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Our First Day: The van was at our hotel at exactly 6:10 AM, the time we were given for pick-up. We met our guide Cristopher (Cris) Cerdas and four of our fellow paddlers, two men from Ohio (Matt and Jason) and two women from Toronto, Canada (Cheryl and Tarra). We said little as the van pulled away to fetch the remaining couple, a husband and wife from Montana (Chris and Michelle). With the Montanans on board, we were off to Puntarenas and breakfast.

Becoming acquainted on a trip like this is a little like the beginning of a blind date. First you are mostly quiet, trying to figure out who these folks are. Then there is tentative and safe conversation. Gradually, you begin to get an idea of whom you are traveling with and what the time with them may be like. On this trip, the openness of all the travelers and their interesting and pleasant personalities made the entire trip worthwhile.

This didn’t have to be the case given the great diversity of the group. We had two single twenty-four year old women from Canada, gay partners from Ohio, parents of young children from Montana and Lisa and I from New York State, both of us in our sixty’s and old enough to be the parents or grandparents of everyone else in the group. The diversity worked however, and made for interesting conversation. It was a positive experience for us and I think for everyone else.

I have been on nine of these guided kayaking trips with a tenth coming up in March. I have been lucky in that on every one, the people have made the trip just as memorable as the paddling. I know from talking to others that this isn’t always the case, so I suppose I’ll have a bad experience some day. But so far, the folks I have met and the friendships I have made keep me coming back for more.

We stopped for breakfast at a nice Costa Rican breakfast buffet about 9 AM. I really like Costa Rican food. Costa Rican meals are usually well balanced with (always) rice and beans, protein and fruit. Pinto Gallo is a breakfast staple. This is a rice and beans mixture with onions, spices, fresh cilantro white rice and black beans. Served with scrambled eggs or an omelet and doused with Lizano salsa, it’s the best breakfast around! And, of course, there’s the coffee. Locally grown and roasted, it is (so far) the best coffee in the world. It makes getting up in the morning worth it!

After breakfast, we continued on toward Puntarenas. The Costa Rican countryside is wonderful! So much diverse topography in such a small area!

Costa Rica is very mountainous, with high mountains along each coast enclosing a broad central valley. These mountains contain several active volcanoes, with many mountains over 10,000 feet high. As you move up and down through these mountains you pass through a variety of forest types with cattle ranches and dairy farms, and at specific elevations, coffee plantations. To the east is the Caribbean Sea (Mar Carib). To the west is the Pacific Ocean (Oceano Pacifico). We were headed west to the Pacific side and the Cruru Preserve, a private wildlife preserve on the Nicoya Peninsula.

Puntarenas is the ferry terminal for the jump to the Nicoya Peninsula. I’m not sure that we saw all that the town had to offer, but the terminal area was industrialized, dirty, and a bit seedy, with several trashy tourist trap souvenir shops and hucksters on the street.

Even though we were early for the ferry, we would not get on this one because there were so many big trucks ahead of us. To avoid a several hour wait for the next boat to Paquera, we took a smaller ferry to Palya Naranjo. This added an hour or so to our road trip, but saved time over waiting for the other ferry. And it gave us an opportunity to see some of the more remote parts of the peninsula that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen.

We finally arrived at the Cruru Preserve about one o’clock. We unloaded our gear and viewed a campsite already set up and waiting for us. We were assigned to tents. Couples got the big walk-in tents. The others got smaller timberlines. Each was equipped with two, three-inch thick self-inflating

mattress. This is the point at which we discovered this would be a base camp operation rather than a supported expedition, as there was no way this equipment would fit into a kayak. Cris, our guide confirmed our suspicion. After some grumbling and comparing of notes, we concluded that we all had gotten the same erroneous information from Johannas at Crystal Seas Kayaking. We agreed there was little we could do about it at the time, but all vowed to contact Johannas about the situation upon our return.

Lunch helped to soothe everyone’s grumbling. After eating we changed into swim wear and headed for the beach. It was time to get our gear and be fitted to our kayaks. I described the boats in an earlier blog. Let’s just say that they were well used but serviceable. I was able to fit Lisa and Cheryl to their boats, while Cris and the crew assisted the others. We had brought our own PFD’s. Lisa is small and has difficulty finding PFD’s that fit. I brought my own as well. While the supplied PFD’s were of good quality, little time was taken to fit them securely, which could have caused problems in a capsize.

We pushed off the beach and were soon headed for Playa Quesera. I paddled near Lisa. She was somewhat frightened by the swells and the unfamiliarity of her boat. It felt very unstable to her. I was paddling the same model boat and was having no problems. But I’m fifty-five pounds heavier than Lisa and a bigger person. Soon she was doing better. We slowly made it to Quesera, having covered about 1.75 miles. There was a slight surf running on shore as we approached the beach. I yelled for some one to assist Lisa, as she was approaching the beach at an angle and I feared she would broach. She got ashore without a problem and probably didn’t need the help!

We explored a trail at Quesera and found bats in an old well, but not much else. Shortly, we were back in the boats headed for Curu. The wind

had picked up a bit with swells coming broadside. This was making Lisa very nervous. Cris came along on her leeward side and I stayed to windward. As I looked across toward Lisa’s and Cris’s boats, first one would disappear in the swells then the other. Small whitecaps began to appear. Lisa paddled on, slowly and steadily until we finally reached the beach at Cruru.

One of the things I love about Lisa is her grit. She loves kayaking and is willing to try just about anything, even if it scares her. It makes her a great and valued partner, and my best friend. At sixty-one years of age, she is willing to join me in a kayaking adventure on the Pacific Ocean in a foreign country, to sleep in the jungle in a tent on the ground, and at the end say she had a great time. I can’t ask for more than that. So I’ll be the good partner tomorrow and put us in a large double kayak.

Back at camp, it was clean up (cold showers, but showers none-the-less), Happy Hour at six, and a fine Costa Rican dinner at eight. Then bed at a reasonable hour

NOTE: One of our group, Cheryl Drewitz, has written about our adventure on TravelPod.com. Here is a link to her blog: Cheryl's Blog of her trip to Costa Rica

With a few bumps and false starts, we are off on our kayaking adventure in Costa Rica. Today we travel from San Jose to Cruru Wildlife Preserve and take a shakedown paddle.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Kayaking Costa Rica: Curu Preserve