Besides our bike ride, this was my other favorite activity from our visit to Puerto Viejo. Cahuita (Kah-Wee-Tah) is a national park reserve about 30 miles north of Puerto Viejo.
We had to catch the bus to get up there and we missed the first one at 7:30 because the times were posted wrong and it actually departed at 7:20. Oops. We caught the next one around 8:20. The best thing was the bus had air conditioning! Once we got close to town, we missed the stop where the first entrance to the park was, and we had to ride all the way into town to disembark at the bus station. That worked out though because if we had gone in the south entrance we would have to pay a mandatory fee but at the town entrance it's only a donation.
We used our phones to guide us the entrance and followed some other people headed the same way. This would be our last national park to visit. Word on the street is that the snorkeling is excellent because there is a live coral reef in the reserved area, but we would have to hire a guided boat, and we didn't want to fork over the cash since we already did Cano. Plus, we still had Bocas coming up next week.
I don't think Clark was too enthused to go visit but he was glad we did. At first, we thought Cahuita would be "just another trail" through more of the same forest we'd already seen all over Costa Rica, but we saw quite a bit of wildlife. The trail was fully shaded right near the ocean, the forest was just right, not too thick to miss the wildlife but not so thin there wasn't wildlife there, the beaches and water were a fabulous color, and we enjoyed swimming at the midway point of our walk. If I ever find myself back in the area, this is a place I would come back to for the snorkeling tour.
Puerto Viejo is a dirty town, even dirtier than San Jose. There was trash everywhere. These vultures were near the bus stop.
Cahuita Beach is very near the entrance.
The way the branch and vine are twisted caught our eye.
Early on the trail, a group spotted a sloth.
Up there somewhere. Need to zoom in...where's Waldo?
Rather than cut trees, the locals just train them to grow the direction needed.
There is a river that runs through Cahuita and empties into the ocean. Part of the trail parallels a marsh formed by the river.
This is where the river enters the ocean but because it's the dry season, the river isn't high enough so there is a little sandbar dividing the two.
Another beautiful Costa Rican beach.
Look right...to Punta Cahuita.
Look left...to Playa Cahuita
Am I documenting crabs or ants?
Surprise...a boiling pot on the trail!
Looking through the bush to the ocean.
Spiky stem
Such strange roots but look at the water in background. Gorgeous!
Is this natural or man-made?
Vines
Some of the hermit shells had neat algae growth
Another version of spikes.
Dead End Beach
I think it's a monkey
A ginormous fungus. The picture doesn't demonstrate the chunk on the ground is bigger than my hand and broke off the tree.
As we got near Punta Cahuita we began to see monkeys on the beach. These girls had a lunch box and the monkeys really wanted it but gripped the towel instead to prove a point.
This is a racoon on the trail. It was following people through the bushes hoping to benefit from some scraps or thrown out trash.
The sign at Punta Cahuita. From here the trail continues south to Punta Vargas, which is the southernmost entrance where we luckily missed our stop earlier.
Monkey
The water was really beautiful, probably the best we'd seen; even clearer than Cano. The waves in the distance are breaking over the reef. The current around the point was like swimming in a river.
This guy was trying to get into some backpacks.
A busted open unknown fruit.
On the walk back; along the trail.
Colorful crab in the woods.
Interesting seed pods.
A humungous ant.
A dumpster in town across from the soda where we ate.
A pano of the bus stop.
The sign at the entrance to town. The "T" is missing. If we weren't on the bus, one of the kids could use their body and arms to form the "T". That would have been fun.
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