On the coast, and another trip coming….  Friday, 03/02/2023

Haven’t really been doing a lot over the last few days… Mainly chatting to various people and going to the beach. However, next Tuesday I will be off to Costa Rica for a week, so it has been pleasant to have a relaxing interlude. 

Travelling to Costa Rica from here is best done by aeroplane. Theoretically it would be possible to sail along the Caribbean coast, but facilities are poor on this northern coastline – the best beaches and also a few marinas are all on the Pacific coast of the country. There are a couple of places where one could anchor on the northern coast, but crime seems to be a problem – certainly not a good location to leave a boat while you travel inland. 

And that’s the real point of Costa Rica – seeing the natural environment. The country is famed for its biodiversity and is the first tropical country not just to have stopped, but reversed, deforestation – basically by paying landowners to protect nature. There are numerous national parks, making up 28% of the country, and they are very varied thanks to a mountain range that runs down the centre. 

So I’m flying from Panama City to the capital, San Jose (only an hour and twenty minutes), and from there will hire a car and visit two very different places. Corcovado in the south, on the Pacific coast – which is one of the world’s most biodiverse regions – and then Monteverde Cloud Forest up in the northwest, which is at an elevation of 1,330 metres (about 4,400 feet). This way I’ll get to see and be in very different climates – and hopefully get a reasonable impression of the country. Costa Rica has become a noted tourist destination, much of it centred on ecolodges and trips on foot or by boat into its national parks, so it’ll be interesting to see what things are like on the ground!

Here the only thing of note was a small boating incident a couple of mornings ago. It had been very windy, and in the night a small red yacht, 28 feet or so in length, had broken free from its mooring just north of the marina. It had ended up between two yachts on the outside of the marina jetty, opposite me. The head of the boatyard, an American called Jim, and a few of the marina employees were trying to get it off the dock and attach it to a buoy some way out. A couple of the guys were in a dinghy and were successfully pulling it out, into the wind, when their outboard engine failed. Jim, on the dock, had a line and was desperately trying to prevent it floating into the orange yacht at the end. The coastguard were in the marina and he was shouting (swearing!) at them to come and help. They were well equipped to do so – being in a substantial launch with two huge outboard engines. What was interesting is that they proved to be… absolutely incompetent! 

One of the marina guys had got on board the errant boat. He threw the coastguard a line from the bow, which they attached. Now all they had to do was reverse into the wind and pull the boat out. They started to do this, and then for some unknown reason just stopped – allowing themselves to float along behind the boat as it ended up against the orange boat. Eventually they reversed, getting the boat out to the buoy, to which the marina guys tied it. 

Strange indeed to see the coastguard being so absolutely hopeless. They strut around in smart uniforms and have a sleek launch, but clearly when it comes to common sense something is missing. After their miserable performance they slunk off to jeers from the dock… At least now I know that the local coastguard are not to be trusted!