Archive for July 10th, 2008
Ok, I’m at an internet cafe, trying to catch up on the backlog. We have some amazing pictures and videos, but I’m only getting about 10kB/s and I can’t stay here for 4 hours uploading all of it. I’ll get to that when I can. for now you’ll have to settle for text only.
Luckily we have a plethora of stuff written up on the trip so far. In chronological order:
Also, read Cynthia’s take on Days 1-5
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This post by Cynthia obviously.
Day 1 – San Jose
Urban Costa Rica is shabby chic. There is a feeling of historic richness tempered with age and use. The streets are old, some buildings are dilapidated. We arrived early Sunday Morning (12am) to San Jose and rode through darkened, narrow streets wet from a recent rain. Past disco-techs, bars, banks to arrive at our hotel. Our taxi driver announced our arrival through the iron gate barring the entrance, and the clerk let us in. We had a note from our tour leader, Alberto, and the desk clerk handed us a 1.5 liter bottle of water with our room key and told us that the hotel had no water. No showers, only one flush of the toilet until we check out at 8am. Through the doors of the lobby we entered an enclosed courtyard that all the rooms were centered around, 3 stories high. No elevators here. Our room was on the bottom floor. Behind the wood door was a sparse room with cheerful but faded cotton curtains and bedspread. A miss-matched conglomeration of tile, marble, porcelain textures covered the floor & shower walls. The bathroom door cleared the edge of the toilet bowl by ½”. We would have to be awake in just 6 hours to meet Alberto and get our paperwork squared away. We fell on lumpy pillows and slept.
Day 2 – La Fortuna
Alberto is a cheerful, rotund tico with a background in ecology and tourism. Fitting. We give him all our info and then he tells us the plans for the week, and what time we are departing this morning. He explains that the sewers in Costa Rica can’t handle toilet paper, and that all toilet paper has to be placed in the trash cans in the bathrooms. Eww! We begin our demands of him immediately, requesting a place to get a Desayuno Typico de Costa Rica. He sends us up the street to the Clarion Hotel for their breakfast buffet. We eat gallo pinto, huevos fritos, jugo naraja. The café con leche is divine. The buffet master gives me fruit to take with us on the road, he thinks I don’t like tropical fruit, since he gives me grapes, an apple and a nectarine. Back at the hotel our blue Turismo bus has arrived.
We meet our tour mates on the bus. We are quite a mixed group. There are 3 pharmacists from Toronto, Anita, Jenny and Jennifer. Also from Toronto are a father and daughter, Lou and Nicole. There are 4 sisters from Virginia: Lara, Sarah, Lindsey and Amanda. Finally, the four Aussies: Melanie, Sarah, Cheryl and Amy. Pat and Lou are the only men. They are also the 2 oldest of the group.
Our bus travels through San Jose towards the countryside. We pass a place that looks like a castle, but Alberto tells us that it used to be a prison, now it’s a children’s school. Out side of town the vegetation gets thicker, the roads get windy, and the hills rise into great, green, rolling crests and valleys. Rural Costa Rica is the very definition of the word verdant. Our destination today is the town of La Fortuna, and the volcano Arenal.
Our first stop in La Fortuna is at a tour company run by a former GAP employee. We are greeted with free cerveza and a presentation of the various activities offered. We consult with Alberto and choose to go on a nature hike with lava-viewing opportunities, and finish with an evening visit to the hot springs, pizza dinner is included. For tomorrow, class 3&4 river rafting on the Rio Toro. Then we go check into our hotel. The Paraiso Tropical is more shabby than chic, but at least the water runs. Lunch at a local soda (soda means a family owned local food joint) is Casado con salsa carne. Casado means marriage or togetherness or something, so the platter has beef in sauce, rice, beans, plantain, chayote, corn tortillas. I pour a generous amount of the salsa Linzano and some other tobasco like sauce and dig in. I love the food here!
The rain forest hike is kinda lame, the guide is almost surly and hard to understand, shockingly, it rains. Hard. We also did it backwards, you are supposed to get dropped off at the top and walk down, but instead we started at the bottom and hiked up to the top. Dripping, we piled into the bus, and on the way down the road to the Lava observation point our bus is stopped by the pizza delivery boy. We’re on narrow, muddy dirt road outside of town, it’s dark and we’re driving in the rain. That’s service!
At the lava-lookout it’s still pouring rain, and the rain clouds the air so we can’t see the hot molten magma that Arenal is spitting out. We wait it out in the bus and eat pizza. The company also sent a cooler filled with beer, coca cola, juice and a fresh 500ml bottle of liquor. It’s made from sugar cane and tastes like vodka. The 15 of us kill it in 20 minutes. Then we decide to abandon the lava for the hot springs.
We arrive at Baldi hot springs at 7:30. Our guide Alberto saves us each 10 bucks by watching our bags so we don’t have to get a locker. Baldi has nearly 2 dozen pools of various temperatures, ranging from 55 celsius to cold. It also has 2 swim up bars, music, and water slides. It’s dark and there are very few children, mostly young people like ourselves. We wander around, dip in a few pools, we find that the 45 degree pool is too hot to get in, and wonder at how anyone gets in the hotter pools. Then we find the water slides. While climbing the wet slippery (painful) metal stairs to the slide we run into others who warn of the treacherous widow-maker slide we are headed for. Pat, resplendent in his arrogance, assumes they are joking. He hops on, pushes off as hard as he can, and we all hear a resounding crack of cabeza before the splash at the end. I’m sure he’s unconscious or bleeding, deservedly so. I go last, and find out what the fuss is about. I cross my legs at the ankles, brace my hands behind my head, and keep my core tense for the ride, making sure to keep my head up, but my body flat. It starts out in a nice loop de loop, suddenly I’m freefalling and flying over the side of the slide, rather than to the pool below. I’m told by the gaping, laughing bystanders that I skipped and spun across the water for quite a distance. When I came up, I was facing the slide. It seems obvious at this point that the slide is not built to the exacting safety standards we are accustomed to in the US. I wonder if maybe they left a section or two out when constructing it. The best part is sitting in the warm pool below the slide and watching the unsuspecting victims as they come careening off the impossibly sharp turn, slamming against the side, pummeling their bodies as they fly over the sheer cliff-like drop at the end.
Day 3 – La Fortuna
Our pickup for rafting is at 8:30 so we were envied by our tour mates who had earlier morning departures. We have a leisurely desayuno at the soda. Fried eggs over beans and rice is still soooooo good! The Aussies are coming with us on the river, so we all pile into the tour van when it arrives. Our 2 guides, Carlos and Carlos inform us tha twe’ll be rafting 4 each to a boat, so Pat and I start to chat up the other couple that was in the bus when we climbed in, knowing that the Aussies would be their own group. Farrah and Abiolo are from New York, but she recently had a job offer in Sacramento, so we tried to sell her on the sweetness of California Living. They lamented the expensive futility of the urban NY lifestyle. At the river we were given helmets, life jackets, oars and safety instructions. Even the guides wore safety gear. Pat and Abi rode up front, Farrah and I in the center and our guide, Carlos steered from the rear. Abi and I were on the left, Pat and Farrah on the right. Carlos called out instructions for us to paddle, left back, right forward…forward everyone…back everyone…left forward, right back. The rapids were abundant and continuous, some technical, others just fun. The safety instructions included high-side drills and ducking inside the raft, but we rarely had to use them, everyone secured their feet well, I only got knocked back once, but just hung over the side of the boat, since my feet were still tucked in the proper position. The water was cool and the river was exhilarating. We surfed at a section of the river, Our boat was better at it than the Aussies because we had 2 men to paddle. Carlos would warn us of possible safety precautions on each rapid. He informed us that we might have to high-side left on one run so we all prepared. As we came down rapid, heading directly for a wall, and a left turn, he called high side left, since I was seated on the left anyway I didn’t have to move, and I didn’t have time to be suspicious, as everyone piled to my side of the boat, it capsized directly on top of me. I was under the flipped raft. I opened my eyes and could see in the dim light that there was an air pocket under the overturned raft. I came up and took a few breaths, and looked for my escape route. I knew the wall was to the right, so I decided to go left. When I tried to duck under and swim, the current was pushing against me and trying to force me back under. I kicked harder, and pulled harder, the current was still pushing, but I overcame it and popped out to see our guide already standing atop the raft, laughing as all our gear floated down the river. Everyone was clear of the raft safely. He had flipped us on purpose.
Our guides loaded us back up at the end of the river and we headed back to town, to have lunch at the company house on the Arenal River. We stopped at a small mercado on the way to buy bebidas. Pat and I split a 40 of Imperial (the local cerveza) while the Aussies bought a handle of the sugar cane liquor and some more juga. Even the guides picked up a cerveza to enjoy with us. On the way we asked what bar they liked to hang out at in La Fortuna, and they invited us to crash the 20th birthday party of another guide later that evening. The bar was called Vagabondo. At the company house we were served pollo, arroz, frijoles, ensalada, pico de gallo y tortillas fritos. Deliciosa!
Back at the hotel after our tour we convinced Abiolo and Farrah to meet us at the bar later, then we rallied all the young folk in our group to come as well. Our tour guide managed to snag us the hotel bus to taxi us there and back for about a buck each, total.
The Vagabondo was an Italian style pizza & pasta place We enjoyed more cerveza and more pizza, then met up with our guides who were hangingout playing pool and drinking in the back room of the bar. Soon the restaurant closed, but the bar remained open. Loud music in espaniol and lots of hooking up and making out going on amongst the guides. Upon my visit to the ladies room I found that the birthday boy was getting a special birthday treat in the stall next to mine. I felt dirty, and not just because I didn’t bother to wash my hands as I rushed out of there!
Day 4 – Monte Verde
We departed for the Monte Verde cloud forest this morning around 8. Our small passenger van was packed. It was a quick ride to our first stop.We arrived at lake Arenal and were hustled onto a waiting ferry. Our guide Alberto wished us farewell and took our baggage, since the next leg of our journey would involve animals of the equine persuasion. We zoomed across the lake, stopped to take pictures of the Arenal volcano looming above the lake, and headed up a short path to the horses. My horse was named Gasparino, He was grey with spots, and his mane was buzz-cut. We didn’t like me and had bad ankles or knees, I soon found out. The stirrup rubbed my ankle the wrong way after the first hour and a half of riding. Pat’s horse tried to bite mine 3 times on the trail. Horseback Riding is hard work! We stopped at a small glen of guava trees to have a snack of pineapple and trail mix. The horses liked to eat the fallen guavas so I fed a few to various horses, although Gasparino refused to eat the one I offered him. Brat. Back on the horses we continued around the lake towards the end of the trail. The horses eagerly anticipated the end of their long haul and began to trot toward the finish line with enthusiasm, jostling and crowding for position. Once we unsaddled at the end the horse just turned around and walked themselves back to the trail to return to the start. It was almost creepy, all these riderless animals just trodding back the way we came. We used the bathroom at a small soda and then climbed into another van. The road was so bumpy the luggage was falling off the pile onto the Wilson sisters sitting in the back row. We drove past strange cattle and quaint pastoral farmlands. Laundry hung on the clotheslines to dry, houses were cobbled together from stucco, wood, tin and masonry, all painted with mismatched tropical colors.The unpaved road was rustic, kidneys massaged roughly by the ruts and gullies. The rolling green countryside looked ripe with fertility. We stopped again around 2 for lunch and I had ceviche. The restaurant was good, and the food was cheap! We finally arrived at our destination in Monte Verde around 5. Claro de Luna is a fantastic little bed & breakfast with lush flowering gardens planted around it. We had time to settle in and then left for the Frog Pond. It was pouring rain on us again as we walked. Thankfully the frog ponds were a man-made covered exhibit, so we stayed dry. Unfortunately, they were a man-ade covered exhibit with a guide and it was a bit lame. We saw a lot of froggy-style action. Apparently the rainy season is also mating season. We walked back to the hotel, and everyone tried to take a shower at the same time. Except Pat & I. We were just dirty when we all left to walk to dinner. We had reservations at a place called Tree House. It was a restaurant built around and under a giant fig tree. The atmosphere was cool, there was live jazz music. The waiters had palm pilots. The service was terrible, the food was expensive. We came home and crawled into bed.
Day 5 – Monte Verde
We had a 7:30 bus to the Monte Verde Reserve, where we were met by guides for a nature hike through the cloud forest. This hike was not lame. First we checked out the humming bird “tent” which was a patio populated with tiny iridescent birds darting and hovering about. Then they showed us a strange raccoon like creature in a tree. Then they showed us through a telescope some tiny yellow orchids growing high above us on a branch. The hike hadn’t even begun yet! Our guide was a crazy bird-obsessed naturopath. He called to all the birds in the forest. I took pictures of bright flowers. He told us about wasps that lay their eggs in figs. We saw a puma track. He found the elusive, exquisite Quetzle, which means resplendent. It’s endangered. The guide’s girlfriend showed up, and she looked less than half his age, and barely (if at all) of the age of majority. We gave him a tip, because his knowledge was aweso. On the way back to Claro de Luna we stopped for helados at the cheese factory. I tried a smoky gouda-like sample. It was gouda. Then I ate coffee ice cream. Then I ate cookies and cream ice cream. Then the van dumped us in town for a quick lunch before our next excursion. I had a taco con cerdo at the Taco Taco Taqueria, basically a taco truck without wheel. It was juicy and tasty.
We were picked up by the tour company for our canopy tour. When we arrived at the headquarters one of our crew decided that X-treme Canopy was too extreme for her so she declined to go. We all signed waivers and geared up. We got a quick lesson and were off on the lines. The first two were short and easy, for practice. The next one was 450 meters long, and spanned a green gorge. It was so awesome. So was the next one, and the next. We zig-zagged back and forth across the same valley a few times, stopping to rappel and swing on the tarzan swing (omg, like super cool!) and then did the grand finale, the longest, highest zip line in tandem. They hooked pat and I together, I got the camera video rolling and we were off. The views are spectacular, the mist was rolling over the hills, the trees and houses were tiny below us. We finished just as the clouds burst open with another torrential rain. We waited out the worst of it with our comrades back at headquarters before getting a ride back to our hotel. We rested about an hour and then headed out to dinner again, the restaurant we made reservations at sent a car for us, free. It was a very nice place, Italian food and pizza, a great menu. Pat and I had a bottle of the house cabernet. We had good conversation with our tour friends, and headed back the the hotel bleary eyed and satiated after a very long day.
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Long (5 hr) bus ride to Quepos today, but it was definitely worth the $10 per person upgrade to have a private bus – both faster and not a den of thieves. Monteverde is isolated by bumpy dirt roads, but within a couple of hours we encountered construction crews laying down fresh asphalt. The winding, two lane highway would often slow for passage through old and rickety one lane bridges. We stopped at a fairly modern mall for lunch, and then stopped at a more normal two lane bridge to spot lazy crocodiles. I was hoping for the annihilation of a bird or a croc-on-croc death match, but instead the big event was when one closed it’s mouth.
In Quepos, we are staying at the German run Hotel Villa Romatica. Rooms are nice and it has a pool, but everything else has a price. Want to use the safe? $3. Access the internet with their computer only? $1.75 an hour. Use the A/C in your room? $7 a day. Squares of toilet paper are 15 cents (not really). The silver lining: Self serve cold beers are only $1.70.
Tomorrow, we’ll check out Manuel Antonio national park and try to rent surfboards at the beach.
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