Maryly and I got up early again to go surfing before the wind came back. We had another quick snack (good enough for breakfast for me, but a "real breakfast" is still coming). This time when we went out to Mariela's Surfing Beach, Paloma came with us. We played in the surf and worked our way up the beach looking for the mouth of a nearby Mangrove swamp.
Maryly got dumped out of her boat at one point and pulled her boat up on the beach to dump water out. While on the shore she saw a little turtle in the water and called out to me. I jumped out of my boat to try and take it's picture. I got one poor look at it and it disappeared into the surf. It looked a little too reddish green to be a sea turtle and I think I saw a very pointy head. I have almost convinced myself that what we saw was an adult turtle washed out of the nearby mangrove swamp. But when I mentioned the turtle to Paloma, he jumped out of his kayak and walked up and down the beach. If it was a sea turtle there would be tracks and we might get to see more of them dig their way out of the sand! But no luck, he never found any trace of a turtle nest.
When everyone was back in their boats and back in the water we headed towards the mouth of the mangrove swamp. Our guide, true to his title, guided us through the deep water channel and into the lagoon between the breaking waves without getting us wet. We then found ourselves in very calm water following channels that meandered between the tangle of mangrove roots. When we could travel no farther up our channel, we saw a green heron only a few meters away on a branch. It preened itself while we took pictures and didn't seem disturbed to have us so close by in the water.
The reason we could travel no farther up the channel was because there was a log bridge across it with a water pipe tied to it. Paloma told us that one of the rural people of Curu lived in the mangrove swamp. He is a fisherman who goes out on the ocean in a dugout canoe. We saw his canoe from a distance while surfing and Paloma apparently asked him if he would sell us some lobster later in the day. He said no because he would not go out on windy days like this. We had not seen any wind yet.
But when we paddled back out to the ocean we were surprised by that same strong wind again! We had planned to continue east to the next rocky point but Maryly wanted to get back now! We headed straight back to the next point with the wind coming at us from and angle on the left. The wind-driven waves rose up to over a meter high. Maryly had her rudder down which apparently allowed her to track straight but mine was strapped down and unavailable. My boat tended to weathercock into the wind which turned me too far to the left. I had to work hard to go straight or let the wind turn me left for a while. Then I could almost surf down the waves to zig back pointed too far to the right. This was fun but it caused me to drop behind Maryly and Paloma. Since I wasn't the guide on this trip I was able to relax and assume that Maryly was being watched over.
Maryly chose to go way round the rocks on the end of the point just east of our beach while I went between them. This allowed me to make up for getting so far behind. As I went over the shallowest spot off the point the waves rose up a little higher and gave me a bit of a ride. The wave got so steep that the nose of my kayak was buried in the trough of the next wave in front of me for a few seconds. Then we came around the point into the calm air and calm water in front of our beach for an easy landing. We were back in time for the big breakfast we were promised.
While we lazed about through the middle of the day, our hosts took the supply boat back to Curu to get some more ice. While there Paloma called into his office where they were very glad to hear from him! They wondered if we had all been blown away by all this unseasonable wind. Paloma accused us of bringing the wind with us from California. I told him that he should be glad we did not bring an earthquake! (Costa Rica has many of those as well).
Since we could not go kayaking, Maryly and I went for a walk in the "dry jungle" behind our beach on an old dirt road. We saw several blue morpho butterflies, a line of army ants, bats in an old well, howler monkeys crossing over our trail, and more of the rare small deer.
In the evening I felt the need for more kayaking and went snorkeling by kayak by myself. I stayed close to camp and tipped upside down in the kayak with my mask on. The water was cloudy but I could see the bottom at two meters or less. I saw lots of fish and they were very surprised to see me. I didn't particularly feel like I was getting tired but my roll got worse and worse after about 20 "dives". Eventually I was unable to roll up and had to exit from my boat. (Paloma was watching me just at that moment to witness my failure). After catching my breath I re-entered the boat from underneath and was able to roll it up full of water with a Greenland-style sculling roll.