Costa Rica - the other side of the Pacific

[reelcrazy]

Just returned from Costa Rica. Rented a house on the beach at Palo Seco, just north of Manuel Antonio for a couple of weeks.

Palo Seco is an inshore island - attached to the mainland by a bridge (like Bribie), it fronts the Pacific and is backed by an estuary. About 8k long of black sand - mostly uninhabited jungle, same latitude (only north) as the tip of Cape York.

Missed a few days fishing after the bag containing all my lures, hooks etc was held over in Dallas/Fort Worth and the mental giants there sent it on a round trip to San Jose Mexico, real impressed. missed most of the new moon fishing.

Fished the beach - low tide only due to low flat shallow nature, had to wade out about 100 metres into thigh high surf to get past the breakers.

Caught this on local live bait :) - locals call it Pargo Rojo, fought like a jack. 26lbs - about 12kgs. 20lb Fireline, 30lb flurocarbon leader on a custom Loomis 10 footer.

[reelcrazy]

Tried the estuary out back of the house, but the sandies and mossies were incredibly hungry, even 100% deet didn't deter the mongrels and they bit through clothing.

Since it was the rainy season, the estuary was mostly discoloured through silt and litter with floating debris.

Pity though, the estuary looked the part, I headed up to estuary entrance at top of the island to catch live bait on sabiki's. Bait was mainly small pompano, mullet and juvenile rainbow runners.

Caught a few more pargo's around 1-2kgs, small snook, small roosterfish, and pompano in the surf. Released all but a couple, locals thought I was crazy, but the fishing was generally good.

Costa Rica is an unbelievably beautiful place, but is under a development push from the yanks and europeans who are busily buying up all the coastal land.

[reelcrazy]

This is the beach, 8k long, driveable the full length at low tide in the Landcruiser I rented.

Islands at the right are off Manuel Antonio, the place is Jurassic, not surprising that Jurassic Park was filmed near here.

[morty103]

nice fish and scenery there, looks like a real nice place

[Girella]

Interesting stuff mate. Thanks for the info.

Feel free to post more.

PK

[wessel]

You lucky dog you......

There are a few places left in the world where I would love to go and do a fishing trip to.

One of them is Costa Rica, it must have been awesome over there.

Apart from the cost to get there, any ideas on daily living costs, general safety?
e.g. renting that house, renting a car, ease of getting around, chartering a boat from the locals - is it difficult at all?
What are they local fisherman like?
Did you go offshore at all?
A million questions, sorry ;)

Enjoy the memories of the place, there are others who really wish that they were there......

Wes

[krtazy]

awesome looking place there would love to visit it :)

[DaveSue_Fishos_Two]

Interesting post and really enjoyable to read. Thanks RC!

Dave

[Angla]

Nice Pargo Reelcrazy. They look a good size by the way you are handling it. Good post and thanks. I take it there would be a bit of reef fishing done with the nature of the islands (volcanic are they) and that the locals would have that sussed. A culture of some may seem lethargic to fish though, would that be correct?giving a laid back approach to life.
Did you go by yourself ?
Sorry for all the questions. Never left Australia and probably never will as the West beckons me (Kimberleys)

Angla

[reelcrazy]

Costa Rica is really a special part of the world, Tico's as they call themselves are a laid back bunch, whose main expression "Pura Vida" is very similar to our own "no worries mate".

They work hard though, outside of the tourist areas, unemployment is fairly high, if it's any indication, there were places on Palo Seco under construction, and these folk worked 7 days a week.

It is the first world in the third world if you would understand that analogy. They have good education, medical facilities and a reasonable infrastructure.

Most of all, I like the fact that they do not have a military by choice - which says a lot about their attitude to life. Crime is probably less here than in the US or Australia, but is increasingly prevalent on the Caribbean side, and in the capital, San Jose. Mostly it's property crime.

When we travel, my wife and I like to immerse ourselves in the culture and people, hence renting places away from the usual tourist haunts. Palo Seco is like that, the nearest town, Parrita, about 12k away, is a typical Tico farming town of a reasonable size, but it was still reasonably close (1/2 hour drive) to two major tourist beats, Quepos/Manuel Antonio and Jaco (major surfing centre).

Quepos (pronounced Kay-pos) lays claim to being the sportfishing capital of Central America, and arguably the Americas, however, my budget didn't extend to offshore day charters USD750-1200 a day - inshore a little over half that. I'm a surf/estuary fisherman by choice, I like to actively fish.

The fishing reports for offshore are nothing short of excellent - lots of sails, blues, blacks and stripey's being raised in day sessions.

These prices are for the entire boat and crew though, so if you have the numbers it could be more reasonable. If solo you could probably check around the charters there and get a shared charter if they lots available.

Wouldn't stay in Quepos though, the place is a dump, a better bet would be either rent a place where we were and travel, or stay in one of the many hotels in Manuel Antonio.

Inshore fishing reports were excellent too, there are a number of inshore reefs in the area, but I did alright in the surf out front of the house we rented.

There were a bunch of local fishermen fishing from the beach with handlines and did well, using cast nets in the surf to catch live bait, then walking/wading the beach casting. There's a lesson there, for they did better than me with hundreds of bucks worth of gear, however, the gringo beat them all with a trophy sized Pargo, and that impressed them.

The most interesting fish caught were the Roosterfish, I caught a few up to about 4kgs, but released them all, they are a stunningly beautiful fighter that kilo for kilo would outclass most fish, with long striped dorsals that flare when they are caught, great sport.

Here's a picture of one and the other fish caught - since I was wading in the surf, didn't carry a camera.

Roosterfish
http://www.landbigfish.com/fish/fish.cfm?ID=163

Snook
http://www.landbigfish.com/fish/fish.cfm?ID=120

Pompano
http://www.landbigfish.com/fish/fish.cfm?ID=197

Here's a shot of the house we rented, the pool was excellent at the end of a fishing session.

Next post I'll get into costs.

[reelcrazy]

Costs

The house rent was USD$770 a week, USD$1540 for the two weeks. I found this on www.vrbo.com and dealt directly with the owner, a yank in Maryland. Three bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, pool etc.

Car rental, got a Landcruiser hard top diesel 4WD for about USD$380 a week. This included insurance. Had to pay for a replacement tyre (US95.00) blown out on a particularly nasty pothole on the trip back to San Jose.

This should give you some information on car rental in Costa Rica. They are the most reasonable.

http://www.orbitcostarica.com/carrentals.htm

There was only one small bad patch of road, about half and hour out of San Jose - it was a classic game of dodge the potholes reminded me of some of the roads here in Manhattan, but the road on the coast was quite ok, driving is on the other side of the road - no problems for me, I drive here in Manhattan.

The bridges over the Parrita river, and into Quepos are classics, one lane, the deck on the bridge made out of rail lines laid transverse. Bit of third world, but adds to the adventure. One day going into Quepos we were delayed for about an hour as a couple of welders did some running repairs on the bridge deck. Mind you this was after a torrential tropical thunderstorm.

Cost of living is still reasonable there, Parrita had two decent supermarkets, we probably spent about $120 a week for three of us on groceries, produce etc. Local beer is excellent - my favorite Imperial was about $14 for a slab. A bottle of local rum about $6, imported Caribbean rum about $8. Excellent cuban cigars were cheap too.

Language was really not a problem for us, my wife speaks conversational spanish from a few years living in South America, but I don't speak it and managed to get by.

So anyone interested in this part of Costa Rica please PM me, and I'll provide some links and some more hints.

Here's a shot of the house looking out from the breezeway, the beach is at the end of the drive. If you are curious about the white on the base of the palm trees, it's to prevent rats/vermin climbing the trees and eating/damaging the coconuts. I think it's whitewash.

[wessel]

Tom

Excellent post, thank you for taking the time in sharing that info.

Now, I am off to go and get my facts straight to discuss this with the minister of war and finance ;)

Wes

[DaveSue_Fishos_Two]

I checked out the sites about the rooster fish, do you have any photos as I found the sites to be sh!t.,

Dave

[reelcrazy]

I checked out the sites about the rooster fish, do you have any photos as I found the sites to be sh!t.,

Dave

Dave

No problems, the link below will take you to excellent information about these beautiful fish. Sorry I have no shots of my own, didn't want to risk soaking my digital in the surf.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLC,GGLC:1969-53,GGLC:en&q=roosterfish

[reelcrazy]

Tom

Excellent post, thank you for taking the time in sharing that info.

Now, I am off to go and get my facts straight to discuss this with the minister of war and finance ;)

Wes



Wes

My pleasure to share, at first my minister of war and finance was a little leery, but there's plenty to do here outside of wetting a line, she went on the Rainmaker tour (rainforest walk over suspension bridges), and being central to the area, we were ideally situated for day tours up and down the coast.

If you have kids, Palo Seco was ideal, you could just let them run freer than most places. One of the nicest parts about Tico's is that they truly love children.

The final arbiter of any place visited is whether you would return, for us it was yes, in a heartbeat, and we will.

Tom.

[Hoges]

I checked out the sites about the rooster fish, do you have any photos as I found the sites to be sh!t.,

Dave

Dave

No problems, the link below will take you to excellent information about these beautiful fish. Sorry I have no shots of my own, didn't want to risk soaking my digital in the surf.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLC,GGLC:1969-53,GGLC:en&q=roosterfish

Just type Rooster Fish into Google then click IMAGES and voila heaps of pictures...

http://images.google.com/images?q=rooster+fish&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images

Can see why they are called Rooster fish.

[el_carpo]

Great post reelcrazy! My brother has always wanted to take a trip down there. I'll have to show him this. Thanks! You really gave a detailed description and plenty of information. Very helpful! Thanks again and congratulations on a great trip!