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Our visit to Costa Rica began Los Suenos & Jaco, where we made our base for 2 weeks. We then continued to Golfito with stops at other various anchorages.
Costa Rica! Oh beautiful Costa Rica! Our first destination that allows us to finally relax for a few weeks. We arrived on a bright note as the seas were calm and Larry fixed the water maker so we were full of pure clean water. What a relief! LOS SUENOS
We had to remain on board
four hours before the clearing officers could come and complete the paperwork
“cha We said our “goodbyes” to John Rains and the first mate Scott. They still had a long journey ahead of them. They are made arrangements to take a long taxi ride over the rough pot holed road to the mountain town of San Jose to make their flight connection back to San Diego. We were very great full for the experiences with them. Most of all we learned what the boat can handle and are now confident and looking forward to what lies ahead. MEGA SPORTSFISHING! We’ve neve Unfortunately, even these
high priced pros and equipment haven’t been catching fish either. There’s
definitely a cloud of disappointment hovering over the docks. There’s
additional tension and concern since next week is an important tournament and
the top booty is $500,000!! At our slip though, fish
abound. Tropical striped ones, small and medium sized grey ones, round flat
pink ones, and there’s one blow fish that slowly glumps around every afternoon.
It’s become a thing with Ziggy to watch for him. He goes crazy over this
particular blowfish. He chases him all around the boat and down the dock and
the blowfish completely is undisturbed or bothered by Ziggy. He just continues
to go about his way nibbling off the barnacles on the dock and ignores Ziggy
completely. Ziggy does everything possible to catch his attention. He barks
and lunges at him, almost falling in, but nothing stirs this fat fish. The
Costa Rican boat hands get a kick out of it.
There are a few mega cruising yachts on the end piers and the others that are too big to get in or can’t get a reservation are anchored just outside the breakwater of the marina in the beautiful natural bay called Bahia Herradura, which means horseshoe, as that is it’s shape. John Rains said the last time he was here, Johnny Carson had his mega yacht named the Serengeti anchored in the bay. This place is not an
inexpensive destination. Our slip fees ran $170 per night for two weeks, which
is more than anywhere else we’ve encountered, even in the US. The marina has
ample power and we are totally “plugged in”. We get great cable TV and all the
AC’s on the boat are running non-stop. The climate is very hot and very humid
so we spend a lot of time in the boat. The marina has an open-air restaurant
bar on the second floor of the office building that over looks the marina. It
has 5 TVs running constantly, all tuned to different sporting events going on
around the world and the music blasts most of the night and day. There is a new
efficient fuel dock that most yachts on their way down fuel up at. I wish I had
that concession. Our fuel fill up was $3000 including the oil change. You
don’t just go and pull up to fill up. You make an appointment a few days ahead
and great service. PUNTARENAS We spent a few days
resting, cleaning and anxiously got ready for our friends to arrive. We rented
a car to have for a week at $150 a day and drove North up the coast to Puntarenas. Puntarenas is the port that the majority of cruisers check into
to get their entry papers cleared. John Rains had told Larry it was “a hell on
earth. Larry wanted to see what a hell on earth was so we drove the hour and a
half north over a potholed road to see the other place that we could have come
into. It was a pretty sad looking place. It must b a tough existence here for
the locals. Windows and doors were boarded up everywhere and buildings looked
mostly like shacks.
LUNCH IN THE JUNGLE On our way back,
Zig & parrots in dining room!
CROCODILES on the RIO TARCOLES On our way back to the
marina we stopped the car and walked across the bridge over the Rio Tarcoles.
We had noticed other people doing the same on the way to Puntarenas and wanted
to see what they were looking at. Just below the bridge, to our amazement,
were several crocodiles sunning themselves on the gravel shore.
We were anxious to get back as our friends were arriving. They were a day late because their flight was cancelled the day before. All communication to us is through email and we obtain that mostly though the radio over single side band once a day or rarely over satellite connection. We were worried when they didn’t show and had no way to communicate except by this email. Finally in the afternoon we received an email from them explaining their delay to our great relief. FRIENDS ARRIVE! AND A LITTLE TIME TO HAVE FUN! They finally arrived the
next afternoon bringing much needed mail, boat parts to repair things that had
failed on the way down and extra cash. We got them settled and had a wonderful
dinner under the palapas of the local restaurant Le Galeon which overlooks the
marina and our boat. The Chef is excellent and has cooked for some of the best
like Wolfgang Puck. I couldn’t believe our friends were here and we were in
this nice marina and having a fabulous meal. We were having the most delicious
grilled peppercorn crusted tuna with chillie pepper mashed potatoes and
appetizers of tuna tartar with sesame seeds and wasabi!
LITTLE TOWN OF JACO The next day, we decided to rest up, lay around the pool at the Marriott and then head into the nearby town of Jaco and shop. We had a date to join John and Sue Spencer, off the “Uno Mas” (another Nordhavn that is heading south through the canal to Florida) on the same mission as we are), for dinner. They are headed for Fort Lauderdale to link up with the other 29 Nordhavns for the Nordhavn North Atlantic Rally in May. Jaco, is a surfer-dude
town. Cheap little tourist shops and restaurants. It’s our only place to get
groceries in what they call the super mercado, “Mas X Menos”, mostly “menos”
(less). I almost pass out every time I go in there because it is so hot. Larry
always tells me to go outside because my face is getting so red. We’ve done
pretty well getting delicious fresh fruits and vegetables, drinks, marginal
eggs, the basics. I’m almost totally turned against eggs now. We get farm
fresh but they are never really fresh. I have to test each one by submerging it
in water to see if it floats or not. We met John and Sue at Los
Suenos, and all six of us plus Ziggy, crammed into the rental car with John in
the back where the luggage goes.and headed to town for dinner on the beach that
night. We headed to our next favorite restaurant right on the beach. The
sunsets are like the billboard for the movie, Endless Summer. The beach is long
and wide and the sand is black. It’s flanked with palm trees and at sunset
people are riding horses and still swimming and wading in the ocean at dusk. It
made for a magnificent backdrop to our dining experience. The food was great.
They serve the freshest Dorado and Sea bass with garlic sauce.
Sunset on the beach in Jaco Now on to the VOLCANO
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Costa
Rica
cha”. Ziggy had a hard time understanding why he couldn’t get off the boat
as soon as we reached our slip. As is the custom, we hung our Costa Rican flag
on our starboard station and the yellow quarantine on the left. This signaled
our location and identified that we were not cleared for entry. Around noon our
agent arrived with the clearing officers and the paperwork “cha
cha” began.
This time instead of agents in army uniforms, brandishing guns, and dirty black
boots, this group was dressed in golf shirts, shorts, baseball caps, sandals and
looked very resortish. They came in, sat themselves down at our salon table,
all five of them, and ordered cervezas! Good thing, I had one six pack left and
thank God it was in the frig and cold! It went pretty smoothly and we were
allowed to remove the quarantine flag and go ashore but not without being warned
that we were not to go anywher
e without our passports or we would run the risk
of being arrested! 
r seen anything
like this marina. It is geared solely for MEGA sports fishing yachts. We are
the only cruiser here and lucky that we were able to get reservations. Others
that we knew going this path couldn’t get reservations or were lucky to get in
for one night. Our boat length is 62 feet overall, and we feel small. Most lot
of these monsters are 75 feet and more. We seem out of place and especially
since we haven’t caught a fish to eat in 2500 miles. The place buzzes with guys
in baseball caps, white t-shirts silk screened with sports fishing insignias or
logos of their boats. Their feet are adorned with rubber flipper thongs. You
absolutely cannot tell one from the other.
Their sole purpose is going out
everyday with the idea of catching something big. “Catch and release” is the
motto here. It is supposed to be humane, but after I saw what it did to the
three Bonita we caught and released, I’m not convinced. Each boat has a huge
tuna tower on top. Some must be 60 plus off the water. It looks to me like a
death-defying act to climb up on those things especially when out to sea and the
boat is rolling back and forth. It’s a thrill just watching them climb to the
top to clean them in the security of their dock slip.
There’s plenty of
entertainment each just watching theses mega monsters leaving and coming back
each day. They maneuver them fast in and out of their slips. The hired
captains, (mostly American that stay on the boats, and the owners fly down
occasionally to go out) handle them like huge, slick polished Cadillac’s. With
their backs to the helm, the captains manipulate the bow thrusters and gears
behind their backs, they drive them into the dock slip with the speed of light.
The sounds of the fine tuned powerful engines roar in and then powerful grinding
sound of the thrusters start as they manipulate themselves left and right for a
perfect landing. There is quite a surge in the marina and even at its calmest,
it can be a challenge to get any thing in the slips. They’ve got themselves
pretty protected though because they have tied huge fender balls to all sides of
their slips to prevent any damage, god forbid the, master captain would make a
wrong maneuver. The Costa Ricans call them “Cappies”. 
Pros are flying in from all over. Each day we
watch as they come back and we ask, but the response is, “no luck.” The talk
around the dock is that the “moon isn’t right” or the “water isn’t clear”, or
“something is bothering the fish”, etc. It must be devastating having the
expense of those huge boats for the sole hobby of catching fish and for days,
and weeks on end not being able to catch anything. The home ports listed on
the back of the yachts are from places such as Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale,
Texas, Newport Beach and some names are so hideous like “Lucky Sperm, from
Climax, PA”, “Topless”, “Jammer”, etc. You get the picture.
The diesel is $2.11 per gallon. There is a gourmet mini
mart nearby with frozen Omaha Steaks, duck, pate, and Hagen Daas ice cream.
While you’re filling you can also have cases of beer, both domestic and
imported, cokes, and bottled water loaded on your boat. A short walk away is
the Marriott resort with a beautiful golf course, restaurants, swimming pools,
spa and casino, all flanked in front by a long crescent shaped black sand
beach. The black sand beach serves as a picturesque backdrop to the many white
egrets. There’s a walking bridge from the marina to the hotel and below on the
sun heated boulders are multitudes of iguanas or hela monsters. They blend
into the color of their surroundings and it’s like a puzzle to spot one.
Once
you notice one, you start to notice more and more the longer you look.
The streets were crowded and we noticed many prostitutes,
hustlers, trash, etc. This town is also the destination for those wishing to
take the ferry Golfo de Nicoya to other tourist and wildlife destinations on the
Peninsula de Nicoya. It’s about the only way to get over to some of the
remote destinations across the gulf except by private boat or small charter
plane. This port unloads cruise ships here also, can’t figure that out.
For such a busy stop over, this is not a pleasant place.
we
stopped for lunch at a small place off the highway, a few miles back into the
jungle on a dirt road. The place was surrounded by acres of botanical gardens
and had a magnificent view of the coastline that we had just crossed. The woman
that ran the place was from the US and had been living in this wilderness for
two years now. She had been living in Jamaica for the last fifteen and said she
felt safer in this country. She invited all of us including Ziggy in for
lunch. As we waited for lunch we listened to the amazing loud cacophony of
insects in the surrounding landscape and the silly chatter two pet parrots
perched
next to our table who spent much of the time kissing and admiring each other.
True love I guess.
They
were motionless and blended in so well with the coloring of the gravel bed that
I would have stepped or sat on one except that one slowly opened his massive
jaws just to show us how fierce he could be. 
It was delicious!
MMMMm yum!
Ziggy is welcome too. That particular night he was interested in some frogs in
the bushes nearby. The waiter told me they weren’t good for the dog. “Peligroso!”
(dangerous) I realized later that Costa Rica has poisonous frogs that can
paralyze or kill other animals. The Indians used to use their secretion for
poisonous darts. Yikes!