We met our first sidecar checking out of Nicaragua, a German couple on a yellow BMW. We were very excited. Toshi and I queued-up for migracion and customs while Fran and Heike stayed with the bikes and got acquainted. Heike cannot walk, even so, they are on a two year round-the-world trip. Just when you think you are doing something special, you meet someone who really is doing something special.
We spent the first night in Liberia in the midst of a horse festival and next day made our way to Tamarindo. There we spent a blissful week with our friends who were visiting from California. The beauty of the Pacific coast more than made up for the shock of the gringo zone. We did the tourist things like sunset sails and crocodile hunting on jungle rivers. Of course it all ended far too quickly and shorts and bare feet were soon exchanged for bike jackets and boots and we were back to dragging our worldly goods up and down the stairs of various inns of unknown repute.
After the dry, California-like vegetation of the coast, Lake Arenal and its nearby volcano were cool and green. And wet. It rained and rained and it wasn’t even the season yet. Here we got our first introduction to the national park system which is anywhere you might want to go or walk and that’ll be $15.00 each please. It was all very lovely but I'd sat beside the San Pedro volcano in Guatemala for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for 5 weeks. For goodness sakes, it was practically handing me the salt across the table. Now we had to spend $30 for the privilege of leaving the road only to lose sight of Arenal’s volcano behind the bushes.
There was a new Ural shop in San Jose and we’d ordered spare tires. This was an unexpected bonus as the next dealer is in Chile. Leaving the lake there was no indication of how bad the day would turn out to be. About 50 km from the city the road entered a national forest. All cell phone coverage stopped and my charging cord also decided to die. It began to rain and even though it was only 3 PM, under the trees it was already getting dark. Fran changed gear to climb uphill and there was a terrible clunk. The clutch was gone. With an awful grinding noise, he managed to get into second gear and drive a bit further. This was rather miraculous but there were hills and stop-and-go traffic which finally did us in. We pushed the bike to the side and stood in the rain, watching people watching us out their car windows. Funny, this was my worst nightmare but now that it had happened, I was very calm. I’m sure I was in denial and it’ll come out later in therapy.
A nice truck driver stopped to help but minutes later a tow truck came around the corner. By now it was pouring but between us we got poor Pferdi loaded. By sheer coincidence Sven, a German Ural owner we planned to visit, lived in the first suburb outside San Jose, but we couldn’t reach him. In the end, Ivan from the support group recommended a hotel downtown. That’s how we found ourselves in the center of the city, in Friday night rush-hour with the dollar clock ticking on the tow truck dash.
At the hotel, steel gates were unlocked and the parking lot was a fortress. It wasn’t hard to guess this wasn’t the best part of town. Even the tow truck driver didn’t know it. Inside, reception asked me if we needed a room for 12 hours or 24(!) All we wanted was a cold beer and a hot meal but Ivan had said not to walk outside, not even in the morning. The night loomed ahead in the spartan room, just a bed, a towel and a pile of wet luggage. After a cold shower, Ivan came to the rescue again and took us to a friend’s house for pizza. The welcome was warm and the beers were cold. It was a good end to a very bad day.
We’d no idea what we were going to do when we woke up the next morning. Luckily Sven was back in contact and better still, he brought a friend with a truck and a rope. Back into the downtown traffic, there followed a nerve-wracking 45 minutes with Fran at the end of a 10 ft. rope steering Pferdi at 30 miles an hour on a freeway. We were very grateful for the tow but mi amor was quite traumatized especially as our driver got distracted pointing out the beauty of the mountains while driving with one hand. Steady Sven acted as escort, protecting Pferdi’s fragile umbilical cord. We made it to his workshop and for the next week they worked for 8+ hours a day. When the clutch was fixed, they moved on to Sven’s seized engine. Meanwhile we’d got the loan of a guest house in the gardens of an organic farm. I definitely got the better part of the deal, hanging out with the owner and his horse and listening to stories of the family’s private rainforest preserve on the other side of the country. Just when it felt like we’d never have wheels again, it all got finished. We’d survived the first breakdown of the trip but only thanks to Ivan, Sven and the two Ricks, not to mention the tow truck driver who gave up his Friday night with his ‘novia’ to drive us into the worst part of San Jose in the rain.
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Making up for lost time, we drove north to Monteverde which boasts not only several rain forests but cloud forests as well. Before leaving the coast we fueled at a unique gas station completely ‘manned’ by young girls in black shorts and tight red t-shirts. Climbing higher, the views got better (if you discount the living girlie calendar below) but the road got worse. The last 20 km we bounced and rattled over gravel and potholes. Amazing to think this was a main road to one of the most well-known parks in the country. The government keeps promising to have it paved but finds better things to do with the money, like put it in their own pockets.
We stayed in Santa Elena, on the continental divide, and every rainy season its streets get washed away. Every dry season more gravel is added and the houses sink lower and lower below street level. The town had an alpine feel and looking down the mountains we could see the Gulf of Nicoya and Pacific Ocean. The nights rocked with wild winds and during the day low clouds lent a mysterious air. Even in the rain, the park was a dreamlike world with its dripping leaves, emerald mosses, vines and ferns. But there were blots on the landscape too, like trash, and streams that were a suspicious shade of cloudy blue. I’m also sad to report that the ugly new mini-mall was a lot easier to find than a trail that didn’t require a hefty entrance fee.
We spent April in the Central Valley and for the first time I felt we were truly in Costa Rica. Hidden halfway down the mountain in a large clump of trees, our house had a view over the valley that was breathtaking. We even had our own stream. Oh the joys of sitting in bed each morning with a cup of coffee facing that incredible panorama. Living in the country did take some getting used to, with the forest coming alive each night with an electric buzzing we hadn’t heard since Belize. I hardly slept the first two weeks with the scurrying noises of tiny paws and the crashing and banging of heavy objects falling (I think it was fruit on the roof). During the day there was a strange rat-tat-tatting, like a machine gun, that took 3 weeks to figure out: a woodpecker at work hanging off a window frame. I got used to the noises but not the brown, beetle-like bugs. They flew with a rapid whirring of wings and lined up outside every evening, hung on the screens and crashed against the glass like hailstones. We barricade ourselves inside, blocked-up the door frame cracks but still they got in.
The locals began to say hello (which was ‘adios’ for some reason) and the village taxi beeped every morning on his runs. Easter week was quiet but there was a small procession and a church service with little girls dressed like “I Dream Of Jeannie” and boys in purple satin. Just before we left met Eduardo and his family and knowing them made it even sadder to leave the village. Of all the sights before and after our month there, Barbacoas remains for us the real Costa Rica.
Back on the Pacific and now in the off-season, we visited Manuel Antonio National Park. Further south in Uvita, the beach itself was the park. The entrance fee was well worth it with rainforest spilling down to the sand instead of hotels and bars. Sitting between the gentle waves and the jungle’s humming, you definitely knew you weren’t in Benidorm. I’ve waited my whole life for a beach like that.
I wanted to leave the country by the Caribbean route as we hadn’t been on that coast since Mexico. After a lovely night with a couple from the support group, we climbed the mountains and got rained on for two miserable days. Coming down to the plains and banana plantations, we sat in traffic with Dole and Chiquita trucks and passed endless yards of containers waiting for passage to Europe and America. Seeing all this it was hard to explain the empty banana shelves at the grocery stores. It was a different county up here. The poverty was very pronounced with haphazard shacks on stilts and the faces that stared from the Limon doorways were Afro-Caribbean. In the sunshine Puerto Viejo must have looked beachy and colorful. In the downpour, it had a shabby, slightly lawless air and the water was grey as the Irish Sea. But there was nothing Irish about the humidity; we lasted two days and got out of there. Panama was only 40 km away.
Fran thinks the best thing about Costa Rica is its marketing. I say it’s the Emerald Forest, Middle Earth and the Garden of Eden rolled into one. The landscape is nature on steroids but history and culture take a back seat to tourism. The towns look like they were built in the ‘50s and are more American than European. We missed the indigenous communities, the cathedrals and the winding streets of old (or new?) Spain. There are no jungle clearings revealing vine-covered pyramids or ancient ruins. The country’s reputation for being the most expensive in Central America is no lie and the high costs coupled with limited quality were wearing us down. It’s bad enough having to buy peanut butter for on-the-road sustenance but paying almost $8.00 a jar is downright crazy.
We expected to live in the local economy but there isn’t one; it’s all the ex-pat economy. How the ordinary Costa Ricans survive is a mystery with prices often above those of Southern California. It’s a good thing these lovely people have the Pura Vida attitude because sometimes I found it more dura than pura. The greatest mystery of all is how a country of such overwhelming natural abundance can be so lacking in decent fruit and vegetables. Don’t get me wrong, it is a beautiful place to visit…....but as Fran says, best done on someone else’s credit card. Maybe a Pura Visa would do. Just don’t leave home without it.