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Costa Rica Cruise Review: Sea Voyager

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

After a night of calm waters and clear skies, we returned to Costa Rica. By 6:00 we had cleared immigration at Playa del Coco and continued our journey along the northern Pacific area, where remarkable views of eroded islands and limestone formations occupied by nesting brown boobies marked our way to Tamarindo.

Tamarindo is an interesting beach town where artists, surfers, fishermen, international travelers and other different kinds of people meet and enjoy the pleasure of the tropical warm conditions all year around. After breakfast most of our families disembarked to head to the mangroves and the estuary of Tamarindo in Zodiacs. Other guests decided to meet the local people and/or go for some ocean action in the waves of this area, known as one of the best surfing areas in the province of Guanacaste. After a couple of hours the mangrove expedition returned with some important bird sightings included the white ibis and the yellow-crowned night-heron. This was the best time to cool off from the heat and it is when we had most of our young explorers together with their families learning on their own the best wave riding technique with boogie boards or simply using their bodies to surf.

After lunch we repositioned our ship in the area of Bahia Zapotal just a few nautical miles north of Tamarindo. The most beautiful sight was this mile long, light colored sand beach, all for ourselves with nobody else in sight, except a local fisherman who joined us for a little soccer game. Some of the children went for a walk finding tracks of white-tailed deer, white-nosed coatimundi and the fresh tracks of an olive Ridley turtle that nested some time in the last week. Later the snorkeling and a game of ultimate frisbee rounded up our young explorers activities. The lightning and rain clouds approached from the northeast arriving to our location just before we were heading back to the ship. By this time just a few howler monkeys remained in the area greeting us with howl of goodbye.

Author: Gustavo Abarca, Family Coordinator