Costa Rica

May16

Costa Rica was near the top of my keen to visit countries. Sadly, it’s obviously high up on a lot of other peoples’ lists too as many areas are full of tourist shops and attractions which are teeming with foreigners. Everything was top dollar – the costs had rocketed! Gid hasn’t stopped whinging.

We picked a fair sized town, Liberia, for ease of finding our first accommodation in Costa Rica but found that full. A motel along the highway just beyond it did the job although the roar of traffic through the night barely stopped. The dipping pool was one very pleasing bonus after what felt like a long hot day – Central American border crossing days always feel like that, although pouring rain might be even worse.

Our second night’s stop was in a much more rural area, right on the edge of Rincon de Vieja National park, where we were told that we could stay for only one night because they had a coach load coming tomorrow – although a campsite was available. This kind of booking was verified as common by a very nice English couple, who had joined us at the previous night’s motel, having just flown in from the UK and like us found the town up the road full. They told us their itinerary and explained that when Booking.com says it’s full just phone the place and they’ve probably got space. ‘The tour companies make block bookings and then can’t fill all the spaces so they’ll have rooms spare’ we were told. Our hearts sank. This was supposed to be one of my prized countries to explore and here we were on a roller coaster tourist track.

At Rincon de Vieja we did at least get away from the tourist trail approaching via it’s ‘back door’ along dirt roads to a shut gate. Thankfully a man came out from the bushes, charging us a National Park entry fee he gave us access to the park. Once settled in our accommodation we took a local walk through the woods to a cataract but got more than we bargained for. The morning after I woke up at 4:15am in a panic because I had ‘things stuck to my legs’. Bed bugs? No internet to check! Ticks we discovered, once our online research told us to count their legs (8). Gid delved into the First Aid kit for the tick remover tool, and we spent a tedious hour clearing each other’s wrinkly bits. Sadly, we found a few more over the next 24 hours. I thought I’d probably picked them up weeing in the woods on our walk but we were both covered in them. 15 – 20 each! We were still in a state of hysteria when, a few hours later, we piled into a car with two other people to go on a sloth seeking tour near La Fortuna. With a sigh of relief we settled once the guide told us that there are no deer here so no Lymes Disease but a wash down with alcohol would be a good idea.

Reaching speeds of 70km per hour is quite exhilarating at first but by La Fortuna’s fifth zipline wire I was a bit ‘Done That’. Thankfully there was a Tarzan swing line to try out too. We both enjoyed the ride but wouldn’t seek it out again unlike our fellow zipliner who said she seeks them out and has done many.

Our sloth tour and bird watching trip, both with guide Jose, had more lasting impact. Seven sloths with one slightly moving was awesome as were the two different sorts of toucans on our bird watching tour. The local frogs were pretty cool too. Costa Rica is famously good for wildlife spotting, which is much easier with local guides who communally know where the beasties lurk. However, a rather sad observation has been made that the wildlife spotting is easy partly because so much forest has been cleared that the wildlife is now crammed into relatively small areas, separated from each other by grazing and farming clearances. The country clearly manifests a conservation ethic, but like the UK’s, a lot of primary forest is gone. With the realisation of what it’s lost Costa Rica is now trying to regenerate areas of forest.

_{(Photos taken through a spotting scope were taken by the guides, using our phones).}

At Rincon
Typical Sloth Sighting – Furball
Jose’s bird table!
Poisonous!
This motmot was on our last day in CR

San Jose

Having indulged in total tourism for a couple of days it was back to more serious stuff. Our bikes were booked in to be serviced at a main dealer in San Jose and we had two parcels to collect. One was from the UK. A collection of lost, broken or never realised it would be so useful items collected by Jo, Gid’s sister, and sent to a DHL collection point. A second parcel collected by Jared, a Bunk-a-Biker host, who had been kind enough to receive several Amazon orders. Well, one order came twice and the third not at all. Such was Amazon and the US postal system. All gratefully received. Christmas had come!

Gid: Although I had done the last few services, I decided to get the bikes professionally listened to at 24,000 miles, and certainly a quality wheel repair was beyond my abilities. My deteriorating front wheel was more thoroughly repaired than it had been in Mexico – the workshop replaced the steering head bearings too, presumably this was a consequence of the last few weeks wobbly front end. We got new chains, although the current ones were not yet a problem, they had done 12,000 miles or so. We left the tyres, although they give us a dilemma – there’s plenty of tread left by road standards, but at what point will they become a liability on dirt and mud?

In San Jose, like in Mexico City and Guatemala City, our choice for a place to stay was a yuppie flat complex. This time we were on the 29th floor, in a studio flat, with spectacular views – including views into the next door flats – privacy was a little lacking. The building’s décor was a so-Hispanic mix of really fancy, surrealist stuff, and unfinished blank concrete. But, it had good parking, and a really rather good gym. Legs didn’t really need a gym, with 29 flights of stairs available. There were a few interesting places to visit in San Jose, although, definitely, too many pots in the museum.

The Pacific beach at Uvita was a spectacular beauty, a cliched arc of pale sand with coconut palms on one side and blue waves on the other – waves and howler monkeys competing. The serious boardies stay a little to the north, where Dominical has expert grade waves. Uvita has gentler stuff and was sparsely dotted with beachgoers and a few boardies at the small breaks. The sea water was cool bath temperature, barely cooling at all. Although it was overcast, I was dripping sweat after 1 and a half laps of the beach, while Clare collected sand dollars and admired the agile crabs running over her foot.

The only outstanding bike job was to fix my rear pannier. I’d got too close to a truck when lane splitting in Guatemala City, and the truck’s extended wheel nuts took off my rear pannier corner protection. A lucky escape! I should never have been that close. I could have gone flying. There’s no spare part, so it has to be bodged: At the coast a local surf board shaper had no interest in slapping some glass fibre on the corner but the metal worker down the road was happy to cannibalise the pannier’s rear inner corner protection to move it the the front outside corner where the pannier is far more likely to need protection even without me trying to vie for space with a trucker.

At this point, riding in drizzle and mist, we realised that our rear lights basically didn’t work, nor did our brake lights. I had fitted “upgrade” LED bulbs from the UK, in Mexico City (USA bikes are sold with ordinary bulb lamps, unlike everywhere else in the world who get LEDs from the get go. I think it’s called a “non-tariff barrier”). Anyway, obviously crap LEDs, as they’d deteriorated to near invisibility in 6,000 miles. Hazards on then, team! Fortunately the replacement spares (also LEDs) that I’d bought in Mexico City, proved nice and bright.

The Caribbean beach at Cahuita isn’t a patch on the Pacific beaches, but that wasn’t why we’d come. Lonely Planet states that despite some development in recent years it has kept its Caribbean vibe. True enough, Bob Marley’s One Love amongst many other hits were blasting out of several brightly painted eateries along the coastal road. Alas, whatever we planned here has to factor in the unseasonal cloud and rain that’s visiting us now. Locals are appalled – it doesn’t do this. ‘Rain at this time of year will ruin the fruit crop. The fruits will swell and burst!’ But yes, it’s overcast with some torrential showers. It’s one month short of the rainy season so whether we like it or not we need to get our act together to deal with this wet both on and off the bikes. Two out of three of our recent dawn choruses had been thunder, the third howler monkeys.

As the “unseasonal” rain continues day after day, gradually confirming that it’s just an early start to the rainy season, we should admit that although unhelpful, it ain’t that bad. Very often, the mornings are fine, with the humidity rising until rain breaks out in the afternoon. A lot of the rain falls overnight – thank goodness for Clare’s brilliant bike covers. We can mitigate it a lot by getting up, and getting going, early. It doesn’t rain every day, either. We do still get caught out occasionally though. And of course, it’s warm rain, being wet is just, well, wet. Not welcome-to-Scotland-in-August-dangerously-hypothermic-wet. Equally, I’ve worked it out now, that if I want to go for a run (which I fail to do weekly), we either have to be at a height of over 1500m, or it has to be raining, otherwise it’s too hot. Which leads to the odd, flapping, flatfooted experience of running in my basic Teva sandals, rather than trainers. Or just occasionally, the treat of running barefoot on a sandy beach.

On the Caribbean we visited the Park National Cahuita but on this occasion we went for the option of a guide. It’s about 50 – 50 whether or not we get a guide but with a guide we are guaranteed to see some prized wildlife in the area – they know where the beasties are, and the guides in an area share sightings. This was again the case at the Quetzal National Park (actually just outside at San Gerado de Dota). In the quetzal park we left at 05:30 with our guide Inaki to stand for the nearly an hour with just a few common birds in our view. Inaki showed his prized pictures of quetzals, the National bird of Guatemala, in this tree to our left and that one behind us justifying why we were standing here. Then a whirlwind hit. The walkie-talkie squawked. Cars were dashing past, we were legging it to the buggy. There was a mass exodus down the road where every group found a spot to park, jumped out and joined the throng. Scopes pitched, necks craned told us where the quetzal was. Three quetzals, in fact.

The dual carriageway, CR32, down towards Limon was our first experience of Costa Rican contraflow traffic. Cars approaching us at speed was somewhat alarming. ‘What the heck is this?’ A few more expletives passed between us as the odd car, truck or lorry came hurtling along from the other direction right towards us separated by a thin white line. Initially, some obstacle was placed in the fast lane to force the traffic to merge into one. Nothing unusual there. There is often an obstacle in the road. From there we were separated by the occasional plastic pole set into a small concrete disc. So infrequent where they that occasionally a car would cross to overtake before weaving back into our lane. We got kind of used to that but it went a step further on our return. Out of the blue there were three arrows on obstacles semi blocking our road pointing leftwards across the central barrier. Gingerly we went across with no further indication that this was correct. ‘Local traffic,’ Gid said explaining some cars still on the other carriageway. ‘It’ll soon cut across and join us.’ To be fair on coming traffic did seem to be using one lane but that was of little comfort when we were on our own. Gradually we caught the traffic ahead but reversing lights were on. It seemed to be stopped and even backing. Just before them was a gap in the central reservation. I was through it closely followed by Gid. We’d no idea what was going on but had had enough of where we were when the road looked perfectly good to our right. A few seconds later we could see that the contraflow lane that we had left was blocked. That’s why the cars were backing up the dual carriageway. They had to reverse back to the gap.

But moaning about the dual carriageway is rather missing the point about Costa Rican roads. It’s not a large country, so with two indented coasts and four mountain ranges up to 3,800m (https://lacgeo.com/mountain-ranges-costa-rica) many of the roads are twisty and steep. I don’t suppose Costa Rican bikers suffer much from “squared off” tyres. The ride from San Gerado de Dota to Puerto Jiminez was pretty much 170 miles of convolutions. Of course, a faster bike than the Him would have livened it up, but with such short sightlines at the incessant bends, going much faster might prove fatal. Often 30-40mph was ample. One thing we are seeing in CR though, first time since the USA or maybe Mexico, is locally registered “big” bikes. Whizzing past us, sometimes, but that’s fine by us, we don’t know the roads at all. Another aspect is that, curiously, as we sweat along in 35°C temperatures, some of the countryside looks like, well, Devon. Rolling hills, green grass, rickety fences, processions of cows heading for the milking shed. Curious indeed.

Guayab, our stopping point when returning along this road, is the site of the National Monument. Pre-Colombian is the most specific information about the people who built this city. The site is quite small compared to the Mayan ruins we’ve seen as the foundations of the buildings is all that is left together with two water cisterns and a section of road way.

Later we were going to pass the turning to Sierpe which leads to the Finca 6 site – UNESCO listed since 2014 because it is of world significance and interest. It is again the site of Pre-Colombian civilisations dating from 200BC to 800AD and had many strong similarities to the National Monument at Guayab. They both had raised circular mounds bordered with large stones where it’s believed a large conical wooden hut was built, with a thatched roof. The significance of Finca 6 and its surrounding area of lowland was the large stone balls varying from small to 2.6m wide. The stone balls are, it is thought, a mark of prestige, power and honour when placed outside a house. Others of the balls were placed to line up with the sun or moon in a similar way to stone henges extensively found in north western Europe which also align with the summer and winter solstices. Although, similar to the henges, there is much debate as to the precise placing and use of these stone balls. Only a few are thought to be in their original positions. Certainly it must be quite an effort to reduce a large boulder to a near perfect sphere using only stone and bone tools, so they were obviously important.

Our last port of call was to the tip of the Oso peninsula, billed as the largest expanse of untouched wilderness in Costa Rica where from Puerto Jimeniz there is a unique opportunity to explore an area of ‘untouched’ wilderness. At Surco, one tour operator, Sean the young salesman was busy selling us the benefits of a two day, over night trip to explore ‘untouched’ wilderness in the Corcovado National Park. Despite my saying that I get quite sea sick he didn’t seem to think it was pertinent to tell us that the seas are quite rough at the moment which resulted in one boat flipping a couple of days ago. He didn’t mention that either! We settled for the one day more local trip. Oh yes, and it’s Easter: Everyone is on holiday and half of the businesses are shut. But there was quite a lot of wildlife going on at the wonderfully jungly Chosa Manglar hostel we stayed at.

Can’t remember where we saw this.
Typical Puerto Jiminez Old House

To compliment the untouched wilderness tour we took a local ‘night tour’ with the same Sean. This was a tremendous success with us seeing numerous frogs, spiders and small things, three or four mammals and a couple of birds but the piece de resistance was a fer de lance snake. One of the most deadly in Central America. Gid’s cayman is also pretty cool. And I started getting to grips with the new 60mm macro lens that was the main thing we’d collected from Jared.

Four percent of the worlds biodiversity is in this small area of Costa Rica, the Corcovado National Park. The day of our tour we set off full of expectation. The ‘How to deal with a big cat interaction’ noticeboard raised the stakes. But let’s get real here. There were twenty or more of us split into different groups all with tour guides trying to justify their near extortionate charges. Our guide Esteban, seemed to know the area well. He was searching one spot saying that the green and black frogs are often here. Right on cue – here are two. The local animals must be very familiar with the whole routine and stay a discrete distance away unless they are quite relaxed about the whole performance. We saw families of coatis on our way out and finding them again on our return trip where I was no more than six metres away from the female and her kits. Overall it was a fun experience with the crocodile and anteater at the top of our best sightings list. The scarlet macaws and squirrel, spider and capuchin monkeys were almost omnipresent and provide excellent entertainment value as did the coatis.

Honduras

Mar11

After extending our beach stop in El Salvador to allow Gid to rise from his sickbed, it felt good to be back on our bikes and focused on covering distance. Well, some distance – our stops aren’t far apart in Central America, as there’s plenty to see. Most of these countries have nominally a middling population density, but in practice crowded urban areas, and middle density farming on the coastal plain and valley bottoms, leaving very few folks left to populate large areas in the hills or the north, toward the Caribbean coast. Much of which is still roadless jungle. Many of the small communities there are not connected by road to their countrymen. Being roadless, these large areas are not connected to us, either, we’re only in the more populous areas.

Copan Ruinas, our first Honduran destination, was slightly NW from our border crossing. After 2 hours in the border, Aduana, we were fairly focused on making some progress but then reality hit. The road was still under construction. Sections of it were near perfect but for some reason it had 2m bands of gravel every 150m or so. No need for speed bumps here. The views were beautiful but viewing spots are a luxury seldom found. Other parts of the road were very much still under construction but we soon learnt to go ‘native’. Honduras is back to swarms of bikes. At road works they weave their way to the front and beyond given half a chance. On one such occasion we followed the bikers and a family of cyclists through on to the coned-off raised new road. Ten metres or so before the end of this section the lead bikes peeled off to the left, across the approaching traffic, along a dirt track bordering the road, through the petrol station and down a narrow lumpy path and back onto the road. I stopped at the start of the footpath. I wasn’t alone. A man on his bike loaded with wood stopped too. We dubiously looked at each other and the kangaroo jumps the bikers ahead were doing along the footpath. Gid squeezed through. He got 2/3 of the way along with his bike bucking all over the place and stopped on what seemed like a position stranded half over the next lump. After that moment of route planning, so Gid says, (or buttock clenching), the Him bounced through ok. With a subtle shake of our heads the guy and I turned back. We had to wait a short while before we could squeeze out alongside the approaching traffic. Safe and sound off we went.

A little further along the road we took a turning. Dirt road the navigation informed us but – wrong, It was a newly laid 8km stretch of beautiful surfaced road with some wonderful views thrown in as we wound our way up and down mountain sides. Encouraged by this we took the next dirt road too. This 30km short cut bypassed a whole big loop around the top Gid informed me. But no such luck this time. Although a definite road it was dust, gravel, ruts, gulleys, hills, descents and a ford , along which, in the main, a steady dribble of motos overtook us. That was encouraging as it felt as if it was in constant use servicing the villages and other tracks along the way. Nearing the end however, three men overtook us but then stayed just in front. That was unnerving as they should have disappeared into the dust. Why were they hanging back with us? Thankfully it wasn’t too far until we were back on the main road. Our escort went in the other direction.

Copan Ruinas was delightful. Although another cobbled ancient town it had retained some of its charm because it wasn’t so full of tourist shops or heaving with tourists. When walking round the ruins themselves we were two out of four people in the place although a couple of groups were arriving as we left. The main attraction of Copan ruins, another Unesco site, was the option to go down into two tunnels and look at the previous temples. Because the temples were enlarged by successive kings who wanted their temple to be bigger and better, the carvings on the former temples had been covered and were still in very good condition. Somehow it felt magical to glimpse at what had been hidden away.

Archaeological work was very much still in action both on the surface and inside the tunnels which felt as though we were experiencing history as it was being uncovered. The displays in its mini museum linked the Copan ruins to several of the temple sites that we have already visited. Copan is the last major and most southerly Maya site in Central America.

We decided to traverse Honduras along the northern, Caribbean coast. This has a wealth of cultures with eight different languages being spoken. One of which is Garifuni – the Caribbean freed slave culture & its partly creole language scattered all along the Caribbean coast from Belize south. Asking for milk at the local store in Tornabe proved interesting. It wasn’t Spanish or English is all I can say. The place felt a bit like Hopkins in Belize, except zero tourists, as the locals were of African heritage and mooching around on foot. The only hotel, like most of the other buildings, was right on the beach, with our bikes parked on the sand between us and the sea. Locals wandering past. We had a comfy night, although it bucketed down at some point.

To get there, we’d swing by the famously beautiful Lago Yojoa. Appealingly, we could stay in a micro-brewery. When at Lago Yojoa we took another archaeological walk around Los Naranjos. We were warned that the original temple was made of clay so had been left covered but that hadn’t sunk in until we arrived at the temple to see a relatively small grass mound and nothing more. Thankfully a small museum at the site’s second entrance had a display informing us about the ruins and its place in history, being very old in Central American ruin terms.

Both of us enjoy birdwatching and one of our best experiences was on Lake Yojoa. We’d booked onto an early morning bird watching boat trip. Honduras does boast a wonderful number of resident birds but our own efforts to see them have been fairly pitiful. Our guide, Mattias, took us off to the canal armed with binoculars. We hadn’t even reached the water before we were looking this way and that. Two to three hours passed in perfect bliss as we were paddled along spotting various birds. The highlight of the trip for me was the osprey. Sitting high in a tree but clearly visible with binoculars it wasn’t far from a white chested hawk. The pair were magnificent. The osprey flew over which Gid spotted first. Sadly I barely saw it. As we so quickly forget, Gid made notes of the different birds that were pointed out to us, many of them brightly coloured, and announced we’d seen over thirty species. A few of them like the herons and fly catchers were almost omnipresent.

The botanical gardens at Tela was another attempt to see more wild life. It was more of an arboretum but occupied a spacious area with signage informing us about some of the species. We had hoped to see some birds here but in the heat of the afternoon nothing much was evident. We stayed onsite, in a splendid wooden cabin left over from the fruit company days, so the following morning took an amble in the softer light which was much more pleasant but still lacked wildlife. When preparing to leave our host came to tell us that they was some issue up the track. ‘Motos would get through,’ she said, ‘pero no carros!’ True enough! There had been rain overnight and a land slide. Part of the road was missing. Cautiously we went through aware that a lot of the area looked sodden.

Gid hasn’t been interested in waterfalls. To be fair in 2023 we toured Norway where in places there’s a stunning waterfall every 100 metres. But link a waterfall walk with bird watching and we were off. Three toucans almost make up for our cumulative zero quetzals. Our stop here was a guest house focussed on the local rafting tourism on the Rio Cangrejal. Right on the rocks by the white water river, it brought back a lot of memories of our paddling days.

Biking back along the muddy & potholed dirt road from the rafter’s guest house towards La Ceiba I had hoped that some of the slimy mud down the lane might have dried out a bit. No such luck. The drizzle started as we finished packing our bikes. That together with last night’s rain ensured that it had remained a slushy, muddy, dirt and gravel road with numerous pot holes and oversized puddles. Faced with a large muddy puddle and an on coming moto that was going to take the rim around the left hand edge I went for it straight through my side. My bike squirmed a couple of times, some water splashed over into my boots but a bit of adrenaline kept me going and I didn’t slow down. ‘ A twist of the wrist’ so the name sake book says will nine times out of ten get you through a problem. It worked. I was chuckling, the approaching biker, who had slowed to watch the drama, had a broad smile and gave a thumbs up. Who else was on the road? – oh yes – an inexplicably abandoned porker.

Sodden was here to stay – we had a lot of heavy showers in Honduras. We had set off at 9:30 with a 100mi to cover so expected to be there by lunch time. With just a short lunch break we arrived sometime after three. The potholes along the way had disintegrated into large areas of mud and broken road. The traffic ahead of us on both sides was weaving across the road and slowly negotiation the holes. We picked our way along the main road at times behind tired buses, trucks and tuk-tuks. Consumed in clouds of exhaust as yet another overloaded knackered out X tried to pull away from the speed bumps or pot holes. Frequently, at the speed bumps, we sped past. Once we were officially on a dirt road the surface was in a much better condition. Thankfully a lot of the traffic had also turned off by then so we were able to make better progress.

Here’s an assortment of Honduran road photos. We take more photos on dirt roads ‘cos there’s usually more to see, and time to look.

And here’s a few photos of what we could see from the road.

As far north-east as we could reasonably go, a couple of days at the beach at Trujillo was to round off our trip to Honduras. Gid had highlighted the fort and a couple of historic points of interest in the small town. Yes, um, it was indeed small, but attractive enough, once it had stopped pouring with rain.

Leaving Trujillo we soon turned south and headed down a lovely road enroute for the capital city, Tegucigalpa. It was the best road we’d been on for a while so we were merrily cruising along. We soon realised that we had a third rider also on a touring bike tailing us. After a brief roadside stop we agreed to a coffee somewhere ahead. Steve, a Canadian rider, was on a tour to Panama – his version of the Snow Goose descent south for the winter. We stopped together for the night and shared food, beer, and stories. Steve’s BMW RS boxer was five times as powerful as our Himis, but the sporty suspension & position wasn’t so accommodating over speed bumps and potholes. He might have said it wasn’t entirely happy on the low octane gasoline, either. But we’re all doing it, that’s the main thing. Forums are full of “what bike for …” discussions, and journalists pontificate endlessly (with a nod to their advertisers!), but the best answer seems to be “the one you have”. We do seem to be a bit off the moto tourist trail now, we no longer see occasional groups of looming, be-panniered, be-foglamped adventure bikes going the other way, or whizzing past us. Of course, just by time and distance, we’re getting beyond the range of a ride-from-home tour for North Americans with jobs and families needing them back soon.

Honduras’s capital Tegucigalpa was busy but pleasant enough. After all the usual online warnings about crime, the biggest threat was clearly as a pedestrian trying to cross the roads. Maybe it was our location, but the traffic seemed more cramped and more urgent than either Mexico or Guatemala Cities. Tegucigalpa is not reckoned to be much of a tourist destination, although we did visit a few places. We were in the city because it had a Royal Enfield dealer, one of only 2 in Honduras, and I had discovered some loose spokes in my front wheel. I wanted to be nearby when I had my first ever go at a motorcycle spoked wheel tweak. In the event, the adjustment seemed to go smoothly, and no parts or help were called upon.

Although our Honduran visas were for 60 days, we were aware that the CA4 group of countries only gave us 90 days from entering Guatemala, so we had to exit both Honduras and Nicaragua, by 29th March. East of Tegucigalpa the Honduras/Nicaragua border hove into sight all to soon, after around 3 weeks in Honduras. Another border to cross, another country to plan. But just before that, Gid misunderstood what he was told about the nightly rate, and our last night in Honduras was rather a splendid indulgence, and a bit of a moto museum, too.

La Paz

Nov3

The small city of La Paz sits near the south end of the Baja California peninsula. From there we would take the ferry to the mainland. La Paz faces into the Sea of Cortez, which divides Baja California from the mainland. The sea is warm, shallow and sheltered, attracting wildlife. It’s a beach hotspot.

We intended to spend a few days in La Paz but it was such a wonderful location it turned into a week. I’d marked on the map that swimming with whale sharks was a possibility but knew little else – information online was confusing, so we’d check that out when we got there.

Our Casa Buena accommodation was a real hit as it had a very comfortable room, a social area and a swimming pool that you could actually do lengths in. 15m wouldn’t qualify for a training pool but was wonderful to push off, stretch and not stub your fingers on the other end. And, apparently, Itchy Boots stayed here when she came through.

The town itself is a tourist resort which has managed to find the balance between tourist tack and a functional Mexican town. The promenade provided access to the golden sandy beach although the advice was not to swim from the town’s waterfront. There were plenty of cleaner beaches further along.

On our arrival in La Paz we pulled over at the posh marina (not inside, it wasn’t free!), and the gatehouse attendant dug out a jolly fellow called Oscar, who did boat trips, only to find out that the sharks are seasonal and won’t be in for another month but the boat trips to the island of Espiritu de Santa are still happening. ‘You’ll be able to swim with sea lions,’ he enthused. Sea lions, they’ll do. ‘Lunch on the beach and snorkelling over coral reefs during the afternoon. Arriving back about 5,’ he continued. Great! But we couldn’t go for at least two days because the winds were too strong and the harbour was closed.

The ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan goes three times a week and we had to be in Mexico City by 30th Oct. Putting our crossing back two days was still perfectly achievable. We instantly extended our stay visiting the museums and wandering around the town to fill the days. The Baja California Sur Regional Museum was as to be expected – stairways to well organised rooms, displays annotated in Spanish, QR codes available for English translation. The second museum was a real treat. The Museo de la Ballena y Ciencias del Mar was a sandy grit base with three shacks housing exhibits with plenty more aquatic bone collections outside. Pickled brains were a blast from the past and reminded me of my supper the night before which luckily Gid ate. Hippopotamus and whales were on the same display and one of the earliest separations on the time line. There were also a few electronic displays in Spanish but the cooling fans were the biggest attraction.

We started to understand where things were in town, and appreciate the steep price gradient as one got nearer to the Malecon (promenade). Speaking of which, Gid chose the statue of Jacques Cousteau as a running turn-around point, but couldn’t find him the first time and fell short. The run had to be completed by 8am, as by then it was getting much too hot. Locals knew that, the prom is pretty busy 7-8 but everyone soon vanishes, emerging again just before dark.

We arrived at the jetty at the appointed time ready for our boat trip. The wind had died down but the sea was still producing some big swells. We were one of two couples booked in for the ‘swim with sea lions’ boat trip, along with an extended family.

We set off full of expectation. It soon became evident that it was too rough for our crew. As to be expected really, the swell was still up. The two children were whimpering as the boat bounced along spray flying high. Once we were heading away from the shelter of the land the chop became more intense. Our plaining hull rose over one wave crashing onto the next covering us in spray. One wave came over the bow and ran a river down the footwell over our feet. The children panicked. It might swamp the boat. The next wave we jumped had us all briefly zero-g above our seats. Gid and I would thrive on this excitement being seasoned sea-kayakers but the two children instantly burst into tears. That was the end of that. Sea lions were off! The day turned into a snorkelling over coral in the sheltered bays exercise. It was pleasant enough, and scratched our “beach itch”, but not what we had paid for.

As we set off for home from our snorkelling pursuits Andrea, our guide, announced that we would visit the nearby lighthouse rock as it was reported that sea lions were there. I assumed that they had had radio communication with the other tour boats in the area. A smile was back on my face.. It wasn’t far to the rocks which we circled in the boat looking for sea lions. Nothing! Andrea asked who wanted to snorkel anyway. Gid and I jumped at it but the rest were set for home. We were quickly ready and in the water. Circling the lighthouse rock the visibility was great on one side but less so on the other. Just as we were ready to call it a day a squeal of excitement alerted us. A single sea lion swam lazily past us. Success!?

At breakfast the following day our German friends exuded enthusiasm for their trip where they had made it out to the island. They were full of how wonderful the experience had been – swimming with numerous sea lions. They talked of how close the sea lions came, the acrobatics they performed, the babies on the rocks and the unmistakeable bark of the sea lions.

It had to be done. We extended our stay at the guest house again. Thankfully we hadn’t booked the ferry yet – back that went another two days. Once on the mainland we had to make Mexico City in three days now. Perfectly do-able providing everything went well.

Our second boat trip was a totally different experience. A more professional set up that cost twice as much but our guide, Andrea, gave a more extensive dialogue about the marine biology and geology we passed along the way, and more of a look at the local birds too. It cost twice as much but was worth every peso. And, the sea was now flat.

Indeed, we swam with numerous sea lions. They came really close, performed superb acrobatics, the babies were on the rocks and the unmistakeable bark of the sea lions surrounded us.