Uvita, Costa Rica

Yet again we found ourselves walking to the hostel in the midday heat with sweat pouring down our faces! But we made it to our hostel in the early afternoon, just in time for Grace to rush off to her scuba diving refresher course. I was on my own for the afternoon and decided to spend it in the shade, catching up with writing these blogs and then calling family and friends for a catch up. Once all of my life admin was done I got chatting to a Canadian girl in our room called Kris. Once Grace got back we went for dinner with Kris in a cheap restaurant next door. On the way back we saw hundreds of leaf cutter ants forming a line from a tree across the path and further into the forest. I’ve seen leaf cutter ants before, but never this many. There was a 2 meter line of them that was about 20cm wide.

The next day Grace was out scuba diving again, so I decided to book a horse riding tour through a forest on a nearby cattle ranch. Kris asked if she could join me so just after lunch we headed off. We got there and were put straight on a horse, I asked for a helmet but was told I wouldn’t need one, they obviously hadn’t realised I’m basically Mr bean on holiday.

Me and Kris

I had the cutest most affectionate horse I’ve ever met and he was also so inquisitive. At first he really wasn’t keen on going on the ride at all. As the guide, Kris and a nice Italian couple that made up our group, headed out of the yard towards the start of the trail, my horse headed in the other direction towards the stables. After a tug of war on the reigns, which I eventually won, we followed the others but we were already lagging behind and my horse was in no hurry to catch up.

The rest of the ride was interesting though, possibly more for my horse than me. He stopped to look at a butterfly, and to listen to the howler monkeys and at one point there was a calf feeding from its mother that he was super interested in, I had to tug him away as he kept getting closer and closer and I didn’t fancy being in the middle of a cow Vs horse showdown. Even after we had passed he kept looking back at them.

The trail wound through a forest where the cicadas were so loud you could hardly hear yourself think and then alongside a river. Something spooked my horse and he made a run for it down a river bank, which was terrifying but did mean we caught up with the rest of the group. Alongside the river the train was less dirt and more small rocks and pebbles. Kris’ horse kept slipping and at one point nearly fell over entirely with legs kicking out in all directions, luckily it was okay and so was Kris although slightly shaken as she’d only just stayed on by wrapping her arms around her horse’s neck! I was really starting to wish we had those helmets!

This video still doesn’t do justice to how loud the cicadas were!

Eventually we arrived at a small waterfall where we could swim for 45minutes and the horses were left to wander and drink. We explored the waterfall and took a dip in the river, although it smelt very fishy. When we got out of the river I could see what I thought were flies moving away from my foot after every step. But after closer inspection it was actually teeny tiny frogs only a cm or two across.

I sat down on a rock to dry off and suddenly a horse’s head appeared on my shoulder, luckily it was still attached to a horse and not a ‘the godfather’ style threat. My horse had wandered over and decided it wanted some attention, he kept rubbing his head up and down my arm and bopping against me until I would stroke his nose or neck, like a giant puppy. Every time I stopped he would follow me around nudging me until I stroked him again. I got Kris to distract him while I got re-dressed. Once it was Kris’ turn to re-dress however, he wouldn’t be distracted and kept nudging her and almost pushing her over half dressed. I was too busy laughing my head off to come to her rescue.

Once Kris managed to get dressed and back on her horse we took the same route back to the stables with my hose trailing behind again. At the stables we got some freshly cut watermelon and got to feed the horses the rinds and say goodbye.

Kris was on a tighter budget than us so asked if we fancied cooking dinner together rather than eating out, we agreed and grabbed some vegetables and spices from the local supermarket for a veggie curry. It ended up costing about 65% of what eating out here does and tasting 100% worse… I managed to eat mine as I was so hungry but Grace struggled just pushing hers around the plate and not having the heart to tell Kris it wasn’t very appetising. We agreed it would be the first and last time we let someone we don’t know cook for us!

The next day we headed to the beach, the beach and sea at Uvita is a national park. We got there just before low tide, paid our entry and then headed to the famous ‘whale tail beach’. It’s where two different currents meet at the end of the beach and at low tide it forms a beach that is in the shape of a whale’s tail. Although I feel it would have been more impressive viewed from the air. It was already baking hot so we found some shade between some coconut trees, (it’s a hard life I know!) And set up base for the day. Even in the shade it was absolutely sweltering. We would go for a dip in the sea to cool off, even though it was the temperature of bath water, and by the time we were back in the shade we were almost dry again.

Whale tail from the air

It was beautiful though, there were animals everywhere. Which I found to my dismay when I fell asleep and woke up covered in ants and more annoyingly red ant bites. After an afternoon lying about avoiding ants, once it had cooled down a bit, we took a walk along the beach. The place seemed to come alive as soon as it got cooler. We saw white faced monkeys in the trees, pelicans flying overhead and hundreds of hermit crabs making a dash for the sea. Also saw some weird sea snail things I’d never seen before making trails in the sand.

We stayed to watch the sunset and then headed back to the entrance of the reserve. The tide had started to come in at this point so we found ourselves wading through rivers that had previously been a trickling stream we’d jumped over. For some of them we were up to our waist in water, with our bags held over our heads. We were slightly worried as the reservation was also home to alligators but hoped the pure volume of people splashing through and leaving on mass would be enough to deter them. We made it out without a sighting thankfully. That’s one nature encounter I’m not too keen to have.

On our last day in Uvita we decided to visit local waterfalls. They were really nice, not the biggest or prettiest we’ve ever seen but still felt spectacular that day, purely because of how cold the water was! There were several different sections you could swim in and one of the falls was over rocks that had become so eroded and rounded from the water the local teenage boys, and some American army dudes, were using it as a water slide. Neither me nor Grace was keen to try, they looked pretty high from the bottom and I’m sure would feel even higher from the top. A few tourists took the ladder to the top and then decided against the slide taking the ladder back down. The local teens however had no such fear going down backwards, face first, doing back flips and dives.

We stayed in the deeper pool until Grace felt something touch her foot and I pointed out there were fish in the water. For someone who does so much scuba diving she really does not like fish. So we headed for one of the smaller fst moving stream sections and chilled there for the rest of the afternoon.

Eventually though we had to leave the cool stream behind and head off to collect our things and get the bus to our next stop, Manual Antonio.

Tell you all about it soon, lots of love, Alice x

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