Costa Rica’s tourism industry prides itself on its wildlife: crocodiles, sea turtles, parrots and iguanas. But monkeys are the undisputed stars of the show. This is the most ubiquitous monkey, the capuchin, which we saw at least once every day. This one was making a break for it across the lawn in front of Ylang Ylang.

The Cauchins who slept in a tree near our dome would leave every morning at sunrise and return just before sunset. Every evening we would come back from the beach in time to watch them jump from tree to tree, scamper along branches, sometimes drop onto our roof to see if we were giving away bananas (we weren’t) and then usually settle in small clusters of two or three about 100 ft up in a nearby tree. I thought of it as our own private monkey show.

The capuchins were fun to watch because they were energetic, agile, and at times cheeky, but the howler monkeys made a sound that has to be heard to be believed. I hope to have a video of the howlers up soon. (Update: howler video is up.)

When I wasn’t watching the monkeys, my second favorite pastime was watching the pelicans fishing just off shore. They would sweep backwards and forwards along the beach for about an hour at a time, gliding, circling and finally diving for the fish. Even with a pair of binoculars it was a little difficult to tell what their success rate was, but I figured it was somewhere in the region of 50/50.

Other birds we saw included royal terns, zone-tailed hawks and, in a nearby nature reserve, a crested caracara and some beautiful blue-crowned motmots. The star of the bird show, though they were so high up my photos are not even worth uploading, was a group of five Scarlet McCaws, probably the most beautiful birds I have ever seen in the wild.

Then there are the animals that seemed exotic at first and soon turned out to be such frequent visitors to our dome that they became as normal as banana pancakes for breakfast. This was our resident agouti, who would stop by two or three times a day to crunch noisily on fruit and seeds.

And you don’t have to walk far in Costa Rica to see an iguana.

Related:
Montezuma Holiday (EiNY)
The View From My Hammock (EiNY)

While we were waiting for our flight at JFK the other week I noticed a copy of Forbes magazine’s “Lives of the Very Rich.” The special issue contains edited versions of a number of chapters from All The Money In The World. Sofie had a good laugh at page 22: Lucky to be Me by Paul Berger.

March 4, 2008. Approx 3pm. Temp about 85F. Probably reading All the Pretty Horses.

Related:
Montezuma Holiday (EiNY)

It’s been a couple of years since Sofie and I took a holiday without friends or family—seven years since we took a beach holiday—so you can imagine how sweet it was to spend one week in the village of Montezuma, Costa Rica (pop. 500, plus tourists). As you can see, it’s not such a big place.

Since we never had a chance to take a honeymoon when we were married in 2003 (a story for another time) and since our anniversary was February 26, we decided to splurge on the Ylang Ylang Beach Resort. Ylang Ylang is a ten minute walk along the beach from Montezuma, set among tropical gardens about a hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean. This is by far the largest building on the complex, a bar/restaurant with a yoga studio/library upstairs.

Ylang Ylang sleeps a total of about forty people in a range of accommodation from large, fancy tents (called jungalows) to simplex and duplex apartments. We stayed in the most remote simplex apartment (Dome 6) set in the jungle about two minutes from the beach. Our balcony caught the sun every morning and almost every afternoon we would head down to a couple of large hammocks by the sea.

Ylang Ylang offers what you might call jungle luxury. The dome’s shuttered doors and window are open to the elements. There is no air conditioning, just a fan above the bed. The dome-shaped apartment magnifies every sound in the jungle—birds, monkeys, cicadas. While we were in Montezuma the sea was unusually rough with waves, eight to ten feet tall at times, pounding the shore day and night. Some nights it sounded as though D-Day was being reenacted on the balcony outside. A troop of about fifteen capuchin monkeys, who slept in a tree nearby, woke us every morning at daybreak (5.45 am) as they grabbed a noisy breakfast and headed out for the day. (When we returned to New York I could not believe how quiet it is—in this corner of Brooklyn at least.) The beds are hard but comfortable. Inexplicably, there is no bathroom door.

Breakfasts and lunches are served by the ocean. Dinners are candlelit under the stars. Sofie took yoga classes in the shaded open air studio facing the ocean almost every morning and we went for a few walks along the beach and into Montezuma. But with the exception of a half-day trip to a nearby nature reserve, we did very little other than sleep, eat and read. It really was bliss and I would highly recommend Costa Rica, and Ylang Ylang in particular, to anyone who fancies a semi-adventurous, romantic week the sea.

Next: Monkeying Around Montezuma

Related:
Montezuma Tourist Information (Nicoyapeninsula.com)
Ylang Ylang Beach Resort
The View From My Hammock (EiNY)