We head across the bay to Puerto Jiminez to picked up our car (a four-wheel drive which is essential for the roads there). It is a tiny village with a car rental place in a small demantable, they don't even know how to park a boat - doing it wrong.
Thankfully the cars were more modern than the agency or village and we were relieved to have air-conditioning. We quickly got used to driving on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car. The first thing we observe is the speed limits. Maximum is 80km/hr but you rarely have that opportunity. Towns are 40km/hr and school zones 25km/hr. This may not sound too bad until you realise there is a village every couple of kms and every one of them has a school. No one seemed to stick to the speed limits but we'd heard the fines were in excess of $500. We occasionally got into the slipstream of another lawbreaking faster car but tried (very hard...sometimes unsuccessfully) to stick to the limits.
Our first stop was another wildlife rescue centre. We like supporting these, they are doing some great things for critters that wouldn't otherwise have a chance. The stories told about some of these were disturbing and distressing. They do try to release any animal they can back into the wild and those that can't be are well cared for. Some have it so good they keep coming back after release. One example is the creature below. We're not allowed to say what it is or where we are, as the authorities don't want them being held by visitors but she wanted to climb onto us without encouragement and liked to nuzzle.
Let's just say she had very long quills hidden under the fur and Deb was a little nervous when she clambered over her shoulder then started to back up next to her neck. All was forgiven when she licked Deb's cheek and than checked her for fleas.
There was also a loving baby anteater who just wanted to be with people.
And some personality filled raccoons and squirrels. Sadly one of the white faced capuchin monkeys had a habit of feeling up the women visitors so they had to stop the encounters...even at our insistence that we were happy to be felt up by that and any other monkey or non-human creature.
A little further down the road we visited another reserve. This is just a protected area of forest/jungle, there are no fences, the animals come and go. We saw a few more capuchins playing in the trees and a couple more sloths and a coati.
Definitely worth the stop, our final wildlife opportunity. On to San Jose. Unfortunately we arrived in the dark in the crazy that is San Jose in peak hour and were relieved to drop the car back, safe and sound. For our final night we stayed at the airport Marriott. It was clean, dry and air-conditioned, it felt like extreme comfort compared to the previous three weeks.
We've loved our Costa Rican adventure but are missing being clean, non-sweaty, not covered constantly in bug spray and sunscreen, soft dry beds, non-lumpy pillows, toilets you can flush toilet paper in or flush at all, hair that isn't constant curly and frizzy from the heat and not being covered in itchy bites.
Debbie finally got her passport on our final night before departure but she and Tracey will be traveling home separately, that story will need a whole other blog page.
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