Cosata Rica, the final chapter

We woke up early to meet our ride a little ways down the hill from Casa Mariposa (for some reason no one without four wheel drive wanted to drive all the way up).  We found our driver Roberto and his wife Mary waiting in the dark for us. I'm not sure what the deal is with people taking their families along but it provided good entertainment.  They own a touring company and drove to fill in the gaps between tours, and like 99% of Costa Ricans who had been to the states, they had lived in New Jersey.  They were both really nice and helped make sure that we got on the direct bus to Cahuita... not the stop every time someone on the side of the road waves their hand bus.  Doris, the woman Amber had rented a house from in Cahuita, arranged to have us picked up from the bus depot.  I don't think I have ever been so organized about travel in my life.  The house was a beautiful open air affair with a nice garden and, as we were to learn in the morning, lots and lots of chickens in the neighborhood.  We all woke-up our first morning to a god-awful howling and lots of roosters.  Turns out that there are also a lot of howler monkeys in the neighborhood. 

Cahuita was an interesting town of tourist, rastas, and drunks (these are not all mutually exclusive).  It did have a great beach next to it with a park full of monkeys (white-faced and howlers), sloth, raccoons, and birds.  The beach has a bit of a reputation for thievery but after seeing the people and the animals we all wondered how many wallets were up in the trees with the monkeys.  We were all pretty excited to see the sloth until we realized that it was just a blob of fur in a tree that did not move; to be fair to the sloth when we returned the next day it had moved one tree over.  We found a great beach south of Cahuita in Puerto Viejo called, and this is the real name, Playa Chiquita.  Had a great day body surfing and re-acquiring sun burns.  Our return bus was complete with stops every couple hundred feet for someone on the side of the road, crazy swerving to miss giant pot holes, and boxes and bags of chicks and chickens.

The next day Alexis and I hopped on a bus for San Jose for our flight out the next day.   We relaxed most of the afternoon at our bed and breakfast, Margaritas, run by a very helpful and friendly Dutch woman.  The following morning we lounged about and had breakfast before our taxi arrived to take us to the airport.  The only real problem with all the traveling was navigating our way through the Miami airport immigration and customs (I feel so bad for people who are new the country who have to figure it out).  We didn't take may photos of this part of our trip as we spend most of our time on the beach or relaxing at the house but we had a great time!