Cahuita Friday March 19 to Sunday March 21

The sandy streets in Cahuita were lined with small bustling restaurants and colourful hand-painted signs pointing the way to hotels and other places to eat.

We walked around the entire town, which didn't take us very long. Talina chose our hotel: the Seaside Inn, which - for $25 - was right on the ocean. From our room, all we could hear was the roar of the waves. We were on the top floor, in a utilitarian wood-paneled room with two firm beds and mosquito nets over the windows. Hammocks hung in front of the hotel, stretched between the coconut palms and on the long porches in front of each room. Many were occupied by dark-skinned Carribean men, shirtless, smoking fat joints.

For dinner, we selected Miss Edith's, a Carribean restaurant. It had a roof but only vines and bushes for walls - something we saw a lot of in Cahuita. Lanterns hung over the tables, adding to its overall resemblance to a summer camp mess-hall. A loud Australian family were the only other customers.

Electrified water is probably perfectly safe

Talina and I had to wait a long time for our food, and while we waited, we ordered our first mango refrescos con leche - in fact, we ordered one to try and then immediately ordered another after we tasted it. Refrescos are fruit drinks made with crushed ice and either water or milk; what we ordered tasted a lot like an Indian mango lassi. I chose the curried fish, but when it arrived I was taken aback: I wasn't expecting an entire fish, complete with skeleton and eyeballs. Talina refused to eat it because of the thousands of tiny bones, but I ate everything besides the eyeballs. The curry sauce was different than what I was used to from Thai or Indian curries, sweeter and milder.

We went to sleep early, lulled by the sound of the ocean.

The next morning, we wandered over to the supermarcado, where we bought some avocados, a mango, and a pineapple for breakfast. We managed to find a shop that sold disposable cameras - the hardest part was conveying what we wanted! We asked "¿Usted vende cámaras fotográficas?" then had to mime throwing it away. That of course was extremely puzzling to the shopkeeper - we wanted to buy a camera then smash it? Finally we managed to break the language barrier and she pulled a dusty Kodak disposal camera from behind the counter. Success!

Back at our hotel, Talina bravely used the electric shower in our room. An electric shower is exactly what it sounds like: a cold water shower that has a tiny heater that sits over the spigot, heating up the water up as it comes out. Water? Electricity? The two are not natural partners, and furthermore all the electric showers we came across in Costa Rica were invariably dangerous looking: frayed wires, patched with duct tape. Despite their appearance, we were assured they were perfectly safe. I was on our pourch, swinging lazily in our hammock, when Talina came out with a thin towel clutched around her. "I just got shocked!" she said. "Go into the bathroom and turn the shower off, I'm too scared."

We both went into the bathroom and stared at the shower, water running. "I turned the water on and the second I touched the metal handle, current ran down my arm," Talina said.

Talina Wood at the entrance of Cahuita National Park

"I don't want to touch it either," I said.

Finally, I wrapped a shirt around my hand and, gingerly, constantly jerking my hand away just in case, turned off the water. Then I went back to my reading. Talina threw some clothes on and went downstairs to talk to the owner. She found him smoking a joint on the side of the hotel. The owner and some of his buddies all came upstairs and stared at the shower, scratching their heads. Talina demonstrated, and got shocked AGAIN when she touched the shower handle. The owner turned off the electricity to our bathroom; Talina took a cold shower and I elected to stay dirty.

The entrance to the Cahuita National Park was right on the edge of town. The sandy beach at the entrance was packed: kids surfing, vendors selling pipas (green coconuts) with a straw stuck in them, greased up adults roasting in the sun. Signs everywhere warned of the deadly riptides. We veered off into the jungle, onto a wide sand path. Leaf cutter ants marched on their own tiny trails carrying green triangles. Every step we took scared up at least a couple gold lizards; they weaved frantically in front of us, finally disappearing into the underbrush.

We came to a little estuary, where a stream poured into the ocean, and Talina (the taller one) carried me across on her back. The water was warm. We didn't walk much further past the estuary though, since we were worried the tide would come in and leave us unable to get back to town, since I can't swim under the best of conditions, and Talina was wary of the riptides. On the walk back, Talina thought she saw monkeys huddled in the tree branches far above us.

We returned to the Seaside Inn and took a short siesta. When I woke up, the sun was setting and conversation and pot smoke drifted in from the porch. I wandered outside to find Talina on the hammock with a village boy, who introduced himself as Ulisas. Talina said she was practicing her Spanish and Ulisas was practicing his English. Neither were very advanced. I sat down with them and we talked all night long, in our pidgin Spanish-English. At one point, Ulisas showed us a sloth hanging from one of the mangrove trees outside the Seaside Inn. It had a tiny little face comparative to its thick body, and it moved soooo slowly. Talina reached up and petted it - it didn't like that much, but it couldn't do anything about it.

Before we went to sleep, Ulisas tried to kiss Talina and she went along with it - "I feel like letting him cop a feel is his reward for showing us the sloth," she said. I said that made her sound like a hooker.

We woke up early to catch a bus back to San Jose. From the capital, we were going to take another bus to the Monteverde cloud rainforest. While we waited for the bus, we bought a takeaway plate of gallo pinto con huevos from the soda beside the bar - it was the best gallo pinto we had anywhere in Costa Rica and I think it was the turning point for me to liking the cuisine.

NEXT: Santa Elena and Monteverde