I left the beautiful mountains of Costa Rica down some really stunning and curvy mountain roads until I hit the Pacific coast and then made a hard left to the south. Before I reach my destination, though, let’s make a quick stop at the Crocodile Bridge. It’s a section of Highway 34 over the Río Tarcoles.

My guide at the animal sanctuary, which I’ll visit later, said after the fact that the crocs hang out here because the locals used to feed them by throwing dead chickens over the side. I don’t know why on earth they would do that, other than just to attract tourists, but the crocs are now permanent residents.

Crocodiles aren’t the only reptiles that like to hang around either. I spotted this huge iguana from the Crocodile Bridge too. He looks almost big enough to eat a chicken.

Back on the long road to Uvita, it was roughly 40-50 miles of nothing but gigantic groves of palm trees. I’ve never seen so many! It’s pretty obvious, palm oil is the biggest export in these parts.

As I suspected, the weather along the coast is very hot and very humid. Luckily my hotel room in the tiny town of Uvita has some A/C. My first order of business was a no brainer, a nice refreshing swim in a waterfall. There are several waterfalls in the area, but the most popular and most developed seems to be Nauyaca.

Nauyaca is a two tiered waterfall. The hike in is about two miles, which shouldn’t be a big deal, but in this heat was kind of brutal. Holy crap, the water in the pool of the lower falls felt so good! I spent a long time here just relaxing and floating.

After my swim I took the short walk up to the upper falls to take a look. This place is just beautiful!

Time to hike back, but now it’s pouring rain. I wasn’t expecting this. Keeping my new, not waterproof camera dry was a bit of a challenge, but at least the rain helped turn the temperature down.

The next morning I started my day with a visit to the Alturas Wildlife Sanctuary. They take in all kinds of animals and birds, mostly from the illegal pet trade, but also rescues from unfortunate circumstances, with the goal of releasing them back into the wild. The ones they can’t release get to stay here.

This ocelot was being lazy and trying to hide. Him and his sister were found after their mother was hit by a car. His sister was eventually released to the wild, but this guy refused to hunt for himself and nearly starved, so he lives here now.

These spider monkeys were kept as pets and not treated very well for most of their lives. The police actually intervened on their behalf and brought them here. They’re 35 years old now.

As with most sanctuaries in this part of the world, the largest group of residents are birds. The occasional wild lizard comes for visits too though.

There were also a few capuchin monkeys in residence. The one in the picture below belonged to a drug dealer who got arrested crossing into Costa Rica illegally from Panama. The cops named him Pablo and brought him here.

Julietta, the parrot below, lived in a hotel lobby for most of her life. She speaks two languages and REALLY loves kids. When she saw the two little kids in our tour group, she got really excited and immediately climbed down to get as close as she good and started talking to them. She’s a sweety!

Here’s another type of spider monkey I had never heard of before, the yellow spider monkey.

These turtles were put in with the boars. They knew the turtles were safe in there because the water is too clean. The boars prefer dirty smelly water. Gross!

They also have a crocodile who won’t hunt. She was hiding under the water, but as soon as I got to the edge of the enclosure, she popped her head up for a pic. Thank you!

And finally, the resident sloth, who was unfortunately found hanging onto her dead mom when she was a baby. She was sleeping, but poked her head out for a second while I was there.

After leaving the Alturas Animal Sanctuary, the rain started falling with a vengeance again, which really slowed my day down. It wasn’t the rain itself, or my camera this time since I brought a plastic bag to protect it today (I learned my lesson yesterday), but the roads got really muddy and treacherous. The roads to a couple of the waterfalls I intended to visit just got too bad. I did make it to one of them, though, Cascada el Pavón. I think the rain chased everyone away because I had it all to myself. No need for swimming today though.

This area has some interesting archeological history as well. The pre-columbian people that lived here left behind some really cool artifacts. I started at a small museum at the Finca 6 museum to learn about what I was looking at.

The people here lived in very small chiefdoms. Not much is really known about them, but they left these polished stone spheres all over the region. They were made, they believe, with stone hammers and chisels and then polished with sand.

After exploring the museum it was time to explore the site and see some of those stone spheres out in the wild. As soon as I walked outside, though, torrential rain. As I was standing out in front of the museum contemplating getting soaking wet or waiting for it to lighten up, the security guard showed up and loaned me his huge umbrella. Faith in humanity is not completely lost.

As you can see, some are exposed and some are left partially buried to help preserve them. The only thing that is really known about them is that they were symbols of prestige, either for an individual like the chief, or for the village as a whole. These above and below were placed in front of huts of which only the foundations remain. All there is to see of them are grass covered mounds though.

This next group was called the alignments because of the way they were deliberately placed. They have no idea what the significance is though.

Finally I came to the last section which is just a mish mash of stones that were previously taken or stolen and have now been recovered and repatriated from locations all over the world.

I returned the umbrella back to the uncommonly nice security guard and thanked him before setting off. In addition to this site, there are supposedly three others in the area. I was able to figure out the location of two of them pretty easily so off I went. I couldn’t figure out where the third was unfortunately.

First up was El Silencio. Over 350 of these stone spheres have been found to date, but the largest of them, at 2.66 meters in diameter, is here at El Silencio. I drove up the rocky, muddy road until it got too muddy and I started to worry about getting stuck, then I walked over half a mile in that mud to see this huge stone sphere. Yes, I know I’m a little nutty, this has been well established.

Just down the highway was Batambal. It seemed closed so I let myself in through a hole in the gate. Shhh! Not much is known about this site either. I wish I did know more. Anyway, there was a foundation of some sort and four stone spheres here.

On my last day in Uvita the rain stopped and the sun brought the heat back. Time to check out the beach. Uvita is right next to another one of Costa Rica’s national parks, Parque Nacional Marino Ballena. It’s a crazy looking sand bar that stretches out into the ocean and spreads out into the shape of a whales tail. Humpback whales can be seen from here when they come here to breed in the summer. It’s still early so I didn’t see any this time, but that must be a really cool experience.

This next shot from the end of the whales tail gives some idea of what it looks like. That water is ridiculously warm too, by the way.

The walk out was nice, but you can’t really appreciate the shape from the ground. For that you need an aerial shot. I can’t do that, unfortunately, so I just pulled this one from the internet for show and tell.

Uvita has its own waterfall too just up the hill a short distance from town, Catarata Uvita. Rather than swim in the ocean in that super warm water on this super hot day, I thought it would be better to swim in this cool water underneath a beautiful waterfall. It was a good decision.

That ladder to the left of the waterfall is so you can climb up and then slide down the waterfall. I watched another guy do it and it looked like a really rough ride, so I didn’t try it myself. I was happy to just float and cool off.

That’s gonna wrap up my stay here in Uvita. I missed a couple of waterfalls due to all the rain and resulting mud, but overall it turned out to be a pretty fun stop. Tomorrow, I’ll be back on the road for more. Stay tuned…