Costa Rica

Parte uno: Arrival and Corcovado National Park

And now on to the main event. Costa Rica had been on my mind since my buddy Jordo’s weekend plans fell through one September morn and he caught a flight down to San Jose to pick up a spare condo. His tales of the brilliant town of Jaco, with its strip malls, condominium developments, bars of white Americans, and characteristics so much like any beach town in the US but so much further away, filled me with awe and wanderlust.

My good friend, Andrew the Canadian, famous from such blog posts as Labo(u)r Day in Toronto joined me once again, bringing with him his exquisite lady-attracting skills. Also in the crew was Paula the Canadienne and Natasa the Macedonian. However, for simplicity’s sake, only Andrew will maintain the descriptive descriptor: “the Canadian”.

We landed in San Jose and immediately left the airport. I was travelling light. I find it fairly easy to do so when the airline loses your bag. Mexicana, or Marvelous Mexicana as I prefer to refer to them, told me my bag would be in the next morning and to drive the hour back to the airport to fetch it the next day. After a restless sleep in the heart of San Jose, we acquired our vehicle the next morning: a hearty Toyota RAV4. After an hour ducking, weaving, dodging, and swearing at San Jose traffic we arrived back at the airport. Marvelous Mexicana told me that the bag had, unfortunately, not arrived on the 11AM flight and should be on the 11PM flight. Then helpfully recommended we spend one of our 9 days in Costa Rica waiting around for it. Full of appreciation for their expert advice, we tactfully declined and asked that the bag be shipped down to Puerto Jimenez, an 8-10 hour drive from San Jose on the southwest corner of Costa Rica. They agreed, and we were off.

Our scenic drive took us over the central mountain range in San Jose, where Andrew the Canadian found he could determine our altitude by checking the RAV4’s external thermometer. We dropped about 15°C in an hour on our steady climb to the top Costa Rica, then warmed up as we descended and followed the rivers out to the sea.

Stopping in San Isidro, we picked up some lunch and I picked up a new pair of underwear that I washed in the sink of the restaurant. Here I am showing off my new undies.

And here I am hanging those same undies up to dry in the hotel that night as they, remarkably, didn’t dry in the 95% humidity…and inside a car.

Costa Rica enjoys fantastic sunsets. Here’s one we experienced on our first day.

By around 7 that night we had reached the rough, potholed road leading around the north end of the Osa Peninsula. Andrew the Canadian was driving and we were swaying violently in our seats. Here’s a picture of the roads in the daylight hours.

Merrily swaying along, we soon heard a flapping sound and found that we had sprung a flat. “No problemo!” we exclaimed in Spanish (so as to be sure to be understood). After emptying out the hatchback, we were delighted to find the jack securely bolted to the RAV4 with no method of extracting it, and no tire iron even if we did remove it. Luckily, the ever gracious Costa Ricans were there to save us. An elderly taxi driver stopped and attempted to help us. He pulled two of his jacks out, which were slightly small, not to mention the ground was hopelessly soft and wet. After about half an hour of MacGyvering, we had yet to raise the RAV4 up to tire changing height. However, we didn’t need to worry any more about that, as we were pleasantly surprised to find that our back tire had also gone flat. Our Costa Rican friend was nice enough to give a ride into Puerto Jimenez where we called our guide for the next day’s trek and then spent half the night running with him out to the RAV4, changing one of the tires, bringing it back for repairs only to find all repair joints closed (at 1AM, imagine that), and finally giving up and going to sleep around 2AM. Early the next morning, after another couple of hours of repair attempts, we gave our keys to a friend of our guide and asked him to repair the wheel and drive it back into town. One might call it jungle valet.

So began the most exciting portion of our trip. We spent the next 8 hours hiking into the heart of Corcovado National Park, the most biologically intense place on earth according to National Geographic. Here are some hauntingly beautiful shots of us walking along the deserted beaches.

As you can see, the jungle grows right up to the beach and, in some places, the trail is impassable at high tide.

Corcovado is a huge park, spanning 425 square kilometers (yes fellow Americans, I don’t know what that means either, I just copied it out of Wikipedia). There are no roads to the central station, Sirena. One can either fly in, take a boat, or do it the true way: hike. Most of the trail from Leona station to Sirena is along the sandy beach but a considerable amount goes inland for a bit. Beautiful though the beach walk was, it quickly became our least favorite part. The shifting sand is a poor trail medium and one spends tremendous energy each step. Luckily, we had the opportunity to compare the difficulty of sand hiking with deep mud hiking on the final day. Turns out, both suck.

Here’s a rare shot of Natasa smiling while hiking.

Simply stunning shots of palm tree lined beaches.

I’m ecstatically marching in this one.

This is just nice.

Punk rock.

Being in Corcovado means seeing animals. It wasn’t until we went to some of the other Costa Rican parks and heard people asking if we’d seen any monkeys yet that we realized the panoply of wildlife that surrounded us in Corcovado. Monkeys? Oh yea. We saw tons of white faced, capuchin monkeys (like in the movie Outbreak),

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several spider monkeys, howler monkeys, and quite a few spottings of the endangered squirrel monkey.

Here’s a cute little anteater fella.

The toucan has a big nose, here he is.

The beach, energy-sucking though it was, was crawling (yes literally) with countless hermit crab. I stood still several times and just watched the sand crawl. Here’s a little video.

Scarlet macaw anyone? Yup, got em.

Family picture:

Oh, we went in a cave too. Lots of bats.

Around 3PM we realized, due to our shifted schedule on account of the car, that we would not have the good fortune to eat lunch. Luckily Felix, our ever industrious guide, hacked open a coconut that was lying on the beach for us to munch on.

Have you ever wondered what the days before Survivor were like? I imagine they were something like this, but who wants to remember back to those dark days? Not I.

Oftentimes the raw sexual energy of a picture can say more than any preceding sentence ever could.

After about 7.5 hours of hiking I was sick of my boots, which were technically Andrew the Canadian’s boots, as mine were still safe, dry, clean and sweet smelling as the scented rose in Marvelous Mexicana’s baggage department. We all felt the same way, so we decided to get new ones. Here we are switching boots with each other for new ones.

In actuality we were fording a wide river. This same river fills with crocodiles and bull sharks when high tide rolls in. Naturally, we returned the next day at that time and chased crocodiles, here’s one.

As dusk rolled in, we strolled in to Sirena ranger station. Hot, dirty, smelling like poo, and hungry well beyond necessity. We had just missed dinner but the kitchen staff was obliging enough to whip us up some mad grub. Utter silence fell as we buried our face in our plates. Within an hour, we were passed out in our bunks.

Around 5 in the eerie morning twilight we heard the guttural wailing all around us of the howler monkeys. These guys can be heard for long distances throughout the treetops. One group's male will howl to the next, which then howls back, this is echoed in the distance again and again. Territorial, these chaps.

After breakfast (beans and rice again!) we sat down to get our morning briefing. Since we were going to be forging through deep jungle with insects, snakes, and all manner of stinging beasts, I wore my most appropriate apparel.

Some have questioned my fashion sense and called it faux pas, I prefer to consider it dépêche mode. In actuality, my clothes were in my bag in Marvelous Mexicana’s care. Andrew the Canadian, ever the frugal packer, had only 3 outfits that he planned on washing with camp soap. Luckily, the ladies on our trip had an impressively superfluous amount of clothing. Thus, what you see are some coveted shots of me in women’s clothes. The paparazzi are going to have a field day with this one.

We then set out on a few hikes around the ranger station.

Here's one of those hikes.

In the afternoon we were lucky enough to track down some Baird’s tapirs. I think they ran from my outfit more than anything else.

The end of the tapir trail:

We were also fortunate enough to not get killed by this chap.

Felix the guide explained that death comes about 10 minutes after a strike from this viper. Luckily there was some antivenom at the ranger station, about 20 minutes away.

Leaf cutter ants are amazing, they form lines everywhere, shuttling slices of green leaves to their mounds where the grow fungi on them which they feed off of. You can follow the trail in between the mound and the current leaf they are slicing up, bit by bit. Here’s a trail.

Getting around the jungle requires agility, leaps, bounds, scrambling up slopes, and sliding down mud bogs. It's always nice to have a firm handhold. Luckily, this tree was always intelligent enough to be found whenever I blindly reached for support...and that was often.

Thanks buddy, I still have the splinters.

That evening we went on a night hike, which is the best time to spot the nocturnal animals like frogs. We saw a few of note and then this hombre sitting on a tree. A black tarantula.

Unfortunately, 3 of our 4 lights went out and we had difficulty navigating the deep mud. Paula was also eaten by a nest of ants. Luckily, Andrew the Canadian lightened the mood by walking face first into a large branch. Ah, that helped.

The next morning we started our 30 km trek out of Corcovado. Natasa’s leg had locked up entirely the day before and so she was planning on trying to boat out. That proved to be impossible so she popped a few Tylenol and limped along for 11 hours.

The trail ascended steeply and dropped precipitously for the latter half of the morning, all in claylike mud which we were able to cling surprisingly well to, much like a former girlfriend of mine. Ah, clingy girlfriend jokes are such low hanging fruit, yet still so very delicious.

Our lunch stopping point was at Los Patos ranger station after 17 km. We look disgusting. I'm bandanging blisters.

We stopped for 20 minutes, enough time for Paula to break the soccer goal the rangers had set up to while away the hours of solitude. She’s clearly pleased with herself.

The last 13 km was composed of crossing the same river 34 times (no really, 34 times).

Here are some pictures showing Natasa in various stages of agony.

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Eleven hours of hiking chafes various body parts. Luckily, Natasa had some cold cream that I liberally applied to my own creamy white inner thighs. Here’s a great shot of me doing that while simultaneously modeling Andrew the Canadian’s sweaty underwear.

Mmm, baby got back.

At long last, after 11 hours of hiking and breaks totaling 45 minutes, we finished and were taken back to Puerto Jimenez. I was so excited to get my bag and change out of women’s clothes, I was a chubby kid coming back from fat camp. Well this fat kid had to continue the fast. My bag still hadn’t arrived. I called Marvelous Mexicana and talked to the same rep I spoke to on Saturday night.

Me: “Where’s my bag?”

Marvelous Mexicana rep: “We have it right here for you sir, in San Jose.”

Me: “Why didn’t you ship it to me in Puerto Jimenez like I asked you to on Saturday night?”

Marvelous Mexicana rep: (after long awkward silence) “Umm, somebody told me that you said to not ship it down there…”

Me: “I haven’t spoken to anybody else but you.”

The Marvelous Mexicana rep offered to ship it down the next day, necessitating our cancellation of plans to leave Puerto Jimenez the next morning. I reminded him, in the politest of tones that I was currently wearing women’s clothes and dirty underwear that was too small for me and I couldn’t rely on them to deliver a bag in a timely manner given my experiences. And so it was that we drove 10 hours back up to San Jose the next day.

Before leaving sunny Puerto Jimenez, however, we went out one last time with Felix. It was nice to be in clean, albeit women’s clothes, again.

After some in our party had a few drinks, we decided it would be a great idea to fish for caimans in a nearby pond. Caimans are little crocodiles about 4 or 5 feet long. So we tied fish to a line and threw it to the caimans and pulled it back just before they snapped. What fun. Here we are jeopardizing our future usage of healthy limbs and bones.

I have to put a plug in for Felix and his guidesmanship. We had an incredible experience, saw tons of wildlife, and had a great time with him. He went above and beyond the job for which he was hired and pooled his resources to fix our vehicle and still ensure we experienced all we came to see. If you need a Corcovado guide look him up at Osa Travel Expeditions.

This ends the first portion of our trip. The next section will detail our beach excursions in Domincal and Jaco, hot springs bathing in Arenal, and adventuring in Monteverde.

Pura Vida.