We landed on San Lucas Island yesterday. This is the location of a prison colony dating back to 1885. It was run along the lines of Devil’s Island in French Guyana or the prisons in Australia. The prison was closed in 1991, but the infrastructure is still a century old. We walked into the cells where the prisoners were held and the lack of light alone would have killed me. Bats and bugs abounded inside the buildings; the bats would scurry about and flit away from you as you moved around the prison. There was a poster about the San Lucas prison and Barry thought you might like to read about the place. There is a lot of the history of Costa Rica that has taken place on this island. The structures of the main administrative building as well as a church are still in place. There is a huge wide walkway from the water up to the main building and it made me think of men in white suits with Panama hats strolling up and down. It could be a good location from a movie from that era.
We walked along the jungle paths and listened to the howler monkey’s do their stuff. They make amazing sounds, a deep woofing roar, quite unnerving actually. Barry was determined to try and get some fruit off of a tree and dragged a 10 meter long branch around until he found a piece of fruit he could knock down. There were mangoes, bananas, coconuts and some other weird fruit that we couldn’t figure out. You wouldn’t go hungry on this island.
There is a floating restaurant about 100 meters from the old prison. We sat on the deck last night and had fresh fish as the sun set. What a gorgeous view. There are 4 other boats in the bay and we had met 3 of the other boats before so we able to visit with them for awhile. This is quite different from Mexico as there as a lot fewer boats down here so you get to know each other pretty quickly. Most of them are going to be taking there time and staying in Central America this season, so once we leave this area we will not likely see them again. We are headed to another beach today and will take the ferry into Putarenas tomorrow; hopefully we will be able to find an internet cafe this afternoon and you will be able to read about this set of adventures.