Cahuita, Costa Rica

We love Cahuita.  We drove down with Luis through farm land and bannana plantations.  He found us Spencers Seaside Cabanas, where the surf pounds relentlessly, and we had a big room, with sheets that didn't stay on with a deck that looked out onto the Caribean through the palm trees. Caleb or I would sit on the deck in the evening and play the ukelele We take the bad with the good and it all balances out.   Cahuita is a small town, that has many small accomodations (5 - 20 rooms).  No resorts, a few fancier lodges up the beach.   The best part of Cahuita is the National Park that you can access by donation from the town end of the park (at the Puerta Viejo end it is $10 per person). We went in every day and walked the trail, hung out on the beach, walked up the beach in the water to get to quiet areas all to ourselves. 
We really enjoyed the wildlife in Cahuita National Park.   There were lots of white throated capuchin monkeys overhead, that provided tons of entertainment.  Of course the baby ones holding onto mama for dear life that were 10 feet from us were amazing to see.  Marty would spend a long time engaging the howler males in territorial disputes,  just to see if he could make them go hoarse.  Would you believe Marty could outlast them?  Its because your such a stud Marty (says Luis).  We saw some agoutis (cat sized guinea pigs), a coati (a cat sized furry critter), but neither for long as they would run across the trail in front of us, or under a walk way.  There were several sloths that we saw (one hung out around our hotel and he climbed right past us on the railing while we ate our breakfast not 3 feet away).  One day we walked 10km around Cahuita point and there was 2 km on a beautiful boardwalk through old rainforest.  There was a mama sloth climbing down a tree and a baby hanging off her.  There is a symbiotic relationship between sloths, a fungus that grows on the sloths back, and ants that eat the fungus.  All good for mama who was apparently used to it, but the poor little sloth was going nuts trying to scratch at the ants, and keep hold of mama who was transfering from one tree to another with a great stretch, all in very slow motion.  They do not have any fast twitch muscles! 
We hung out with Luis and watched him surf the waves at playa negra, and thought we were staying out of the sun, but would you believe it doesn`t take much time down here to burn on up? Painful, and embarassing.  I believe I was being judgemental just the day before when I saw a mom with a burn.  And we learn very slowly, forgetting various body parts on a regular basis.  We did bring sunscreen,  its just 20$ for small bottle, so I thought I`d try the cover up and stay out of the sun option, but you do have to do all of those parts together, and all the time!! 
Caleb says these are too long (especially if you are on your phone), sorry!  Off for swim, and I`ll post this with photos later. Read more