Mars 2022 - Costa Rica - Tortuguero, Cahuita

 The Caribbean coast was definitely our favorite part of Costa Rica, with beautiful nature and fantastic opportunities to spot wildlife. To get from La Fortuna to Tortuguero, we took a shuttle (minibus + boat) since going by public transportation we wouldn't even be sure that we would make it the whole way in one day (4 buses + boat). The shuttle service was expensive; despite the many shuttle companies in the country it was not possible to pay anything less than $60. At least, we really enjoyed the trip. The boat tour, which was about an hour, was almsot like a sightseeing tour, as the captain would slow down in several places along the river so we could spot crocodiles, caimans, birds, iguanas and various other lizards. The small village is quite touristy but had a really nice atmosphere, with just a single "main street" with some restaurants and shops on each side.

In the evening we went looking for something small to eat, since we had had a late lunch. We found some street food (which generally seems quite uncommon in Costa Rica) - some grilled chicken skewers, or tortilla stuffed with a big piece of cheese and some sourcream. At one of the restaurants, we ordered a plate of patacones - smashed plantains, fried, and served kind of like fries but in a different format, and with a few dips, like guacamole and pico de gallo. Patacones soon became a favorite snack or side dish, somewhat reminding us of the tajadas we had in Honduras, but quite different still. Getting fried bananas with your burger or fish might seem like an odd idea, but it was so good. 

The next day we were up extra early, to head to the national park. The main area of the park has a walking trail, but also consists of waterways that can be traveled and experienced by canoe, kayak, or a boat with a silent motor. Most of the guided tours start at 6 am when the park opens, and though we decided to go by ourselves (and by kayak) we opted for the same time, hoping we would get the opportunity to spot some more animals. I can say that this was one of our top 3 experiences of this trip. One of the first things that happened when we started to paddle towards the canals was that we saw an otter in the water! As we paddled on, there were quite a few guided groups around, and this meant we were sometimes able to see caimans, or a sloth high up in the trees, that a tour guide pointed out.

The main benefit of going by ourselves though was that we could keep going when the tour groups turned around to head back, since we didn't have a time limit. As we paddled on, further into the river system, we saw several lizards, including the green basilisks, turtles, monkeys, and - a tamandua! A small, tree dwelling anteater with a long tail munching on a termite nest high up in the trees. That was a really cool experience, and one of my favorite wildlife encounters. On top of all that, the environment was incredibly beautiful and it was pretty amazing just paddling around in the quiet, serene jungle.

Tamandua! yeah, you might need to zoom in a bit...

Since the national park entry was valid for a full day, we took the walking trail in the afternoon. We spotted some green macaws cuddling up in a tree, and two guilty-looking raccoons crossing the path, but most of the trail was just a path by the beach.

The next day we went to another, smaller part of the national park which meant we first needed to take a boat taxi to the small village San Fransisco. Around the entrance and along the path were plenty of big spiders, which we assumed were not venomous (although quite creepy...) since they had let them be. This area is known to host red poision dart frogs, so of course we went scouting for them along the trail. We found two of them, very small and cute! The short trail went up a hill and provided us with a pretty view of Tortuguero, but spent about as much time waiting for the boat back as we did walking the trail. In the evening we had a very nice dinner, having shrimps in coconut sauce with pineapple rice and (of course) patacones. 

View of Tortuguero

The transportation to our final stop in Costa Rica was also a prebooked shuttle - which included a three hour boat ride, just as beautiful as all of the Tortuguero area, and then a short taxi to Cahuita. A small village, right next to a national park, but with a bit more touristy and expensive restaurants. Our first afternoon we decided to walk to one of the beaches in the area, and on the way we saw two sloths! This was the first ones we spotted by ourselves, and close enough to the ground that you could actually see for certain that it was a sloth.

In the morning, we woke up to the sound of howler monkeys, loud enough that I almost thought they were in the hostel garden. After breakfast we prepared some lunch sandwiches and headed to the park, which nicecly enough had a donation based entry fee (i.e. pay what want). The trail was 8km long and went through different types of nature which was really nice - the only downside was that it wasn't a loop, meaning we had to walk all the way back again (unless we wanted to try to catch a bus or a taxi). Along this trail we saw several sloths, monkeys (howlers, spider, and white faced capucins), raccoons and toucans. The beaches here were incredibly beautiful, so we also took the opportunity to spend some time on the pretty, white beaches until the park rangers came to shoo everyone out around 3pm.

We decided to come back again the next day, to do a shorter walk and spend most of the day on the beach. Despite our lunch sandwiches being safely stored inside a backpack, we were visited by both monkeys and raccoons sneaking up silently while were reading our books. We had learned the day before that trying to eat anything in the beach area would attract cheeky, thieving monkeys (and clearly raccoons as well, though they were much more timid), so we had to walk a bit further off in order to eat our lunch in peace.

Aside from the beautiful surroundings and beautiful beaches, Cahuita provided the best sloth encounters in Costa Rica as we saw many of them, and several close enough to the ground that we did not need binoculars to see them clearly. Walking around the cloud forests scanning the treetops is not necessary at all, if you plan on going to Cahuita.

Januari 2022 - Mexico - Cancún, Valladolid, Río Lagartos

 At the time of writing, we are on our very last day in Mexico. These blog posts will be slightly delayed depending on wifi-access, time and energy, so for shorter and more recent updates I recommend you to head over to my instagram account.

But let’s get to it! This will be the first of two parts about Mexico. I’ll try not to let it get too long, but if you’ve been around for a while you know that it probably will. Overall we’ve really enjoyed our time here. Some overall impressions:

• The public transportation is great, even if I sigh every time they put on a dubbed movie without subtitles (which is always, by the way). Long distance buses are easy to book in advance and timely. Colectivos and local buses are usually very easy to use and cheap.
• The food has been mostly great, though we gave up on trying to go for a completely pescetarian diet after only a few days. We’ve tried as many local dishes and drinks as we could, but still we keep seeing new things on the menus. Ordering the same thing at two different places can bring you very different results, which means sometimes you will be thrilled, and sometimes you will be disappointed. 
• On top of that, we’re still not really used to the size of drinks as they are often served in huge glass goblets or styrofoam cups, and rarely smaller than 0,4 liters. 
• Opening hours are also something that continues to confuse us, as many things are closed on Sundays,  Mondays or Tuesdays, or any combination of those.
• Mostly we get by just fine with our basic Duolingo-Spanish. Occasionally we make an educated guess on what people are trying to tell us by interpreting single words, context, gestures or just gut feeling :D
• I really enjoy the breakfast food here. Especially chilaquiles (as seen on the photo below) and huevos rancheros. 

But let’s get to the specific places, and the first one is of course Cancún, where we flew in a spent just a few days in order to recover from the jetlag. We found Cancún to be a strange city. Not so appealed by the idea of the Hotel Zone – a 20km long sand strip packed with huge hotels and resorts – we opted to stay in the centro. However, it didn’t feel like there was much of a city center. It was all huge roads with little traffic. We did find a plaza that had some food stalls, which is where we had our first taste of tacos, panuchos, empanadas, burritos, licuados and agua fresca. One day we took a bus over to a park that was supposed to have some animals and birds (plus, nice to just walk around among trees) but it turned out to be closed on Sundays – which unfortunately incuded the new year’s day as well. 

chilaquiles for breakfast

Another day we took the local bus out to the Hotel Zone to spend some time on Playa Delfines – a nice beach, especially if you get there early before the masses arrive. Just taking the bus itself through the Hotel Zone is kind of a bonus sightseeing tour, although they drive like crazy and the buses are barely keeping together. It also became clear to us that in terms of covid and precautions, mask-wearing, hand sanitizing and temperature checks are everywhere, but there is absolutely no social distancing, especially in public transportation where the bus or minivan is not full until every inch of the floor is filled with people.

Our first stop after Cancún was Valladolid, which is the classic starting point to visit the Maya ruins of Chichén Itzá. It’s a quite cute city with colorful colonial square houses, a big plaza and plenty of churches. As check-in time is normally at 3pm, wandering around the town looking at buildings and churches is quite a nice pastime. Valladolid was full of tourists, more than we expected, and quite lively. We found a  nice foodcourt which worked for both breakfast, lunch and dinner, and occasionally we wandered around the streets in search of a restaurant or a café. Turns out the food court can sometimes have great and cheap food, but do not go there for your coffee! We thought we would order café con leche with our breakfast but what we received was quite literally the opposite – a styrofoam cup with hot milk and a jar of nescafé on the side. Luckily we found the cute café Kux Tal which served great coffee – well worth the walk.

Of course, we took the opportunity to go to Chichén Itzá. As we followed the instructions of guide books and internet, it did not tell us that the parking lot for the colectivos (minivans) had moved, but thankfully some locals could point us in the right direction as we wandered around at 7am. If you are reading this in/after 2022, the parking lot is on the same street as the ADO bus terminal, just a bit further down. While the site of the ruins doesn’t open until 8am you want to get there even before that to start queuing for the entrance. Naturally, because it's touristy, there’s a Starbucks where you can get some coffee while you wait in line. We were quite happy to be able to explore all of the ruins at our own pace before the huge busloads of tourists arrive and fill up the area. It also allowed us to wander around most of the site before all the vendors had opened up their shops and started calling out to passing tourists to buy souvenirs. It was really nice walking around these old temples and ruins, though we felt we had seen all of it in less than two hours, so we were quite early back in Valladolid again.

Another day we rented bicycles to go visit some cenotes – big sinkholes filled with water where you can swim. We really enjoyed the bike rides even though the bikes themselves were not the most fancy. As soon as we got out of the city, there was a good bike road all the way to the cenotes. While the cenotes were very pretty, we were unfortunately a little bit disappointed as they were of course also very touristy. Apparently there is some general rule that you need to wear a life vest in order to swim in the cenotes, and this is not alway included in the entrance fees - it felt more like a way for them to earn more money, than something that was required from a safety perspective, but maybe there is a good reason for it.

We did find a nice restaurant in Valladolid, La Selva, which also happened to serve excellent margaritas with a bit of chili salt. We also tried the famous chelada & michelada drinks, but were a bit sceptical - while they got better towards the bottom of the glass, we prefer the beers as they are.

Margarita

Chelada & Michelada

Originally, we were looking to go from Valladolid to Isla Holbox, but it seemed most of the budget accommodations were already fully booked, so instead we ended up going to Río Lagartos. It's a very small, but cute, fishing town by the water where pelicans, frigates and other seabirds are plentiful. Strolling along the water (or even on random streets in town) people will try to sell you boat tours. We had a really cute accomodation at El Faro ("the lighthouse") with a private room on the roof of a building. Unfortunately, our terrace was overlooking the town rather than the water, but it was still very nice. 

The main attractions in Río Lagartos are of course the boat tours, so we booked one of those for 300 pesos (roughly 150sek). The boat tour includes a few different things: stopping for some photos of pelicans and seabirds (not super exciting as you can get plenty of those in town as well); finding one or two crocodiles in the mangrove; trying to scout some other cool birds from the boat (there are about 400 different bird species in Río Lagartos, though you probably want to pay for a proper guide if you want them pointed out to you); going to a shallow area to see some flamingos; stopping at a beach with white mud "Maya baño" that you can apply to your skin (it has some sulfur and is supposed to be rejuvenating for the skin); lastly a long boatride back (when the mud really dries in) to a beach where you can go for a swim and wash it off. I will say honestly the best part of the tour was to see the flamingos - although you can sometimes see a few of those flying by the town too. It was a nice tour, but not amazing.

The very best part of Río Lagartos, which we experienced the next day, was an area just east of town, easy to walk or bike to. An area called Sendero Petén Mac, and the Cenote Chekila. In this area there was a short wooden walkway into a mangrove forest, with a small "pond" where you can see crocodiles. As we walked here in the morning, we saw two of them sleeping in the sun - lying so still we nearly thought they were fake! We were also completely alone there which made a great opportunity to get some photos of them. When we walked over to the cenote, which was just by the ocean, we spotted another croc, with a snowy egret nearby. A local man told us that they have two different species of crocodiles in Río Lagartos, and that this was the smaller kind. They lie in the sun with their mouth open to clean the bacteria of their teeth, and occasionally the egret might help by picking their teeth - a risky hobby it might seem! 

Overall we really enjoyed our stay in Río Lagartos, and especially going to that small area outside of town that I'm sure a lot of tourists miss out on. Unfortunately, it seemed the town was not at its peak as most of the restaurants and food stalls (as well as some hotels) were closed. At first we thought it might be because it was Sunday, Monday or simply too early in the day, but seemed like most were permanently closed. My best guess is that it was a lot more lively 2-3 years ago before covid. Most tourists that come here only go on day tours from nearby cities rather than stay the night. But if you're looking for something relaxed, it's a nice place to spend some time by the ocean, watch locals fish for shrimp at night, and maybe take the opportunity to eat some nice fish and seafood dishes.

Our next stops in Mexico were Mérida, Bacalar, Mahahual and Palenque - which brought some museums, kayaking, scuba diving, beach time, waterfalls and more Maya ruins. More about that in the next post!