Costa Rica, Part 1

Greetings from Costa Rica

Why here? Long story. Basically I had 35,000 United miles expiring by July 31st. I found that could get me to Hawaii or Central America. Having been to Hawaii enough, and Central America never (Tijuana doesn't count), it was an easy choice. After doing some research, I settled on Costa Rica over Belize/Guatemala. Then I found out that tickets to Vancouver actually cost over $600 (and Seattle not much less). For a lark, I checked on fare prices to Costa Rica, and found that I could get there for $400. So I used the frequent flyer miles to go to Seattle instead. And since I had spent a couple of weeks looking at Costa Rica by now, I HAD to go there anyway...

Unfortunately, my flight was at 6:45 AM. I get to the airport at 5:50, it is dead, through security in 2 minutes. I bought the Stellar Black Hole bag regular after checking out the Patagonia website. Jimmy mentioned later that Hh had written a whole blog article on it. I vaguely remembered, but at this point in my trip, I agree with him. The bag is great. Probably a little big for your standard frisbee weekend (and it needs to be checked), but otherwise perfect for a trip like the one I'm on right now. Flight through Miami to San Jose, and I arrive at around 1PM. There is a little confusion trying to get a taxi to the hotel (Adventure Inn in Ciudad Cariari) before I finally figure out how to get one of the recommended, official airport taxis.

I arrive at the hotel and quickly realize I don't feel like trying to get into San Jose proper to do touristing. I do some errands locally, use the hotels internet to catch up on email, hot tub, beers in the bar, ya know, the usual vacation thing. Next morning I have to wake up at 5AM to be picked up at 5:30 by a bus to take me to Tortugueru National Park. The whole journey will get us there around 2:30PM. We went to a few other hotels to pick up the rest of the passengers and the guide, then off we went. Picking up the passengers in San Jose hotels confirmed the rightness of my decision the previous day not to visit San Jose. It was pretty dungy. Our travelling group ends up being family of four from NYC, including a biology teacher who had taken his class here for the past two years, and was researching a subsequent trip, a french couple, a spanish couple, and two older ladies, I was never able to determine whether they were a couple...

We finally left San Jose and made our way up through Braulio Carrillo National Park, which was a gorgeous mountainous and green park. We didn't make any stops, just passing through. The road eventually devolved down to a dirt road with a bunch of pebbles. At one point we were passing banana plantations on both sides. Our guide gave us the entire lowdown on the planting and harvesting process. Let me tell you, I will never look at a banana the same way again. The reason that bananas are so cheap is NOT because it is a mechanized process. That is what things like Nafta and Cafta get us. Not that I necessarily agree with it, but based on everything we saw, there won't be a mechanized process for a LONG time, at least not at this stage of robotic development. Each banana bunch hanging from a plant had a blue plastic bag around it to protect it from the elements AND bugs. And the plants, while in 'rows', had canals going through them for waste water, basically totally uneven ground. Bunches would get picked, attached to a wire harness, and once 25 bunches were picked, a hauler would drag them along the wire to the processing plant. There, smaller bunches would be cut off each main bunch which had between 60 and a 100 bananas. They would dump them in water which would get sprayed/cleaned and passed down to the next set of people, who would cut them into smaller bunches. The whole spraying/cleaning process also sealed up the cut end of the banana bunch so that the bananas wouldn't dehydrate through the opening. Then another group would take the individual bunches and bag them, Another conveyor then brought it to a final stage where the bagged bunches were put into boxes. And the boxes had the Del Monte label on them. Our guide said that all of the plants were the same size, there were no economies of scale to be had, and from what I saw, they were right. Picture below.

We come to the end of the road and now we have to wait for our boat. That eventually arrives while it has started raining. Fortunately the boat has a roof, but with open sides. We head off down the canals towards the town of Tortuguero. That takes about an hour+. We pull up in Tortuguero and have our first 'tour'. Tortuguero has a population of maybe 2-300 people. At one point I walk by a little B&B that I had emailed about vacancies. They hadn't had any, and in retrospect I was very happy about that. Back to the boat, and then off to Turtle Beach Lodge, which was another 35 minutes away, including a turnoff off the main canal into a tiny canal which couldn't have had more than 1-3 feet of clearance on each side of the boat for the ENTIRE trip. Talk about resupply fun. When the tide was low, they actually had to lift the motor most of the way out of the water otherwise it would drag the bottom. Pretty wild. We finally arrive at the lodge around 2:30 and head off straight to lunch, which is buffet-style. Our table is identified by the name of our guide, Eloy. We are there for the duration. I neglected to mention that we had picked up another guide in Sarapiqui, a friend of the guy from NYC who had done trips with him before. He was part of the research team, and ended up being very useful as a counterpoint to Eloy. And his English was a little better, but no knock on Eloy. After lunch, we finally check into our rooms. I have a room at the end of a series of bungalows with screens on 3 sides. Very cute, and surprisingly isolated. In the meantime, I had befriended the French couple, and got a chance to refresh my French. It did get confusing after awhile, switching from French with the couple to English with the family, and then speaking French to the help before realizing I had to switch back to English, or my pidgen Spanish every now and then (3 years in high school). After checking out my room, I headed out to the grounds, and 100 yards later, I was on the beach facing the Caribbean. They had strenuously suggested that we NOT swim, which was too bad considering the good body surfing opportunities. Although there was some yellow foam/smegma on a lot of the waves, and I never asked what it was. I walked along the beach quite a ways down, did the whole photo thing, and then rested up in a hammock for awhile and thought of Lost... :)

Then a swim in the turtle-shaped pool, at which point it started raining again (I have always loved swimming in the rain). Finally, drinks, dinner, drinks, a little pool with the NYC dad and his 8 year old son Tomio, who actually got the ball in 3 times while his dad and I looked on in amazement (never where they were supposed to go in, naturally). There was another large group of French people, a few Americans and a large young Spanish-speaking contingent, but nothing to really glom on. And then off to bed for a little reading because we were going to have another early morning to do a boat tour. Up at 5:30, on the boat at 6:10. This trip was guided by Erich, the friend of the NYC guy. We slowly went along the canal, seeing lots of cool birds, lizards, basilisk types, and finally towards the end, we finally saw some spider monkeys. We sat and watched them for about 20 minutes before heading back. On the way back, 5 minutes before we pulled in, the French woman looked in the trees behind us and spotted another pair of spider monkeys, mother and child, and we ended up watching them for another 15 minutes. VERY cool. I got some good film and ok pictures.

Back to the lodge for breakfast and an hour off before going out to the jungle tour. I forgot to mention that there was not a cloud in the sky during the boat tour. Of course, for the 10:30AM jungle walk, it started pouring. I was well equipped with my Patagonia Rain Shadow jacket and a tiny portable umbrella that I had brought, so that I could take footage without having to worry about the cameras getting wet. We saw cool stuff like a strangler fig that had destroyed and replaced one large tree, red poisonous frogs, some spider monkeys in the distance, a bunch of birds and cool plants. It rained the ENTIRE time, and pretty hard also. It definitely made it feel truly like the 'rain' forest in which we were walking. The added benefit was that it kept away the mosquitos. Just before we started, the Spanish group came out and had mentioned that they had been bludgeoned with mosquitos. I saw maybe one the entire walk. Considering that I was already waffling on whether to continue my anti-malarial treatment, the lack of mosquitos during this portion of the trip sealed the deal. Towards the end of the walk (I was bringing up the rear) all of a sudden I heard a buzzing sound around my umbrella. I shook it and it was still there. I shook it some more, walked faster to catch up to the group, and it didn't stop. Finally I look at the top of the umbrella and don't notice anything but still hear the buzzing, and then it begins. I started getting bitten, and I look down at my shirt and I am COVERED with what looks like large flies. The french couple is just ahead of me, and I call out to them and start giving them my umbrella and camera bag as I am frantically taking my rain coat off. I am starting to panic as I continue to get bitten/stung (I don't know which yet), and we call out to Eloy, who is well ahead. Now I'm down to my shirt, and I look down and it is festooned with bugs. The french couple sees the back of my shirt and it is similarly accoutred. I frantically take the shirt off and start shaking it to get them off. Eloy has gotten to us by then and he picks a couple of them off to show to everyone, identifying them as a stingless wasp. He shows the over-large mandibles and says that they were only biting me, and that there was nothing to worry about. I put the shirt back on, and a couple of minutes later get 'stung' on my right arm, think it is psychosomatic, then get stung again, have to take off rain coat, camera bag, and shirt again. Pull the arm inside out, and sure enough, there is a goddam wasp on the inside of the shirt sitting there laughing at me. Flick him off, and I finally finish the tour pest free. But it was exciting/memorable, let me tell you. We also took a fallen coconut and watched as Eloy opened it up to get to the big hairy seed inside, and then crack open the seed so that we could try the shell and drink some coconut juice. I am normally not fond of coconut, but when I tried the shell, it basically tasted mostly like a nut, with VERY little coconut. Makes me cringe to think of what they do to it to concentrate the coconut taste. The juice was pretty cool also.

Nothing else particularly glam. A drink, dinner, a couple more drinks, and then played pool against this one guide and smoked him 5 games to 2. The most satisfying one was the first one where I couldn't sink a ball until he had only one left to my 7, and then I finally went on a run and beat him in two turns. Not that I'm competitive...

Of course, the next morning I had to wake up at the crack of ass yet again, as I had a 7:05 flight out of Tortuguero to get back to San Jose. This involved the 40 or so minute boat ride to the airport. When I say airport, we're talking an one floor open sided building maybe the footprint of my living room, with two guys outside with a sheet of paper checking off names as we show up. And when they weighed my bag to see if I was under the 27 pound limit, they used a handheld spring scale! When I arrive, there is one plane there, Paradise Air, which takes off 5 minutes later. I walk to the end of the runway (maybe 40 yards away) to get some footage of the runway and our plane landing. The runway isn't exactly paved, but nor is it dirt. More like craggy pavement that hasn't really been touched up in a few years. I see our plane coming in finally, and take some footage of the landing and a picture as it approaches. It turns off 50 yards before it reaches us. Imagine doing this in the US.

I walk back to get my bags and get in line to get on the plane. It seats maybe 15 people total. Shockingly, I'm the first guy in line after we provide our bags, and as I'm getting on, I ask the guy what is the best side to sit on, and he says the left. I sit in front just behind the pilot (knees in the back of his seat) and get my gear ready. I take footage of the takeoff and random pictures of the journey.

25 minutes later, we are in San Jose at 7:30 instead of 2:30. Well worth the $90. I grab a taxi to my hotel, fortunately they have a room ready for me, and I settle in while I figure out what to do with my day. After discussion with the front desk and the realization that any tours I want to do have already left, we settle on my renting a taxi for the day for $80. I tell Jorje that I will be ready to go in about 40 minutes, once I am done settling in. I go to my room, settle in, catch up on email, and then grab my backpack, bathing suit (ends up being an essential thing to bring as we'll see later), camera gear, and money of course. To this point, I have still not used my credit/debit cards for anything besides an initial withdrawal at the airport of colones. EVERYTHING can be paid for in US dollars or colones, which I wasn't completely aware of, so at this point I'm trying to divest myself of the roughly $600 in colones that I took out. I had also neglected to inform my two credit cards that I was going to be travelling abroad, so the later I have to charge something, the better, so that they won't have a chance to freeze them until it is too late (fraud protection).

So I get into the taxi with Jorje and we are off to Volcan Poas (Poas volcano). Naturally, Jorje speaks only a little english, and no french, so I have to dig deep into my 3 years of high school spanish. It ends up being great, as I get a crash course in vocabulary and other as we try and communicate. There was a lot of 'como se dice'. There were only a few concepts that took a long time to figure out, like 'verb', etc. We never actually got the generic word for verb, but didn't end up needing it. By the end of the trip, we were conversing reasonably well, if in very short sentences. As we were driving, I asked where the volcano was, and when he pointed it out, with nary a cloud near it, I asked if that was normal, and he said no way. Maybe 3/4 of the time it was covered in clouds. I was thrilled that I was going to be able to see it sans clouds. Sure enough, we got to the volcano and still no clouds. He walked with me to the actual overlook, took a few pictures of me with the volcano, and then as we walked back, and I was going to take the loop trail to Botos Lagoon, I told him that if he wanted, he was more than welcome to wait for me back at the car.

I think he was happy about that, and after taking the loop, I understood why. It was pretty long, and had a number of steeps to it. But it was well worth it, as the lagoon was gorgeous.

45 minutes later, back at the visitors center, lame tourist goods, I grab a large bottle of water, and then back to the parking lot to catch up with Jorje. Next stop, La Paz Waterfall Garden. Takes about 45 minutes to get there, and then he brings me to the gate, and we arrange to meet after I'm done, maybe 1.5-2 hours later. The garden is pretty cool, with the initial walk taking you through a huge bird cage with a bunch of tropical birds, a hummingbird cage, frog cage, snake cage, etc., before getting to the second part of the trek which involves walking along a narrow path to walk down a river and see 5 reasonably gorgeous waterfalls. Naturally, I'm doing all the little side trips to get footage.

The tour ends at the top of the final waterfall, named La Paz. I can see at the bottom that there is a road crossing it, so once the shuttle brings us back to the lodge, and I catch up with Jorje, on the way out I tell him I want to go to the bottom of the falls. He says sure, and we drive on down and park. I take some footage, he takes some pictures of me near the falls, and while we are there, some guy randomly climbs down to a ledge and jumps into the pool at the bottom. It is higher than the diving board that John Bar may remember from Jonjoping at Worlds in '96. Naturally, intrigued, as I'm walking back to the car I make up my mind and tell Jorje that I want to go in also. Jorje had said that it was the first time he had ever seen someone do that, and he was there all the time. I put on my bathing suit, walk Jorje through how to take a video using my camera, and then as I'm walking to the ledge, I see the guy (who had since jumped with his son), walk up to him and ask him if he had touched bottom. Once he said no, I made up my mind. I climbed down to the ledge, and as I was standing there overlooking the pool, I realized it was even higher than I had originally thought. Nonetheless, I looked over to the bridge, gave Jorje the thumbs up, and then proceed to set up and do a perfect swan dive into the pool. Well, it felt like it at the time. Boy, the water was COLD. But the crowd was suitable impressed, and Jorje actually got almost all of it on the camera. After we got back to the car, we had parked right behind the other guy, and his kid showed me a picture of the dive, so I gave them my email address and asked them to email me the picture. If they send it, I will add it to the blog below.

And that's it for part 1.