48-Hour Froggy

On 1st December 2023, I made a very conscious, and very necessary, choice: I went clean and sober.

I quit alcohol and all prescription and recreational drugs (confession: apart from caffeine).

This had been 30 years in the making.

As my friend says; 'Sometimes you just get sick and tired of being sick and tired'.

Before December 2023, I'd never travelled sober, bar childhood holidays.

With the money I started saving, I realised I could go on better, more adventurous holidays...and actually be present during them — be aware of everything I was experiencing. Not drunk or high, or both.

I realised I could have lifechanging experiences, rather than 'quick trips in the sun' and injuries I had no explanation for.

It's early days.
My sober trips include The Gower Peninsula (Wales), Cambodia and Vietnam, Costa Rica, and there's an upcoming trip to Tenby (Wales again).

I'll start with what first spun my head this summer, then decide where this blog goes from there.
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I landed in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, after 19 hours travelling, from London (with a 5.5 hour stopover in France).

I was knackered and incoherent.

I managed to get some words out in roughly the right order when I approached the reception desk at the hotel.

I showed my passport, got a room key, and have a vague recollection of dumping my suitcase, eating, then passing out for about 12 hours.

Next day I woke up and had a mooch about the hotel, had the first of many portions of rice and beans for breakfast, and took in the humidity.

I knew I was meeting my tour group (a bunch of perfect strangers) that night, so asked about it at reception.

I was pointed to a laminated sheet: 6 names of random people + a tour guide.
We were to meet at 6pm, in the lobby.

I carried on mooching, sat by the pool, got in, then jumped straight back out again upon realising that it was ball-shrinkingly freezing.

It started raining...a bit...then it absolutely pissed it down.
Proper, chunky, tropical rain.
And it didn't stop until evening — so I read, on a sofa in the lobby.

I met my group and they were a decent bunch: 4 Americans (mother and daughter, and two single women), 2 Canadians (married couple), and 1 Costa Rican guide.

We had dinner together, we chilled for a bit, we discussed what we'd each like to see on this holiday, then bed.

To clarify, there was one thing I wanted to see above all.
I'd wanted to see this little critter since David Attenborough marvelled at its tiny little (but deadly) frame, on screen, when I was just 6 years old: the fire extinguisher red poison dart frog, with electric blue legs.

That's the one thing I travelled 19 hours to see — that and sloths.

If I saw them, I'd die happy.

The next day, we set off in a minibus.
We were going to Tortuguero, AKA Land of Turtles — waterways winding through rainforest, with beaches where, at certain times of year, turtles nest.

Along the way, we stopped for one of many breakfast casados — gallo pinto with eggs, chicken, pork (any kind of protein) and plantain.

We got back in the minibus, got maybe 500 yards further along, and abruptly pulled over.
There was a sloth in a roadside tree.

It was quite a way up and was a mass of grey, matted fur, clinging to a skinny branch.

It wasn't the best view we'd get, as we'd see many more on our trip, but it was sloth all the same.

When we got off the minibus, we dragged our stuff down a muddy, stony embankment and it was hauled onto an open-sided boat for us.

And then we were away — off into winding waterways, with rainforest springing up all around us on both sides...a kind of benign Heart of Darkness trip.

We arrived at a sort of concrete dock, got off the boat, and vast green garden was in front of us.
Green and red macaws screeched, and flitted from tree to tree.
Howler monkeys, well...howled.

We went down a long path, to an open plan reception/dining area, were given keys, and went off to different rooms.

They were sort of beach shacks. Not luxury, but not shabby.
Kind of rustic. Wooden frontage, tin roof.

In the middle of the bed was a green towel that had been fashioned into a turtle. Cute.

We had lunch, as a group, then boarded a boat to head back onto the waterways.

We were taken to a little riverside village — kind of in the middle of nowhere, but with a school, shops, bars....and tons of knick-knack shops (wooden turtles, chintzy keyrings, fridge magnets etc), ready to sell stuff to eager tourists like us.

Best of all, the village had tons of cats wandering around — all friendly, not feral. Perfect for an ailurophile like me.

We went back as it got dark, had dinner together, got freaked out by moths the size of two hands, then retired for the night.

I say retired for the night.
I get the giddy excitement of a child when I'm in tropical environments, so I wandered the paths with my torch, trying to get a glimpse of all the creatures making noises: a chorus of glass frogs, cicadas, crickets, toads, and various other things that I don't know the names of.

The next day, after an early breakfast, we set off on the boat again on a nature-spotting tour — seeing ring kingfishers, anhingas, caimans, toucans, proboscis bats (which all rest in a neat line, one in front of the other, on tree trunks).

But my moment was to come about an hour after that.

On the site of our accommodation was a patch of rainforest set aside specifically for tourists like us.

As it had continued to piss down (as I said, tropical rain, so all good) and the forest would be full of shin-high puddles, we all donned ponchos and wellies.

We had a guide, called Andrea, along with our group guide, Aryeri (the 'y' is pronounced as a 'j').

We were in the forest all of 2 minutes, when Andrea spotted it.
All of 4cm long, bold as brass, sat on some dead leaves — the one thing I'd come to see: a bright red poison dart frog.

It shot off before I got a picture, but I'd seen it.

And we were to see several more of them, all among the leaf litter, hopping back n forth.

From never having seen one in my life, apart from on a screen, I was surrounded by them, in real life.

And I managed to get the shot of a lifetime, which I'll stick below.

That was it.
I was happy.

Within 48 hours of landing in Costa Rica, I'd seen the one thing (mutiple times) I'd come to see.

If I saw nothing else on the whole trip, it would still be considered a success.

I waited 37 years to see that little frog.

And I saw it present and sober.

Unforgettable.