OUR SPIRITS NEEDED A JOLT OF COSTA RICAN Pura Vita before returning to the sturm und drang of the USA and a condo in the beach town of Jaco was just the ticket. This is our fourth visit to Costa Rica, we’ve already covered most of the country so we don’t feel terribly guilty about taking it easy this time. Connie takes her six-mile morning walks, of course, but I have been doing a fair imitation of a sloth!
Some Pura Vida
We did visit nearby Carara National Park to check out the birding and stretch our legs. Like in the States, online reservations are required but the $10 entry fee is new. We didn’t see any new birds—Connie is missing only a handful—but I did get our first photo of a Great Tinamou and improved a few others.
Riverside Wren, Carara NP
Muscovy Ducks, Carara NP
Great Tinamou, Carara NP
I have wanted to catch a sailfish since I read Zane Gray’s books on fishing as a teen and Costa Rica is one of the hotspots. I had hoped to convince one of our friends or my brother to join us (and split the cost!) but the timing didn’t work out. I had almost talked myself out of going when Connie said it would be my early birthday present. YES! I pictured myself sitting in a fighting chair on the stern of a real charter boat—until I saw the cost! We ended up on Capt. Randall’s open 31-foot Aquasport, Cielo, for 7 hours of sail fishing .
The Dream
Reality . . . "Ceilo"
I should be disappointed that we didn’t hook a sailfish. It’s something I was really looking forward to—not necessarily to land one, just hook it and have it jump a time or two. We raised four sailfish to the baits and saw two others but just couldn’t hook up. The captain and mate did everything possible. They even spent time pointing out birds to Connie.
Captain Randall at the helm
Lines are out
Yes, I should be disappointed. But the reality is, after struggling to boat a couple of puny eight-pound tuna, battling one hundred pounds of sailfish would likely have left me sobbing like a little girl.
Fish on! Only a Tuna
About all I could handle
It was a good day just the same. Our motion-sickness patches worked as advertised, there was plenty of Diet Coke, fresh pineapple slices, Subway sandwiches and sashimi right from the sea.
Spinner Dolphin and a leaping tuna
Spinner Dolphin showing off
Bottlenose Dolphin and a boat like ours
We saw several huge pods of Spinner Dolphin, some that seemed to spend more time in the air than water. There were also Bottlenose Dolphin that surfed our bow wave. And birds; Boobies, Black Terns, Wedge-Tailed Shearwater and Connie’s target, an un-photographed Least Storm Petrel.
Black Tern
Wedge-Tailed Shearwater
That’s why they call it Fishing, not Catching.
