With our new brakes, we felt we could go anywhere now. That chore out of the way, we looked into shipping our vehicle across the Darien Gap, the 100 miles or so between Panama and Colombia without roads. You must ship your vehicle and fly or sail to Colombia to pick up the vehicle again. Such a pain! And very, very expensive! We wanted to see if there were alternatives going from Costa Rica to Colombia or Equador. We'd already spent time in Colombia when we'd come to meet and sail with Steve on that fateful journey back in 2018, so we weren't thrilled that Cartagena seemed to be the only destination available. But such is life.
We headed to the Pacific coast tport town of Caldera to see if we could find someone to answer some of our questions. We parked on the public beach access to the beach camping area, this black sand beach.
YOLO parked at the beach in Caldera.
We didn't get any answers on the shipping alternatives we wanted so we headed off. Apparently ships full of cars from Asia come into this port, but none go out; the ships just go back for more. The helpful shipping agent we talked with called around and found a lady who'd at least try to get us a quote to ship from the Caribbean coast of Limon. We contacted her with our vehicle info and she said she'd try to get us a quote, but it wouldn't be that day. So we headed towards the Osa Peninsula to visit our friends' home. We stopped at Jaco Beach for lunch.
Looks like the tide was out when we stopped, leaving a wide open beach to enjoy.
Karen selfie at Jaco beach.
A view from the mirador/overlook onto Jaco Beach.
This end of the bay had some big rocky outcrops with breaking waves.
Waves crashing over the rocks from the mirador. The safety chain was down or gone from much of the cliff.
We ended up at Matapalo Beach for the night. Just park anywhere between the palms and hope the coconuts don't let loose.
Cute sign on a driveway here.
Our view from the van. Dangerous rip currents kept swimers close to shore. A lone brave surfer dared to enter the waves. He could only get 5-15 seconds of a ride from the waves, then would spend that many minutes paddling back out getting pounded by the curling waves breaking on him.
Jason enjoying some down time on the beach at Matapalo.
Lots of little crabs digging in the sand make some funky designs.
This huge tree stump was standing up when we arrived. High tide waves actually pushed it over. Quite the piece of wood. Full tree trunks were being moved around on the beach by the high waves.
Some white ibis poking their long curved beaks into the mud puddles after the rains.
YOLO and a pretty palm next to it.
Clouds hovering over the Corcovado Peninsula highlands.
Unusual clouds formed above us.
This time of year, it's a pretty good bet they're going to bring rain.
An octopus carved into a pillar on the balcony of Mike and Sue's house.
We missed seeing our friends by about a week, but they very graciously offered us the use of their house for a respite from van life.
The view from the balcony looking NE. Ahead is Puerto Jiminez and the gulf; behind us is the Corcovado National Park.
Jason relaxing in front of the fan. It's hot and humid here and rains every afternoon or evening.
A troop of golden monkeys, probably spider monkeys, went jumping and dancing through the trees to the rambutan trees, where thery ate and knocked down a lot of the fruits.
The starfruit were dropping and rotting in the driveway. Here Jason tries to coax a monkey with one.
Big beautiful scarlet mackaws fly around here all day! You know they're around from the raucous squawking they make. They will perch in the treetops and preen before taking to the skies, always in pairs. Too bad the camera in the phone can't capture their majestic flight and colors.
Fruits from around the yard include this velvet apple. It's got a dark orange velvety peel.
The inside is a creamy pale yellow with a consitstncy sort of like a banana. A barely sweet taste, I wouldn't buy them. Animals and birds don't seem to like them either as they were all just laying on the ground under the tree.
Starfruit here isn't eaten by locals as they say it's too acidic. They are another pretty fruit, but I just don't like their flavor.
There were a couple of rambutan trees on the property. I love rambutans, but so do the squirrel monkeys. A whole troop of them cleaned off hundreds of them and just bit them and dropped them, leaving the sweet insides to rot. Really ripe ones are usually darker red but the season just started here. These were delicious.
I think Jason's has has seen better days. He'll need a new one soon.
The doors inside the home were made of stunningly beautiful woods.
The starfruit tree with all the fruit just dropping and rotting alongside the driveway.
Mangosteens are purple on the outside and have 5-6 sweet globs of goodness inside. Very tasty! I ate about a dozen of them so they wouldn't go rotten. The property caretaker brought me some and told me where the tree was, so I gathered some more.
This scarlett-rumped tanager on the window sill outsde kept trying to fly through the glass. Or maybe he was just pecking bugs off the outside? Pretty.
Some heavy weather moving in as we left. The front hit us a bit later with driving rain and winds.
We're off to Panama!
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