Costa Rica Part IV - To Sea!

Sat 12/29

Basically a wasted day in between the land tour and the sea-based portion. Having spent most of the previous day sitting around I started the day with a quick workout on the elliptical, had breakfast, then packed up and checked our bags in for transfer to the ship. Valerie and I took a walk and browsed in a really cheesy souvenir shop then continued across to a shopping mall. The mall was pretty dismal - at least half vacant - but walking around was something to do. I thought about getting my hair trimmed, as at 1/8 inch long it was getting pretty unruly, but the barbershop charged 6,800 Colones (about $11) for a haircut and I was just too cheap to pay that kind of money to have someone spend 60 seconds buzzing my head with the clippers.

We ate lunch at the food court, where I impressed Valerie with my ability to order her a personal pan pizza combo in Spanish. My Spanish is very limited, but I do pretty well in restaurants. The conversation is very structured with a lot of context and my food vocabulary is pretty good, so I can generally make it through. Though I have to admit, when I ordered my sandwich at Subway I had to point at some things rather than asking for them because I didn’t remember the words for some of the veggies (cucumber? mushrooms?). Google has a really cool translation app, but a fast food order line is too fast-paced for me to be able to fumble with an app. Still waiting for the Star Trek Universal Translator - which may not be far away at this point.

Back at the hotel all the cruise passengers gathered in the lounge. One of the high points of any trip for Valerie is meeting new people, so she began to make the rounds. We met one family from LA, whom we immediately suspected were also Jewish. As I’m sure I’ve noted before, we have a minor obsession with spotting other Jews (which is not at all unique to us - I think that as a small minority it makes us feel a little less alone in a sea of goyim to encounter other members of our tribe out there). It turns out we were 2/3 right in this case - the wife and her mom were Jewish and they’re raising the kids Jewish but the husband and his brother were not. Plus, their son is named Jesse. In fact there were two Jesses and two Jessicas out of the 65 or so passengers. Very unusual and sometimes a little confusing when we gathered for daily outings from the ship (“was that Jesse cabin 219 or Jesse cabin 217 you called?). These Californian semi-Jews were just one of a large number of family groups on the trip, I guess because it’s school break week. There was a kind of rednecky (but it turns out quite accomplished and also quite fun) group of 11 from that corner where Delaware, Pennsylvania and top of the Chesapeake Maryland come together; parents and their three 20-something daughters from Chicago; and grandfather and grandson from Orlando (it turns out the grandfather is in the modeling & simulation business - we know people in common from when I was in that biz), the three generation family of six who were on our land excursion, and more. There other couples without extended families on board (the New Zealanders, the bicoastal Charlottesville/Oakland couple, etc.) but it felt like we couples were the exception rather than the rule on this trip.

All of us - families, couples, whatever - headed out at 2:30 PM for the ship. As I mentioned earlier, the previous day the ten of us who had done the land extension had driven several hours back to San Jose, driving right past Punta Arenas, where we would be getting on the boat. I guess mustering everyone at one hotel in San Jose was convenient for the cruise line, but it was damn rude to make those of us who had spent extra for the land add-on retrace the very same route back to Punta Arenas. All told, a waste of about half a day spent on buses negotiating Costa Rica’s winding mountain roads. Perhaps it was because we were on a bigger bus, or maybe it was that this driver wasn’t as skilled as Marco, our previous driver, but navigating the endless switchbacks on the way to Punta Arenas left all of us a little woozy. So our heads spun a little bit when we realized that we needed to transit via small Zodiac boats for a bouncy ride out to the ship. Valerie really wasn’t prepared for this. In Alaska, the skiffs had been bigger, with bench seats inside, whereas these were smaller skiffs where you just sat on the edge, feeling with every wave like you were about to get pitched over backwards into the drink. Fortunately, we made it to the ship unscathed. We boarded the ship via our first experience with the swim platform, a motorized contraption at the fantail of the ship which lifts the skiffs (or kayaks, or whatever) in and out of the water - no launching required.

Safely aboard, we found our cabin, settled in a little bit, then went to the lounge for a group welcome, abandon ship drill, cocktails and buffet dinner on the upper deck. Valerie was feeling the motion of the ship a little bit and so retired early. I wasn’t being affected as much (I actually think that time spent out on the water kayaking, while a very different kind of motion, gives me a certain degree of “sea legs”) so hung out in the lounge a little bit and had a cup of coffee before going to bed.

 

Here's our cabin

Preparing to abandon ship

Preparing to abandon ship

Oh, coffee! The lounge of the ship had a fancy-schmancy coffee maker which on demand would brew coffee, lattes, and cappuccinos - and it had decaf as well as regular! I was saved! That was, in fact, an indication of another difference between ashore and at sea. On land we were more immersed in Costa Rica. The food we ate had a Costa Rican flavor (as I’ve mentioned, rice and beans at every meal), and while the tourist industry accommodates English speakers, you were in a country where Spanish was the primary language and I felt obliged to sputter things out in Spanish when I could. Once we were aboard ship, the experience changed - this was an American company catering to American tastes. Rice and beans and other Costa Rican foods were largely gone from the menu. The crew, while partly local, spoke excellent English and there was never any expectation that you had to know any Spanish. And there was decaf coffee!

Sun 12/30

UnCruise ships offer a small wellness program including morning yoga every day (and massages!!!). Doing yoga at sunrise out on deck of a ship anchored in a beautiful location is a wonderful experience. Trying to balance on the rolling deck of a ship is another story ... as one of the instructors said, the ship is a great equalizer, as experienced yogis and novices alike were stumbling in and out of balance poses.

 

AM yoga on deck

Our morning activity was kayaking! Yes, sit-on-top doubles (though unlike in Alaska, they indicated a willingness to rig them as singles), but kayaking nonetheless! The group (about eight boats) didn’t have a formal leader, but the crew was out providing safety boat the motorized skiffs out and they pointed us into a the mouth of a small river. The river offered some really amazing scenery with otherworldly tree roots growing in weird directions (like bald cypress - but more so!). As we paddled back out of the river we spotted a large iguana basking on a tree branch above us. Lizard watching by kayak - is there a better way to spend the day?

Wild trees

Lizard spotting!! (see branch above Valerie)

Kayaking scene

Once we got fairly close to our the beach which was our ultimate destination Valerie decided to see if she could fall out and get back into the kayak. Without hesitation she heaved herself over the side into the water. I was just starting to instruct her in how I thought she should attempt to re-enter the kayak when one of the guys in the skiffs showed up and encouraged her to just climb up the ladder into the skiff to be ferried to shore. We got the feeling that they didn’t have a lot of patience for goofing around in the water attempting self-rescues and so Valerie accepted the ride and I paddled the boat solo in to the beach.

Valerie in need of rescue

Once on the beach I realized that we were at a well developed and fairly busy national park. The scene at the beach was in part familiar to anyone who has visited a national park - picnic tables, bathrooms, even a small gift shop (not expecting to be in a developed area, we hadn’t brought any money - so no Curu tchotchkes for us). What was most immediately distinctive, though, was the wildlife. The place was teeming with capuchin monkeys and the most fearless raccoons ever. The monkeys and raccoons had clearly figured out that the picnic tables meant the possibility of food and other interesting items and were constantly trying to sneak in and make off with stuff. The raccoons (in groups!) would brazenly walk up right in front of people and try to grab stuff. Only loud clapping and shouting caused them to back off. The monkeys kept  a little more of a distance but given the chance would scavenge stuff as well. All of us kept a close eye on things. In the U.S. raccoons, while highly opportunistic, keep their distance during the day. Here the intermingling of people and wild animals made it feel almost like a Disney movie. I expected toucans to start circling over our heads and burst into song (probably something by Alan Menken). Anyway, what's most important is that Valerie rated kayaking in a striking tropical environment with lizard spotting as a “20 on a scale of 1 to 10”. This made me happy.

Critters everywhere!

I think part of Valerie's 20-out-of-10 rating was that she was just happier with the sea-based portion of our trip. The ship, unlike the land portion, offered choices. On land, we had one guide and each day had a fixed activity. On the ship, there was a whole “adventure” staff who each day offered a range of activities at different levels. Also, being on the ship meant no more unpacking and repacking, and no more bus rides. Plus, as mentioned earlier, the ship meant pampered American tourism with just a smidgen of exotica rather than total immersion in a foreign land.

One of the few things I don't like about the way UnCruise runs their operation is that you always go back to the ship for meals. This can waste whole bunch of time. Nonetheless, we returned to the ship for lunch then it was back ashore in the afternoon for a “moderate” nature hike. Well, “hike” turned out to be too grand a word. Really, it was a gentle wildlife walk. The group meandered along, stopping frequently to look at animals. It wasn’t strenuous, but it was just what the group wanted; with the heat none of us wanted to walk very hard and there was just so much to look at - scarlet macaws, trogan, agouti, deer, iguana, long-nosed bats, hummingbirds, howler monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and more! But again, this wasn’t deserted wilderness. For most of our walk we were walking along a road rather than a trail and we had to keep ducking out of the way of cars.

Wildlife spotting at Osa Conservation area

Agouti (not my picture)

Howler monkey

Little deer (see Bergmann's Rule)

Someone else's picture of a (male) howler monkey

Emerald toucanette

Scarlet macaw

Yeah

I'll also mention that every day there were multiple activity options of various difficulty. In the past I always would have signed up for the most strenuous, but since my surgery, and with the heat (remember, it was exercising in the heat which brought on my cardiac symptoms) I opted for "moderate" on this trip. There were a couple of hikes I'm sorry I missed, but I'm just too tentative these days about over-exerting myself to go gung-ho for the hard hikes in the tropics.

By the end of the day (and after a beer at cocktail hour and wine with dinner) I was tired - could have gone to bed at 8:30! But I stayed up reading. Then I poked my head into the lounge for the evening’s talk, which was billed as being about photography but which turned out to be more about bird identification. That was a disappointment, as the guide giving the talk had been the leader of our hike where he had demonstrated a great ability to use a spotting scope with people’s cell phone cameras to get some pretty good wildlife pictures. He did seem to know about photography. At about 10 PM I gave up fighting my tiredness and went to bed.

Luis doing his trick of taking cell phone pix through a spotting scope

Capuchin

Iguana - there's no such thing as too many lizard pix

Mon 12/31

My New Year’s Eve day started once again with sunrise yoga. Then it was a slow morning. We visited the bridge where we spent a long time chatting with Sasha, the boat’s second mate. We opened the conversation by telling her that Valerie and I had met designing shipboard navigation systems and by the time we left the bridge we had heard how she met her (same sex) partner, her work history (mostly cargo and cable laying ships - she’s new to small ship tourism), discussed the history of shipboard navigation electronics, compared the bathroom break challenges of manning a bridge and teaching, and learned of the rivalry between New York Maritime Academy and the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. And more. While this is not atypical for a Valerie conversation, I also think manning the bridge is a lonely job without a lot of opportunities for conversation.

After leaving the bridge Valerie went to the free swim off the fantail. I meant to join her but by the time I finished shaving and brushing my teeth (my first chance to do so since I had been up and out of bed early for yoga, then straight to breakfast then the bridge) the first swim time was done, so I worked on my travel journal for a bit then caught the second swim time later in the morning. I didn’t swim for long; I actually have a fear of the water and don’t enjoy just floating around. Then I worked on my journal some more while Valerie got a massage.

In the afternoon I went ashore- this was at the Osa Conservation Area, home to Corcovado National Park. I got momentarily excited that maybe this is what the Antonio Carlos Jobim song Corcovado was named for, but eventually realized that the song was named after a different Corcovado, (and this makes obvious sense for a bossa nova) a mountain in Rio de Janiero. I went on the (once again "moderate") waterfall loop hike at Drake Bay, which was a nice outing - enough of a hike to feel like a real hike, more dense jungle looking scenery, and a nice waterfall as a destination. Yes, you could jump in. No, I didn't.

Waterfall hikers 

And then it was New Years Eve at sea! After dinner everyone gathered in the ship's lounge, which had been done up with lights and decorations. There were also some party hats - but I had brought my own (the old-fashioned cone kind, purchased at Ayers and flattened out for packing). It was a good time (have I mentioned that open bar is included on the ship?), but we adventurers are not a late night lot and by general consensus we agreed to celebrate the turning of the new year at 9 PM, after which people started to turn in. My understanding is that a few people stayed up until actual midnight, but we were not among them.

Getting ready to ring in the new year

Last sunset of 2018

The ship's crew made it festive (that's the captain in the middle)

Party in the lounge

This adorable lizard (which, unfortunately, I didn't see - someone else's picture) has nothing to do with New Years. But lizard pictures improve everything!

Can't have too many sunset pix.

Tues 1/1/19

Today was by necessity a half active, half restful day, for the afternoon was spent pier side to clear Panamanian Customs and Immigration as well as take on additional supplies and fuel. Upon awakening we found ourselves at Golfo Dulce, one of only two fjords in South America, though apparently whether it qualifies as a fjord is debatable depending upon one’s strictness of definition thereof - it is the right shape and has the right depth profile (as I’m sure all readers will already be aware, fjords are shallow at the entrance and then deeper inside), but was not formed by glacial movement. Which leaves up for debate the question, “Have you driven a fjord lately?” 

In any case, being protected waters it was dead calm - none of the rocking to which we had grown (somewhat) accustomed. We headed out by kayak to explore the extensive mangroves of the area. Once again, Valerie and I enjoyed paddling together.  Valerie sets a good even rhythmic cadence and so it’ easy for me, seated in the rearward stoker seat, to stay synced with her. We have little of the clanging paddles so common among inexperienced double paddlers. Plus, whenever she needed a break I got to get some serious paddling practice keeping u with the group while paddling solo. At one point Valerie said she wanted to be up closer to the front of the group with the guide; I impressed her by sprinting us up to the front under solo power - years of paddling muscle memory at work. 

 

I love paddling sit-on-tops! 

The mangroves were another cool experience. Different than our previous exploration (and sadly, no lizard sightings), but also really cool and alien looking formations of plants. Our paddling trip ended at a couple’s private estate (the Saladero Ecolodge), where there is a small shop and snack bar. This was the second time we unexpectedly ran across a gift shop while exploring, though neither time had it occurred to me to bring money, because, I mean, heck, why would there be anything to buy in the wilderness?!

 

There's the ship

Ashore at the ecolodge

The ship’s kitchen provides some pretty good food but occasionally wanders into odd territory in the service of novelty, such as today’s lunch of coco moco, a Hawaiian dish consisting of a burger patty topped with a fried egg over sushi rice. I took the vegetarian option, a veggie burger coco moco, though still having the fried egg garnish it was only semi-vegetarian.

After lunch we sailed for a bit towards Panama then paused to wait for a harbor pilot to take us into port. Tired from a morning of paddling, I tried to go on deck and read (too hot), then kept borderline dozing off while reading in the lounge and so I retired to our cabin for a quick nap. I awoke and looked out the window to see the unexpected sight of truck wheels. While I had slept we had docked and I found myself nearly face to face with the guys refueling the ship. Being the modern connectivity junkie that I am I realized that pier side probably meant cell phone connectivity and took the opportunity to dash off New Year’ wishes to Teddy and David as well as check the headlines (apparently Trump is currently sparring with General McChrystal, another Iraq War hero - McChrystal said Trump is immoral and Trump responded that the general has a “fat, dumb mouth” or something like that).

I went back up to the lounge to read, work on this journal and drink a somewhat well-earned beer.

The evening was spent underway, heading towards Panama. I think it was this evening that I first discovered stargazing from the fore deck. Out at sea at night it's pretty darn dark, and so when you walked out onto the dark fore deck of the ship at night the first thing that struck you is that you couldn't see a damn thing and felt like you were going to perhaps walk over the side and into the water. However, as your eyes adjusted you began to be able to see a blazing collection of starts. Sitting out on deck, with the motion of the ship and the sound of the bow crashing through the waves, looking at the stars - amazing! Also, if you looked into our bow wake you could bioluminescence - like the water was sparking as we went through it. Very cool. On that first evening there were dolphins swimming alongside the bow too - though I got only a brief glimpse then saw their bio-luminscent trails as they broke off.