Dry tropical forest, sand thieves and the seven-hour snake

Those jumping crabs

Despite our Mirador San Jose being described as a tropical paradise, the beach has seemed a little less golden sand and more volcanic grey. There’s also a steady trade in sand stealing by groups who are presumably constructing some of the other developments further south or north. A truck rolls up, everybody waves at you, then it stops, at least six men jump out and start shovelling sand into the back. There’s a chap on top spreading it out as it’s thrown up. They work like demons and then pile back in and disappear.

The section of beach right in front or the Mirador is left alone, but at each side there are excavations where sand has been extracted. There are soft cliffs along the shore, so removing beach sand is likely to cause some quick erosion in a winter storm.

Today, the weather was sunnier and so we drove south to a well-known beach called Playa Los Frailes (quite why monks would want to have a beach is a mystery). It is a lovely beach with golden sand and safe swimming (a little like Lulworth Cove) and we had fun swimming in the breaking waves.

The area is a nature reserve and surrounded by Dry Tropical Forest. This looks very much like dead trees, but when it rains, the whole place breaks into leaf and flower. It’s quite an interesting habitat – small stunted trees interspersed with bushes and cactus. The cactus is interesting. It grows high, straight and is quite thin. A section had been broken and, running through the middle of the succulent spike is a hardcore centre a bit like a bamboo cane shoved through the middle.

We walked up to the headland and then down into the next bay, where the sand is darker and the sea more dangerous. The big attraction here were the jumping crabs, which Tom delighted in photographing. He wanted me to herd a few across some very slippery rocks to make them jump.

Slipping on a wet rock and breaking a leg isn’t the only danger. In the forest there’s something called a seven-hour snake and you can probably guess why it’s called that. Get bitten and you have seven hours to live. Tom seemed quite relaxed, he thought that was plenty of time to get to hospital. I was wishing I’d put my wellies on.

We ate lunch at Margaritas on the way back to Mirador San Jose and I had prawns (camarones not gambas) in breadcrumbs. They were very good and I had the same meal (more or less) every day thereafter: prawns, rice, fried banana and a small side salad, which we don’t eat in case it’s been washed in contaminated water.