By the time we had settled in at our Osa Peninsula hotel, it was mid-afternoon and we started looking around for something to do. It was hot, and we didn’t have enough time before dinner for a full-scale expedition somewhere (even if that had been an option, which it wasn’t – excursions all took place in the mornings, to avoid the hottest part of the day). But we were itchy to start adventuring, after two days of mostly sitting around on planes. Kayaking was the obvious choice.

We dumped our bags in our room at the inn (reached by a flight of about eighty – no joke – outdoor stairs), changed into swimsuits and sprayed ourselves liberally with reef-friendly sunscreen, and we were ready to go. Grabbing kayaks from the dock couldn’t have been easier; we just sauntered up to the hotel employee working the area, and we were paddling off into Drake Bay in moments.

It does. not. get. more. gorgeous.

Longtime readers may remember that I am a summer person. I love the sun and am almost never uncomfortably hot. Steve isn’t a sun-worshipper, but hey – in February, mid-eighties feels like pure luxury even if you usually prefer cool temps. Or at least, it does for him.

As we were paddling around, exploring the nooks and crannies of Drake Bay, it occurred to me that even though we are avid paddlers, I don’t think either of us had ever kayaked in another country before. (I may have, one time, in Mexico when I was twenty – but I’m pretty sure I snorkeled instead that afternoon.) So – our first international kayaking! Exciting stuff.

(Don’t mind the big water droplet on my hat. I was experimenting with my new waterproof camera.)

Drake Bay was gorgeous and the sunshine felt incredible, but eventually we had poked around as much as we wanted to – and there were a few bigger swells as some of the larger boats passed us by, which made Steve a bit nervous, since we weren’t wearing life jackets. I’m a little more relaxed about that sort of thing; I figure if I fall off a sit-on-top kayak into deep water what’s the big deal, really, I can swim and I’m not going to hit my head on anything… but his point was fair and I wanted to honor his comfort levels, so we turned back toward the hotel. I hadn’t seen anyone else out kayaking, so I mused aloud that I’d noticed what looked like a little river spurring off from the smaller bay where our hotel was located, and what about exploring that?

Ahhhhh. Deep green waters, hanging bridge – now this is classic Costa Rica, right here.

We paddled upriver, mindful of the receding tides and on the lookout for crocodiles (didn’t see any – this time). As we slowly meandered along the shoreline, Steve stopped paddling abruptly and pointed excitedly at a tree on the bank.

OH YES, MY FRIENDS, THAT IS A TOUCAN.

I am a gigantic bird nerd, as everyone knows (because I literally talk about birds all the time, ALL THE TIME) but I’d never seen a truly exotic bird in the wild. This was a huge treat! The only thing that kept me from falling out of my kayak was the knowledge that we were paddling in croc-inhabited waters.

Seriously, does kayaking get better than this? Between Drake Bay and the river off our hotel grounds, we had a treasure trove to explore. We reluctantly turned our kayaks downstream and headed back to the hotel once the river narrowed and became impassible.

As sad as we were to hang up the kayaks, we had a week of exciting adventures ahead of us – so the first afternoon’s adventuring boded very well indeed. And the day got even better from there: after we’d washed off the sunscreen and gotten into presentable outfits for dinner, we wandered back down to the previously deserted dining pavilion and found it hopping with our fellow hotel guests, who were all chatting in a group. Steve and I got ourselves drinks and started to dissect our afternoon’s adventure between ourselves, but were quickly roped into conversation by a gregarious hotel guest who explained that the dining was communal and everyone bonded over dinner, and she was adopting us. She asked what we had planned for the next day, and we told her we were going scuba diving. At that, our fellow hotel guest perked up and told us she had to introduce us to the couple we’d be diving with, because they had been wondering who the other divers on the boat would be. She gestured to a man who seemed to be about our age, and told him she’d found his dive buddies. He immediately broke into a huge grin, and introduced himself as “Garry – and my other half is Donna.” Garry and Donna (who quickly joined her husband) had eighty dives under their belts, which blew our minds. We confessed that we were newbie divers, planning to do our certification dives for our open water course on this trip, and we hoped we wouldn’t hold them back too much. They laughed and assured us, kindly but obviously sincerely, that they hadn’t been diving for almost three years between life and COVID, and that a nice shallow, easy dive sounded like exactly what they were looking for, and we’d be very well-matched indeed. The dinner gong sounded and we followed our new dive buddies to the group table, where we sat until everyone else had gone to bed, chatting furiously and discovering that we were exactly aligned on everything from cocktail preferences to salty senses of humor. The next day’s dive suddenly felt much less scary, and much more approachable with our new best diving friends.

Did they survive their first day of scuba diving? Check back next Friday!