The night sky has a faint blue glow as the creatures of the rainforest come awake, voices in hushed disorder. More color blooms in the sky and the night's insect chorus fades out as birdsong fills the air, tentatively at first.
Parakeet squeaks rise to a frenzied chorus of thousands until they all fly away together. There's a strange absence of sound after their departure for a few minutes, as though the toucans and other birds are slow to realize they now have the stage. Miette sits silent in the still, glassy water, not making a ripple.
We're so close to the equator that dusk and dawn are relatively brief events, the sun shooting straight up and then plunging down.
Tucked away in a cozy jungle cove some 15 miles from Puerto Jiménez, we spend a few days in peaceful isolation. Rain and sunshine wrestle, swapping places throughout the day.
There is a small beach near us that nearly disappears at high tide. It belongs to hermit crabs and is surrounded by thick jungle.
The water visibility is good enough to put on our masks and work on scrubbing marine growth off the hull. In this warm water, it grows fast, and quickly becomes the home of shrimp so small they fit under a fingernail.
I work hard at getting barnacles and a green shag carpet of growth off the propeller, rudder, and depth sounder while Shawn goes around scrubbing the waterline.
Miette has a swim platform where we can stand and hose ourselves off before climbing into the cockpit. Our swimsuits look like we're covered in lice. It's all those tiny shrimp. Sea monkeys. I hear a gurgle in my ear and wash out a small, soft-shelled crab that was hiding there. Not quite "Wrath of Khan" ear-worms, but still creepy.
By the third day, we're missing long walks on land and head back to Puerto Jiménez. The cove was lovely, but there was no way to walk in that jungle.
Other cruisers have started showing up and we meet crews that have been close behind us for months. Rochambeau and Soul Rebel.
A sailboat I don't recognize comes in from Golfito. Watching her anchor through binoculars, I see she's named Aldebaran. After settling in, they row out to meet us. I think they're flying the Texan flag and greet them with a "howdy". The look puzzled and say "hello" with Spanish accents. It's actually the flag of Chile.
Javier and Manuel are Chilean men in their late seventies on a grand adventure with no specific destination. They patiently allow me to butcher Spanish during a lengthy conversation. I've never met Chilean sailors, or maybe anyone from Chile.
At a potluck aboard Rochambeau that evening, we all get better acquainted, but since I realize Manuel speaks no English, I sit next to him to learn their story.
It took them 10 days to sail from Chile to Peru, then 15 days directly to Costa Rica. They skipped Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama, sailing far offshore for better winds and fewer navigational hazards.
I learn that Javier worked in lumber and mining and that Manuel was a merchant marine who has been all over the world and has a son and grandchildren in Germany.
As the other cruisers are discussing sailing plans, I turn to Manuel and translate the cliché that "the plans of sailors are written in the sand at low tide". That makes him chuckle. He says the Germans have a saying, "a sailor alone on a boat is an artist, but two sailors are a circus."
There are times where Shawn and I work together like a well-oiled machine, but there are certainly circus moments now and then.
One evening, Shawn and I sit together to study the calendar and a map to understand what remains of this season's journey and decide it's time to get moving. It's time to close this chapter on Costa Rica as the days left on our visas dwindle.
We make the short trip across the width of Golfo Dulce to Golfito, our last port of call in the country.
The town sits at the foot of jungle hills rising nearly a thousand feet over a natural, well-protected harbor. I study nautical charts ahead of time, and often look at street maps to mark places we should visit. Golfito is not what I had pictured. I’d imagined a city, and when asked by Ticos where we were headed, I’d said Golfito as though they’d know it. It's much smaller, and run down.
We drop the anchor near a marina we've heard has inexpensive dinghy fees which include showers. There we find the marina also has a restaurant and bar, and is run by a family. They turn out to be friendly, and the facilities are reasonably clean. Both of us enjoy Hollywood showers for the first time in months. Normally we jump in the ocean, climb back aboard the boat, soap up, and rinse off using only a couple pints of desalinated water.
From the boat, we hear the sounds of jungle birds and bugs mixed with trucks rambling down a highway. Sure, it's a little noisy but the water is very calm and life is comfortable aboard.
Our Chilean friends, Javier and Manuel, are already anchored here, too, and we run into them our first time ashore. They'd come back here to make some boat repairs. We really like these two older gentlemen. They may be in their late seventies, but as Shawn noted, they still have twinkles in their eyes, and always big smiles for us.
A day later, our friends aboard their catamaran Rochambeau arrive and we enjoy dinner with them at the marina restaurant.
The next night, we come across the Chileans at the marina restaurant just as we're getting out of the showers. They introduce us to a young man who'd just delivered a sailboat to a transport ship that hoists yachts up on to her deck, straps them down, and ferries them to Canada. All three men had gotten a tour of this massive transport, and show us pictures of themselves grinning on the ship's bridge.
The young man introduces himself as Dingo, and that he's from Australia. I switch to English for a moment. "You do speak English, right?" I ask stupidly. He laughs and answers in thick, Aussie English “of course, mate!”
Switching back to Spanish, so as not to be impolite to the others, I ask Dingo how he learned to speak Spanish so well, and Javier jumps in like the answer is obvious: it was a woman. Dingo blushes, says it's true, he'd fallen in love with a Colombian woman.
Javier smiles knowingly. It's always about a girl with these young guys, he says, wagging a finger.
I mis-hear Javier when he invites us somewhere with them, his voice is thin and raspy. I thought we were going to someone's boat for a drink, but one word for boat, barco, sounds like barra, a bar, in the noisy environment of the restaurant.
A few minutes later, we are on a sidewalk next to the highway, it's night, and this area is very run down. When I realize they're going to a bar, Shawn and I excuse ourselves. I explain that I misheard, and that we don't have a single Colón on us, only dirty clothes and our towels.
We walk back in the dark to the marina, and it is sketchy. I don't like what I see and my senses are on high alert.
I force small talk with Shawn to cover that I'm actually focused to a strung-out man following us far too closely, having emerged from a shadow as we'd passed. Under a dim streetlight, I turn to glance, taking in as much detail as possible, and letting him know that I'm quite aware of him.
The man is maybe 5 feet behind us, and there is nobody else in sight. Not cool. He is my height, but bony with bad skin, ratty hair, sunken cheekbones, dirty clothes, and dead eyes.
My hackles are up. I'm still playing it cool, but I'm ready if he tries anything. If he grabs and runs off with my bag or Shawn's, he'll be disappointed to find only dirty clothes, soap, and a loofah.
I give him another look and our eyes meet. Knives fly out of mine, I’m ready to kick in his chest like an over-ripe melon. He moves away, crossing the street mumbling under his breath.
The following day, we walk back that same way. We see derelict buildings and shabby houses, some without windows or screens. It’s a rough neighborhood.
Granted we have only seen the coast, but this is the first time we've seen poverty in Costa Rica. It's not as severe as Nicaragua or El Salvador, but more like small towns in Mexico.
We get an early start to beat the heat one morning, and walk up a steep, rugged road that climbs up 900 ft. Jewel-green jungle surrounds us. It's a hard climb in this heat and humidity, but once we're on the ridgeline, we find various scenic vistas that look out over Golfito Bay and across the Gulf beyond.
Golfito is not a tourist destination. This is a deep water port and most of Golfito is stretched out along a 2- lane highway, and within the few blocks between the shore and the rising jungle. Tanker trucks labeled vegetable oil go by often, heading towards a red ship tied up at the port.
Near the docks, I talk to a truck driver who is standing next to his rig. He tells me the trucks are bringing palm oil to load into the ship for export. I thank him for the info and he gives me a fist-bump and a “pura vida.”
Another sailboat arrives, anchoring between Miette and the marina. As we go past in the dinghy on our way to shore, I see the faded name Xanadu. We've seen lots of things strapped to the stern arches of sailboats, but this is the first time I've seen a stroller!
We later meet them on the dock with their 3 year-old, and they explain that they just bought this boat in Mexico a few months before and they're on their way to Massachusetts, where they're from. Sailing is hard enough, and I can’t imagine sailing with a 3 year-old on a boat not much bigger than Miette.
The Chileans see us later and explain that they are going back across the Gulf to Puerto Jiménez for a night, invited by a local family with a forest cabin near there.
Aside from the hike, there isn't much to do in Golfito besides visit the local stores and the enormous duty-free complex at the other end of town.
We detest schedules, but we are eager to get to Portland, and want to start the check-out process. We make copies of our documentation and hop on a series of taxis. Immigration, Customs, the Port Captain, the bank, and back to the Port Captain. He issues us our International Zarpe, and politely informs us that we now have 12 hours to leave the country.
The zarpe, from the spanish verb zarpar, which means to leave port, authorizes us to leave the country, and will be required by the next country we visit.
Shawn goes ashore the following morning for some last-minute fruits and veggies, then we weigh anchor and are soon bound for Panama.
I keep Miette within the channel markers and just as we're about to exit the little bay, I spot Aldebaran, the Chilean boat, heading the opposite way. We wave and smile as we pass each other.
Javier is waving, while Manuel steers the boat, apparently wearing nothing but his underwear and wrap-around sunglasses, standing on the benches so he can see over their dodger. At 76, he looks healthier than most people I know back home that are half his age!
I realize our we are about 5 gallons shy of a full load of fuel, and I know there is unlikely to be any good fuel between here and Panama City, some 325 miles away. I get my calculator out, computing my total fuel versus average fuel burn per hour, knowing that current and wind will also play factors in how far we can stretch the fuel.
I make a 90-degree turn to detour a few miles to Puerto Jiménez where Shawn takes two empty jerry cans ashore, one for diesel, one for gasoline. She does this on a paddleboard! A short walk and a taxi ride later, she's paddling back to Miette.
A week later, we will realize how absolutely critical that 5 gallons of diesel actually is.
Within a few hours, Miette is back in open ocean, heading to an imaginary line in the jungle between two countries, and we are treated to one more beautiful Costa Rican sunset off the Osa Peninsula before night falls.