SV/SOMF: Punta Leona and Bahia Drake

june 6th - june 12th
After leaving Bahia Ballena we just went 20 miles across Golfo de Nicoya to Punta Leona, this was a small anchorage, just a enought room for us, SV Windfall and SV Sunnyside up. We arrived around 4:30 pm and dropped the anchore. Hotel Punta Leona is an all-inclusive resort along the beach. The next day around 1pm Sam from SV Windfall asked if we all wanted to go in and see if there was a town around and what the resort was like. Well after an interesting beach landing in his dinghy and my foot getting stuck inside the dinghy as we were jummping out and of coarse I landed face first in the sandy water getting toppeled by a wave. Well luckely near the beach enterence there was a outside shower to try to get the sand off of me. We then walked around the resort which was big and beautiful, but empty, we went to the outside bar to see if we could get a drink, but we were told we had to have a wrist band, well there loss. So we just went to the little tienda near the beach and got a few drinks and snacks there. While we were paying for our purchases it started to pour down rain. And after we all booked it back to the dinghy, got back on the boat and stripped off our wet clothes we decieded to stay in for the rest of the night. The next day we tried to go snorkeling, but the surf was to rough and made the visiablility not so good.

We pulled up anchor around 5:30 am on June 8th to head 40miles down the coast to Quepos. After 8 and half hours of calm seas and some heavy rain we arrived in Quepos. We took a couple of laps around that anchorage and finding no shallow spots to anchor, and even if we did it would have been really rolly, and the marina Pez Vela was out of the question with their rates of $150 a night, we decied to move on. Next anchorage is Drakes Bay which is 51 miles, so we decied to slow down to about 3 knots and arrive in the morning. We arrived in Drakes Bay at 6am after a calm night, and set anchor in 20 feet of water that was a little rolly. The Osa Peninsula covers nearly 500 square miles and most is in the Corovado National Park. It is said that Francis Drake landed here in 1579. The story goes he attacked and stripped a boat named Nuestra Senora de la Concepion ( our lady of conception) in Esmeraldas Ecuador before reaching Bahia Drake. As a result Queen Elizabeth scored a fortune worth 350,000 British Pounds, or $140 million in todays money. Supposedly Drake then stopped at Isla del Cano and Bahia Drake to caulk up his ship "Golden Hinde" with the teak bark from the trees. There are mixed sourses saying where he acually anchored: Isla del Canos or Bahia Drake. And it is speculation that he had buried his gold here, unfortuently we did not find any gold, nor were we able to get any extra teak for the boat, but we still had a great time. The anchorage was a bit rolley so we tried to put out a stern anchor later that afternoon, but like always it did not hold very well, and we still rocked.

As you go up into an estuary off the bay there is a little dinghy (panga) dock for the fishermen, up through these beautiful jungles of plants and palms there is a resturant. Sure did look pretty, but the prices were not, $3.50 for a beer..wow!

These were some of the largest bamboo we have ever seen!

A cute little house overlooking the bay...and it is for sale, maybe our next adventure?

Jerry and Sam trying to help these guys get there truck started going down the hill...Nice try but, it did not start...thanks guys!

The neatest little planters made out of old tires!

While walking through town in some of the trees we got to see Mckaws, with their vibrant orange, red, yellow and green feathers it was spactacular!!

We had to cross this bridge to get to town druing high tide...hope there are no crocs below us!

So we all decided to take a horse back riding trip one afternoon. The price was $30 a person for 5 and half hours, we could not pass it up. Our guide Oly took us on the beach, up a very very steep rocky hill and down the other side. Yeah Jerry's looks great here, but his horse was the slowest he even named him "Old Spice" at first but by the end of the trip and his hoves hurting from all the rock, and no horse shoes he was calling him "Plantar Fasciitis".

Oly our guide and the rest of us, we could stand but bearly walk...We all went for some much needed cold beers in the middle of the trail, it was all we could do to get back up on the horse to finish.

Jerry wanted to stay there and wait for us on the way back, but he kept going!

Since the 1930s, hundreds of stone balls have been documented, ranging in size from a few centimetres to over two meters in diameter. Some weigh 16 tons. Almost all of them are made of granodiorite, a hard, igneous stone. These objects are monolithic sculptures made by human hands. Receant day archaeologistes do not know why they were made by the indiginous people.