Carate, Osa Peninsula

on the road to carate..taken from the jeep taxi.
osa peninsula, costa rica

01-09-08

so uvita came and went. we decided to take a chance and catch a 3pm bus out of uvita for palmar and try to make a 5pm connection to puerto jimenez. which was our final destination. it was gonna be tight but it made the most sense. why spend two days traveling when we can get it over with in one!?!? so, we said f'it! lets do it! well, we made it to palmar around 5. we searched high and low for the bus stop to puerto jimenez and with little help from the locals we made it to the station around 5¨10 ish. luckily there was a sweet old lady still waiting for the bus. it was late!!!! its nice how things always work out here. its truly a magical place! oh how i love thee! anyways, the bus arrived around 6 and we finally made it to puerto jimenez around 9pm. we arrived at the hostel La Esquina and were greeted by the cutest lil ol lady, bertha. the room was cheap, clean, private and the showers were HOT!!!!!! who could ask for anything more! we decided we were going to go to parque nacional corcovado in the morning so we needed to be up by 5 am so we could have breakfast and catch the colectivo to carate where we would then hike 3.5km on the beach in the grueling hot sun to the entrance of the park.

popped right of the bed around 445 and headed over the the soda deya. the restaurant ran the colectivo to the park. the ride was quite the adventure. we all loaded up in the back of a converted jeep/truck thing and on we went. the road around the peninsula was rock and dirt so it made for quite the bumpy ride. and quite the sore ass. we forged rivers, crossed gorgeous farms and windswept beaches for about 45 km. it took about 2 hours for us to arrive in carate. a small village which served as the gateway to corcovado. not much to the village. we immediately hit the beach and began our hike to the entrance of the park.....more to come