A trip to the beach (finally!)

Earlier this month we made it to the beach at long last! Many people come to Costa Rica primarily for the beaches, but it took us six months! Our impetus to finally travel to the coast was the visit of my god-daughter and her mother, who has been my dear friend for over 25 years now. They live in a very hot part of El Salvador and we knew they’d find the mountains of Monteverde cold, so we wanted to go someplace warmer for a few days.

We chose to go to Playa Agujas, a small and largely undeveloped beach, which is about two hours outside of San José, about 20 km north of the well-known tourist beach of Jaco. We found a couple cabins we could rent at a small local hotel, where Sophie enjoyed the pool.

We were able to walk through the woods to another small beach known as Playa Bochinche. “Bochinche” means a “commotion” and apparently the beach received this name after neighbors had a loud argument there. In reality, it is a very calm beach, with almost no waves.

On Sunday, there were many Costa Rican families there: some had been camping, others were grilling food or fishing. On Monday, the place was deserted other than one or two resident fishermen.

While there we saw several scarlet macaws – the first time for all of us seeing them in the wild. It was really impressive to see them soar across the sky! And while I thought their bright red plumage would make them easy to spot, they were actually quite well camouflaged in the leaves of the beach almond tree (almendro de la playa, Terminalia catappa), many of which turn red at this time of year!

We went for an evening walk along the beach and climbed some big rocks while the tide was out.

We explored tide pools and saw lots of little crabs scuttling along the rocks. A snowy egret flew in to check them out as well and I was captivated by the way the white of the bird’s feathers echoed the white dress of someone posing for wedding photos on the shore.

We also saw an absolutely gorgeous sunset. Watching the sun go down is almost a national past-time here and it is always amazing to me that you can actually see the sun move! It descended across the ocean between two narrow bands of clouds, sending out glowing colors across the sky and water. But just as it was about to disappear, a container ship sailed across the view, blocking the last moment when the sun dipped below the horizon. We joked afterwards that commerce had stolen the sunset!