Cathedral Point

Friday 19th February 1988

After a big Costa Rican breakfast and a litre of “Dos Pinos” milk I went to explore the National Park. Dos Pinos is the main dairy producer in Costa Rica, though not the only one. Their products are excellent and varied. The milk is pasteurized and homogenized.

I waded across the brook to get to the entrance and paid my ₡ CRC 25 entrance fee. I then walked along the path with threaded through the trees up above a fabulous beach, which is rated amongst the top ten in the world. There were lots of tents amongst the trees where locals camped with there ghetto blaster music machines and kids.

I followed the path that did a circuit of Cathedral Point with its forest topped cliffs which is connected to the mainland by a thin land bridge that separates the park’s two most popular beaches, Playa Espadilla Sur and Playa Manuel Antonio. It is a huge, tall heavily forested headland and viewpoint which juts out into the sea.

At one point I nearly jumped out of my skin as the ground moved beneath me and a huge lizard scurried for cover. Further on a racoon-like creature with a black and brown banded tail (this would have been a white-nosed coatimundi, or coati) stopped to stare cautiously from the nearby trees.

As I followed the trail through the tall vine-covered trunks small animals, which looked like spiders with a black conker-sized body and long red legs, scampered into their holes in the bank. I concluded that they were some kind of crab, even though I was on top of cliffs which were well above the sea.

I went to pick up my bus ticket to return to San José tomorrow at 06:00 hrs. from the office on the beach at a cost of ₡ CRC 280 and met the man with the strange accent from the hotel. He turned out to be a German immigrant living in Canada. I went with him for a long walk along the beach and up into the hills along a dusty winding trail.

After a couple of hours, we staggered down to the road back to Manuel Antonio Playa, waiting for a short while for the bus and then continuing on foot to the bar. Here my new Canadian friend bought ice cold beers to quench our raging thirsts.

It was a posh bar geared up for wealthy tourists and the waiter rushed to top up our glasses from the bottles and change the ashtray for a clean one every few minutes. In between times he polished the already spotless bar surface.

We walked the last kilometre in merciless sun on a shade less road to a bar with a juke box for a couple more Bavaria beers. Back at the hotel we showered and had another beer for good measure. This weekend is supposed to be the last of the holiday season, the last before the end of the Costa Rican school holidays, so it was a real big event with half of the population of San José swarming in.

I did a bit of camera maintenance on my Ricoh KR-10 Super SLR (Single Lens Reflex). A single-lens reflex camera (SLR) is a camera that typically uses a mirror and prism system (hence "reflex" from the mirror's reflection) that permits the photographer to view through the lens and see exactly what will be captured. I blew out the dust and put in a new 35mm transparency slide film.

At 17:00 hrs I went to the beach with the intention of swimming but ended up just walking barefoot through the surf, watching the sun go down in an azure cloud-free sky. Children played on the beach and the surf crashed comfortingly giving a lulling sense of peace.

As the sun disappeared from view the insect chorus began and a few frogs hopped along through the grass. Last night one hopped through the restaurant while we were eating. I had my evening meal at the Grano de Oro, which consisted of a huge, foot-long mackerel served complete with head and tail.

I ate with an American who looked longingly at my fish as he munched forlornly on his rice and beans because he was trying to become a vegetarian. The two restaurant cats and the puppy called Pinto fought over the head and bones of the fish which I threw on the floor.

Afterwards I went out for a walk. There were millions of stars visible overhead and the campers had lit several campfires along the beach. Bright fireflies flashed about in the darkness. Nothing much seemed to be going on. Everybody was probably at the big disco in Quepos which was 7 kilometres away.

I went back to my room to pack my gear and have an early night.