Going crazy from Mosquitoes

We were in our hotel room under the mosquito net but there were still mosquitoes biting my girlfriend. She was going crazy from so many bites. She asked me to go sleep in the other bed so that she could cover up under the blanket and hide from the mosquitoes. So I went over to the other bed and fell asleep. A couple of hours later I heard her screaming about the mosquitoes again and I got up to check on her. She looked terrible. She had bites all over her. She was scratching them and pretty much had already lost it mentally over all the bites. Some of the places she had been scratching were bleeding already. She was crying like a baby. I got her some more benadryl to take and closed up her netting better than she had it and after a little bit of calming, soothing talk I got her to calm down a bit. She wanted to go home right away. She told me she never wanted to go to a jungle again. I wasn't very bit up at all and that pissed her off like I was holding out some secret that I hadn't told her about. I stayed with her to try to keep her from going totally insane over the bites but I wasn't very helpful. The sun finally came up and the mosquitoes seemed to slow down their assault on her--or maybe there just wasn't any blood left in her for them to suck out. She was so covered in bites it looked like she had a rash like the measles or something like that. She was not a happy camper. We showered and I went down to eat breakfast but she stayed in the room to try to catch up on some sleep. I brought some food back for her but she didn't want to eat. After a short discussion we decided that I would go out on the boat ride and she would stay in the room and try to get some sleep.

I went down and joined my friends and we took off to see some dolphins and to do a little bit of fishing. I had seen dolphins many times in all the fishing I had done in my lifetime. This trip was booked more for my girlfriend than for me and here I was out doing it without her. Such is life. We saw a huge school of spinner dolphins. The spinner dolphins are fun to watch. they jump out of the water with gleeful abandon and spin in tight circles end over end or just spinning as they arc up out of the water. They looked to be jumping about twenty feet high on a lot of their jumps. It looked like they just flat out loved life. We put some trolling rods out and only caught some needlefish and a couple of small pargos. It was ok by me. I just love being out on the ocean whether I catch fish, look at dolphins or just ride around.

When we got back to the hotel my girlfriend was feeling better. She came down for dinner and we listened to the other guests tell us about their trip out to Cano island. It was a long boat ride but they saw spinner dolphins too and climbed up to the top of the island. They enjoyed it. They saw lots of the large round stone balls that I had heard about. Some of them are six feet or more in diameter and perfectly round. Nobody knows for sure how they were made or why but there is some speculation that they were grave markers and the bigger ones were for more important people. That could be totally wrong though. They also snorkeled a little and saw some sharks, rays and eels along with some colorful fish. We spent a long time talking and drinking after dinner. It was enjoyable to us all and my girlfriend was recovering somewhat from her bug phobia.

We went to the hotel room eventually, a bit drunk and happy. After a nice long hot shower we crawled into bed. I made sure to kill as many mosquitoes as I could find and I very carefully tucked the netting in all around the bed before we went to sleep. It was much better than the night before. Lots of benadryl didn't hurt either. In the morning we had breakfast and jumped back into a water taxi for the ride back up the river to the airport. I enjoyed the Osa and my girlfriend will never forget the place. The flight back to Quepos was quick and painless. We even had some time to go to the beach for a little bit in the afternoon. The beach in Manuel Antonio is very nice and my girlfriend likes it as much as I do. I also think the salt water was helping her mosquito bites feel better because she was finally happy again.

More Corcovado Park

We were having a great time in Corcovado National Park hunting for animals and birds. There was only one problem with the hike. Bugs. Lots of bugs. Big Bugs, little bugs, biting bugs, crawling bugs, slithering bugs, flying bugs and bugs on bugs. My girlfriend was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and the biting flies. She was not having a very good time because of all the bugs. Survivor man did a stint in these same jungles and in an interview someone asked him where the worst place he was ever dropped off to survive in and he answered the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica. My girlfriend was agreeing with him. Surprisingly the bugs were not bothering me at all. I did not even use any bug spray like everyone else was using. I did get bit by one ant that hurt like a son of a bitch but that was about it. My friend though was almost crying. She wanted to go back and get out of this place. Around midday we entered a clearing and there was a building where we ate our lunch. The bugs were not so bad inside the building so we rehydrated our blood drained bodies and then headed back out for the last part of our hike and to then back to the beach where our boat was coming back to pick us up.

This time we saw a large bairds tapir which was interesting to see. We also saw footprints of a big cat stalking around us as we hiked along the trail. We never saw the big cat but the foot prints were only a few seconds old on the path so it was watching us. I wish we would have spotted it but try as we might the big cat was too elusive for us.

When we got back to the beach the breeze was blowing and it kept the bugs away. There were some biting sand fleas but they were not as bad as the bugs in the jungles. We waited for our boat to come and pick us up. While we waited we saw some coatis eating eggs in the sand. They were probably sea turtle eggs that they were finding. I went up to look and sure enough the tell tale half a ping pong ball like egg shells were scattered where the coatis had been feeding. A coati is kind of like a redish raccoon. The coastline was gorgeous except for one thing, even in a place that was as out of the way as we were in, the beach was littered with plastic bags and other debris, mostly plastic that had been washed ashore with the tides. Pollution is everywhere compliments of humankind.

Our boat arrived to pick us up and we waded out to get in it. All of a sudden my foot was on fire. I yelled and ran to the boat and jumped in to see what the hell was the problem. The boat captain quickly opened a bottle of ammonia and poured it over my burning foot. He laughed and told me it was just a jellyfish sting. The ammonia helped to get rid of the jellyfish toxin. It did help but my foot still hurt. It looked like a burn. Over the next two weeks the area where I was stung basically rotted away and fell off leaving a big hole in my foot that took about a month to heal. Such is life.

Back at the hotel we ate another great dinner of mahi mahi and pargo with all the Tico sidedishes like beans and rice, salad, fried plantain, pickled vegies and some bread and of course dessert of cake and ice cream. We all rehashed our day and passed our cameras around looking at each other's pictures. The owner operator of the hotel was a single Costa Rican woman or Tica. She was very entertaining. She kept inviting me back sometime in the future without my girlfriend. That got a few smiles out of my girlfriend. The mosquitoes were thick all through the dinner and my girlfriend wanted to go back to the hotel room and hide out under the mosquito net over the bed. The hotel owner offered her some benadryl for the itching. She took some and we went to the room. The next day was we were planning on a boat trip to go see dolphins and stuff on the ocean and a short fishing time. No bugs out on the ocean I told my girlfriend and she was very happy to hear that. We were heading back to Quepos the next day after that. We crawled in bed and covered up with the mosquito net.

Corcovado National Park, Osa, Costa Rica

My girlfriend from California wanted to come down to Costa Rica for a visit again. I told her to come on down and I would meet her at the airport. I could hardly parade her around Quepos with all my flavor of the days we would run into so I decided to go on a trip to the Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula to the South of Quepos/Manuel Antonio. The Osa is a much less developed area and it has a large National Park where you can see scarlet macaws, big cats like jaguars or pumas, lots of monkeys, tropical birds and many other interesting tropical rainforest things.

I met her at the airport and we spent the night at my house. We went to Cafe Aqua Azul because she always liked sitting up on the hill watching the monkeys and birds. Then we flew to Osa the next day. I had booked the trip with a travel agent so everything was planned already. We were met at the airport by a taxi that took us over to the river where we boarded a small boat for a ride to our hotel. There were four other people in our group. One older couple from North Carolina and a couple from the midwest in the States. On the ride down the river we saw lots of birds and some snakes. Of course there were crocodiles along the shore and some swimming out in the current of the river too. I was hoping to see a manatee but we were not lucky enough to find one.

The ride down the river was about an hour long and then we came to the mouth of the river and there were large waves breaking ahead of us. Our boat captain deftly drove our small boat over around and through the crashing waves. It was a bit on the dicey side. One mistake in waves this size and we would have capsized and we would have been swimming in the water with all the crocodiles. He made it look easy the way he slid through this dangerous area. I asked him about it and he told me he has been driving this route for over thirty five years so he was quite familiar with the method to the madness. We followed the coast south for another forty five minutes or so. We could see dolphins playing further offshore. There were fish following in our wake that were jumping out of the water. Our guide told us they were needlefish. Then we motored into a very small bay and he ran the boat straight into the shallows and grounded the boat on the rocky shore. We got out and walked through ankle deep water to get the rest of the way to the beach and they carried our bags for us. We climbed up the hillside to our hotel and checked in. There was one other couple at the hotel already so there was a total of eight guests.

We cleaned up in our rooms and got ready to go eat dinner since the hotel was all inclusive. There were lots of tropical plants growing on the grounds of the hotel and we stopped to look at the chocolate growing on the trunk of its tree. There were also bananas, mangos, papayas, coconuts and tons of flowers growing around us. The dinner was very entertaining as we all got to know a little bit about each other through small talk while we ate. The host explained our options for activities while we were there. All of us wanted to go to the park to hike around and see animals and birds. We booked an all day excursion for the next morning to the park. A boat would pick us up right after breakfast. We spent the night talking and drinking with our new friends before hitting the sack fairly early.

The next morning after a very good filling breakfast we again walked through the ankle deep water to get on the water taxi and we were off to the park. After about an hour we rode the waves into the shore and beached the boat again. We got out and walked to shore with absolutely nothing but jungle everywhere we looked. We were assured that our guide would meet up with us there. While we were there I spotted some scarlet macaws and we all ran up the beach to look at the beautiful scarlet colored parrots playing and eating in a tree right on the beach. Our guide showed up and after the macaws flew off we headed into the jungles for our hike. I was quietly saying, lions and tigers and bears oh my....In the morning we saw lots of monkeys and a few birds. Our guide was getting a little miffed at me because I was finding more things to look at then he was. I have a talent for seeing wildlife that I have had my entire life no matter where I am. I am just observant and I use my ears as much as my eyes to find things. We saw toucans, mot mots, parrots, hummingbirds, deer, sloths, birds birds and more birds, crocodiles, camens, snakes and more. I loved the hike.