Long overdue update 1-Costa Rica Part 1

Occasionally I find myself preparing to blog and realize, I have too much to say, but the events in question happened long enough ago the amusing parts are slowly being forgotten. How terrible to lose such stories. I look at things I wrote at the beginning of my service and I read them like they are completely new, having forgotten half the details that made them interesting in the first place. Pardon the length of today’s post, but hopefully it will make up for virtual silence for 2 months, and keep these stories alive. I plan on doing a few more posts in the coming days since I am in a lull in service and want to write these before they lose their character.

Costa Rica was a good place to spend Christmas, while spending it only with my wife and one friend was somewhat sad, we made the best out of it. We started off our trip with double bad luck and no alarm waking us up to get a ride into Teguc despite having set 2 alarms. Alice gets a phone call from our ride and before my eyes are even open I am running into the guest room where we keep our clothes (we have no closet, so we just pile clean laundry on the guest bed), forgetting completely there is a guest in there (who is also coming). I suppose I could have been smoother, but instead I turned on the lights waking her up and reminding myself she was there, and I was in my underwear. I quickly go to the pile of clothes on the ground and pick up the first pair of pants and start to unfold them and hurry them on when our female guest looks at me and asks me if I really intend to wear her pants. I rummage around and finally find the clean pants Alice had left intentionally on top of the pile. We thankfully still made our bus.


Our bus was direct, but still took us 12 hours. 12 hours in a bus is not fun, but that aside it was a very nice bus ride. The major bus lines have a special deal with the border crossings to get through faster, so what could have been a 4 hours border crossing was only thirty minutes. After some time standing in front of burger king, the hotel shuttle showed up to take us to the national park and only 15 or so hours after leaving we were in our hotel room. We all decided to stop by the restaurant for a night cap to kick off our vacation officially and we ran into a few hotel staff members and a small group of gringos doing the same thing, while all were watching a soccer match. I finally realized why the ride hadn't wanted to pick us up when they told me the game was the Costa Rican league finals. After the game we made polite conversation with the other gringos, two young ladies also on vacation for the holidays. They told us a surprising story about their adventures the previous day. They had contracted the horse guide to take them to natural hot mud pits that were cool enough that people could give themselves a faux-spa treatment, but they encountered a stream that was acting much like a raging river due to some recent rain. The guide initially told them they couldn't cross, but after some thought he decided that if he helped each girl with the horse they would probably have no problems. So the guide dismounted his horse and got on the horse with the first girl and they started across. They made it halfway before the horse lost its footing and fell. The guide immediately caught the young lady and pulled her out of the water unhurt. The guide had managed to bang up his leg really well, but didn't have time to think about it before he needed to recover the horse before it drowned. He raced to find the horse stuck underneath a log that he managed to move just enough to get the horse out and onto the shore. To make things worse the horse had come up on the opposite bank and now it had to re-cross. This time the horse crossed without anyone on it and it made it just fine, but the horse's reluctance was obvious. At the end of the story the girl who had been on the horse hugged the guy next to her, who by this point I could identify as the guide, just by looking at his bruised legs. At this point it was obvious this quiet national park had a lot of adventure, but I had heard my warning. Safety first.


So the next morning we are all awake by 7 despite our plans to sleep in, but no one was moving very quickly. We had a quick breakfast that was not too unlike a Honduran breakfast. Eggs and a side of beans and rice. Then the girls spent an hour reading while I explored the hotel grounds. I found a little side path and started to take it until it got too muddy. When I got back to the hotel the girls were finally about ready to go on a hike.


We put on our hiking clothes, which was tennis shoes, jeans and a t-shirt for all of us (these clothes actually double as our "nice" clothes, "travel" clothes, "beach" clothes, "casual" clothes, and pretty much everything else, but it is important to know we were not exactly in ideal hiking outfits). We go to the front office of the hotel to work out how we are going to get to the park, and the guy tells us he'll make us a map and take us to the trailhead. He explains that we are about 3 kilometers from the entrance to the national park, but there are a variety of thing we can see within 5 kilometers of the entrance. The numbers should have seemed daunting, but at the time our enthusiasm pushed us forward without question.


We walked to the trailhead and had our first sign of how the day was going to go. The trail was pure mud and it was obvious almost no one went on foot. Most people instead paid the money for the horse. Being Peace Corps volunteers none of us wanted to pay, but we all knew that none of us had an additional pair of shoes when the ones we were wearing turned into mud balls. We looked at the front desk officer, who saw our concern and but told us, “You are going to get muddy, don’t even waste your time trying not to.” The first hill was the worst. It was nothing but mud, but we still wasted our time trying to stay as clean and dry as possible with a fair amount of luck. The forest was like no forest I’ve ever hiked before. There were hardly any pines or maples or anything else that seemed familiar, even in Honduras, but the unfamiliarity was nice. It kept me excited about walking, an activity that on its own offers very little amusement. It took over 20 minutes to get up the first hill, in part because of the trail, in part because of the incline.


The first stream we crossed was calm and only about 2 feet across. It hardly reminded me of the scary story recounted to us the evening before. The next stream had a little bridge and I wondered how far off the beaten path the mud pits were, since so far there were no raging rapids, nor any sign of them.


We finally got to the entrance and had a bit of luck. The park ranger had run out of foreigner tickets and could only sell us the ones for nationals, which cost about 20% of what we expected to pay. I’m not sure that there is any logic at all to that, but I’ll take 80% savings over logic any day.


The park looked a lot like the walk to the park, since a large portion of the walk is also a protected area, but the park’s trails were slightly better maintained, not as muddy, and not over run by horse tracks. We decide to skip the hummingbird trail and head as fast as we could to the hot springs, which sounded like the best way to spend an afternoon on vacation. We ran into another stream, this one nearly 8 feet across, but we managed to jump from rock to rock to cross and keep our feet dry. If I were able to see the future, I would have just walked right through the stream. That was the last easy to cross stream we would see all day until we turned around and headed back.


We took a quick side trip to a waterfall and we caught our first glimpse of what the young lady was referring to when she said rapids, but there was nothing to imply we ever had to cross such insanity. The waterfall was large, and had 2 actual falls divided by a large rock. There were trails all along the sides so you could go to the top or the bottom and see it from what ever angle you wanted. If the water wasn’t so cold there were all sorts of fun that could be had. After walking back to the main trail from the side trip we decided we should go straight to the hot springs so we could spend as much time as we wanted there and if we had time we could side trip on the way back.


We reached another stream crossing, but as we approached it we saw a sign that said it was actually a river crossing. Having spent too much time playing Oregon trail, we all discuss our river fjord-ing options. We can just cross, de-shoe and sock and hike up our pants, we can go upstream and look for a bridge or series of rocks, or we can turn around. We decided we had walked too far to turn around, and the rocks upstream looked promising, so we walked 50 meters upstream and crosses, still managing to stay somewhat dry and clean.


30 minutes later we were at another river and had the same decision making process. This time there were no promising looking rocks, but the river had gone wide in this area so there was almost no current and the water was crystal clear, so the girls decided to remove their shoes and socks and hike up their pants. I tried to hike up my pants, but they wouldn’t stay, and I decided this was a good opportunity to finally just clean off my shoes, so I barreled across with absolutely no grace, but a high level of effectiveness. Especially since the rocks in the water ended up only looking smooth I eventually found myself serving as a guide and steady shoulder for the ladies.


After having crossed multiple streams, walked at least 7 kilometers up-hill and fjord-ed 4 streams when we finally got the stream we should have turned around at, but we were all too determined to just get to the hot springs. Okay, Carmen and I were determined. Alice was completely happy to make the smarter if less adventurous decision, and turn around. We saw the only other people we had seen all day cross, and while it didn’t look easy, it looked possible, and I won’t be out done by a German 8-year-old, even if he was carried by his father. After we decided as a group to cross, Alice’s reluctance was still obvious. We searched first for a series of rocks we could cross, but after no luck we looked for the widest spot in the river where the water would be shallow and the current less strong. Sadly all of our searches ended in no advantages so we decided to just go slowly, one person at a time. I, being both the stupidest and most willing to take the risk, walked across. The rapids that had downed a horse 2 days before didn’t manage to knock me over, and both the girls made it across just fine as well. Alice crossed the fastest; making it obvious she was not a fan of standing in a rather strong current. The fun part about the whole thing was that at this point we were soaked up to our waist. All that time the girls had spent trying to keep their jeans dry was suddenly undone, and we still had to go back to where we started.


After the last river it was only another kilometer to the hot springs, but when we arrived there were two problems. First, the hot water was only slightly warmer than the cold streams we had been crossing. Second, the German family that crossed ahead of us was already in the water. After a short discussion we decided we were not interested in spending an hour in cold water with 8 other people. We had been informed about a second hot spring not advertised by the national park and we had directions to it provided by our hotel. The guy had told us that after heavy rain, the park hot spring is often cold, but the secret hot spring had a better bathing pool that rain didn’t affect as much. He even made it sound like it was relatively close, just take a second trail that’s not on the map, cross a stream and take a right. We headed back to the turn off to look for the trail.


We ended up walking all the way back to the stream only a crazy person would cross and we knew we had missed the turn. We decided not to cross again quite yet because we knew that would mark the end of the days walk and a complete failure as far as hot springs were concerned. We did a u-turn and kept looking for it. We found the right trail but discovered the guy who drew our map and gave us directions was unaware of scale. He showed the trail directly off the main trail, when it was actually about a half kilometer farther down a side trail. All we were missing was a right turn after crossing a stream. After we crossed a stream and walked a while it occurred to me we were going to cross at least 4 more streams and he had never specified which one. We crossed the first stream and there was no trail. We crossed the second stream and there was a trail that seemingly leads no where. It actually looked like it then immediately wanted us to cross back over the stream, but that didn’t make sense. Surely that would have been mentioned in the directions. So we continued on. There was no trail after the 3rd or 4th stream either, and Alice had the “I’m not turning around to go look for this” look on her face, and I was unwilling to lead her on further chases involving a wild goose.


The rest of the trail was in terrible condition and I started to realize it was because we were walking on the horse path and horses are not as concerned with mud as we were. The only person to fall because of it was me, but I knew there were plenty of places to clean myself off, so I didn’t worry about it. We got back to the ranger station and asked the ranger and he informed us we were about 75 meters from the second hot spring. We had turned around right before the spring.


The hike was effectively over; Alice had made that very clear. I decided I should check out a couple nearby attractions so I talked Carmen into doing a quick walk down the hummingbird trail (no hummingbirds present) and to the watering ponds that are great for watching wildlife and birds (which were also not present). Then we all hiked back down to the hotel, muddy, tired, and ready for dinner and a brew.


There was of course no working hot water, so Carmen went and used the shower at another room and Alice and I just took slightly cold showers. I had originally planned on also showering in another room, but I had gotten in the shower with my clothes on to clean the mud off and just decided I might as well shower.


We ate dinner at the hotel, since there were no other options and the prices were fair. We ordered a round of cold ones to help us relax from our nearly 7 hour hike when we were gravely informed that there was no beer, and no beer coming until the next day. The order had gotten mixed up and there was simply none to be had. In our state of exhaustion we were obviously disappointed and asked why their driver couldn’t go, but since all the guests that day had already been picked up, he had already gone home. Finally, they tell us that if we really want, one of the employees will take one of us to a local place where we can buy a few cans of suds. After dinner I got escorted just outside of the hotel to a house where a party is obviously raging inside and I was informed this is where all the locals come to sing karaoke and relax after spending a hard day working in the fields. We have similar establishments in Honduras and the general rule is to avoid them. They are the places where the idiots hack each other with machetes over minor conflicts. They are never safe for women or children, and gringos would do best to avoid them. I was immediately put on edge. We haven’t even made it inside the fence when I can hear a terrible waling coming from inside that can only be karaoke sung by a man who has not been informed singing and screaming are different animals. I start to get more observant, making sure my money is in multiple places and I am on guard, just in case.
Then, the real strangeness starts. Three kids come running outside and the people on the porch are a mix of men and women, chatting calmly and ignoring the clamor coming from inside. Kids continue to play games that look like tag and nothing seems dangerous at all. We’re 20 meters from going in the house when a 5 foot tall leathery skinned woman comes waddling out like she’s spent too many years on a horse. She’s carrying a flashlight and a wadded up grocery bag and her face says she knows what you’re thinking. She has exactly the kind of scowl I would expect from someone who owns a rural watering hole the world over. Walter, my companion from the hotel, stops us and says she’s the owner of the place and we should ask her if she’ll sell us some beer. Sometimes when the house is crowded she’ll only sell to regulars, which thankfully, Walter is, but she’ll know the goods are for us, since Walter will never get anything to go. There is a quick exchange between them and it sounds like she’s running low, but she has back up supplies at an uncles place down the road. She always makes sure to never have too much on hand in case people take things and forget to pay when she is doing something else. That way, she can never be out too much money. I’m starting to relax since I am still watching every person around me and no one has even noticed I’m a gringo yet and they all seem completely comfortable. This would never happen in Honduras. I avoid such establishments by at least 100 meters, since the drunks in Honduras seem to sense a gringo in the area and take great pleasure in the minor harassment of one. Usually it’s just a barrage of questions about taking the person to the states, but at its worst it can be anything from a man hugging you and crying to downright dangerous situations. Here, there is no one that drunk, and they seem quite content to have more people there to share in the party.


The exchange ends and the owner agreed to sell me a couple, but first she has to run down the street for backup supplies. Walter says he can stick around for me, but I am enjoying watching everything and Walter seems to be keeping an eye on me. We hang out for a minute and Walter knows pretty much everyone who goes in and out and there seem to be a fair number of people going in and out. One of them stops to chat and my accent gives me away and I get a few questions about where I am from, but not as many as I expected. The topic turns to language and the man keeps trying to get me to guess what he is saying in some local dialect. I have no idea, so I make a few things up, and he thinks that’s great. He never tells me what he says, but keeps making me guess for 5 minutes when the owner waddles back. Her flashlight is out of batteries. She gets a second and goes back.


The guy decides we need to sing, and doesn’t seem to understand that we do not need to sing. I tell him I’ll sing when the owner gets back, he seems satisfied and goes in to pick out the perfect song. I talk to Walter for a while longer and I like him more and more. He’s a decent guy with a college education from Costa Rica and works near the park so he can help with conservation efforts. He was the one who actually built most of the canopy tour I am considering going on the following day. Inside I can hear my new friend start to scream and I realize I don’t need to worry about actually singing with him, since no one could hear my anyways. The owner finally returns with a full sack a few minutes later and Walter starts trying to get things taken care of for me. No one ever buys more than one drink at a time, so she can’t figure out how much it will cost. She makes Walter find her calculator and then makes him figure it out for her. Finally, thirty minutes after the start of my adventure I am going back to the hotel. I get back and the girls ask what took so long. To tell them what happened takes nearly as long as the whole adventure took and they decide that it was totally worth the time spent. I agree. It was interesting. We decide the next day we want to do the canopy tour and we’d like to see the other half of the national park but we’d prefer to see it from the back of a horse. This time I send the girls to office to take care of things. They come back 5 minutes later and inform me that the national park will be closed the next day. How can they close dirt trails? That just doesn’t seem right to me. The girls go back to negotiate a way in and they come back a while later and Walter, inspired by our recent trip has agreed to take us to the second half of the park. The guy at the desk seems satisfies when we tell him we will do the canopy tour and then Walter is going to be our guide. He doesn’t ask where Walter is taking us, and we don’t offer. Walter, being a lover of nature, wants us to get a chance to see anything, and if we came to his national park, we’ll see whatever part of it we want. The front desk guy is obviously worried that if we get kicked out of the park we’ll not want to pay. So, we’re not sure what is going to come the next morning, since we assume Walter and the desk guy will eventually talk it over, but we just go to bed.


Canopy tours are awesome. When we first arrived, I guessed it would be scary, as Alice and I both loathe heights and Carmen hints she’s not such a fan either. They gear us up and I get concerned that perhaps we booked the wrong tour, but from the minute I was dangling from the pulley I knew I had made the right decision. Alice’s smile after the first run implied she liked it just as much. I’ve been through no comparable experience in my life. I assumed that the point was to see wildlife and trees from a new perspective. While that is interesting, the truth is, it is just a lot of fun to fly from one tree to another. There isn’t a lot else to say about the whole experience since it all happens very fast, but somehow the clock has moved rather dramatically. I highly recommend it to all mildly adventurous travelers.


During our canopy adventure it became quite apparent the guy from behind the desk had no clue where Walter was actually taking us, but every time he mentioned the places we were going to see it sounded nothing like what Walter had told us, so we just agreed readily anytime he asked. (The desk guy and Walter are the canopy guides). Yes, yes, we’ll be happy to see the hot springs we missed yesterday. I finally got to ask Walter and he told me he had just told the desk guy we would be in the park, and since only half the park was technically open, the desk guy had done all the assumptions on his own. Walter was confident the rangers could care less about where in the park we were as long as we didn’t get hurt.


The upper half of the park is a long long walk, or a long horseback ride away. There is a lot more interesting things to see and tons more wildlife. We saw monkeys, iguanas, birds, butterflies and more monkeys. I’ve never seen wild monkeys before and it was a treat. We saw an orange lake, boiling mud, a boiling lake, hot springs, waterfalls, and beautiful views of Costa Rica. The second half of the park was far more interesting than the one we hiked the day before and the rangers never saw us. The desk guy has no clue we ever went and Walter got a fair sized tip. On the way back down Walter even took us to the hot spring we missed the day before and we got to relax for a half hour before we went back.


That night after dinner we just hung out with the staff. We learned that they get a decent wage from the hotel, far better than somewhere in Honduras would pay, but the pay still sucked. They work for 2 weeks and then get 3 days off, or they can work for a month and get all six at the same time. They work 14 hour days and most guests don’t usually want to hang out with the employees. They showed us their rooms, which were small, but private. Sometimes when there are no guests in the hotel they get to do the canopy tour or sometimes they go on horseback rides. Walter likes to spend his time developing new paths in the national park and looking for hidden attractions. All of them seem happy enough to work there, but all of them also seem to aspire to work someplace better in the future. Sometimes I miss aspirations while I am in Honduras. Too many people seem to just be trying to survive, or they have what they want and they never try to better themselves or their community. Many Hondurans are not like that, and to say the entire country is would be offensive, but most Hondurans agree they are very relaxed people, sometimes too relaxed. Sometimes being able to go with the flow has really saved them. While most of Central America has warred internally and externally Honduras almost never participated. They have never had a civil war. Sadly, that attitude has also cost the country opportunities. I suppose in the end I appreciate Honduras for what it is and Costa Rica for what it is. The people in the streets of Costa Rica are not nearly as nice as Hondurans. The people of Honduras don’t seem to like risk. Which probably means I will always find work trying to change that mind set of Honduras and Costa Rica will always be nice to find some privacy.