Nov 18-  No pirates here…..

I woke up around 6:00am, no howler monkeys this morning.  I had some bird friends around the balcony, so we made some coffee and sat outside for a bit. We were getting picked up at 8:30am to head into town for our snorkelling adventure.

The blue Magpie Jays were around so I put some banana out so they would come closer. Apparently these birds are known for being mooches with food, maybe similar to seagulls at home?

A few minutes after the birds came by, we noticed the palm tree rustling, we watched a Coati climb up and look around a bit…

 

Our friend Francisco picked us up and brought us into town, the tour was leaving around 9am or so to head to….

I thought this was where we would find Jack Sparrow and his crew…..apparently we are in the wrong ocean.  There is another one closer to Haiti that was the famous pirate island. There was one other girl from Germany taking the tour, and a family from San Jose as well. We had a nice small group on the boat, whereas the bigger tour company had about 15 or so people. Everyone goes to the same island, so we were fine with choosing the “smaller company” who’s boat wasn’t much smaller than the popular guys, was cheaper and less crowded. WiNNING!

I took a gravol to be safe, I probably would have been fine as they were moving pretty good and the water wasn’t too choppy. It was just under an hour to reach the island, we saw the El Chorro waterfalls which spill into the ocean. The only way to see these falls are by boat, hike the beach or take horses. Closer to the island we saw some beautiful rock formations as well.

This island is beautiful, much like the Caribbean….minus the pirates but they do serve rum!  There were a few smaller islands to snorkel around in front of this one, we did that for 45 minutes or so, saw some cool fish. I didn’t use my camera as the water wasn’t the most clear.  We headed back to the island for lunch after, they were cooking up some Dorado, rice, salad and fresh fruit. There were also a couple of large bottles of beer in the cooler for us as well;)

Fresh oysters and making ceviche with lime

Jay with our 2 guides, Michael & Eduardo from Cabo Blanco Tours.

After lunch we had about 2 hours to relax on the island before heading back. They had a souviener shop that also sold beer and coconut water with rum. We relaxed in the ocean for the most part, enjoying the afternoon. We got back to Montezuma Beach around 4 or so, we figured we would eat dinner before heading back to the cabin. We went back to the same spot on the beach where we had lunch the day before, caught the sunset and saw some horses headed home as we waited for our ride. We had to be back in town the next morning for our taxi boat to Jaco.