesome, as was the price.  Plus, the liquor store/minimart was, like, right there!  Perfect!

Which filter makes a truck stop look more glamorous?  #lipstickonapig

The familia Ruma apparently runs this area of Muelle de San Carlos.  Their name was on several of the businesses - the licorera, the hotel, the minimart, the gas station/service center.  After we settled into the room and with dark fast approaching, we thought we'd grab a bite to eat.  We walked north, back the way we'd traveled on the bus and had a decent dinner at Restaurante y Bar La Subasta.  Subasta is Spanish for 'auction' and the upstairs dining room of this restaurant overlooked a bullpen.  There was even stadium-stye seating for the cattle auctions held here.  There was no auction this day, unfortunately.  But the food was good, the meat portions were large, the beer was cold and, as we realized, they were nice enough to serve us even though we kept them a little late after their normal closing time.  We tipped appropriately.

We walked back to the hotel, but hit the store for snacks and alcohol.  It was beer for me; Bex! was very excited that she found this to drink:

A nice change of pace, indeed.

In fact, my beer and her wine tasted so good that we went back to the minimart/liquor store for refills - and so she could do this:

Did I mention that we slept well that night?

Between the after dinner drinks, AC, a nice shower and some TV, we indeed slept very well.  We needed the rest for the travel day we had ahead of us.  Up early the next morning, we dropped the key off at the front desk/check out counter of the liquor store and asked if there was a bus running east.  Nope.  We were told our best bet would be to continue south to Ciudad Quesada, where the larger bus depot was and where we could get where we wanted to get, get it?  We popped into the grocery store for breakfast-type snacks and other junk food to get us through the day.  After a short wait at the bus stop, we were back on the road.

To assist you in following along, our goal today was to travel via bus:

Muelle de San Carlos to Ciudad Quesada;
Ciudad Quesada to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui
Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui to Guapiles;
Guapiles to Puerto Limon;
and finally, Puerto Limon to Cahuita on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.

Will our intrepid travelers still be smiling at the end of the day?  Stay tuned!

We gained a fair amount of elevation on the way to Ciudad Quesada.  When we got to the terminal, we saw we had a couple of hours until the next leg of the adventure.  We really had no idea how far we'd get in one day.  It would all depend on bus schedules that were mostly unknown to us as well as the timing of our arrival at one stop and the departure to the next.  As we pieced it together after the trip, we realized we did pretty well.  We couldn't have gotten much further than Muelle de San Carlos or Ciudad Quesada the previous day, anyway.  And given the waning daylight, it was smart to stop early to find a hotel rather than be stuck somewhere unfamiliar at night.  Plus we caught the same bus we would have caught out of Ciudad Quesada anyway, so it was a wash. 

We made Puerto Viejo just fine, except we had another two hour wait.  Too many of those would hinder travel but we had no choice.  Besides, it gave us time to have lunch and stretch our legs.  The trip to Guapiles went pretty quick and things got interesting from here on out.  

The Guapiles terminal was much busier than the others we'd hit this day.  This terminal was a hub, so there are different bus companies heading in all different directions, and they have assigned bays in the terminal.  Their schedules are posted above their respective bank of parking spots.  We walked the length of the depot and discovered that if we hustled we could just make a bus to Puerto Limon leaving in just a few minutes.  Otherwise we had another wait ahead of us.  To conquer, we divided - I got in the ticket line and Bex! scouted the parking area to see exactly which bus was the one we wanted.  She got varying answers - ugh.  But we got tickets and even had time to buy a couple of bottles of water before getting on the bus we needed.  Whew! 

One thing we do well when we travel is make friends.  We met another 'travel angel' on the bus to Puerto Limon.  This is a bustling city, one of the largest on the Caribbean, at about 60,000 people.  It is the home of many produce processing and export companies.  Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita all have facilities here - pineapple, bananas, coffee.  Ships head out from the port to all points on the globe.  Thousands upon thousands of containers are stacked in yards along the roads leading into the city.  It was impressive!

Our bus dropped us at their terminal and we knew from the research we'd done that the bus we needed to get was a few blocks away.  But once we got off the bus, we had no clue which direction to go.  It was dark, the terminal was crazy busy, we were being solicited for all kinds of things - everything from taxi rides to souvenirs to drugs to who knows what else was being shouted.  It was nuts and we were not feeling like we were in a safe enough place to put our bags down and dig out the map.  Then this nice man we had chatted with on the bus walked up to us and told us to follow him closely.  He hurried through the crowds, with us right on his heels.  

Turns out he was headed for the same bus we were, his destination being one of the small villages south of Cahuita.  He blocked traffic, waved us through, held off the riffraff that seemed to be everywhere and led us to the bus terminal we needed.  We got tickets, had enough time to use the restroom and get more water, then got on the bus with our new friend and were on the road after about 10 minutes.  Without his help, we would never have caught this bus, the last for the night heading south.  The fact that this guy stopped on his travels, risked missing his chance to get home just to help us was admirable.  We've had many experiences like this but this man was exceptionally helpful to us.  We couldn't thank him enough, so we'll look for opportunities to pay it forward.

And… we ended up making it all the way to Cahuita in one day!!

[Note:  Okay, Stephan, Jimmie, Gertie, Don - you can start reading again from here]

"And that's how we caught a helicopter ride from Los Chiles all the way to Cahuita."

Here's how the Garmin captured out 5 bus day:  Muelle de San Carlos to Cahuita

We got off the bus in Cahuita and headed into town on foot.  The terminal is a couple of blocks from the main drag.  This is a tiny town, it was late and we had a general idea which way to go.  We got to the main road and walked in the direction we thought we needed to be going to get the hotel we had in mind.  Yeah, this is the part where being travel weary led to bad decision making.  We were both fried from the long day.  We couldn't quite get our bearings, although we did find the town center.  No street signs, no idea which way to go, tired and hungry for real food, not sure what time the town would shut down, we bagged the idea of finding the place we wanted and just picked a place that was, hey, look, right in front of us.  Bad idea.  It was called Sam's Cabinas Safari - or as we called it after the fact, Sam's Crack and Smack Shack.  Ugh.  It would do for the night, but just barely.

We walked back into town and had dinner at Riki's.  There wasn't much open, so choices were limited which was a good thing.  Our ability to make choices was drained.  It was a quiet dinner - we were both road weary.  Full stomachs made falling asleep in our dirty, creepy room a little easier.  

And, hey, we made it!!  All in one day, all the way to the Caribbean!  Tomorrow would be a better day!

[continued in Adventuras Acuáticas:  Capitulo Cuatro]