OUR RETIRED ADVENTURE
qUEREMOS VIVIR AL SOL
KSha
Costa Rica is amazing! Beauty abounds.
Panama is "home" for now. Loving life!
South America is next! Columbia here we come.
Costa Rica is amazing! Beauty abounds.
Panama is "home" for now. Loving life!
South America is next! Columbia here we come.
NGG needed a shakeup from the one hour to the wall walk on the beach today. She had an idea (which is less than a vision...yeah I thought) that we would reverse our route that took us into the hills past town last week. So we took the dirt road into town that we use when we shop with the shopping cart; it gets us to right in the middle of town. The beach is probably a 3 minute walk if you turn right, and two of our grocery stores are a 2 minute walk to the left. We turned left and walked past our stores to the Lumber yard (this is where we came out at during the first walk) and turned off the main road. The first part of the way was familiar, a paved road that wound through a Tico (what Costa Ricans call themselves; ticos/ticas) neighborhood. When we hit the dirt road junction we knew a left turn would take us up into the hills and the same roads we travelled before...so we turned right for something new. On this stretch of dirt road it appeared to be laundry/cleaning day as many houses we passed had that activity and smell. Another junction in the road and we veered to the left (a right turn seemed to be headed right back into town) on what we thought was a new road for us. Several minutes later we saw a sign with an arrow to the right, Barrio las Brisa, and we both recognized that we had seen it before on our original trip. We had decided against investigating last time and kept on going up the hill. We decided this time we would find out what was down this road...and that's when the real adventure began. The road didn't appear to hold a whole lot of promise as after walking several minutes we saw two dogs "guarding" a lone property at "the end" of the road. It looked as if the road ended and the jungle began; but NGG was undaunted and we kept on going. Upon further inspection, we found a trail that veered off into the brush on the right side of the end of the road. We looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained!", and headed in! We travelled on this winding footpath for about 3 or 4 minutes and then we came out on a road in a different neighborhood! It was a short, but very cool walk through dense trees and vegetation. The road bent off to the right; but both of us took a long look to the left; because in that direction we heard howler monkeys! That was all the nudging we needed; there wasn't a trail...but it looked clear. We navigated about a hundred meters through short grass, rocks and vegetation and found a dry creek bed, all the while the howls were getting louder. Some careful navigating around the downed tree and we knew we were very close to sighting our "quarry." Oh yes, NGG spotted them first and had to guide me to look in the correct parts of the tree. As NGG was getting her shots, and I was moving around to get different views, the male continued to howl, sometimes in brief grunts and then longer howls. After about 5 minutes of watching them it seemed the male was looking at us both with spittle hanging out of his mouth and grunting, so we figured we would leave them and move on. Looking through the trees and vines, we realized the creek bed had brought us about 50 meters from a road that we made our way out to. We walked for a short time and came upon what looked like the entrances to two resorts or private areas. We went into to the first entrance that looked like a club (acting like we owned the place) and walked around the grounds checking to see if there was a way to continue out the back. There wasn't. We came back out and looked at the second entrance and saw a guard there, so we figured we had to go back the way we came. (Remember this for later.) We walked back down the road we came after seeing the howlers and reentered the jungle to find the creek bed and retrace our way back to the clearing-but no path. We had successfully navigated 80% of our return when a crawling vine "jumped up" and got caught on my shoe. Down goes Frazier--I mean blog boy. Glad to say, minor fall that hurt my pride more than anything. CB made her presence felt, and said "pick up your feet old man", kissed my boo-boo, brushed me off and sent me on my way. At the end of the clearing-but no path we continued on the right bend in the dirt road. As we walked I was moving my shoulders and back to reverify that no harm was done when we came to another T-junction in the road. We encountered a man walking from the left and asked him if it was possible to find town going the way he came from. Our luck was that he spoke english and gave us directions..."continue to the curve--don't go through the gate. You will see a little trail the goes off to the right-there will be a wire-on the ground, you step over that to the trail. It'll take you to the road and Club Coco and back to Ocotal Road." OK, sounded simple. We cautiously approached the curve, saw the gate we didn't want to go into, and searched for the entrance to the trail and the wire to step over. We thought we had it, but then couldn't see a trail so we kept moving forward. I'm not sure what you mentally pictured from those directions, but it wasn't exactly what I pictured when we found it. The trail was partially hidden unless you looked fairly hard...but we were successful in finding it and walked to the paved road from the directions. We both were surprised to see that we had just been here about 15 minutes ago when we turned back into the jungle after we thought there was no way through the private areas. We approached the guard gate, said buenas dias and asked if we could continue on in. A positive response and we walked into Club Coco. The paved road was lined with beautiful trees and greenery. Next thing I know, NGG is back with another howler alert. This time we would be getting an up close and personal experience as we found two different males in the trees ahead at the side of the road. NGG was super happy having a double howler sighting! We continued on and saw the end of the road and realized we were where we wanted to be, on the far side of town and coming out on Ocotal road. We headed back into town, stopped at one of the three stores we shop at for supplies, took the horse path shortcut and made it home...two hours and six minutes after we left home. Mission accomplished! Shortly after we had lunch, it started to rain...enjoy. Pura Vida!
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Kevin & Sharon SeibelBeginning our next big adventure! Archives
December 2023
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