Cabo Matapalo, Costa Rica - Days 42 & 43

Sunday, March 24

Wondering when the best time of day is in Cabo Matapalo? Sunrise. I woke up at 5:00am this morning and sat in the open-air living room watching the sun rise over the ocean. The pink and orange hues of the sky were gorgeous against the light blue ocean water. The picture I snapped doesn’t do its beauty justice. It’s cooler in the mornings, too — a chilly 80 degrees. I listened to the birds chirp and the howler monkeys make their deafening chorus of calls.

Andi joined me in the living room a few minutes after I woke up and said he slept horribly last night. “Did you have mice in your room, too?” he asked. Tory and I slept together upstairs and I’m not sure if there were mice in our room or not, but I wasn’t very happy to know that was a possibility! Mice are my nemesis. Apparently Andi saw them on his way to the bathroom multiple times in the night when he went to take a cold shower. He was so hot without air conditioning that he couldn’t sleep.

The howlers woke Tory up at 5:30am, so she laid in bed and watched her iPad. The kids love the way the bug nets around the beds feel like their own special fortress.

Andi volunteered to make breakfast. He said to Aden, who was laying next to Tory in bed watching the iPad, “Do you want pancakes for breakfast?” and Aden responded, “How about you make them while I lay here and then you let me know when they’re ready?” Ha! These kids lead a rough life. I can’t complain since Andi makes me breakfast every morning, too, while I workout.

Andi calls this customary Costa Rican coffee maker the “dirty sock method.” It’s not actually a dirt sock, it’s a clean fabric filter but it sure looks (and tastes) like it.

After breakfast, we set off to adventure the Osa Peninsula. The Colorado couple we met yesterday told us to check out Luna Lodge which is a secluded eco-lodge situated on 60-acres of rainforest near Corcavado National Park. Luna Lodge is 15 miles away from where we’re staying and Waze navigation said it would take us 2 hours to get there. Based on that, we knew the road to get there was going to be a bumpy one but that’s half the adventure.

Walking to the car to leave, we saw four or five spider monkeys in the trees on our property. Tory was confident these were spider monkeys and not the howlers we usually see, and I think she was right as these ones had brown (not black) fur. It’s pretty neat to see so much nature steps away from our front door.

First stop was Playa Matapalo, a beautiful palm tree-lined beach that stretches on for miles. This morning, there wasn’t another soul in sight on the beach. It was low tide exposing a rocky shoreline with lots of small tide pools. We hunted around for sea creatures, but didn’t see much besides hermit crabs.

On our way back to the car, we saw a capuchin monkey sitting on a low tree branch eating fruit. These monkeys are my favorite with their human-like faces, ears and hands. He sat in the tree and watched us watch him for a long time before he scurried off to another branch higher up in the trees.

Driving on Costa Rican roads often means crossing rivers, and today was no exception on our trek to Luna Lodge. I can’t imagine driving through these rivers during the rainy season. It must be intense! There’s only one road in and out of Matapalo, so driving through the river isn’t optional.

As expected, the drive to Luna Lodge was a bumpy one. The rocky, dirt road passed the beautiful Playa Pira and Playa Carate before leading us through a dried-up riverbed. Then, up the mountain we climbed to Luna Lodge at the very end of the road. We got a kick out of this sign as we neared the summit.

We parked our car in a small parking lot at the top of the road. A waiter met us at the entrance of the resort with ice cold waters and a warm welcome to the property. We asked if we could have lunch at the lodge and the man said, “Of course! Enjoy the pool while you wait. Lunch is served at 12:30pm.” Nice! Soon after, we met the owner’s mother who helps out at the lodge during part of the year. She shared the story of how the lodge came to be, and invited us to spend as long as we liked at the resort.

It was 10:00am, so we grabbed our beach bag and hit the pool. Fortunately, there were a few kids swimming already and Tory and Aden jumped right into a game of Marco Polo while Andi and I laid in lounge chairs and read books.

What an awesome surprise today was! Andi and I were not at all expecting to relax by a beautiful pool near the border of Corcavado National Park. At 12:30pm, we toweled off and walked to the restaurant for lunch. I worried we weren’t dress appropriately, but none of the staff seemed to be bothered. Lunch was a fixed menu — quinoa salad with black beans and plantain chips for adults and choice of a sandwich or black bean quesadilla for the kids. Aden wasn’t pleased with his choices, but Andi and I made it work by sharing some of our quinoa salad with him and in turn, eating some of his quesadilla. For dessert, we each enjoyed mango mousse. The owner of Luna Lodge stopped by our table after lunch to introduce herself and ask if we were enjoying our time at the lodge. She was a bright, caring person who obviously loves this area of Costa Rica. The owner invited us into her home to see her personal breathtaking view of Corcavado National Park.

Andi wanted to hike to the waterfall on the Luna Lodge property after lunch, but I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea to do during the heat of the afternoon. It was well over 90 degrees outside. Both Tory and Aden whined because they wanted to go back to the pool to swim, but Andi persisted. A staff member gave us a map and showed us which hike would be the easiest for the kids, and we set off.

We made it the small waterfall / swimming hole, and surprisingly the kids did awesome walking there. Aden tripped on a root and fell once, but he popped right back up and kept walking without a tear. We all got into the water to cool off, but the kids bolted as soon as they saw little crayfish swimming in the water. Andi wanted a picture, just the two of us, so Tory volunteered to be the photographer while I bravely waded through the water moving swiftly to avoid getting pinched by the little lobsters!

We hiked back to Luna Lodge and found our way back to the pool to cool off one more time. Aden and Tory each wanted another banana pineapple smoothie — why not?!

Around 3:00pm, we pulled the kids away from the pool and made our two-hour trek back to our airbnb. When we arrived, Andi and I wanted to go down to the beach to watch the sunset, but the kids politely asked for a break. They both curled up with an iPad on the upstairs bed while Andi and I lounged around the open-air living room.

Promptly at 7:00pm Tory asked if it was time to read before bed. The kids were really tired after a long day of swimming, hiking and driving around in the car. And since there’s not much to do in the darkness anyway, Andi took Aden downstairs to their man cave to go to bed as well. It was an early ending to a fun day on the Osa.

Monday, March 25

This morning I woke up at 4:00am to the loud call of howler monkeys in the trees. There’s no sleeping in on the Osa — the jungle is alive 24/7 with birds and monkeys making all kind of noise. I got up and attempted to blog using the very slooow Internet connection and Andi joined me in the living room shortly thereafter. He had a terrible night of sleep again. This time, there were bats in his room smacking against the bug net around his bed and dogs humping outside his window. Poor Andi. As much as he’s trying to be a good sport and honestly is enjoying the activities on the Osa, he’s profusely sweating all the time. Last night I looked over at him during dinner and sweat was dripping down his face. He doesn’t usually sweat like that in tropical climates, but it is exceptionally hot here.

Add this cute little cockroach to the list of critters we’ve seen in Costa Rica. Yuck. Tory was awake shortly after sunrise, and laid in bed again watching her iPad until breakfast.

After Aden woke up, Andi make the kids pancakes and eggs for breakfast and then walked over to the caretaker’s cabina to find out the details of our fishing trip today. We hired William, the property caretaker to take us shore fishing at low tide.

Since our Internet connection is so terrible here, doing our online school program is out of the question. Fortunately, I brought along a few workbooks for Tory to use in this event. I’d forgotten how much she enjoys worksheets, and she got really into it this morning. We also did 30 minutes of Spanish practice on the Duolingo app.

William the caretaker said to plan on fishing at 1:00pm, so we didn’t have much time to do anything before then. I made a simple cold chicken salad for lunch with cooked & diced chicken, yogurt, dijon mustard and honey. Honestly, it was too hot to eat and none of us had much of an appetite, but we knew we needed something in our bellies.

After lunch, William came over and the five of us hopped in our SUV to go to a beach about five minutes away that he said was good for fishing. William seemed to understand English but spoke very little of it, so Andi and I both had a hard time understanding the details of what we were doing this afternoon. When we arrived to the beach, William pointed to one side and communicated something to me in broken English that basically said, “You stay here with the kids while Andi and I go fish over there.” The other few words I caught where “no bueno,” but did that mean the water? The beach? The trees along the sand? I had no idea. As Andi rushed after William he said, “I think we’re going over there to catch some bait!,” and they were off.

Aden and Tory were bummed. “Aren’t we going to fish, too, Mom?” Honestly, I had no idea. The kids and I played in the sand for a while and then we took a dip in the water to cool off. The beach was deserted — there wasn’t a single person there except for us. Tory and I tried hunting for sea creatures in the tide pools, but the water was hot inside the shallow pools of rocks and they were filled with green algae. Next, I tried to help Aden boogie board, but I didn’t do as good of a job as Andi and Aden took a big fall in the water. No bueno was right! He was not pleased. For the next hour, the kids and I played on the beach while Andi and William fished off in the distance.

When they returned, Andi said they saw some really big fish out there but the fishing pole snapped in two and they were out of bait. William wanted to move to another beach to see if the fish were biting better there, so we packed up our things and drove to Playa Tamales down the road.

This wasn’t at all the fishing experience we expected, but I was glad to see Andi having fun. When we got to the second beach, William threw out a net and caught a slew of minnows and then Andi and William started fishing from shore again. This beach was nicer because Andi was fishing right in front of the kids and I and we felt like we were apart of what he was doing, even if we weren’t the ones fishing.

Andi and William were “shore fishing” which meant they stood in the ocean waves and cast their fishing rods into the ocean. It was intense! Every few seconds, a wave crashed over the top of Andi and William and they jumped up to keep their heads and rods above the water. A few minutes into it, Andi reeled in a maccabee.

Aden kept himself busy playing in the minnow bucket (not much is different than fishing at home!). Tory and I played tic-tac-toe in the sand and a game we made up called “find the buried treasure.” Andi caught another fish — a red snapper this time.

Around 4:30pm, it was time to go as the tide was coming in and the beach was slowing disappearing. As we walked back to the car, Andi asked William if the maccabee was a good fish to eat. “No, not really. It’s good if you grind it up and put it on tortillas,” he said. Eh, no thanks. We decided to give him that fish to take home.

Back at the airbnb, as Andi cleaned the red snapper with Aden, he looked up and said, “Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?” I think he was tired from an afternoon of fishing. We’d save the fish for later.

We showered, dressed, and then drove up the road to Martinez Restaurant. It was packed when we pulled into the parking lot. Right away, Aden spotted a disco ball and said, “I’ve just got to dance!”

We ordered beers first, and they tasted so refreshing — a cold drink! Tory and Aden played ping-pong while Andi and I struck up a conversation with a family from Portland, OR. As we talked, we realized we were neighbors at Casa Bambu. They just checked into the cabina next to ours. The Portland family invited us to join them for dinner, so we did. It’s fun to meet people while you’re traveling that you’d never otherwise come across. Our two families couldn’t have been more different, but for an evening we enjoyed swapping travel stories and sharing about our lives.

For dinner, Andi ordered mahi mahi, I had a pork chop, and the kids split a plate of gnocchi. Dessert sounded delicious so Aden had the Oreo ice cream and Tory and a slice of key lime pie. It was a fun night!

When we got back to the airbnb, we realized the door had been left open. Oops! More than worrying about having our electronics stolen, we were concerned we’d find a critter hiding inside somewhere. We searched all the bedrooms but didn’t find anything but a little bird poop on the floor.

It was way past our usual bedtime, so we all said good-night and retired to our separate rooms. I hoped the afternoon of physical activity would help Andi sleep better tonight. Tomorrow is our last day in Matapalo and we’ve got a fun adventure planned.