Cuajiniquil de la Cruz (part 1)

 You thought I was done with the Costa Rica trip and on to another adventure.

Wrong!!

Still traveling Costa Rica. 

Ok, let me clarify....still traveling in my head and my heart, but I am at home now.

One can not do justice to this beautiful county by just posting one or two blogs about it.......wait I hear you saying:

"Camellia, you posted more thant just one or two".

Well yes!

Technically, you are correct. 

But this is my blog and I can post as many articles about Costa Rica as I want. Especially when I have a ton of photos to share.

Anyway moving forward.

As you can tell from the title of this post, we are in Cuajinquil.

To get there from  Cañas Castilla, it is about a 32 km drive (~20 miles). Naturally a few photos along the way was necessary.

Cuajiniquil is a small fishing village on the Pacific coast of northwest Costa Rica.  This little town is located about 10 km from the Pan-American Highway, 56 km northwest of Liberia, and 50 km southwest of Nicaragua.  The coast of northwest Costa Rica is one of the richest marine areas in Central America.  About 2,000 people live in and around Cuajiniquil.  Many people make a modest living by fishing from shore, fishing from small boats near the coast, or working as crewmembers on larger boats.  Fishermen fish from small boats using nets, hook and line, and spear guns.  Their harvest includes lobster, octopus, and red snapper.  Long-liners travel far from shore and extract pelagic species, mostly dolphin fish and thresher sharks.

 First sighting a this location were the cats. They obviously knew this was the perfect place to be, after all there was no shortage of fish in this area.

  

And besides the cats....the turkey vultures had also found "their" idyllic spot.

You might be wondering, and then, maybe not....why are we at this fishing village.  

 

Well....we are here to catch the ferry. 

 

This particular ferry, which by the way is a semi medium sized fishing boat with enough room for seven people to sit and three people to stand, is going to take us to one of the Mangrove forests in Costa Rica.

 

Naturally on the way to the mangroves I had to take several photos. 

But first stop, before reaching the mangorve forest, was this " little" contaiment pen in the bay where a huge...let me restate that word HUGE grouper resided. 

When I say huge I mean somewhere around a couple of hundred pounds HUGE!!

The captain of the ferry dangled some fish for Mr. Grouper, so that I could take some photos. But  because Mr. Grouper being a speedy little, big, guy and the waters not being clear, I was not really able to capture him on photo. 

Actually there were two pens in this area. One holding a HUGE male, grouper and the other holding a semi normal female, grouper. The purpose for this set up was to study the reproduction cycle of the Grouper species.

Next stop was going to be the mangrove forest, but on route I clicked as we flew on the water. 

My original goal was to create one post for this area but, with the number of photos I took as well the research behind them, this post will also become a split in two post.

 

Therefore, if you are intersted in finding out what mangrove forests are all about...stick around for the next post :)