feeling hot, hot, hot

Our next stop was Drake Bay on the Osa peninsula in south west Costa Rica, home to Corcovado National Park which, according to all the advertising National Geographic has called 'the most biologically intense place on Earth'.

Waiting for the boat, Sierpe.  

Fish at the dock with bright blue eyes

There was a lot of vegetation floating down the river and you would often see a grackle (big black birds equivalent of our starling) floating past on one of these makeshift rafts. The stuff looked like water hyacinth and we wondered if it was native.

This was our boat on the left of the picture.  We waited for hours for it to leave, it seemed to be the most disorganised system in the world with people getting on the boat sitting for an hour then having to get off, then we got on the boat sat for a while, set off and then had to come back again, set off and then had to keep stopping to sort out the fuel supply.  

Eventually many sweltering hours later we arrived in Drake Bay by boat from Sierpe having gone down the river Sierpe and out into the Pacific and round to the bay where Francis Drake is said to have anchored. 

Eventual arrival at Drake Bay

We had a complementary truck up the hill to our budget cabina. The cabina was nice but was located in a special audio alignment with the local bar, making it all too easy to hear the drunken Karaoke every night which was inexplicably turned up in volume for the last hour from midnight to 1am. I suppose we should have just gone and joined in but we were consistently too sun baked to feel up for it.

For some reason we decided to go for a stroll at around 11am, it was pretty hot

Turin shroud? or is it the face of Hitler?

The view was nice though we did not see much wildlife as it tends to avoid the midday sun.  We were followed by a huge black horsefly with menacing red eyes which we had to run away from which caused us excessive sweating!

Tiny sweat bees

lost in translation

Drake Bay a welcome sight after a hot walk, time for a refreshing dip......in the lukewarm sea!

the cabinas owner had a great dog with a slight underbite issue but she was still very cute

the grumpy guard dog at the local supermarket - fiercer than it looks

If you look carefully at this scarab beetle you will see it is transporting some tiny pseudo-scorpions, this is apparently called phoresy- when one animal hitches a ride on another.

Dinner with French and Quebecans, apparently the pronunciations make it difficult for them to understand one another. The French couple on the right were really nice, the guy did trials motorcycling and his son is a mountain bike dirt jumper. The French guy said that people in France that were lazy were said to have hairy palms because they use their hands so little - this caused much amusement as it took so long to translate.