Cabo Matapalo

February 4: 91 degrees

It's Tuesday and we leave Puerto Jimenez tomorrow to head back to Uvita to attend a day of The Best Fest music festival.  Then, we're headed to the South Caribbean coast.  Given the travel ahead of us, we splurged on a rental car for a week.  I'm so freakin excited about the freedom of a car again.  Yes!   

Our drive there had us surrounded, at first, by farmland

Today, we got up early, got the car, and made a day trip to Cabo Matapalo as the man we met at the concert a couple days before suggested.   Cabo Matapalo is at the tip of the Osa Peninsula where Golfo Dulce meets the Pacific.  It also is on the outskirts of Corcovado National Park, so it's largely unspoiled nature and jungle right up against the ocean.

Then we hit the jungle... 

The drive there was gorgeous.  We were on the lookout for this guy's place, but we missed a sign somewhere along the way.  Luckily there was a sign coming from the other direction (as we backtracked after turning around) to point us in the right direction.   As we drove carefully into what looked like a driveway, and we used every bit of the 4WD our SUV provided us, we passed a girl on a 4-wheeler and asked her where this place was.  She said "about 10 minutes more down this road."  The most interesting thing about her answer was the fact that we were, indeed, on a road.

...and the gorgeous water.   This is a zoomed-in view from our picnic.

Eventually we made our way and met some folks who told us about a trail and a waterfall.   While we failed to find the waterfall (because we didn't quite go far enough), Kas and I had a great lunch with an awesome view.  We had packed tuna salad sandwiches in our backpack, complete with a frozen water bottle to keep things cool.  As a side bonus, we also had gallettas mantequillas (butter cookies), which I've been addicted to for a few weeks now. And after we climbed looking for the waterfall, we found ourselves at a good height with a great view of the ocean and nature.  It was a a pretty good mistake.

After the hike and lunch, we drank a beer at the guy's house/rental cabins and drove back into town to get ready to hit the road the next day.