For our last day at
Cayoba Tropical we had a very filling
pancake breakfast, and said our thanks and goodbyes once our private van
transfer arrived to bring us to Uvita.
Although the drive was only 40 minutes, we were charged $150
and felt totally ripped off.
Public transportation would have been way cheaper, but taken
significantly longer. Still,
simply hailing a cab on the side of the road would have been far more cost
effective.
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| Flutterby Entrance |
We had prebooked a hostel called
Flutterby House, and it was
incredible: a big open-air hostel consisting of several tree houses and cabins,
and hammocks hung everywhere possible.
They had a communal kitchen and living room with their single dorms
above, a big long outdoor dinning table, and even a yoga platform with mats,
cushions and curtains.
Up front
they had a bar with decently priced drinks, and from where you could borrow
beach bags, towels, snorkeling gear and bikes, and rent surfboards.
They also had a mini rock climbing
wall, beer pong area, “dutch coffee house”, “shagging shack”, dart boards,
board games and a book exchange.
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| The common areas |
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| A couple of the tree houses |
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| The cabin we stayed in |
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| The front bar |
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| One of the chickens |
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| Their little greenhouse |
All their facilities had a strong focus on the
environment. They had a strict
garbage sorting and onsite composting, their own vegetable garden, and all the
walkways were lined with recycled bottles. Plastic bags were not welcome into
the grounds (they provided reusable cloth bags before you head out for the day),
and they only used environmental soaps and bio-filter their laundry water through a mini
marsh out back. Their toilets were
bio-debatable and had a long
explanation of how waste is broken down and reused for methane gas for the
kitchen and compostable soil for the garden. Although at first consideration this seemed kind of gross to
me, it really is quite brilliant and responsible.
For our first day
in Uvita Sandra, Heidi, Christine and I had booked a private surf lesson with
Bodhi Surf School. Gibran and
Steven were excellent teachers and very patient with us. The beach at Uvita is perfect for
learning because it’s so shallow and sandy for our inevitable wipeouts. However,
the gradual decline also meant we had to walk out really far until we were
chest deep; which after a while became extremely tiring. The tide was low that day so the waves
weren't too powerful, though the odd one did have a nasty tendency to push
us back several feet.
It was reasonably
easy catching the wave, but from there you had to clamber onto your knees and
‘pop’ up to a crouching position.
I had a hard time managing that, both because my tired limbs just
weren’t cooperating, and also because my agility is not unlike a newborn
giraffe in high heels. I managed a
few times but often just rode the board shore-wards on my knees and in attempts to conserve energy, hopped off
before it took me too far.
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| Christine kicking ass |
We spent a good
hour practicing until it grew dark and started to rain a bit. It was very cool
being in the beach watching this little storm slowly blow in. The distance over
the mountain held a sunset, a sunny clearing, and a little moody storm cloud
simultaneously.
After our lesson,
the rain poured so much that Gibran kindly offered to drive the four of us to
town where we were meeting up with Care and Sabina. We bought a load of groceries for the next few days, and
headed out to dinner at a little restaurant Gibran recommended called La
Fogetta. Like most Costa Rican
restaurants we’d found, it was open air and served large portions of fresh
food. We were joined by two men
who were staying at Bodhi Surf school’s bed and breakfast, and they entertained
us with tales from their wild world of dancing. Yes, not only were these men dancers, they were Blues
dancing dancers. A Blues Dancing
Dancer who was also a lawyer, and a Blues Dancing Dancer who was also…I
forget. But the important thing to
note was that he was a G.D. Blues Dancer.
They enjoyed our company so much, they decided to join us on our
Canyoning Trek the next day.
Though, looking back on it now, perhaps they were trying to recruit us
for their cult Blues Dancing group.
