Costa Rica - Day 5 - Heat Exhaustion & Angry Monkeys

So, even though the three of us had been going to bed pretty dang early, (when the sunsets at 6 pm and towns start to shut down, there isn't much left to do) I am rather talented at sleeping in no matter how much sleep I've gotten. Both of the boys were out of the tent before me and soon after I heard Adam say, "Alissa, there's an animal out here!" so of course I assumed he was trying to trick me to get up (I mean, he has done it before) so I make him describe it to me. "Its got a pointy nose and a a really long tail" says Adam. I jump out of bed almost immediately since I know that he sees a Coatimundi!

Coatis are animals in the raccoon family and they are omnivores. He was picking up some food from the ground and eventually after I took some rather blurry pictures he ran away chasing a rabbit.

We stuffed some food in our camel packs that were full with water and set forth on our 13K hike to Playa Naranjo. We had asked the park ranger about driving to the beach the day before, but he said that the road was so bad that we would have to sign a waiver to drive our car on out there - I know lots of people are daring with rental cars, but we decided to hike on out instead.

On the hike out we quickly saw that there was no way our car could have made it...the road was rocky, had huge holes in it, and was even hard to hike on sometimes. The hike on out to the beach was mostly down hill and since it was still early morning, it wasn't too hot out yet. We would stop and search the tree tops when we heard noise, trying to spot whatever jungle critters we could. The jungle in Santa Rosa National Park is a relatively dry jungle and part of the Gunacaste World Heritage area due to the great diversity of life in the area.

While hiking down a rather steep hill we heard a ton of noise in the trees to the left and there was our first and only monkey spotting of the trip! A white face capuchin monkey was in the tree right by the road and man was he not happy to see us! Behind him was a tree full of his family swinging from branch to branch and eating. The angry monky near the road hissed and looked like he was going to jump and attack, but of course I had to get at least a couple pictures first!

Eventually we made it down to the ranger station down at Playa Naranjo and were welcomed by tons of various species of iguanas - they were HUGE!

Now, since we hadn't seen anyone else on our long hike down to the beach we were kinda expecting a deserted beach. But, Playa Naranjo is a very well known surfing beach and surfers come from all over to ride its waves. The surfers don't get out to the beach the hard way either, they pay boats about $200 a day to transport them over to catch some waves. So, needless to say we weren't alone.

Out in the middle of the water is a gigantic rock, known as Witches Rock and it was out around there that we spotted the surfers hanging out and about 3 boats. Besides being known for its waves, I had wanted to hike out here to hopefully observe some deadly wildlife. There is a lagoon off the beach that is suppose to be teaming with huge crocodiles and angry bull sharks (responsible for the most shark related deaths and attacks).

We walked along the shores of the lagoon, keeping our distance since we didn't want to experience any large crocodiles by first hand attacks. Sadly, no deadly creatures were sighted. :(

Despite being terrified of the bull sharks, we took a quick swim in the water...warily staying inland from other swimmers.

On the hike out there, I had managed to finish off most of my camel pack of water. Thankfully, the nice park ranger allowed us to refill up our packs out of the filtered water they had out at the station. We ate a quick snack of our trail mix and started the long, long hike uphill.

Man, oh man was hiking significantly slower than the hike in. Not only was the hike uphill this time, but the temperature had gone up at least 20 degrees and the sun was bright overhead. The hike was a killer for me and I had to take a ton of water breaks and much more frequent sit down breaks (not sure if I took any on the way in). I started to get dizzy and it didn't seem to matter how much water I drank or food I ate, I was definitely getting weaker and weaker. It was pretty crazy, but I'm pretty sure I had at least minor heat exhaustion.

When we FINALLY made it back to the tent, Adam ran off and grabbed us some nice cold Gatorade at the cafeteria and I jumped into one of the showers with all of my clothes on to cool on down. I don't think I've ever been that close to fainting before, but after a bit of rest, electrolytes, and a cold shower I started to feel MUCH better. Why do I always do stupid things on my "vacations"?

The three of us hopped in the car with plans to drive to Monteverde, but it started downpouring like crazy. We had been really lucky so far since we were traveling to Costa Rica during its rainy season and hadn't seen a drop so far. We grabbed a bite to eat in Liberia and hoped that the weather would clear, but it continued to pour so we decided to stay in town for the night at our swankiest hotel of the trip.