day 3

At 5 am we received our knock on the door to wake us up. We had booked a boat tour to Cano Island. Our taxi was scheduled to pick us up at 5:45 for the hour drive to the Sierpe River where this next adventure was set to start. We ate a quick breakfast of cereal, got our gear together, and were ready when our ride arrived. Once we got to Sierpe we were served a hot breakfast right on the river where we watched the small boats come and go. Once we finished, we got fit for our flippers and masks for snorkeling paid, and we were on our way...

The sierpe River


4 different types of mangroves live along this river


There are lots of different animals that live on this river... monkeys (which we saw, but I wasn't able to get a picture of them, crocodiles, raccoons, and many more...


It took close to 30 minutes to get down the river to the mouth of the river where river meets ocean. This was a cool thing to think about doing. I had seen the Mississippi Delta when I was a little a girl (I think I was 8 or 9), but to actually go through where river and ocean met and to be a part of that journey was a really cool thing to do. The waves were big and the water was rough, but the driver of our boat Capitino Steve, was an excellent driver...


Once we got out into the ocean we went in search of whales... the one thing I most wanted to see... The ocean was beautiful and healthy and smelled so good and was so warm...


We saw dolphins a couple different pods of dolphins, but they were really hard to get photos of. They just move so fast. Holly got some video of them, but we were still in search of whales. The Humpbacks were in this area, so I really wanted to see one. In fact, everytime I thought about that I really might, I started to get choked up. Finally, moments before Adrian (our other tour guide) and Capitino Steve threw the towel in we saw one blow and jump out of the water. We weren't able to get as close as I would have liked, but at least I got to see it come out of the water and it slap its tail. I know that one day I will see them close up, so we were on to snorkeling...

These were the first waters we swam in.


In these waters we swam with lots of fish. The water was pretty clear, but the exciting thing we saw here was a 2 meter shark on the bottom. There were like 6 shark, but the 2 meter shark was the largest. They are bottom feeders and we were on top of the water so we had nothing to worry about being in the water at the same time as them.


We swam here for a while and then on to the beach... Cano Island, it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been visually. There were hermit crabs everywhere and little lizards and the water was so clear and the air so fresh...




We saw more whales way out in the water while sunbathing on the beach... there are no pictures of the whales because they were always too far away from us.


After lunch we were off to snorkeling again...We almost didn't go, but at the last moment I decided I was going to go while the other girls sunbathed, but then they also decided to go as well. I was so glad we did. We saw a school of angel fish and clown fish and many others. While swimming here, one of the other girls on our tour (there were 2 other ladies from Italy with us) started saying tortuga! Tortuga! And we all went under water to see and there was a sea turtle about a 1 1/2 ft across. We swam so close we could have touched it. It was beautiful and awesome! It made me so grateful to be there in that moment and just be able to observe it without it being fearful of humans. It was awesome. We swam with it for a long time before having to leave because our tour guides were really wonderful. (we ended up meeting them later at a dance club)

On the way back they took us through the mangrove swamp - the largest in Costa Rica. Mangroves are amazing plants. I won't go into it here, but you should really read about them...


While heading back the up the river, we finally got to see monkeys. Holly got video of them they were just moving too fast for me to get a photo of them, but will post the video of them in a few days I hope.

We fell in love with Costa Rica while there. Our tour guides were a lot of fun and we ended up inviting them to meet us at Roco Verde a local dance club we were planning on going to that evening to salsa! They came and we all learned to salsa. Ashley stayed back at the villas because she was worn out, but the other 3 of us went and got our dance on. The music was not salsa music it was techno in spanish mixed with hair metal. It was very strange, but we still had a great time and the place was right on the ocean, so we ended up getting back in the ocean to finish the night off... then back to the villa...exhausted and exhilarated... costa rica our home away from home...