I booked what I thought was the last room in all of Cahuita off of www.hostelworld.com . At $15 the price was average, it had wifi, and apparently I even got my own room – a rarity when the normal situation is three or four bunk beds stuffed into a room.

The shuttle from the rafting tour dropped me off right in front of Brigitte’s. A handful of cats and dogs were lounging throughout the yard. Empty hammocks hung from trees and posts. An elderly black man sat on a picnic table, doodling on post cards. As I entered the main cafe area, Brigitte herself, a small, tan, blonde woman, dashed in to help two confused backpackers in the main area. She turns to me immediately and asks “Rachael?” When I nod yes, she says “OK, 5 minutes.” and runs off again. Apparently New Years and some accidental double bookings had had her running around in circles all day. While she was gone I tried to strike up a conversation with the older black man. His name is Ricardo Campbell and he is an artist. He showed me some of the postcards he was working on and selling to tourists. Then brought me around to admire some of the larger canvasses. Turns out he had painted a lot of the rooms too, including mine, as you can see in the pictures above.

When Brigitte returned she showed me to my room. Humble enough, but all mine! The windows were only holes in the wall with curtains so she ran around searching for a mosquito net. The search ended when she broke into an apparently uninhabited nearby room by climbing through the window and grabbing theirs. I’m not sure the net did much, but I felt like a princess.

Cahuita is totally worth a look if you ever come here, I would come back in a heartbeat and rent a house on the beach for a week. Here’s Brigitte’s website (btw, she specializes in horseback riding on the beach, but alas I had neither the time nor money): http://www.brigittecahuita.com/