Ten Days In Almost-Paradise

TEN DAYS IN ALMOST-PARADISE:
Costa Rica by bus and boat.

The cab driver was few minutes early, unfailingly polite, and both loaded and unloaded our luggage - a very good omen at 4:30 in the morning. 
Contrary to my expectations, we were not the only passengers at Logan at that hour - American had three flights to Miami at 6 a.m. and more leaving at 7. It took 40 minutes to get through baggage check, with the crowd overwhelming the insufficient number  of AA people,
Once in the air, AA austerity was much in evidence. A snack box was available for $5 but the flight attendant apologized in advance because there were not enough on board to go around,
Coffee is still free - but to watch, not films, but reruns of old CBS sit-coms and late night interview shows from ten years ago,  cost $2 for earphones you could keep for the next flight.
The reduction in both ground and in-flight personnel is clear testimony to the parlous state of air transport in the U.S. The very senior flight attendants who worked both our flights had long ago lost any interest in their work or their charges.
Only those airlines like Southwest which have made explicit their lack of extras seem to have a successful business model.
A late plane from Miami made for a late arrival in San Jose, the country’s capitol, where, in a huge crowd, Carol spotted the clipboard emblazoned with the crest of Overseas Adventure Travel, carried by our guide.
Jose Cocozza. a 33 year old Costa Rican of Italian heritage, has been a professional guide for 16 years, dropping out of college after graduating as a scholarship student from a high-end German high school in San Jose.
He turned out to be a model for all tour guides - knowledgeable, helpful, and sensitive to his charges’ needs. 
The Courtyard Marriott that was our base entering and leaving the country was luxe by Costa Rican standards, situated in a plaza several miles from downtown, with a neon sign blazing in the night - ITSKATZU Plaza. I just accepted it as a greeting to me, and never found out the meaning of the name.
Dinner on our own that night was in a Peruvian restaurant nearby, with a California couple we met who were on their way to the Costa Rica Pacific coast to look at land they had optioned. As we discovered, Costa Rica has become a hot market for vacationing Americans - and Europeans - who are buying condos up and down the Pacific coast.
As would happen each morning of the trip, we left our luggage outside our door as we went to breakfast, and it magically made its way to the top of the 20 seat tour bus with which we became all too familiar.
At breakfast in the hotel, we made our first - but hardly our last - encounter with fried plantain, an ubiquitous banana-like fruit which was standard fare at every breakfast meal we ate in CR. 
Visits to the National Theatre building and the Archeological Museum in downtown San Jose subjected me to the first test of how my back would behave. Standing is no fun, but walking presents no serious difficulties, other than speed - I tended to bring up the rear of every group.
We didn’t spend enough time in San Jose to get any real idea of what the city is like. But one difference from other Central American cities I’ve been in is the lack of indigenous people - because CR doesn’t have many. 
When the Spanish landed in the 16th century, there were few natives and the culture and economy that evolved was quite different from countries to the north and south. It was not dependent on exploiting native peoples, but was focused on small farms worked by the owners. 

En route to Sarapiquis Centro Neotropico, the first of the five resorts we would visit, we stopped at a coffee plantation, up 3500 feet in the foothills northeast of San Jose. It is hard to imagine, but the coffee berries grown on the 1,000,000 bushes of the DOKA plantation are picked by hand by most of the five hundred workers employed - who do this backbreaking work for $2 an hour. 
And since the berries do not all ripen at the same time, multiple pickings are necessary. It seemed doable on the fairly level ground of this plantation. Later, we saw plantations on 60 degree hillsides, where workers let themselves down by ropes to get at the berries. 
DOKA processes about 10% of the coffee they grow - keeping only the best beans and selling off the rest. Apparently, tours like ours, which included lunch, are a major source of income as well. 

San Jose sits in the middle of the central valley of CR, with mountain ranges running up and down the country both to the east and west. We were on our way east over the wall of peaks that leads to the rain forests of the northeast and the flat lands along the Caribbean Sea, where banana plantations dominate the landscape.
Along the way, at one of several stops, an enterprising souvenir merchant had set up bird feeders, baited with pieces of papaya that attracted at least a dozen species. The birders in the group - there was one fanatic and several fellow travelers - were elated. At least four species of humming birds were close enough to almost touch.

CR roads reveal that this is indeed a country with economic problems. (However, in terms of human development, as determined by UN standards, CR ranks with Uruguay, Argentine and Chile in the upper third of world countries, and considerably above El Salvador and Nicaragua, close by.) Generally, except on the major highways joining the largest cities and towns, there are no shoulders and the concept of guardrails hasn’t reached CR as yet, even on mountain roads with hairpin turns that are bracing, to say the least.
Potholes abound, rough surfaces are the norm, and one-lane bridges are typical everywhere in the outlying districts. An average speed of 30 miles an hour is probably the best that can be expected, off the main highways. And significant portions of some roads are unpaved.
Road maintenance apparently rests with the central government, and as with many issues, the further from the capital the road is, the less money for maintenance.

Sarapiquis Centro Neotropico is a 2000 acre private reserve, devoted to the protection of the rain forest. The land was bought some years ago by a group of concerned people in Wisconsin, and it has evolved into an  educational center, funded in part by the resort on its grounds. Teaching local farmers how to preserve the forest while making a living is the theme. But there is also a museum on the grounds, devoted to the people who lived in the area 800 years ago, and we got a lecture from a member of the staff. 
The thatched roof buildings in which we were housed approximate the construction and styles of the indigenous people who once farmed in the area. We have. thankfully, left television and room telephones behind in San Jose.
The nearby Sarapiquis River has second and third degree rapids. We navigated it without major incident in 4 and 5 person rafts, with dense rain forest on one side, part of a national reserve, and ranches on the other. The water was cool, not cold, and a swim after the ride was delightful.
The first monkeys of our journey appeared along the river, one a white headed variety evidently fairly rare, while most were howlers, the dominant species in CR. Harder to discern - their nature is to be non-active - were the sloths, clinging to tree branches.
Birds were everywhere, and we saw the first of the more than 110 species identified on the trip. The dedicated birders saw everything much before the rest of us, and were very gracious in helping us overcome our obvious deficiencies.

The food met my modest expectations - beans and rice at every meal, fried fish, fried chicken, plantains cooked in a multitude of ways, lots of salads, and of course, fresh fruit and coffee. Portions have been generous, and breakfasts are a problem: too many choices.
At least four kinds of fresh fruit - pineapple, oranges, bananas, and papaya - plus at least two juices, pancakes, rice and beans, eggs cooked to order, bacon (not worth bothering with) cereal, toast, coffee, tea and milk.
Forget the bread - no one seems to have figured it how to bake a decent loaf.

Most mornings, Jose led a determined band at 6 a.m. to check out the early rising avian population. We are happy to listen to their discoveries over breakfast.

After lunch ashore, back in the bus to a pineapple plantation, where we ate easily the best pineapple I’ve ever tasted. It turns out that pineapples are ripe then they are picked - and everything after that is downhill, unless they are kept cold.
That is supposed to happen en route to the customer - but there are gaps in the care. Anyway, if you can pick off the leaves at the top, don’t buy that pineapple - it is over ripe. Similarly, if you squeeze the fruit and juice comes out, try another one. Above all, keep pineapples refrigerated, not in a bowl in the center of the dining room table. And color doesn’t matter - it doesn’t indicate the state of ripeness - another myth demolished, alas.
The plantation guide cut the pineapple from the tall spikes of the plant, skinned it with his machete, quartered and sliced it still with the machete, and offered bite size pieces.

Side note - The machete ought to be the symbol of CR. No matter what was being grown, a machete was hung on the waist of nearly every farm worker we saw.

The Sarapiqui River flows through the reserve, on its way to join other streams that eventually make their way to the Caribbean, A suspension bridge - at 860 feet long the longest in the country - crosses it, continuing over an island mid-river and onto the forest on the east side of the river. More birds and flowers and exotic trees flourish, in a seemingly impenetrable sea of vegetation we traversed on a trail which wound its way into the forest and back to the bridge to return to the west side of the river.
I passed a major test for myself this morning, walking for the two hours it took to cross the swaying bridge and continuing along the series of tracks on the far side, with only two opportunities to sit down.
The only wildlife visible were leaf-cutter ants moving pieces of leaf many times their size along narrow trails in the forest, and bullet ants, an inch long and toxic. The variety of trees, about which Jose was very knowledgeable, was astounding. But the rain forest in CR is disappearing at an alarming rate, as in other areas of Central and South America.
More than 25% of the country is protected by designation as national parks, national forests, and public and private preserve, and the rate of deforestation has allegedly slowed, but it certainly hasn’t stopped.
In part, it continues to happen because CR doesn’t have the resources to police the areas under protection.

Dinner time found us at Bosques de Chachaqua Rain Forest Hotel, making appetizers from produce bought at a market in the town of Quesada, on the way.
Before dinner, in the late afternoon, while Carol napped, I sat on the verandah (the right word, I think) of our own cottage on a hillside, totally content with the rain pouring down on the gorgeous flowers and shrubs planted in beds all around us.
Our luggage was delivered from the bus by a cart pulled by a small tractor up the hill from the hotel office below us.
Strangely, the rain seemed a natural part of the trip, not really inconveniencing - we all had rain jackets and umbrellas. When we left Sarapiqui in the morning for the trip back over the eastern mountain range en route in a northwesterly direction, it had been overcast for the first time since we arrived in CR. Around noon, as we traveled, the heavens opened and the rain began that would be with us for the next four days.
The rain would cease for a short time occasionally, and then begin again. A small stream we cross walking up to our cottages from the main buildings has risen at least six inches in the day we have been here.
Moisture laden air blows in from the Caribbean to the east, rises in the mountains, cools and loses its moisture as rain, even during the dry season - which supposedly we are in.

CR has achieved a literacy rate of 96% (2003 data), at least in part because of mandatory free public education from grade 1 to 7, in elementary schools. Students can go on to high school, which runs from 8th grade to the 11th. A lecturer on CR education bemoaned the fact that the government boasts of the literacy rate while spreading educational funding very unevenly over the country, with the larger cities and towns getting too great a share, to the detriment of outlying districts. The further one gets from the central valley, the site of San Jose and the cities which were founded first in the history of the country - the farther away one gets, the lower the quality of education

We got a first hand view of the physical aspects of elementary education with a visit to a school in the village of Chachagua, which receives financial aid from the Grand Circle Foundation, sponsored by the parent company of OAT. In spite of the fact that this is school vacation time in CR - from mid-November to mid February - more than a dozen children and several teachers were waiting as the bus pulled up to the school.
As we climbed out, each of us was taken in hand by a child and brought into the assembly room. The school, as with many gathering places in CR, has a very open plan, with unglazed window areas and many rooms open to the usually mild weather.
We played games, did puzzles, and then came the dancing girls: eight or nine students in long Spanish looking dancing dresses performing to recorded Latin music. Finally, we all joined in line dances, culminating with the Hokie Pokie - I guess no society in the world has escaped that malady.
The children were so beautiful in that setting that both Carol and I had tears in our eyes.
Finally, one child spoke in English to thank us for coming - and there were few of us who didn’t leave a donation to the school.

Then, a short bus ride to the homes of two of the students for lunch, in two groups. Carol and I ended up with the family of one of the dancers, a beautiful, bright child whose family appears relatively well-to-do by CR standards. (The families are paid $8 a head by OAT for providing lunch.)
The home cooked meal was the best yet on the tour. The family’s three daughters and one son were present, and they appeared genuinely glad to entertain us, aside from the monetary aspect of the visit.
Although English is not taught in school until the 7th grade, many of the children had a least a smattering, and some were quite advanced. With tourism already one of the two largest industries in the country, the advantages of learning English early are not lost on young people.
An indication of how different in some respects life is in the out of the way places like Chachagua is the address of the family we visited - “Roxana Campos Vargas, 150 mts este de la escuela (150 meters east of the school), Chachagua, La Fortuna, San Carlos, Alajuela, Costa Rica.”

Meteorological note: There has been almost no wind with the rain. It comes straight down, and umbrellas really do keep the rain off.

Carol has been suffering from a respiratory infection since we left Boston. Leaving Chachagua, we visited La Gema, a women’s cooperative that processes indigenous plants, grown by its members, into herbal remedies as well as cooking spices.
A packet of herbs was put together for Carol’s ailment, but unfortunately had no effect. What did finally cure her was a short course of antibiotics dispensed by a pharmacist in La Fortuna, whom we found with Jose’s aid.

Our lunch stop was an experimental farm, just five acres, but planted in a huge variety of crops and designed to educate young Costa Ricans about organic farming. The highlight was pushing sugar cane through a press to extract the juice. It was delicious by itself - but much better when made into totally illegal clear “moonshine”: a 150 proof drink that went down very easily.
The delicious lunch came from chicken and vegetables raised on the farm itself, cooked by the farmer’s wife. Not entirely by coincidence, the farmer was formerly the principal of the school we visited. OAT reaches out in many directions.
A note: many of the crops were grown in small patches laid out in geometric shapes, to teach one aspect of mathematics along with agronomy.

La Fortuna, which we stopped at after lunch, is a bustling small town, energized by the rise of tourism and its location close by Arenal Volcano, the most notable of the several active volcanoes in CR.
There are dozens of companies offering day tours, white water rafting, treks on the volcano, and horseback trips, as well as rows of souvenir shops, many with depressingly similar CR souvenirs, many originating in other countries. I did score my one personal purchase - a hand made rosewood cane, which I put to good use.
Searchers for high end crafts won’t find them in the out of the way places one might expect - we had to wait until we returned to San Jose for that experience.

Volcano Lodge, situated at the foot of the mountain, is less isolated and more attuned to - um - less active tourists than our group. The roadways were paved, each room had a television set and a phone, - but when we opened the blinds on our windows, the view gave directly on Arenal Volcano, just five kilometers away.
Unfortunately, all we could see were the shoulders of the slopes -the cloud cover hid the cone and the upper mountain during our entire visit, and we never got to see its eruptions, which are evidently quite spectacular at night but offer no danger currently. The volcano has been erupting since 1968., and shows no signs of stopping.
For the only time on the tour, I opted out when a two hour trip across a series of hanging bridges was on the schedule. Watching the humming birds feed on the flowers just a few feet away from our open cabin window seemed more sensible.

The preoccupation with birds is ubiquitous. Outside the open wall of the inn’s restaurant was a feeding table set up, covered with papaya pieces put out by the inn’s staff. Of course, the setting is a little artificial but how else would we get to see six young toucans all in a row?
When we came down to breakfast, those six immature toucans were lined up having a feast, a few feet from the human diners. Joining the toucans were blue gray tanagers, black tanagers, robins and a flycather.

Our group gets along quite well. The cross we all bear is an eighty-two year old red head from Reno, Nevada who is congenitally late for all occasions, and seems to lack concentration, based on her questions. But her idiosyncrasies are accepted more or less cheerfully by all.
We tend to eat with the same one or two couples, but I would not characterize the group as cliquey.
La Fortuna is only two hours south of the Nicaraguan border, and it was there, to the Rio Frio, we went the next morning, The little port of Los Chiles, a riverfront town, supports a cottage industry of tour boats for both groups like ours and individuals.
The river is flat water as it flows northward into the San Juan, a major stream that eventually gets to the Caribbean. On each side, a strip of a hundred yards inland is protected land, enough to support several bands of howler monkeys, (the howling is more like a roar). One group had a distinctive orange colored female who kept showing up as we ran along the stream.
More birds, some new to us, appeared as did caimans (smaller versions of the crocodile) sunning on fallen logs at the edges of the river. The crocodiles didn’t show, even when we stopped at the Nicaraguan border for lunch, which had been brought along in coolers.
Perhaps to demonstrate the lack of controls along this stretch of border, we motored a few hundred yards into Nicaragua before heading back to the wharf at Los Chiles.

The relationship between Costa Rica and Nicaragua is a little like that of Texas and Mexico - there is a constant stream of illegals moving south for the better jobs and the better economic opportunities in CR. Despite the similarity in geography and climate, Nicaragua’s political history is far different from that of CR, thought both were originally controlled by the coffee growing families.
Since 1948, after a civil war lasting 40 days, CR has enjoyed a genuinely democratic government, and under Oscar Arias, disbanded its army in 1986, at the same time as he engineered a peace plan for Central America that earn him the Nobel Peace Prize.
The country’s reputation has suffered a bit in recent years, as the last three elected presidents are currently under indictment for corruption. Arias is running again.
Along the highway that morning on the road that goes north to Nicaragua, was a police shack, with several patrolmen , who stop buses moving south to check ID’s. As tourists, we were exempt.

We are moving northwest now, into Guanacaste Province, where we stop at Buena Vista Lodge, 4500 feet up in the hills near Ricon de la Vieja National Park. The view from our cabin is west, and we can make out a bay on the Pacific Ocean, about twenty miles away.
A walk in the woods in late afternoon brings us to a bar set up on top of a ridge facing west, where we toast the sunset over the Pacific, before making our way back to our cabin.

Each of the resorts we stayed at has its own special qualities and activities. Here, in the next cabin was a blind masseuse whose service Carol employed. Outside our cabin lived an elderly white horse, untethered who lazed under a tree each day.
Buena Vista boasts a thermal area, with pools of graduatedly hotter water, reached either on horseback - me - or tractor ride - Carol and several others. The pools are several thousand feet lower than the lodge, and in the course of the ride, I remembered why I ride only about once every ten years, particularly during the time my horse was picking his way along a rocky stream a foot or two wide.
After slathering ourselves with mud - with supposedly skin tightening qualities - we soaked contentedly in the warm water with sunshine finally breaking through.
Going back up, I decided to spare the horse my two hundred pounds and opted for the tractor ride.

After lunch came the activity which has become almost a required part of every visitor’s CR experience - flying through the air on a wire above the forest canopy.
The course owned by the lodge consisted of eleven platforms at varying heights on large trees in the dry forest typical of the northwest. From each platform to the next, a cable is stretched.
Each rider is fitted with a body harness, and a hook which attaches to a pulley on the cable, There are two additional safety straps - once these are hooked up, away you go to the next platform, from 50 to 150 yards away. Hands are in gloves with reinforced leather palms, and pulling down with the back hand on the cable controls your speed.
I couldn’t resist this opportunity to buy a picture of me flying through the air.
Vertigo had been on my mind, but in the fact, I had no sense of great height because the tops of most trees were below me, with the canopy of leaves keeping the ground hidden.
Each platform is a little lower than the previous one - getting up to the first was the most difficult part of the experience. Jose pushed and pulled me all the way. By the time the last of ten rides has been completely, riders are just a few feet off the ground.
Carol opted for a massage while the rides were going on, and a few others declined. The member of the group who weighed in at 350 pounds plus couldn’t be accommodated - no belt was large enough.
Getting to Guanacaste involved a five hour trip from La Fortuna, which brought us out of the lush wet, rain forest to the pastures of Guanacaste. Since the Spanish conquest, this northwest region has been the center of the cattle industry, with deforestation having been completed hundreds of years ago.
(The cattle raised are Brahmas, and all are grass fed, leading to a leaner beef than Americans are used to. None of the beef we ate was memorable.)
It is not only very different in terms of climate - much less rain - but it has very low population density and correspondingly fewer services for the inhabitants than other parts of the country.
Indeed, getting to Buena Vista involved eleven miles on a dirt road off the Pan American Highway, which runs from northwest to southeast down the Pacific side of the country.

Back on the Pan American Highway, we headed south the next morning for Puntarenas, the main port on the Pacific coast. Puntarenas shipped the first coffee from CR to the world market, brought by oxcart over the mountains from the central valley.
Now, we are back in the moist rain forest, and moving in a small boat on the Rio Tarcoles, a natural habitat for crocodiles. The river borders on Carara National Park, with scarlet macaws a major attraction.
There were indeed crocodiles of all sizes. There were others boats on the river, as well. One ahead of us pulled onto the bank of the river, and a guide got out with a dead chicken, which he slapped on the water several times. In response, a sixteen foot croc (our guide’s measurement - not mine) came out of water, up the bank and snatched the bird from the guide’s hand.
I suspect this little drama had been played out many times - but it lost none of its effectiveness in the replaying.

As CR becomes more well-known and popular as a vacation destination, development follows. A few hundred yards back from the river, in what appeared to be deep rain forest, we could see a five story condominium edifice plumped down in the midst of the canopy of trees.
I am sure the ad read - RIVER AND PARK VIEW.

We crossed a bridge over the delta of the river on our way to our lodge - and counted 23 crocodiles sunning on the sandbars below.

Our room at Hotel Villa Lapas was air-conditioned, a first since leaving San Jose, and welcome in the humidity we are now experiencing.
By nine the next morning, we were at a pier at Puntarenas, boarding a 33’ by 71’ motor catamaran, on our way to a private refuge on a peninsular across the Gulf of Nicoya.
There are a dozen others going to Punta Coral, and other passengers being taken for the day to a more public beach further on.
The boat makes a steady 10 knots in a calm sea, as the crew, all in their twenties except the captain and the first officer, in spotless white shirts and shorts, hands around trays of fresh fruit.
In an hour, we land at Punta Coral, developed in the 1980’s by an American couple who still run it. An open sided dining room, changing rooms, lavatories, and a tiki bar look out on a half moon beach and the bay.
Ocean kayaks and snorkeling equipment are there for the taking, and a trail runs across the peninsular to the other side. Carol chose the walk in the woods - I opted for a chair on the beach.
Lunch was the best of the trip - fresh sea bass cerviche and broiled mahi-mahi, encrusted with a chopped cashew topping.
The trip back in late afternoon was timed to pass two small islands, home to hundreds of seabirds we saw returning to their nests at the end of the day.
Not a bad way for the trip to draw to a close.

Back over the western mountain range on Sunday morning, our road, the major highway between San Jose and Puntarenas. was still two lane, sans shoulders and guard rails.
Today was souvenir day, with a stop along the way to watch Kuna Indian women sewing brightly colored fabrics on bags and tee shirts. In San Jose, it was jewelry, and a chance to have lunch in downtown San Jose and observe life in the country’s largest city. After dinner at a restaurant high up on the hills overlooking the city, we are packing for the trip home tomorrow.

I think we were lucky in our guide and in the composition of the group. There were essentially no glitches - and given that OAT runs five or six a week for two or three months during the high season, there shouldn’t have been. The bus rides were too long on a couple of days, but given the state of the roads, that is probably unavoidable.
This was a trip for active people with an appreciation of the outdoors and the an interest in understanding a country that is far different from most parts of the US.
We’ll be back.