We had already successfully dodged monkey pee and narrowly avoided stepping on an iguana, so we weren’t entirely fazed when a wild collared peccary sat down on the beach to have lunch with us.
But even for Costa Rica, where on a previous trip we’ve seen white-faced monkeys take food of picnic baskets Yogi Bear-style, this was certainly strange. On Tortuga Island, population 12, there lives a peccary, a wild boar-like creature, that seems to think it’s a human, casually mingling with day-tripper tourists.
Filomena, as the locals named her, nuzzled her porcupine-like coat up against perfect strangers and rolled over to try to coax a belly rub. She seemed to especially enjoy being buried in the sand, just up to her head, of course.
“She also likes to drink beer,” said Ramon Jimenez, 65, who paddles out to the island every day to sell oysters. “Sometimes after she gets drunk she goes swimming. The only thing she doesn’t do is smoke.”
Filomena’s story goes like this. One day she became separated from the pack that roams in the forest behind the white-sand beach. A group of kids was playing soccer on the beach when she was accidently struck by the ball, severely injuring her leg. The people who live on the island nursed her back to health, and now she prefers to hang around humans, living the life of a beach bum.
Happy as a pig
After one afternoon on the island, which we visited during our three-night stay in Montezuma, on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula, I was jealous of the peccary. This was the third trip to Costa Rica for my wife, Daysi, and me since her father, Lorgio, retired there a few years ago.
Each time we go there, I’m increasingly tempted to join him. We’ve bathed in hot springs while watching lava roll down the Arenal volcano, floated on a river raft past sun-bathing crocodiles near Fortuna, and spotted rare toucans, macaws and the elusive spider monkey near Corcovado National Park.
For this trip, we set our sights on Montezuma, a small beach town known for its hippie vibe, great beaches and majestic waterfalls.
We arrived at the Hotel Amor de Mar at about noon after a six-hour drive from Lorgio’s house in Grecia, near the capital of San Jose. The eco-lodge is about a 10-minute walk south of town, and across the street from a hiking trail that leads to waterfalls I was eager to explore.
Monkey business
Before we even started out on the trail, a troupe of about 20 white-faced capuchin monkeys had swooped down to the lot at the trailhead for what appeared to be their afternoon playtime. The capuchins live primarily in the canopy, swinging easily from tree to tree. They will sometimes come to the ground, though, to forage for food, and in this case they were well obliged.
A man who identified himself as the caretaker of the property handed us bananas to feed to the monkeys. I know it’s really never a good idea to feed the wildlife, but who could resist those cute little faces. And monkeys do like bananas, right?
We took off the peels and broke off some pieces. Lorgio’s wife, Maritza, reached up toward a tree to a pair of monkeys that weren’t at all bashful about taking the prize out of her hand. I walked slowly toward a monkey climbing down another tree, crouched on the ground and offered my treat. He stared at me for a couple of minutes, seemingly sizing up the risk vs. the reward. Then he pounced toward me, snatching it out of my hand and scurrying back up the tree.
Just when it seemed like man and beast were coexisting in perfect harmony, we heard the pulsating roar of the mantled howler monkey, immediately putting all four of us on alert.
The howlers, the largest of Costa Rica’s four species of monkeys, seldom come out of the canopy, but on two previous instances we could have sworn that howlers had deliberately attempted to pee on us. We had a good laugh about it, but it turns out that it wasn’t just our imagination. Flipping through a book on Costa Rican mammals, we read that howlers are frequently irritated by people and that they express their displeasure by urinating or defecating on their observers. As the book put it, “thus, it is unwise to view howlers from directly underneath.”
Thus, we decided it was wise for us to begin heading up toward the waterfalls. The 30-minute hike to the first falls turned out to be somewhat of an adventure. The trail followed the path of a river, which had to be crossed on several occasions. It was nerve-racking enough watching Lorgio casually jump from slippery boulder to slippery boulder, but then Maritza’s flip-flops broke, forcing her to walk barefoot.
We obviously looked like a group that needed a little help when we ran into Carlos, an unofficial guide to the falls, who took off his sandals and gave them to Maritza. Carlos, 27, later told me that he helps people to the falls two or three times a day, relying on strictly on tips.
“It can be very tricky in places,” Carlos said. “But I know all the best places to cross.”
Sure enough, he led the way, offering his hand several times to get us from one rock to another, and I’m not sure the four of us would have made it without him.
But it was all worth it at the falls. After a few minutes of gawking at the 50-foot falls, Lorgio and I joined a handful of others who were splashing about in the swimming hole below. Floating on my back away from the spray of the falls, I saw white-faced monkeys playing in the trees high above and an eagle soaring in the sky.
On the way back to the hotel, Carlos occasionally would stop to bang his empty water bottle against a rock, prompting the unseen howlers to respond with their own roar. You gotta love the jungle.
Trip into “town”
With its mix of yoga studios, health-food cafes and surf shops, the town of Montezuma reminded me of Northern California. The two main streets were lined with patchouli-scented vendors. While checking out some of their homemade jewelry one morning, we almost stepped on top of an iguana, which seemed to be camouflaged with the pavement.
With the large number of English-speaking ex-pats, Rasta boys and tourists, it’s not the place to go to experience true Tico culture. But on the flip side, the town is surrounded by the best of Costa Rica’s natural beauty, most of the roads are still unpaved, and there are none of the high-rise condos and big resort hotels that have sprouted up on some of the country’s more developed coastal areas.
For Mathias Braun, a competitive surfer born in the U.S. who works at the Amor de Mar, it’s about as close to paradise as you can get.
“My family moved to Costa Rica when I was 4, so this is pretty much home to me,” Braun said. “I’ve been all around the country, and I think Montezuma is pretty much the best place.”
Horse play
For our second day, Daysi and I booked a horseback-riding adventure to a waterfall on remote Playa Cocalito.
There are no roads leading to the waterfall dubbed “El Chorro.” The route traverses a few long stretches of pristine beaches, most notably Playa Grande and heads into the forest. We were joined by a young couple from Amsterdam. None of us had had any significant riding experience.
“It’s OK to run your horses on the beach,” our guide, Javier Rosales, assured us, after about a 30-second riding lesson. “We want to go fast when we’re on the sand because the horses have to go slow on the trails.”
I spent the first half of the ride trying to enjoy the scenery while not falling off the horse. My horse, Pepe, would stop to eat plants along the steeper part of the trails. Javier broke off a branch from a tree and gave it to me, instructing me to strike Pepe on the hind legs to get him to move along faster.
An hour and a half later, I was just starting to get a feel for the horse when the falls came into view, taking my mind off the pain that was starting to develop in my leg and back muscles. Relieved to be off the horses, we quickly changed into our bathing suits.
Playa Cocalito is a beautiful beach, with white sand, a natural cove, and the kind of clear turquoise water that we hadn’t yet seen in Costa Rica. But the rough waves that prevented our boat trip that morning still hadn’t subsided, and it was too rough for us to go swimming.
“The sea is angry today,” Javier said, while carving up some pineapple for us to munch on while the horses rested.
But we could climb up on the rocks beneath the falls, letting the water pummel us as it continued on its way down into the ocean. Sitting on those rocks was a jungle beach postcard paradise.
But, alas, Javier and the horses awaited. On the way back, the Dutch couple had clearly gotten a good handle on their horses. Every time we came upon an open stretch of beach, their horses took off running. I tried to get Pepe to chase after them. But whenever he started to pick up steam, he would just as quickly slow to a trot, then back to a walk.
Slow boat to Filomena
We awoke the next morning a little sore from the horseback riding, and crossed our fingers that the seas would be calm enough for us to make it to Tortuga Island.
They were, but barely.
It took our captain and his mate three tries and about 20 minutes to load the small speed boat with supplies and 14 passengers – the boat’s maximum capacity. There is no dock on Montezuma Beach, so the captain would bring the boat close to shore, quickly load a few passengers, then have to head back out and wait a bit when the waves picked up. One boarding passenger almost got toppled when the boat rocked backward.
Out on the open water, I sat in the back of the little boat holding on to a railing to avoid falling overboard. Less than an hour later we motored up to the island’s crescent beach. While the snorkeling was less than spectacular – with just a few varieties of colorful fish – the warm, calm water was a perfect aqua-blue. And the price was definitely right: $50 per person for the day, which included a lunch of fish or chicken with potatoes and fresh fruit.
We were the only Americans in our group, and quite possibly the only ones older than 30. The other passengers included two young couples from Spain, a couple from Argentina, and four friends from Canada. But on the island we were joined by tour groups from other areas of Costa Rica, some of whom started up volleyball and soccer games on the beach.
Oh, yeah, and one carefree peccary in search of a beer and a belly scratch.
Contact the writer: bwright@ocregister.com or 714-796-2320
