Tortuguero to Moin by Boat: Windy, Wetter and Wicked

Lessons imparted from a winding boat ride out of Costa Rica’s Tortuguero

***This post was guest written by my wonderful sister and Costa Rican travel companion, Flavia S.

Alas, after three days in Costa Rica’s Tortuguero (described in this blog), it was time to leave. Emboldened by our short stay in this tropical sandbar, we were now empowered wildlife experts, familiar with all the local customs, and wiser from our time in Tortuguero… or were we? Like any good teacher, Tortuguero gave us a little test at the end of our stay, as if to say, remember what you’ve learnt here!

Having arrived to Tortuguero by boat from La Pavona, we decided to leave by the only other option available: the tourist boat to Moin. After all, it seemed the logical choice for our next destination: Cahuita. It involved a 3-hour, straight boat ride, followed by a short taxi and only one bus at the end, instead of 3–4 bus rides meandering through the interior of Costa Rica.

The price of it, at $35, did not seem exorbitant to us, especially given its direct route to Moin, a port on the Caribbean coast. From there, a quick taxi to Limon, a major city and the namesake and main hub in Limon province, and then a bus to Cahuita. I would soon find out the reason why only tourists take the Moin boat.

Ignorant optimism

The night before the boat ride, we were full of ignorant optimism and lots of expectation: it would finally stop raining and we would have a wonderful, sun-soaked ride. My sister was going to be doing some work on the boat; I was going to read my guidebook and research things to do for the next 3.5 weeks. Throughout the journey, we would occasionally stop to look for animals, and we would awww and ahhh at various endemic animal species. In our ignorant optimism, we had forgotten the number one lesson that Tortuguero had imparted us:

Lesson #1: It RAINS in the RAINforest

Reality was a harsh awakening on the morning of the boat ride: as usual for Tortuguero, it was pouring down rain. But remembering the boat from La Pavona, we still had hope: of course, it would be a boat similar to that one — okay, we wouldn’t be able to see as many animals, but the boat would have a canvas roof, the captain would lower the rolled-up canvas sides, and we would still be under relative dryness. It wouldn’t be like our canoe tour the other day, with no sides and no shelter. After all, they wouldn’t do that to tourists on a 3.5-hour boat ride… would they?

The captain and the boat

Our first clues about the boat ride should have been our first few interactions with the captain. The first thing he did was give us thick, rubber ponchos. He then led us through the streets of Tortuguero to his boat, traversing the whole town barefooted and not slowing down for huge puddles, instead bravely ploughing straight into them, and expecting us hiking boot-cladded tourists to follow straight into them. We didn’t of course, knowing that across the corner there was a drier pathway, but in our detour we almost lost our captain — in retrospect, would that have been such a terrible thing? (Ah, hindsight is a wonderful thing).

Once reunited, we followed him like lost sheep desperate for shelter, looking eagerly to docks for our nice, sheltered, dry boat… And we walked, and walked, past all the canvas-covered boats going to La Pavona, all the way on what seemed an endless walk… to the boats at the very end of the docks, which we assumed were spare boats for local use, which were soaked from the pouring rain, and mostly importantly definitely did not have the sides covered… or the top for that matter, apart from a mockingly small canvas patch that was desperately ill-suited for any attempt at protection.

We looked despairingly as the captain started wiping the seats clean (so that our bums may be only damp while the rest of our bodies were free to get a real soaking), while desperately trying to bury our electronics and books in the furthest (and we hoped, driest) reaches of our rucksacks. We looked despairingly as the captain started to put our rucksacks in bin bags to protect them on the trip, having a hard time believing that this was our ride for a 3-hour journey in the pouring rain. And we looked despairingly at the captain when he answered our hopeful ‘Is this our boat?’ with a ‘No refunds’. And as stubborn girls (see this post for another story on stubbornness), for us no refunds equated to two very cold, very wet girls 3 hours later in Moin.

Boats: what we were expecting (above) vs what we got (below). We were extremely busy burying our phones in the driest confines of our bags, and very neglectfully forgot to take our own photo!

Another boat similar to ours, although the canvas top on ours was much smaller than this one.

Travelling companions

Apparently there were a lot of stubborn people in Tortuguero that day, as five other optimistic (or should I say foolish?) tourists braved the weather and accompanied us into our wet, wet journey. The lucky people at the back were somewhat shielded from the horizontal rain by the bodies of the people in front of them, their very own human shields, i.e., us.

The captain, perhaps buoyed by the fact that he’d somehow got passengers paying to be drowned like rats in the rain, was remarkably cheerful, his enthusiasm not dampened by the misery of his passengers (puns in this sentence intended).

I felt most sorry for the poor dog next to us, wrapped in a plastic sheet, looking miserable, wet and with big puppy eyes (he was not a puppy) as if to beg us: I want to be warm and dry. I felt least sorry for the dog’s owner, who decided to let her other dog wander between our feet and absconded responsibility for that dog, actually giving the dog’s lead to another passenger nearby (they were not travelling together).

But mostly, we were together with our thoughts. It is on this journey that I decided that some people definitely should not be dog owners or boat captains. It is on this journey that my sister thought of the name for her travel blog, Stubborn Travel, and the title of her first entry there, Wild wet… and worth it (the worth it part referring to Tortuguero, not this boat ride). And it is on this journey that the captain mistook our silence for boredom, and decided to prolong the experience by occasionally slowing down to look for wildlife. As horizontal rain turned to vertical, I thought: We had better see some spectacular animals, or else…

And indeed, towards the end of the journey, when even the rain had become exhausted and slowed down to a trickle, my murderous intents towards the captain were somewhat quelled. The downpour slowed and then stopped altogether, and the wildlife came out. In particular, our captain deviated to a large lagoon, which he said was known for its wildlife. It was at this point that we redeemed ourselves in Tortuguero’s eyes: we might have failed to remember its first lesson, but we didn’t forget its second.

Lesson #2: What is the best way to see if a caiman is hungry? You put your hand in the water

As we turned into the lagoon, we saw what looked like a caiman. Immediately, we made sure that our hands and arms were inside the boat. It’s not a caiman, said the captain, it’s a crocodile.

Now, you may be asking, what is the difference between a caiman and a crocodile? I certainly wondered that question before arriving in Costa Rica. Let me answer you in very scientific terms: caimans (at least in our experience) are mini-crocodiles. By that I mean that while the caimans we saw in Tortuguero’s canals were maybe 1–1.5 metres in length, the crocodile we saw near Moin looked to be twice the size and weight (and with twice the hunger?). The crocodile stood still tanning in the sun (yes, by that time that yellow thing in the sky had made an appearance!), as if to say leave me alone, I’m enjoying the rays of sun on my skin for a change. It seemed totally indifferent to the noise of the motor.

The crocodile’s stillness must have emboldened the captain to attempt an approach (and in the process, forgetting lesson #2). Closer we went. And closer. And closer, until we were at arm’s length from the crocodile (of course, we did not test the distance with our own arms, as Tortuguero had taught us its second lesson well). I looked anxiously at the crocodile — still immobile. I start to think, Maybe it’s dead?, turning around to glance at the captain.

Suddenly the boat reverses rapidly, and I look in front of us. The crocodile has moved a step, as if to say okay, now I’m warm but hungry, time to catch some dinner. I’ve never seen a boat reverse as fast as we did that day.

Apparently, the captain had not forgotten lesson #2 afterall.

Moin

Now that we were reanimated by the encounter with the crocodile, we reverted to being children, asking ourselves Are we there yet? every two seconds. Although the rain had stopped, as soon as the crocodile had moved, the sun had retreated. After coming out of the meditative torpor that we had retreated to for most of our journey, we were now very aware that we were extremely wet and extremely cold. Water had seeped inside the ponchos and our bras and underwear were wet. The insides of our hiking boots had not been spared, rain having seeped inside them, as if we had stepped in that puddle before the boat ride in Tortuguero. The driest part of ourselves were probably our bums, having sat on damp (not entirely wet) plastic chairs for the journey, our weight on them having kept the water out.

Then, excitement builds. We start seeing other boats (although annoyingly, all had canvas sides and proper roofs). The passengers of those boats wave, but we don’t wave back — their clothes are all dry, the sheltered little brats. We have a few false alarms — we see buildings and a few docks, but disappointingly we don’t stop at them.

Finally, our boat passes one last dock, and then starts reversing. Taxi drivers start screaming at us, asking where we are going and if we need a ride. The final bump telling us we’ve hit the dock is exhilarating. With barely a glance back to the captain, we get out of the boat and onto dry land.

Although my sister has to go back to look for her glasses, which she has somehow lost during the trip. Perhaps the alligator ate them. That is the start of our quest to find glasses in Costa Rica and Panama, but that’s a story for another day (which I’m sure my sister will discuss in another blog post). In our excitement to get away, we forget the most basic rule of traveling: take a photo to document the experience. Alas, our drenched selves don’t care.

But at least we avoided the meandering buses through the interior of Costa Rica. In fact, we avoided buses altogether that day, for the first and last time in our travels through Costa Rica. On the taxi to Limon, we looked deeply into each other’s eyes, melded our minds, and agreed the unthinkable: to take a taxi all the way to Cahuita. Our stubbornness had been beaten into submission at last by our wetness.

***

Postscript: Of course, it is now obvious that we were just unlucky. After I arrived back home, I did some research about the boat to Moin, and two things became clear:

1. I should have done this research before my trip, not after

2. Most people undertaking this trek through the canals between Tortuguero and Moin have an amazing time, and travel in covered boats (such as the ones we saw on our final approach to Moin)

As I’ve been writing this post, I’ve thinking of wise lessons that I can impart to others. And if you’ve read this far, you’ll be surprised to know that the lesson I’ve settled on is not ‘Do not take the boat to Moin’. Instead, it is ‘Check what sort of boat you’re taking, remembering that it RAINS in the RAINforest!’. It seems Tortuguero has succeeded in imprinting lesson #1 on my brain.

And as I sit here on my sofa, dry, warm and somewhat incredulous, I find myself remembering the journey fondly. Do I regret the experience? Not at all: it was a windy, wet, but wicked adventure. And it makes for an even better story.

However, I do regret not taking a photo of that boat.

By: Flavia S