Tortuguero to Cahuita

Having had a loverly 3 nights in Tortuguero we had to make a move in order to keep up with our schedule that would get us to Panama City for our May 15th flight to Bogota, Columbia! As we've tried to avoid backtracking as much as possible, the most sensible route was to carry on along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, and the next appealing place was a small town called Cahuita, famous for its laid back atmosphere, gorgeous black sand beach and creole cooking (also, apparently, for the double murder of 2 backpackers in 2000, but fortunately this wasn't in our guidebook so we only found out about that after we had arrived, and those responsible were caught and banged up anyhow!).

Our choice of route also meant we had a 3 and a half our boat ride to Moin along the same Canals that join up with Tortuguero before getting a shuttle the remaining distance to Cahuita. This proved to be yet another quality journey with all kinds of sights en route.

Lovely little canal lodgings.


Huge coconut palms lined the canals in some areas, after we left the park.


This barge looked like it had seen better days.


On various occasions, the boat sped across estuaries where you could see the surf of the Caribbean Ocean breaking in the distance.


Our cheerful driver dropped the usual hair raising speed when he spotted things of interest. This was our first sighting of a bonafide crocodile, and it was a quite a big one.


The driver edged us closer to him, but he didn't appear too pleased about this and promptly turned round...


Then started making his way towards us...


Before deciding against it and swimming off to be left in peace.


This hefty cicada plopped on to the seat in front of me while we were pelting it along.




This was some kind of customs/coastguard station. The guard in the top tower communicated with our driver in a series of hand signals and off we went.


We arrived at Cahuita and quickly found a nice cheap room to stay in.


Clairy noted a strange fruit growing outside and who was I to argue about another gratuitous 'cajones' shot.


We then set off on our usual exploration of the town. It was right on the coast, and on one side was a vast national park and on the other was the Playa Negra (black sand beach). I really liked the construction on these huge wooden winches for dragging the boats up on to the beach.


It was still quite seriously boiling and humid, even though it was overcast and threatening to rain. I, as usual, was moist all over and the sea looked rather tempting.


It was a very pretty beach and virtually deserted.


So I whipped of me clothes and pegged it in in my pants.


After getting back and showering and changing , we decided to eat at the place right next door to our lodgings, and what a fab choice that was. I went for the whole red snapper, and Clair had mackerel, both done in a gorgeous caribbean style. Unfortunately Clair couldn't get the camera out fast enough, and I had eaten half of it by the time she got a piccy.


We went to a well lively bar afterwards where a seriously top notch reggae, soca, salsa, pretty much every style they fancied, band played. Then on the walk home we came across this enormous chap. He was well up for a fight and had an incredibly aggressive stance. He literally ran at me when I took the picture, so we backed off.


We didn't get murdered in our sleep, which was a bonus, and if we had had more time we would have definitely stayed a little longer in Cahuita.