Trivia Time: Loco in Coco

First off, I am back State-side for a friend's wedding this weekend.  I'll be in the Houston area from Oct 21st - Oct 27th.  It would be great to catch up with folks so let me know if you are around.

Now to follow up a bit on my current town of residence, Playa Del Coco, Costa Rica.  It's a little beach  town on the north-east coast of the country in the state of Guanacaste.  It's one main road lined with touristy restaurants and souvenir shops dead ends into the beach that sits in a half moon bay filled with boats, one of them being a pirate ship, surrounded by jungle covered cliffs.  It's the low season now but things begin picking up in November and am told in late December the main street is closed to car traffic due to the throngs of tourists, both Tico's and foreigners,  that crowd the street.  I am sure by that time I will definitely by considered a local.

I have legitimized my stay by renting a studio apartment a block from the beach.  It has the basics plus a small waterfall through the ceiling in the bathroom if it rains hard enough.  Some people have asked if they can send things but getting mail here is a task in itself.  There are no real addresses so they use local landmarks, sometimes of statues that are no longer standing.  For example my address would be:
Playa Del Coco,  Costa Rica
Turn at the Lazy Lizard Bar, take second dirt road to the right, across from the hotel Puerta Del Sol, apartment between the family of eight and the prostitutes from Nicaragua.

As far as work goes, I'm basically doing an internship at the dive shop until I get my dive master and then I'll work there hopefully starting in mid-November.  Right now I go diving a few times a week with sharks, eels, rays, whales, puffer fish, etc.. and then work in the shop the other days.  It's an amazing place to travel and dive and I plan to be there until January so if anyone wants to come down, feel free.  I wouldn't charge that much to be your guide.

I was thinking the best way to introduce you to the Coco lifestyle is through a series of questions to which you get to randomly guess the answers since you have no knowledge on the subject.  This is how things normally go for me while traveling so it's a nice part of the experience to share.

1.  What have I not had to do while living in Coco:
A.  Pull a stuck truck out of a flooded creek that flows into the beach while the rising tide is coming in and sinking the truck I am driving.
B.  Bury a dead ant-eater that was hit by a car outside our dive shop before the vultures got it.
C.  Chase multiple parrots outside our store that have for some reason wandered inside but apparently do not want to dive.
D.  Have to jump a creek on my bike on my way to Spanish class after the bridge was washed away.

2.  How do they make the sunset booze bruise so cheap:
A.  Capture wild dolphins and force them to pull the boat around to save on fuel costs.
B.  Hire under age bartenders that will work for oversized surf apparel.
C.  Only go out when a monsoon is about to form so they have to cut the trip short and act like they saved your life so you will give them bigger tips.
D.  Have trained monkeys steel your drinks so you have to continuously buy new ones.

3.  What have I learned so far during my dive master training:
A.  Don't sneak up on sleeping White Tip Reef Sharks especially before lunch.
B.  7 foot long Giant Moray Eels can cause you to consume half your tank in one breath if you unexpectedly come upon one lying in a crack with an open mouth one foot from your face.
C.  Extremely strong pointer fingers come in handy when trying to hold a mountain over your head.
D.  All of the above.

Bonus Question:
Since a lot of folks have been asking about the incident with the hula hoop, the mermaid, her sister, and Mr. Bananas (actually no one has asked), how does an incident like that even come about?

Cheers and hope to see ya'll while I'm back,
Jay



Answers:
1.  D - I haven't had to jump this creek yet but am expecting this bridge to be wiped out any day after a good rain.  The good side is there is a bar on both sides.

Bridge to Spanish Class

2.  B - Unfortunately they only hire these guys for bartenders and not bouncers so you still have to watch what you say when intimidating them to pour a stiff drink.

Thumbs up means keep pouring kid.

3.  D - Yes, all indeed are true.

Bonus Answer - Well it starts off like.  Then add free alcohol and go from there.

Mermaid out of the shot to the right and Mr. Bananas below deck already drunk.

Pura Vida on the Pacuare River

Sorry for the delay in posting.  I know some of you have been holding your breathe until the next installment.  Not sure this will make you breathe any easier but here it is.  As my excuse, I was having a bit of writer's block putting this one together with the building pressure of expectations and I was enjoying finally being settled somewhere for more than a 3 day period.  Plus a good dose of procrastination may have played a part as well.

It pleases me to say I have not been on a speeding bus through rain-slicked mountain roads, stuffed into a sardine can-like ferry, or been the 3rd passenger on a scooter in over three weeks and it feels pretty nice.  I have "settled down" in Playa Del Coco, a small beachfront town on the northwest coast of Costa Rica that is the focal point for diving in the country.  I am getting my divemaster/working at a dive shop called Summer Salt Dive Center along with picking up any other odd jobs I can find to make money legally.  Luckily for me there isn't too much that is illegal down here or I may have been deported awhile back for an incident I was mistakenly involved in that included a hula hoop, a mermaid, her sister, and a howler monkey named Mr. Bananas.

I'll fill in the details on the next post, but let's get everyone caught up first. 

After risking life and limb hiking through Costa Rica's wildest jungle for your reading pleasure, I decided I was due for a bit of rest and relaxation.  So I made plans to go rafting down Class 4 rapids on Costa Rica's famed Pacuare River.

It turned out that Natu, our tour guide through Corcovado NP, is also a rafting guide and owns an old lodge on the Pacuare River.  He told me he was guiding some of his friends down river the next weekend and I should come along.  I could then hike back to his lodge and stay as long as I wanted the only caveat being I would have to bring enough food for as many days as I wanted to stay since it was a pretty isolated location.  Hard offer to pass up.

So the next weekend after just getting back to San Jose from down south, I departed in a bus with Natu's friends on a 3 hour drive to the Pacuare River.  Once we arrived, we noticed we weren't the only ones planning on rafting that day.  There were about 15 other boats from different tour companies lined up on the river bank with gear and people spread out along the shores all hustling to get their boats loaded and going.  We found Natu waving vigorously with paddles in hand to get our attention.  We loaded up, had a quick session on what to do and not to do, and then headed downstream.

The last and only other time I had been down rapids was on the Zambezi in southern Africa where our boat flipped over at least 4 times in crocodile infested waters.  So I was expecting more or less the same here, minus the crocs.  However, what we got, invigorating as it was, brought us no where close to having our boat flip over.  And not that I was disappointed but I guess I was hoping for a little more action and who can blame a 34 year old single male for that.

Now, hindsight is a funny thing in that you learn the consequences of your actions after the you perform them.  What I learned, in hindsight, is don't tell the person who is in charge of getting your raft safely down a raging river that you were expecting rougher rapids.

I was sitting in the rear of the boat opposite Natu and as we were entering the next set of rapids he put the boat at just the right angle which turned that area of the boat I was sitting on into a human catapult.  I was instantly launched off my feet onto Natu's side where he rolled back and tossed me overboard with the precision and swiftness of a judo technician making it look like I fell out of the boat of my own accord.  Once again on this journey I found myself in a precarious situation trying to stay afloat in a small life jacket with another 100 yards of white water ahead laughing uncontrollably at my doomed outlook when I probably should have been focusing on keeping my mouth closed and not inhaling so much water as my head bobbled above the water line.  Once the river calmed, I made my way back to the boat still laughing and Natu helped me onboard with a big grin on his face asking me what happened and why I fell off.   The rest of the boat was happy as well because, per custom, the first person who falls off buys the first rounds of beer at the bar post raft trip.

The other main area of interest on the trip was when Natu pointed out his lodge about halfway down the river that I would be staying at.  The lodge consisted of a cleared area about an acre deep with 5 small bungalows set on the steep hillside with a large outdoor kitchen/dining area and bathroom at the top of the clearing.  He pointed out that his place was on the right side of the river while the 4x4 trail accessing it was on the left side.  With the obvious question being, "Well it's a great place but how do I get across the river?", he smiled and as we floated a bit more downstream his finger pointed to a cable spanning the river.  His finger then followed the line to the right where it ended up pointing to a small steel box hanging from the cable attached to a tree on the river's bank.  The small steel box looked like a modified seat from a shabby carnival's ferris wheel that had once been involved in an accident in which it fell onto a famous cotton candy vendor cutting off his right arm in turn making him only suitable to work at the frog toss booth where as luck would have it, he met his wife.  This couple had a child and when he grew older, to avenge his father's misfortune, he built steel carnival seats that doubled as human torture machines.  His only clients being the producers of Saw IV and the Costa Rican Crossing River With Cable Lines Authority. 

'Detailed' directions to Natu's lodge.

So after I finished buying beers for the guys on our boat and then some, Natu and I came up with this "detailed" map, pictured to the right, on how I was to go about getting back to his place from our current location.   I hopped on a bus and told the bus driver the name of the town I wanted to be dropped off in.  After about an hour on the bus, the driver pulled to the side of the road in what appeared to be a desolate location and motioned to me that this was my stop.  I exited the bus to see that the town consisted of one small store/restaurant/bar on the side of the road with the 4x4 trail I was to take to the side of it.  I began the hike to the river around 4 pm just as the clouds gathered and it started to drizzle.

After about 2 hours of trudging down a steep, muddy, rocky car path trying to follow my map and not make a wrong turn, I got to the cable box after sunset just as the rain began to pick up.  Now does anyone have any experience using a cable box at night in the rain?  Scratch that.  Does anyone have any experience using a cable box?  Well I didn't and even though they aren't very complicated, doing anything for the first time, much less in the rain at night, can fill a grown man with a nervous anticipation similar to a virgin on prom night from what I've heard.  For starters, I was just glad the box was on my side of the river as Natu somehow promised it would be.  I climbed the ladder onto the shakey wooden platform where I then squeezed myself and bag of supplies into the swaying steel box.  I wasn't sure if I was supposed pull myself gently across or just let the thing go and enjoy the ride since it could be my last.  I recalled the words of my favorite sea captain, Captain Cook, who said,"What the hell.  How bad can it be." before he landed on a Hawaiian island and was speared to death by the natives.  So I decided what the hell.  I only saw one hook holding the box to the tree in the narrow beam of my headlamp so I took the tension off, released the hook, and held on to my seat with a definitively firm group as the box picked up speed and flew across the river dangling above the rapids of which I couldn't see but definitely could hear.  As the box neared the other side losing speed, I pulled myself the last few yards and secured the box with quite some effort to the other side.  Land ahoy.  Now all that was left to do was to hike about 1 mile upstream on a rarely used foot path through a dense jungle at night in more rain watching for poisonous snakes until I got to the clearing that was Natu's.  Once there, I hiked up the landscaped steps to the highest edifice which had the outdoor kitchen, got out of my wet clothes and cooked a nice dinner surrounded by the pitch black of night with only my headlamp and a few candles to light my way before picking the bungalow with the fewest leaks to sleep in.

This is obviously not the actual cable box crossing at night in the rain.  It's just a tribute.

View from the kitchen with Pacuare River below and the top
of the smoking Turialba Volcano peaking over the tree line

The following morning, the sun's rays slowly lit up the river valley and eventually crept into my bungalow waking me up to a clear blue sky around 5 am.  I took off my watch and set it beside my bed where it stayed for the duration of my time there.  The sun told me where I needed to be and at what time.  The view was spectacular with the Pacuare River flowing below surrounded by lush green forest with the Turialba Volcano peaking it's head above the distant mountain ridge and letting off some steam.  One of the perks about staying at a lodge in the middle of no where is you can wear as much or as little as you want and since most of my clothes were still drying, this gave me a chance to show the monkeys what separates us from them, underwear.

My daily perch where the only thing passing me by
was the river

With 3.5 days of solitude ahead of me, I had plenty of time to explore the area quite thoroughly.  I followed single track trails not having any idea where they would lead me, sometimes to a hidden waterfall with a pool of turquoise blue water at its base perfect for a refreshing swim and drink in the hot afternoon followed by a nap on large flat rocks that were warmed by the light of the sun earlier in the day but now perfectly positioned in the shade of the trees.  Sometimes the paths lead to dead ends where the brush had grown back too thick to pass due to the trails lack of human activity forcing me to turn around.  I wandered a few miles downstream where I came across an expensive resort on the river that was connected to the other side by a narrow suspension bridge.  I smiled smugly as I walked back to Natu's thinking about how much folks were paying to stay here and how much I was paying.  Aside from that, the closest encounters I had with people were the daily rafting trips that passed by around 11 am each morning as I watched from my cabana perch while reading a book in a hammock.  They rarely noticed the place much less me.  Most of my companions were giant spiders with webs built high in the rafters accumulating a plethora of flying insects of which I more than appreciated, troops of leaf cutter ants acting like important gardeners but always making their paths in the most inconvenient places, lizards sprinting from point to point thinking no one saw them, and I am sure many more things were watching me from the protection of the jungle than I noticed.

Suspension bridge farther down stream with rafters riding the rapids below.

Gone native - working on my rain gear.
What 3 days alone in the jungle will do to you.

Now how to get back to civilization.  Without any form of communication, the only thing I had to rely on was that Natu told one of the guide companies to pick me up on the river on my fourth morning as we planned and that the guide company remembered.  I wouldn't have cared to stay longer but I had no more food.  As I waited at the waters edge and watched anxiously as a few companies passed, eventually a boat yelled out my name.  They pulled up to the shore and I hopped in while the people already on the boat looked at me oddly as they tried to figure out where I had come from and what I was doing out here.  Once we got acquainted, I enjoyed another trip down river, this time staying in the boat and then catching a bus back to my hub city, San Jose.

San Jose:

Fish soup with rice, plantains, and dulce leche
at San Jose's central market

Since I spent a bit of time in San Jose as my home base in Costa Rica, figured I owed it a few words. As far as Central American countries go, Costa Rica has given it the best shot at making a hospitable capital. It's not a city I would choose to visit as a sole destination but they have done a good job at making it welcoming to travelers who have to pass through.  They have sprinkled parks here and there providing unique venues for outdoor artwork as well as blocking off the central downtown avenue and making it a pedestrian only thoroughfare.  This Avenida Central is overwhelmed with Tico's (local Costa Ricans) and the occasional tourist most week nights and weekends.  Pedestrians walk in throngs as salesmen try to lure them into their shops or restaurants.  Men spread out plastic sheets in the middle of the avenue trying to sell remote controls, belts, and dvd's of movies that aren't even in theatres yet while women try to sell soap, shampoo, and fake designer hand bags.  There is a an old man who sits under a store awning playing his keyboard and crooning classic tunes not hoping for applause when he finishes a song but just some spare change from a passer-by.  Pigeons stay well above the fray perched precariously on second story window sills while the foot traffic reaches its crescendo in the late afternoon.  For some of these feathered downtown dwellers the urge is too much as they risk getting trampled to go after a fallen french fry.  There is the constant yell of lottery ticket sellers promising winning tickets, trying to urge the people to buy up their remaining supply so they can go home.  There is a bittersweet competition between the impoverished beggars and the non-profit volunteers as to who will collect the most money for their cause.  All this ends in a sprawling indoor market where one can find just about anything especially good food.

The city's layout took me a while to get used to.  San Jose is built between mountain ranges and it seemed no matter where I went I was always walking uphill like some absurd Escher sketch.  After a few outings though I was able to master the streets and choose my route wisely so I was always walking downhill.  As for the architecture, I think the government must have got a deal with communist block architects in the 70's because most of the buildings downtown are big square concrete grey blocks.  There are, however, some surprisingly pleasant structures that sneak up on you as you walk around the city if you keep your eyes open.  One piece of noteworthy architecture is the National Theatre.  It was built at the end of the 19th century in a definitively classic European style and funded by rich coffee plantation owners who wanted a venue worthy of attracting famous composers of the time.  The interior is elaborately decorated with murals spanning up the walls and across the ceilings.  I went in one afternoon to have a look around and was told it was $8 to see the interior.  I asked if there were any performances that night and was told yes.  A concert pianist was performing that evening and the ticket price was $6 dollars.  I'm not sure if the attendant caught the irony in their pricing but I decided to buy a ticket and treat myself to a nice evening of dinner and theatre. 

Street performers outside the Teatro Nacional in San Jose

Although most people may just spend a night in the city before catching a plane or bus to their next destination, I was glad to have the chance to spend more than a few days here and really enjoyed it.

Well I think that is enough for now.  I will get another post out shortly to fill everyone in on Playa Del Coco.  I've already put quite a few photos from some dives under the Costa Rica Photo link if you want to get a head start.

Buenas,

Jay

PS:  Tribute to Fallen Foot Soldiers

I would like to dedicate this post to my flip flops. They have been my sole's only protector on this trip and have put up a good fight.   I have mended their broken thongs until they can be mended no more.  It was hard to let them go as they served me valiantly but it is time.  They are in better place. 

RIP Rubber Soles

PSS: On the upside, one thing about going around barefoot here in Coco is that I have been taken for a local twice.  Having a tan doesn't hurt either.  One time I got the local's price for a coco loco (coconut with rum in it) and the other time a tourist tried to talk to me in broken Spanish asking if I had shoes.  Then before I could say anything, they gave me $5 and walked away.  I tried to up the ante and walk around with no pants since I had some experience with that already in this country but that didn't get me any where good.