Sea sickness and sharks at Drake Bay

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Monday was another early start and in no time we were on a little prop plane to Drake Bay on the Osa Peninsula.

Landing at Drake Bay
Landing at the Puerto Jimenez airstrip on the Osa Peninsula

We’ve been to rain forests before but none as remote or rainy as this. The drive from the landing strip to the guest house was an adventure in itself; piled into the back of a 4×4 truck, our driver navigated dirt roads and river crossings to get us to our rustic accommodation, Jinetes De Osa.

After checking into our guest house we had a wander around.  There are a couple of lodges and a coffee shop and not a lot else. People are here for nature tours and scuba diving.  They have to be, that’s all that’s here!

For 3 days we got up early and took the dive boat to Cano Island, 20 miles off the coast from Drake Bay.  On all 3 days the seas were extremely rough which made for very uncomfortable rides and it was always a relief to get in the water. 

Cano is a UNESCO heritage site and scuba divers are only allowed on a tiny portion of the island for brief intervals in between dives. From what we could see it is pristine and they are doing a good job of keeping it that way.

The diving was good, not stellar but good. Highlights were the sharks (we swam with more sharks in 3 days than we have in 20 years of diving combined), they were white tipped sharks so not huge, between 4ft and 5ft long. At one point there were 10 of them and a ray, just hanging out with us which was pretty cool.

There were also lots of schools of BIG fish and on one dive we found ourselves completely surrounded by hundreds of big jacks, so many that they blocked the light. It was like being thrown into the middle of a scene in David Attenborough’s Blue Planet. Another highlight was a pod of dolphins which performed spectacularly for us.

On our last day of diving, we were getting off the dive boat and a crocodile swam by as we were wading to shore. Needless to say none of us hung around.

Did I mention it rains a lot here? It’s tropically hot though so you just accept the fact you are wet…all the time.

We’ve actually been quite lucky and had some breaks in the rain, enough to be able to spend a few hours at the beach and for the sun to light up the lush green forests which was stunning. The first 24 hours after we arrived were a non-stop torrential downpour, it was so loud you had to yell to each other if you wanted to have a conversation just to be heard over the pounding of the rain on the roof.

White headed monkey

We didn’t see as much wildlife as we’d hoped in the forests around our accommodation although we did see another sloth and a white faced monkey but we are pinning our hopes on our visit to Cocovado National Park which is the most bio-diverse place in the world, so hopefully we’ll have some sightings to report…maybe an anteater if we’re lucky!

The food at Jinetes De Osa has been good considering we are virtually in the middle of nowhere, although I suspect we will be sick of rice and beans by the end of the trip.  Dinner is served buffet style and all the guests eat together on a long communal table.  It’s been a fun group with an interesting mix of personalities; a Swiss woman who flirts with any male who crosses her path, a toff trader from London who thinks he’s been everywhere and done everything despite only being in his early 20’s and a Brazilian couple. There’s been some interesting conversation over the rice and beans.

The friendly staff have been encouraging me to practicing my Spanish with them, who knows, I might even get good at it one of these days!

Our room is at the top of the hill, so we walk off some of the calories from dinner each evening as we labor up each of the 182 steps to bed.

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