“Life operates at different tempos in different places. USually, this is used to demonstrate the differences between cities and countrysides. But there are shifts in culture which mellow the rush as well.” Old Sean
Pura Vida
Heading further south, I arrived in Uvita, the Whale Tail Town. Uvita is much more spread out than Queops with wide shouldered roads for walkers and bike riders. The town has curvy coastal streets and mountains extending further back into the countryside.
There are a few nice restaurants here: Restaurante Maracuya for general meals, Marino Ballena Restaurant for seafood dinners and Le French Café for breakfast and pastries.
However, I’d like to take a side note and mention that Costa Rica has pretty bad service in general. The catchphrase of Costa Rica is Pura Vida (Pure Life) which doesn’t directly translate but instead refers to easy, laid back and peaceful living. A very go-with-the-flow and live-well mentality. However, this means people don’t really rush around frequently.
In restaurants, this usually equates to places being understaffed and somewhat slow to check on customers. Servers are friendly, the food is usually stellar, but service comes at a snail’s pace. Servers and waiters usually work at an irrevocable plodding rate, always accomplishing something but never at a high rate of efficiency.
It didn’t really matter where I was eating outside of San José, this was just a part of the culture I grew accustomed to. Costa Ricans seem pretty comfortable with this setup, as I heard one waiter joking to a customer that he had “Only been gone for two Costa Rican minutes” after heading off to another part of the restaurant for eight minutes or so.
Peaceful Shores
Regardless, Uvita is still a very cool town. There’s a nice little waterfall to the north called Catarata Uvita that boasts a small but constant crowd of people enjoying themselves in the spray. The cost of entry is 1000 colones and there are a few small parking places. It’s generally a stop for some of the tours that head outside of the town.
The best part of Uvita, however, are the picturesque beaches found on either side of the Whale Tale Sandbar, known as Punta Uvita. Generally, this area must be accessed through Parque Nacional Marino Ballena for around $6 USD.
However, if one takes Calle La Caringa, it’s easy to access Playa Chapman for free. Note that the national park entrance asks you keep your ticket on you at all times, implying there’s a regular check by local rangers, but nobody talked to me during the 12 hours I was on the beach over two days.
Punta Uvita is the prize of the beach itself. Only accessible at low tide, this grand, flat and slightly rocky sandbar churns up the ocean in unique ways and allows people to wade deeper into the sea, spotting craggy rock islands and bottlenose dolphins out in the surf. I spotted a pod fairly far off and another couple mentioned they had seen a whale basking the previous day through a pair of binoculars.
Lonely Beaches
Even at high tide, the beaches are wonderful. Great heaps of driftwood are pushed to the upper edges of the surf, where they rest beneath shade-bearing palm trees and provide exceptionally nice, water-smoothed benches.
There are hundreds of small stones of varying colors and levels of smoothness also pressed up on shore, many creating unique patterns in the sand. There are sand dollars aplenty and I managed to spot two unbroken ones nestled in the surf. Swimming in the area is fine, though the tide is somewhat tough. Surfers seem more at home, since the waves on the south side of Punta Uvita are perfect.
Crabs scuttle with incredible speed, the coolest of them being bright red creatures the size of a human fist plunging into perfectly round holes in the earth. Hermit crabs also totter around, bobbing about in a range of spiral, conch and flat shells. Lizards sweep along the shoreline, preferring the shelter of the dense nearby forests when humans walk by.
There are many parts of the beach that support trails into the jungles, thin routes leading past mounds of broken and eaten coconut husks. There are also great, flat streams of fresh water toppling down from the mountains and feeding into the ocean.
Further back from these are the spindle legs of mangrove plants, thriving where fresh and salt water meld into brackish. Waves are often strafed by wind, yanking back white mist the opposite direction from their furls.
Most people head to Uvita for the tours, usually in boats or back up the coast to Manual Antonio National Park. There are plenty of whale and dolphin watching events, where sturdy skiffs crest the sharp waves, otherwise taking people to interesting islands. These tours might be canceled due to evening rain, which arrives like clockwork and hits with immense thunder crashes and powerful downpours, but generally morning and noon skies are clear. I ended up rubbing mud and sand on the top of my feet to ward off burns, so harsh was the direct sunlight of the morning.
Costa Rica Conclusion
And that was it. My time in Costa Rica has concluded. My final impressions of Costa Rica are unusual. Tourism and environmentalism dominate the country to a degree I’ve rarely seen anywhere else.
The Pura Vida mentality is a prideful statement, rooted deeply in a lifestyle that’s relaxing, compelling and a bit slow for my taste. The diversity of nature in Costa Rica, per square kilometer, is unmatched by anywhere aside from the Amazon Rain Forest.
Transportation is slow, somewhat expensive and frustrating and many of the natural wonders of this country require a fair bit of money to enter. Much of the country is somewhat disconnected and undeveloped, with the exception of San José, which is such a massive urbanized beacon. It almost exists on a separate plane of existance. Costa Rica is extremely unusual to me as a place that has been wonderful to visit, but I would absolutely not want to live.
Tomorrow, I’ll gather my last few items from my lodgings in San José, do a desperately needed load of laundry and fly to Belize, where a pair of friends are waiting for me.
So until then,
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written August 4th 2021
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The GoPro Hero Black is my go to Action camera. I’m not comfortable bringing my cell phone to many wet and rugged locations, so the GoPro does most of my photographic heavy-lifting. The only things I bring in my GoPro kit are the camera, a spare battery and the forehead mount. I upgrade my GoPro once every two years. It was particularly excellent to have during my aquatic tour of Belize.
