The journey to Drake Bay

Ted. They say that nothing worthwhile is easy and that certainly applies to our effort to visit Drake Bay. For starters, one cannot drive there in a rental car. For some strange reason, the rental car companies forbid you to ford rivers in their vehicles. 

So, one must drive as close as possible, which ends up being the small fishing village called Sierpe which lies on the banks of a river with the same name. After making arrangements for long term parking, we walked down to the dock and climbed aboard the local version of a water taxi for the "one hour" trip. 

As we headed down stream, bound for the Pacific Ocean, I told Judy that I hoped I wouldn’t end up like Humphrey Bogart in “The African Queen,” dragging the boat through leech infested waters. Well, we did take a narrow short cut through a mangrove swamp, we really did see crocodiles along the shore and got up close to a troop of squirrel monkeys before the river dumped out into the ocean. 

This is where the ride got interesting. The surf in the afternoons can get a little rough and, with 10-12’ swells, our little 30’ boat felt like a tennis ball in a washing machine. No, I didn’t snap any photos at this point because I had a death grip on my seat. We cruised along the coast for a while and then entered the calmer waters of Drake Bay. That was a good thing because there is no dock for the village. Our boat road the surf in and when we were about 25’ from shore, spun around and backed up onto the beach. Two locals held the boat in place while we jumped over the transom into knee deep water and, like Douglas MacArthur, waded to dry land. Again, I was busy trying not to fall, so no photos. Judy assures me, though, that I looked magnificent!

Drake Bay as seen from our hotel