Marina Papagayo, Costa Rica

SpringDay at rest after a fresh bath

Here in Papagayo, we are busy resting, SpringDay got a well deserved bath after her one hundred hour run. Resting at the pool, resting at the restaurant terrace, resting on the portuguese bridge and zooming in on Venus from end to end top to bottom and all over again. Two young captains tall and handsome in the pilot house preparing for departure; notice the seven computers on the flybridge. Watching the dockhands and deckhands liberating Venus was very entertaining, and so all this peaceful and relaxing resting took half the morning.  

Venus is pulling away

 Task du jour: there are many beaches to explore in Costa Rica and Skippers realize that their dinghies are too heavy for beaching. We need the very light kind that once you add foldable wheels to, it can be rolled up on shore and pushed back to sea effortlessly. Now we wish we didn’t have the big heavy Walker Bay that we have. They discover that the Apex factory is right here in Costa Rica, naturally we drive to their location, a three to four hour drive to meet with the owner and look at their product. Deal pending.  

We stopped for dinner and eat outside where a waist high chain link fence separates us from half a dozen iguanas.  We threw at them our shredded beets, lettuce and even fish leftovers, they really eat anything, but beets seemed to be their favorite.

 All and all, the drive inland was very disappointing, dry and unappealing roadsides, very uneven pavement, mixed with a lot of road construction and dangerous driving à la Costa Rican.  Not only do they not respect speed limits, they do not exercise any prudence when passing. Passing in curves, passing uphill, passing in any no passing zones! The sight of a possible head on collision happened more than once. Fourteen hours later this white knuckled back-seat passenger was happy to be back on SpringDay, totally exhausted and adrenaline depleted.  But the calm of the Marina and peaceful and quiet surroundings soon made me forget about the dreadful drive.   

Racoon hiding in rock wall of marina

View from my bedroom porthole - Love it!

It's really too bad more people don't stop here, it's a lovely marina and hotel and the personnel is at your beck and call. The closest town is 25 minutes away, seclusion may not be what everybody wants. You definitely need a car to go explore, 

The dechands even wash the ramp and handrails

Playa del Coco, Costa Rica

Foot cleaning/shower station

I need to mention how stringent the laws are about checking in and out of the country. We first approached Papagayo marina one week ago, but we could not moor without proper papers i.e. immigration stamped papers. We are told to go to Coco Beach  45 minutes away by boat where a pre-arranged Immigration appointment is made.  There, there is no dock and no dinghy dock, just a beach to land on. We anchored and got in Bill's dinghy, beached it without securing it (can't believe we did that) theft is very prevalent in Costa Rica. The immigration officer drove 70 km on a Friday night to accommodate us, our crew Mike and Louann could not leave the country without seeing the immigration officer.  Worried that the dinghy would get stolen, we send Tomas back to the beach just in time to see that the dinghy was about to float away and the surf was beating it and filling it with sand. The next day we discovered panga service from boat to shore and back for $25 a day.  They know how to land it carefully on the beach, timing it just right, stern facing the beach, hovering and waiting for the right wave, no one allowed to move, the "panguero" raises the motor just at the right time, the surf carries the panga, it touches ground, then an order to get out in 2 ft of water is given.  Immigration papers, Check!  Now we have to wait until Monday to have proper papers from the Port Captain... Check!

Papers in hand we return to Marina Papagayo.  Paperwork is handed to manager, copies of everything are made....Check! Oh wait something is missing he says, we need your exit papers from Coco Beach. What? Even though we were anchored for four nights, it was necessary to return to the port Captain and obtain exit papers. The manager offers Don and Bill to drive them to the Port Captain's office to get the "Zarpe" or departure document. In other words, in Costa Rica, you need papers every time the boat moves,  from marina to marina, from beach to beach. It's really strange. The immigration officer gets audited, the marina manager gets audited, immigration is so controlled that no one dares disobeying the laws.

Screwup. The immigration officer asks how long we intend to stay in Costa Rica. Two weeks. To which she says, all right I will put down one month, we think nothing of it. The plan was and is to continue on to Panama.  But by now, SpringDay and Ana Mae are feeling the effects of perhaps rushing too much and not spending enough time in one place, and that the east coast by June 1st seems more like an impossibility now. It is decided we are slowing down.  We inform the manager that we would like to leave our boats here in Papagayo while we return home for a few weeks. He says but you have to leave the country in 25 days, your papers say one month.  Then you have to be gone 90 days before you can reenter Costa Rica. Don and Bill tried to have it changed but to no avail. The manager mentions that there is a way to stay longer.  Buy a two year visa for the boat at 900$ !!
700$ for Ana Mae. Ours is more expensive because the boat is incorporated. In order to obtain said visa we need papers sealed by the state of Washington for february of 2014. Our Seattle lawyer is called and papers are fed ex'd in the next three days. So 900$ plus lawyer fee, plus 100$ per sealed document by the State of Washington. It never ends...  Had we been informed of the importance of choosing between one, two or three month stay maximum, all of this would have been avoided.

Paula, immigration officer, undoubtedly the sweetest officer the world has ever known. She could not have known that we were to change our minds about the length of our stay in Costa Rica, she felt so badly about the whole ordeal. 

We will have to put that behind us and relax...

Thinking of you...