Day 1 – Problems with Vacation Rentals – Lydian

We officially came back to Mexico, and then finally decided two nights ago that we were going to stay in Progreso, which is the same city we stayed in last year. I like Progreso. I liked it the last time we came here too, but it’s changed since we last came, and there are a lot of things that I didn’t notice the last time we came here. For instance, last year, the little walkway along the beach was under construction. Now, it’s finished, a couple of cars drive on the street now, and there are little shower thingies along the road. It’s kind of cool to come back and see that kind of thing. As we drove into Merida yesterday, I felt strangely familiar with the place. Now, it feels almost like I never left, really. It’s weird. I’m sure that if I went back to Beijing, I would have a similar feeling of comfort and familiarity toward the place as I do here, even though China is a difficult and confusing place to go.

We only officially decided on a rental today, and we’ve existed in Mexico since Sunday, and it’s Tuesday now. But then again, we booked the tickets on Thursday of last week, and went to Colorado on Saturday to make it easier for us to get to the airport on Sunday morning. We had to get there at six in the morning, by the way. But anyways, the place that we’re staying at here is a house that the owner of the Spanish school that we went to last time owns. The house looked pretty nice, I mean, there were people cleaning it and stuff, but it still looked pretty nice overall. There are lots of placed to hang hammocks in the place. So far, on just about every trip we’ve been on, my mom, Jennifer, has brought our hammock with us. Each time, there was nowhere to hang the hammock, so it was pretty much a waste of space. This time, we decided not to bring the hammock because the thing was dead weight all the other times, and of course, we have a use for it. We instead decided to buy some hammocks. I don’t know how many we’re going to get yet, but currently we have one.

Yesterday, we had quite an ordeal with some of the rental properties we had chosen to look at. The first two places were being rented by the same person, so we followed her to them in our itsy bitsy car. The first one looked nice, it really did. I would have totally stayed there, but there was something about how she needed all the money right then and there in cash. My dad couldn’t do that because our debit card has a limit on it to prevent fraud and stuff. She was getting seemingly pissy with us when we were trying to explain our situation, so after a little bit we decided to drop it, but before we did that, we went to see the other property. A condo.

We weren’t going to be able to get in. The only person who had a key wasn’t there, he was picking up his kids in Cancun (which was fine), and nobody had a key into his apartment where there was supposedly an extra key. There was a man named Carlos who offered to show us the condo that we were thinking of staying in, and we went with him. He didn’t have a key either. So then, for some reason I’m  still confused about, he took us down this neat little tranquil pathway to some people who were sitting outside. Carlos attempted to explain our situation in his broken English. If I remember right, my dad was on the phone with the man with the key at this time.  My dad’s phone was given the white man that Carlos had led us to. The man said cool before taking the phone and talking to the man with the key for a short moment. He came back with the same news. There was no way to get the key. In the end we decided to give up on this little adventure because it clearly wasn’t going to work out.

Neither of these properties were within reasonable walking distance of the center of Progreso, which in my opinion, is kind of a negative thing. I really like being able to walk everywhere I go if at all possible. I just like it. I don’t know why. If I could bike, I probably would, but both walking and biking are rather social in a way that driving just isn’t.

Instead, we went to our old language place and asked Iracema if she knew of any properties that would fit our criteria. Oddly, she did, and oddly so, I do believe that we’re going to stay there now. The house is really close to everything that we would want to walk to, like the language school and the dance school (both of which are right next to each other, convenient right?), and the Malecon. I like walking along the Malecon. It’s strangely calming. But anyways, we decided that we were going to stay in a hotel for the night, and asked Iracema if she knew of any hotels in the area. Her husband owns the one that we’re currently staying in, which, ironically, is right down the street from the same place we stayed in last year.

Originally we were going to stay in Merida so that we could take our car back easily and stuff, but we changed our minds because it wouldn’t be that difficult to just take the car back that night and take the bus back. Which it wasn’t. We were renting from Hertz, which is in the Fiesta Americana mall right next to the Hyatt in Merida. The bus stop is kind of out almost behind the Oxxo gas station across the street. Look for a small group of impatient gathered people. That’s the bus stop. The bus ride is about forty five minutes to an hour long from Progreso to Merida. For the three of us it cost somewhere around four dollars (fifty pesos or so). Not a lot.

So yeah, there’s our ‘first’ day in Progreso, Mexico. Will continue updating.

Lydian – Day 50 – Don’t Trust the Guidebooks

Now that I’ve finally gotten over my cold that I’ve had, and had time to process the whole experience of going to Tortuguero, I suppose I’ll start posting again. So, like I said, we went to Tortuguero. Driving there was bumpy. The roads were horrible after getting close to La Pavona. La Pavona is a small farm, not a town, but there are signs leading to it. You just have to look hard enough.

There’s a large parking lot where you have to get a parking ticket of sorts to park in a specific place. From there, you walk to a shelter and wait for the 1 o’clock boat to arrive. You’ll see people emerging over the hill. If you need to use the bathroom, be wary, there weren’t any lights, and the doors fool you into thinking that they’re locked so that people can walk in on you. That’s what happened to me, at least. When we got to Tortuguero, I continued to see the same woman who had walked in on me in the bathroom for our whole trip. My family and I decided that I continued to see her for the rest of our trip in Costa Rica, that I should probably think about talking to her. I haven’t seen her since our trip to Tortuguero.

In this shelter place, there is food. Your tickets for the boat will be sold in the same place. If you have a group of people, you will still have only one ticket for all of them. It’s a little confusing.

While we were waiting, there was some T.V. that people were watching that was the older stuff that didn’t have words and was only video. It was kind of interesting I guess, I’ve never watched any older T.V. before. My thought was that this kind of T.V. is probably a little more active than regular T.V. watching session. When you watch a muted T.V. show, you kind of have to put the plot together. That’s what’s so cool about it, is that you can create your own story.

So anyways, soon enough we saw some people coming over the hill from where the river was. It was about 12:45ish by then. We waited till about 12:50 to go down to where the boats were, and were shocked by our discovery. There were river boats down there, and they were in the river, and there was a one handed boat captain. I was expecting something a little more like… Well, like the Strait of Gibraltar. You can see all the way across to the other side, but it’s still far enough away that you have to take a “luxury ferry” with a snack bar and tables. Yeah. Not like that at all. First of all, the river is not very wide across. Second, you go down the river, not across it. Third, I somehow doubt that this river was even wide enough to support a ferry like ones that I’m “used” to. I was scared of this “boat”. I remember looking back at my mom kind of like, “really? Yeah, I’m not doing this anymore…”, but we did get on it sometime around one. I’m really not sure what time it was exactly.

We sat in the front. The view is pretty good from there. I would recommend it. The boat ride is about an hour and a half to two hours. There are lots of stops that the boat will probably take when you get close to Tortuguero. One of these is a town named San Francisco, but don’t let the name fool you, it’s so small it barely looks inhabited. You’ll know when you stop at Tortuguero, trust me. There’s a large, bright pink, cardboard karaoke bar, and a small boat dock.

That’s the trip there, it’s the waiting for nightfall that’s difficult. When we got to our hotel we asked about the turtle tours that they had, and got told that we would have to basically wait for a little while until they knew when they were going out for sure. We found out that they were going out at 9 o’clock that night. We stayed in Casa Marabella by the way. It’s actually a really nice hotel that’s clean and only has a few bugs. When you’re in Costa Rica, you totally can’t guarantee no bugs. There’s gonna be at least one everywhere even if a place is really clean.

So we went for a walk. On our walk we discovered various things. One of my favorites was the aloe vera juice that we found at one of the abastecedors. It was really good, and if you find it, get some of it. Another thing (or should I say person) that we found was a man selling coconuts. Two men were selling coconuts in Tortuguero, actually, but this dude was unique. He had this weird pointy hat that he was wearing that reminded me of something that one would put on a scare actor, and his demeanor was extremely grumpy. The other guy kept shouting about one dollar coconuts. He seemed very not grumpy. Me and my parents decided that if we were to buy any young coconuts, that we would purchase them from the grumpy hat man.
It was really hot out, so we decided that we were going to try and take refuge in one of the hopefully air-conditioned tourist shops that were lining the one occupied street that didn’t look like some scary alley. It wasn’t anything special really. On the walkway outside there were these circles printed on the pavement, they were kind of neat actually. Right outside of the tourist shop there was a sort of a park that had these big statues of sorts. There was this one toucan one and some other ones too, but I can remember them all. There were a number of them.

Inside of the tourist shop there were various items from hackeysacks to local artwork. Everything a person could possibly want was in that store, even Pringles and wine. Now, me and my family have a lot of food allergies, so we couldn’t eat anything there except for the regular Pringles. They were a nice treat later on.

As I was wandering around the store, I decided, hey, why don’t I go try to find the jewelry section. The back of the store was arranged where there were, well, cubicles of sorts, that each had different things in them. One of them was almost (ALMOST) completely devoted to jewelry. As I had just taken a slightly stumbled step into the “cubicle”, I noticed that a woman working at the store had decided to ‘hide out’ in this little area that I was hoping to look through. I stared for a couple of moments as she texted grumpily before deciding that even if she really hadn’t taken much notice to me, it would look weird just to walk away. So I walked in, and, nonchalantly, looked at the jewelry for about five seconds, and left. Then she stared at me. I tried to make the whole thing causal, but I guess that that didn’t work very well.

I then proceeded to find my mother, who was looking at the artwork. I noticed some neat coconut shell purses, and held one up to my dad: The indestructible purse! I waved my mom over, and we took a look at them. My mom opened one up, and can you guess what was on the inside? Ants! I think that they were dead, but I’m not sure, really. Maybe they were just playing dead.

We bought some bug spray here too, accidentally. We had to go return it. The little thing of OFF! was thirteen dollars by itself, not including any of the few other items (Pringles included) we had bought. It felt a little bit like an ordeal to return it, but we did return it, and peace was restored to the Tortuguero tourist shop.

After going back to the hotel, we took a long and refreshing nap on relatively comfortable beds. One thing that I’m beginning to find here is the one cannot have both a comfortable pillow and a comfortable bed at the same time. For instance, in Alajuela, the bed was comfy, but the pillows were thin. Here in Atenas, the pillows rock, but the beds suck. In Tortuguero, the beds were good, and the pillows were weird. If you can imagine really thick pieces of fabric stuffed messily into a pillow case then you’ve got a pretty good idea of what the pillows were like. They were strange, but not necessarily bad. We did eventually get up though and go eat dinner.

We ate dinner out on deck outside of the hotel. It consisted of refried beans and salsa on tortillas on a plate, and for dessert, chocolate coconut cookies from Bio-Land. I’ve decided that these are the only things keeping me going, by the way. Our dinner actually wasn’t half bad.

We went out for another walk up and down the one street after dinner because we had an hour and a half to spare and nothing better to do. So that’s what we did. On our walk, we noticed various things from the fact that we weren’t the only ones with uncomfortable furnishings in our home, to the fact that some chick was walking down the street with an umbrella above her head when it wasn’t raining, and hadn’t been for the whole day, as far as we could tell. So this is what we did until it was nearing our time of departure for the turtle tour. Then we went on the turtle tour.

 

Green Sea Turtles at Tortuguero National Park

The family room that sleeps up to 5 people at Casa Marabella was very clean and the staff was English-speaking and very friendly. The hotel also offered a healthy breakfast in the morning. We were able to warm food in a microwave in their kitchen as well.

Our turtle tour was scheduled to start at 9:00 PM. John was coming down with a cold and he was anxious to “get it over with”. He wanted to be there and wanted to see the turtles, but a good bout of a cold is enough to make most people wish for a comfy chair and a good book, at the very least.

Our hotel was several paces to the left from where the boat docked. A man was standing at the dock with a sign that had our name on it, but he pointed us in the right direction and we took our luggage and found Casa Marabella on our own.

We were in room 11, a “family room” with a queen bed and one twin bunk over another queen. It was clean and for the first time since we’ve been to Costa Rica, the sheets stayed on the bed the whole night. There was no air conditioning and it was humid and warm, but the fans made it easy to endure. Also for the first time in Costa Rica, we did not awaken to the sounds of dogs barking.

We brought our own food on the trip due to our numerous alimentary “issues”, but there were four little grocery stores in town and we were able to buy corn tortillas and refried beans and then warm them in a microwave at Casa Marabella. We ate out by the river and watched the boats come and go from here to there along with some other people who were waiting for the tour. Across the river on the other side were the lights from another little town; likely one that had less tourist activity than Tortuguero village.

We walked back and forth through the town along the only path, which was only occasionally paved. In the unpaved areas where water had apparently pooled from the rain the night before, wet sand stayed wet throughout the entire afternoon under a thick and oppressively humid blanket of air. A collection of foot prints, shoe prints, dog tracks, and bicycle tracks in these wet and sandy areas were part of a collage that was filled with insignificant moments that led to other goings-on somewhere within the small village.

Along the path were fascinating dioramas of village life. Very few people were in their houses, but a few houses had the lights on inside. I would

This little stretch of the Tortuguero village walkway looks relatively deserted, but beyond the foliage are some weathered houses up on stilts.

hardly call these house “comfortable” with their hard floors and hard furnishings. We walked by one house where three kids were sitting on a wooden bench in a living room watching television. There was an older obese woman in the only other house in town where there was a television on and she was sitting in a padded rocking chair with her feet resting on flip flops to keep them off the hard floor. There was nothing lush or posh anywhere that I could see in the place, but I speculated that whatever soft furniture there was would be found in the more expensive tourist motels.

Each walk up and down the path revealed something new. It was a like a Renaissance festival, according to Lydian, and John and I both agreed. The little tiendas were “human-sized” and built to be observed in slow motion rather than the car-sized, fast-paced stores that we see in the United States. The smell of foreign food and the street light that kept going out and then flickering back on added to the ambience.

The sea turtle tour was cool. I generally shy away from things that involve the word “tour”, but this was okay. Though it still involved a group of other tourists, many of them behaving badly (like usual, of course), I wouldn’t have wanted to try to find my way through the rain foresty thickets out onto the dark beach to look for nesting sea turtles by myself. Our tour guide, a busty black woman wearing a special green “tour guide” polo shirt, admonished us to walk two-by-two through the trees to the beach because of “snakes”.

Snake bites are a major issue in these parts. Indeed, as I’m reading some of the anthropological information about the Afro-Caribbean coast out of books like What Happen: A Folk History of Costa Rica’s Talamanca Coast by Paula Palmer and Turtle Bogue: Afro-Caribbean Life and Culture in a Costa Rican Village by Harry G. Lefever, it seems that snake bites take the place of car accidents in these regions. As we were walking through the thick foliage along intersecting and meandering paths the leaves bristles ahead of us and the tour guide stopped for a moment to take a closer look at whatever caused the movement. I don’t know if it was a snake or not. All I know is that it was possible that it was a snake and I was glad to have a tour guide along, just in case it was.

The sand on the beach was dark and even though there was a quarter moon that night, it was incredibly hard to see the turtles without the help of the “spotters”. These people went out ahead of the tour groups with red lights (so that they wouldn’t scare the female turtles away with bright white lights) to find the turtles. We didn’t have to search for the turtles and risk falling into one of the giant hills that they dig on the beach or tripping over a gigantic piece of dark-colored drift wood to find them. Without the help of a guide, it would be difficult to see the green sea turtles this time of the year. They’re huge, but difficult to spot by the light of the moon.

I can’t imagine killing one of these creatures, unless of course, I was starving. They are so slow and they poor things perform such incredible feats; swimming vast distances and then crawling up on the beach to lay a bunch of eggs after digging a hole the size of a grave. They are completely harmless to humans, which I suppose is why they have been such good prey to the people in Tortuguero village and the surrounding area. I understand why people have gone to such efforts to try to promote their survival after seeing them heave themselves around on the beach and working diligently to bury their precious eggs. I also understand why they would be such an easy source of food. Falling in love with a creature like the sea turtle requires a complicated and delicate balance in an environment like this because the people here were able to survive in some part because the sea turtles were here. And arguably, when they were slaughtering them for food, they weren’t necessarily going to excess. It was when people saw the opportunity to slaughter the sea turtle for money that problems began to take shape, at least as far as I understand it.

As one of those boring family-types, I rarely go out at night except when there is some odd but palatable activity that could trump a relaxing evening reading, watching TV and regrouping for the next day. I really relish the night-time stuff that’s truly worth the while and this was definitely one of them. We spent at least 45 minutes chatting with an Israeli family with twin boys and a seven year old girl before the tour even started. They were staying in Costa Rica for a month (the kids had 3 weeks off from school due to Holy Days, apparently) and they talked with us about the differences between Costa Rica and India. I thought it was interesting and amazing that people in Israel could take 1 month of work and school off each year to travel. People in the United States often don’t even take two week vacations. They told us about the sea turtles in Israel (I didn’t know there were sea turtles in Israel). We sat outside in the Sector 4 shelter in the dark waiting for the turtle spotters to find turtles while we chatted with Jewish Israeli’s. A lot of people apparently get really impatient during this part of the turtle tour because the tour guide was especially nervous and reassuring as we sat there in our group, but I liked the wait.

Lydian and John walking back to the restaurant after the river ride back from Tortuguero National Park. Note the big bus sitting there. Most of the tourists climbed into the bus to go back to San Jose.

The Israeli man that I was talking to turned his camera on to take a picture without the flash on the beach and he was pulled aside and given a “what-for” by the busty black tour guide and two turtle spotters. They threatened to take his camera away if he had taken any pictures (which he hadn’t). John tried to make the Israeli man feel better after he got chided for the misbehavior.

Walking through the trees with only flashlights reminded me of Halloween and haunted houses and corn field mazes. There was a bug with green glowing eyes on our return from the beach. John said it looked like the kind of thing he would build out of some clay and LED lights. I agreed and again had reason to think about how fake all the real stuff at Tortuguero village looked to me.

The entire turtle tour lasted about 2 hours and 15 minutes from the time we left the hotel, but 45 minutes was spent just sitting in Sector 4 waiting. The tour guide told us that the tour could last from 45 minutes to 2 hours (not including the wait in Sector 4) depending upon how easy it was to find turtles performing the four processes that were open for public viewing (laying eggs, covering the eggs with sand, camouflaging the eggs, and going back out to sea). We weren’t allowed to watch turtles coming in from sea because this could frighten them off.

Tortuguero National Park- Part I (How to Get to Tortuguero National Park)

This was my view out of the boat from Tortuguero to Rio Suerte the morning after our sea turtle tour. The people standing outside were late risers who had partied too hard the night before at the Disco Bar about 20 meters to the right.

Last minute on Thursday night I decided that Tortuguero National Park would be our weekend destination from Atenas, Costa Rica. We were going to try to go to Nicaragua, but changed our minds because frankly, I’m still not sure why we’re going there. Once I identify our destination and the reason why we would go through the ordeal of getting there, then I’ll be able to put together the final details and we’ll just go. Tortuguero National Park was a good destination because there were sea turtles frankly that were currently nesting there. That’s all we needed was a good reason to make the trip and having never seen sea turtles in their natural habitat, Tortuguero made a lot of sense.

I am writing about our trip to Tortuguero in two parts because there are the pragmatics of how we got there, where we stayed, etc. and there are also my feelings and thoughts about the place. Both are rather complicated so I’m writing just about the pragmatics first.

We rented a car in Atenas to get to La Pavona, which is essentially where the boat disembarks to travel the rivers and canals leading to Tortuguero National Park. We have a really good car rental “situation” worked out through a “friend” here in Atenas, so it’s actually more economical (in terms of both time and money) and definitely  more comfortable to rent a car than to take a bus.  John likes the challenge of driving in foreign countries (I think it reminds him of playing Pole Position as a kid at the arcade). The directions to this place are complicated, but we booked reservations at Casa Marabella ($55 per night for a very basic, but CLEAN room that sleeps five http://casamarbella.tripod.com/) and they provided us with very detailed directions on how to get to Tortuguero National Park from San Jose. See http://casamarbella.tripod.com/id6.html  for very descriptive maps on how to get from San Jose Costa Rica to Tortuguero National Park.

We didn’t have a printer, so I took a photo of the map on this web site and I also hand copied it. It was very helpful, but we still had to use some critical thinking skills to decide which direction to turn much of the way. That being said, however, I think we only took a “wrong” turn once and realized it almost immediately.

This was a drawing of my impression of what we would be going to do at Tortuguero National Park. I desperately hoped it would be more interesting than this, and thankfully, it was.

Below are some detailed written directions to follow to get to Tortuguero National Park from San Jose, Costa Rica:

We left from Atenas, Costa Rica where we’re living out the last 6 weeks of our trip. John decided that it would be easier to travel through San Jose using the directions we had been given than to try to go through Alajuela and risk getting lost. We were going toward La Pavona/Rio Suerte to get on the river boats which leave at 7:30 AM, 1:00 PM, and 4:00/4:30 PM. The Casa Marabella hotel owner told us to arrive at least 30 minutes early for the 1:00 PM boat because it leaves when the bus arrives. Basically, if the bus arrives at 12:30, the boat leaves at 12:45 or so. They don’t wait until 1:00 PM to see if there are other people coming. You just have to wait for the next boat.

So we left at 8:23 from Atenas and it took us until 11:45 or so to get to our destination and park our car at the Rio Suerte parking lot (just down the road from La Pavona—a farm with another parking spot).

In San Jose we took Highway 32 to toward Limon. The roads are not marked well, but if you can download Map Factor GPS software, it will get you through the complicated twists and turns in the city. This software has been a big life-saver(sometimes literally) on all of our travels, even to places where there are no paper maps available. Once we got on Highway 32, the directions to Tortuguero got simpler, but the landmarks become a bit more obscure.

Outside of San Jose, we passed through the one and only tunnel in the country and then into the rainforests of Barrilio Carrillo National Forest. The roads are winding. It isn’t exactly a relaxing drive, which is true of most of Costa Rica, but the scenery is nice. Highway 32 took us to Guapiles. Guapiles is not an easy town to drive through. People and animals are along the highway and people are biking somewhat clumsily. On the edge of what appeared to be the town, we took a left/north at the Santa Clara gas station. The Santa Clara gas station is an important landmark. Don’t miss it.

After turning left/north, we traveled 8.1 kilometers (we set our odometer) to an intersection. Then we turned left so that we did NOT cross the railroad tracks yet. The road travels alongside these railroad tracks. We continued on this road for 0.7 kilometers before turning right (and crossing the railroad tracks) onto the main highway. This highway took us to Cariari.

The road to Cariari is paved, but a lot of people there apparently don’t own cars. They were walking and biking along the road and with all of the people on motorcycles and bikes and people driving wrecklessly in their cars, it took a lot of focus not to hit someone.

In Cariari, there is a gas station about 200 meters past the single lane bridge going into the town. We set our odometer here and traveled straight for 7 kilometers. There was a three way intersection 7 kilometers from this gas station with sign talking about the Base del Solidaritario. It was located in the midst of banana plantations on all sides and we sat there for a few seconds trying to decide if we should follow the road to the right or to the left here. We turned right finally and then there was a sign (about a kilometer past the turn) that said “Solidaritario”. Once we saw this sign, we knew we were on the right track. This road lead to Cuarto Esquinas. We had our odometer set and Cuatro Esquinas was about 14 kilometers from the Cariari gas station.

Along this road, we saw the first sign for La Pavona and Rio Suerte. If we had blinked we would have missed the sign, but seeing it was reassuring. The pavement ends outside of Cuatro Esquinas and we just continued on this road until we reached a tiny village called Palacio (23.4 kilometers past the Cariari gas station). About 50 meters past the general store, there was a road that goes off to the left and signs directing people to Tortuguero. This gravel road continues for 5.7 kilometers. La Pavona was a farm with some outbuildings that have “Welcome” painted on the side of them. We continued past La Pavona to Rio Suerte per the advice of Daryl at Casa Marabella. He told us that going directly to Rio Suerte would be much cheaper than going into La Pavona for boat tickets.

Part of this gravel road is truly treacherous. It’s a short stretch of poorly maintained gravel roads, but it was good to at least have a vehicle that couldn’t easily get high-centered.

The restaurant at Rio Suerte near La Pavona. Down the hill from this restaurant, the boat disembarks for Tortuguero.

We parked our car under an awning at Rio Suerte. There were restrooms and a fairly nice looking restaurant there. It was 11:45 when we pulled in and the fellow standing outside to sell us a parking spot told us that the boat would probably arrive around 12:30 and leave at about 12:45.

Inside the restaurant there was a cash register under a sign that read “Boletos”. We went a bought tickets for the boat ride. I knew nothing about this boat ride except that I thought it would last at least an hour. The tickets cost $8-10 (4,800 colones) for the three of us. The lady behind the counter gave us the receipt and we were told to hang onto it. The receipt was the ticket.

We sat in the restaurant for a little while waiting until we saw a crowd of people coming up over the hill. From the restaurant, we really couldn’t see what was beyond the hill, but the woman told us that the boat dock was down there. When the crowd arrived, we figured the boat had to and we gathered our things and made our way over the hill to see what was there.

The river was there, of course, and some flat topped river boats with multiple seating. We crawled onto the boat first and took the 3 seats in

The flat topped river boat at Rio Suerte that arrived at 12:30 PM. We were the first on board this boat which was headed for Tortuguero National Park. The boat ride was about 1 hour and 15 minutes long.

front. I was glad we did because the leg room on the rest of the boat was scanty and the ride was over an hour long (about 1 hour and 15 minutes). Plus, it was easier to see wildlife from the front of the boat. We also had easy access to our luggage, which was piled at the front of the boat.

Our boat smacked into the side of a cliff on our way to Tortuguero, but I don’t that usually happens. Needless to say it’s good to be paying attention and pull your limbs into the boat if it looks like it’s going in that direction. One of the boat drivers was missing his right hand and I thought more about the accident that might have lead him to lose it after our boat crash. The boats seem to be relatively safe, however, and the ride was peaceful besides that.

There were “river tours” offered at Tortuguero, but John and I looked at each other and said, “Isn’t that what we just did?” after we disembarked from the boat. The last thing I wanted to do was get back on another boat to take a “tour”. We had already seen howler and spider monkeys in the trees, a giant green lizard, and some rather interesting birds perched here and there. The river boat ride itself was really interesting, in my opinion. It’s incredible to see the little towns along these rivers. The people there have such a radically different way of life. Just watching their houses go by was entertaining to me.

A view of Tortuguero village. Note that the streets are sidewalks because there are no cars in this village.

Tortuguero is a very small town. The culture here is completely different than that in Atenas. I wasn’t expecting to be awed by the different way of life of the people here when we decided to see turtles. I mean, the turtle tour was interesting, but the town itself and the people there were just as interesting. Indeed, I think that Tortuguero was my favorite Costa Rican destination so far.

Manuel Antonio National Park

En route to Manuel Antonio National Park.

What can I say about a major tourist destination in Costa Rica that has not already been said in guidebooks? It’s so hard to write about tourist destinations because they are a little bit “canned”. The experience of going to a tourist destination is a lot like riding a train. There is never any question about where the train is going or where it will end up. There are no digressions along the way. The only great story that would be worth telling about a train ride has to do with a derailment or some kind of major discomfort that I encountered.  On real trains, there are real discomforts, but at real tourist destinations, there are rarely many personal stories to tell.

That being said, I was very glad to get to see a sloth in its natural environment. They are cute animals and it’s really interesting that they only descend from their place high up in the trees once every two weeks to poop. We saw one that was on his way back up the tree to spend another lazy two weeks waiting around for his rectum to fill up again.

We also saw a capuchin monkey family swinging through the trees. The baby monkeys are adorable, but apparently, they’re aggressive little creatures. They’ll bite you without thinking twice about it. It’s unfortunately because they’re so cute that you just want to hold one, but you’ll end up in a hospital getting rabies shots if you try to get close to one.

The animals were, of course, the most interesting part of the park. The trails were well-groomed, not Indiana Jones-like at all. There was a lot of uphill and downhill walking, but we didn’t mind after the 3 hour car ride to get there. Even driving there was remarkably easy. The roads are marked in a very American-kind of way and they are well-maintained. And the beach was more interesting than I thought it would be. The waves were really mesmerizing and the ocean was a pretty aqua color.

I don’t have a lot of motivation to describe Manuel Antonio National Park. It was a good destination as far as tourist destinations go. I think I just prefer more “organic” travel experiences that happen as a result of actual need or accidental luck. I’m not easily entertained by landscapes or sights. People entertain me. And doing things that are more challenging than just walking (although walking becomes challenging if you go far enough when you’re tired or hungry) are also entertaining. For example, I would be challenged by surfing.

The older I get, the harder it is for me to be entertained. I’m more picky about investing time in entertainment, but I think that’s for lack of delusions about what actually is entertaining to me. Honestly, I was skeptical about Manuel Antonio National Park, but it turned out to be a pleasant outing. In no way did it push my limits or cause me to re-evaluate my worldview, but I’m glad to cross it off the list of Must-See Tourist Destinations in Costa Rica.

The Right Thing to Do at the Bus Station

I have seen the man in the wheelchair making his way through the middle of the Alajuelan streets begging for change. His legs are withered and he seems to have a death wish hanging out in the very center of the streets amongst the crazy wreckless drivers like he does. It seems like a hard life, to be disabled and to have to beg in the middle of a Costa Rican street.

I am soft when it comes to situations like this and I know that I tend to get taken advantage of because of it. It’s hard for me to understand the behind-the-scenes dynamics that go into play when I see a disabled person begging for money. What’s the story on these people wandering around with major handicaps? Why isn’t everyone giving them money? Most of the time, it’s because they know something that I don’t know. Or because they’ve given money to the disabled person many times before. But as a newbie, in a new place, I feel touched. And I am gullible. I feel obligated to give them something because I have something to give them.

At the bus station, the first thing we did was buy water from a blind man at the concessions stand and then we took our place in line, waiting for the Alajuela to Atenas bus. I wondered if he was burdened by having to work at a concession stand as a blind man or grateful for the opportunity to support himself.

As I was considering this, there was a man in a green and white striped shirt  with a very odd gait who came up to us as we were waiting for the Atenas bus. He had a single gold Colon in his hand and couldn’t speak, but kind of grunted and tried to smile to get someone to give him money. The people in line looked straight ahead. They didn’t budge, didn’t respond at all. I could call them heartless, but again, I have to assume that they know something that I don’t know. The three of us stood there in line following the behavior of the people ahead of us and behind us. The disabled man wasn’t pushy, but it’s hard to watch someone being ignored like that. Again, I don’t know why they were ignoring him.

After he walked away, John went over and gave him money privately. Perhaps we are idiots, but we felt like it was the “right” thing to do

whatever that means. Shortly after the man came over soliciting for money, a big fat woman came over with an older man and a wooden box with a slit in the top and offered us some different colored pens or religious figures on trading cards in exchange for a donation. I bought two pens, one red and one pink, thinking they had red and pink ink (I was actually excited about the pink ink pen and gave it to Lydian, but it turned out to be a pink plastic pen with blue ink). The woman and her old man then left us. The other people in line turned around and looked at us (they wanted to see what real idiots looked like perhaps).

The two pens I purchased “by donation” from the old woman and her companion. They are pink and red, but the ink inside them is sadly, a very boring and typical shade of blue.

In China, there was a man who crawled onto the subway system, dragging his paralyzed legs behind him. He carried his donation container in his mouth and we didn’t give him any money. I still can’t say that I feel good about that decision, which was based on a journalistic documentary that we had watched about how people will prostitute these disabled individuals in China and India and have them go collect change in this dramatic way by pulling at heartstrings. Whether it was the “right” decision or not still remains up in the air for me. Something should be done for these people, I think. And then I wonder why no one has stepped forward to help. And then I think, probably somebody has…but these people are being used and exploited by other people to make a buck. But I don’t know for sure.

Through the window, I happened to see the woman and the old man who had been selling pens and Christian paraphernalia while standing in line waiting for the bus to Atenas.

Later, I saw the woman with the pens and the man sitting at a restaurant as I was sitting on the bus waiting for it to turn the corner. It was not incriminating that they were at the restaurant, just interesting and coincidental so I discretely snapped a photo of them. I figured that what they were doing with their pens and Jesus trading cards was more respectable (perhaps) than the man on the sidewalk who had tried to mug us earlier by throwing his change on the ground right in front of us and then trying to trip us. (He pursued Lydian and I until John came up behind him and said in English, “Uh-I don’t think so…” with a very menacing look that is universally understood in all languages to mean, “I’m going to kick your ass.”)

Ticos might also come up and spray mustard on your shirt to distract you while they steal your money.

So, basically, there were several people who solicited us for money in different ways at the bus station: a man begging, a woman selling worthless crap, and a man trying to mug us. We gave money to the beggar and to the woman selling pens and Jesus stuff, but we were ready to beat the crap out of the man on the street trying to mug us. I’m not sure if that makes us “good” or just “gullible”. A lot of times those two things are by nature, intertwined. Perhaps the good people are the people begging or maybe even the people mugging. It’s hard to say what motivates any of them to do what they do. I’d like to think that I “did the right thing” and all that bologna, but in reality, all the stuff that people do regarding money is silly. Giving it, receiving it, working for it, stealing it… perhaps it’s all sort of the same.

Anyway, it’s something to think about when I’m standing in the hot sun waiting at the bus station.

Jennifer-Day 22-Atenas

We went to visit Atenas for the first time today, to see the new house that we’ll be renting for the rest of our time here. Atenas is, apparently a big expatriate place, but it felt a lot different than La Fortuna (also a big expatriate place). The house looks nice, with a big backyard and soft living room furniture, which was one of the most important features we were looking for after spending the past 21 days sitting on hard wooden stuff.

Yesterday, we had to board a bus to go to Atenas and after we found the bus and boarded it, I realized how stressed I had been about finding it. I have this tendency not to believe in the bus until I see it and it actually lands where it’s supposed to in a place. A part of me didn’t really think the bus to Atenas from Alajuela would be there. But the bus station attendant pointed us to an awning that even had a sign for Atenas hanging down from it and lo and behold…behind that there was a schedule of buses showing that they run throughout the day every hour or every half hour (between the busy times of 4:00 and 5:30 PM). The buses run Monday through Friday until 8:30 or 9:00 PM and on Saturdays until 10:30 PM. I didn’t write down how early they start (I should have), but it was early enough to get people to work in Alajuela.

The Atenas to Alajuela buses are located in the parking lot across from the Alajuela to Poas and San Jose Barrio buses. There are three full parking lots of buses in Alajuela that are all located in the center of town near the big Parque del Cementerio. There are no ticket stands in the bus station. The tickets are purchased on the buses which are marked with the cities that they serve on their routes.  Sometimes you can flag down a bus just walking along the street (it depends) and sometimes you have to be a stop along the way between cities. After being here for three weeks, the bus system is starting to make sense to me in a very Latin American sort of way. They don’t usually run on a strict schedule, but neither does the rest of the country so it seems to work out okay.

The Alajuela-Atenas bus and Atenas-Alajuela bus is by Copetransatenas for Ruta 246. Their telephone number is 446-57-67. The web site address http://horariodebuses.com/ will take you to a place where you can enter in a time and then find out when the earliest possible bus will run from place to place in Mexico, Central, and South America.

 

“It’s My Life” at a Karoake Bar in Costa Rica

The Costa Rican karaoke bar where we sat for two hours watching people get drunk and sing sappy Ranchero songs.

We rolled into La Fortuna, at the base of Arenal Volcano around 4:00 PM. John and I had both been stressed about the trip from Alajuela to La Fortuna. The map of Costa Rica that we had on our trip was as descript and helpful as the road signs leading from here to there. We were told that there were no road signs indicating which road was which and there were few signs to tell you which direction to go either. Both of us had been curious and a bit anxious as well about how we would find our way there without a map or road signs.

Costa Ricans themselves don’t know the names of streets (many of the streets don’t have names at all) or how to get from one place to another unless they’re taxi drivers or they work doing some other type of transportation. Everything is relative to everything else. The grocery store’s location is identified by its proximity to some other, more “important” business. “Importance” however, is rated according to local standards which makes it difficult for foreigners to find their way around and also makes it difficult for locals to find their way out of the place where they live and grew up. Driving between Alajuela and La Fortuna was made even more challenging by the fact that the maps on John’s phone didn’t line up exactly with our true location according to the little blue arrow that mostly indicated we were not driving on any road at all. It was like someone who drew up the map just approximated where the road went in a sort of “as the crow flies” fashion.

Every Costa Rica map is equally non-descript. A person must feel their way from here to there and asking directions doesn’t help. People only know where they’re located in relation to other things, which is only helpful on a local level. But we did find our way from Alajuela to La Fortuna using the non-descript map of Costa Rica, intuition, and GPS on John’s phone. The GPS was most helpful, if not essential, especially since many communities along the route actually put up directional signs (usually the only directional signs) leading the wrong direction so that people would end up in their hokey little towns to buy bananas or socks or whatever tourists might need on their trip to Arenal Volcano National Park.

At the end of our drive, we crossed a long and seemingly treacherous suspension bridge and John and I concurred that it would be nice to get to our apartment vacation rental and “chill” for a couple of hours before bed. We called our contact for the vacation rental and told him we would be there soon.

I can be a real wet blanket if I get tired, hungry, or cold, but generally as long as my basic needs are met, I’m willing to try almost anything. On this particular night, I was both tired and hungry when we arrived. The fellow who was taking care of our accomodations, however, had us come along with him to the hardware store to get a key cut for the apartment. Then he took us to meet some of his buddies at a restaurant called Just Good Food. John rebelled somewhat because, as vegans, he thought we’d fare better at The Flying Tomato vegetarian restaurant (which was horrible, by the way).

We are vegans, for the most part, who sometimes eat chicken, so finding restaurants in Costa Rica to accommodate our needs is challenging. But the guy who was managing our lodging had us sit down and watch him and his buddies drink some alcohol for over an hour nonetheless. We were able to eat some chips and guacamole and salsa so we weren’t starving anymore.

Then, we were just tired.

Our guide had suggested we look at living up in La Fortuna because it had some “cheap property” for rent. He talked about nice apartments for $90-$125. After dinner, he and his codependent girlfriend left us at the MegaSuper to get some supplies. The prospect of insanely cheap property rentals made us curious and so after a detour into the grocery store, we went back to the apartment and he came over to chat with us about the rental possibilities for the remaining two months of our stay.

This conversation took many twists and turns. He talked for the most part about himself and why living in La Fortuna was best. He share with us tales of his childhood in the Congo living with fanatical missionary parents. Every now and then, he would get up and pour himself another shot of rum. And four times he made fun of himself and his drinking problem until finally, I couldn’t help it.

“It seems like maybe you have a drinking problem. It keeps coming up in conversation.” I said.

But this man was a savvy alcoholic. He veered onto issues regarding spiritualism and religious beliefs, his difficult childhood and time spent living in the boondocks as a hermit on the side of the volcano. We discussed thoughts on God and aetheism and how he moderates some online group that discusses God’s existence or on-existence. At the end of his long, drawn-out excuse for drinking he said, “And the only reason I’m bringing this up is because it’s obviously important to you guys.” What he meant was that, he was talking about religion and spirituality because we had a problem and he was trying to help us.

Then, it was 9:30 PM. “So, it’s time for karaoke if you guys would like to go.”

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This was how we ended up at a Costa Rican karaoke bar on that Friday night. For the most part, it was mind-numbingly boring. We sat through two hours of sappy Ranchero music interspersed with our property manager’s passionate tributes to Bon Jovi. At the very end, Lydian sang “Holiday” by Green Day, which went over quite well (she does an excellent job working the crowd) and John tried to sing “Vertigo” by U2 but had lost his voice.

As we got up to leave (finally) a drunk kid came up and put his arm around Lydian. Though I could tell when it happened that she was icked out by it, she didn’t poke his eye out or rip one of his testicles off his body. We discussed the subtleties of the situation in depth later and when the appropriate time would be to go ahead and poke out an eye or do some ripping, but I was pleased with how she dealt with the drunk lad and his clumsy attempts at wooing.

Then, we got in a very small car with a very large man and road back to our apartment where I decided that “It’s My Life” (Bon Jovi) and having seen and experienced the excitement of an authentic Tico karaoke bar, I don’t ever have to go to another one again for the rest of all eternity.

Lydian – Day 19 – The Trip to La Fortuna

This last weekend was interesting, though extremely exhausting. The morning of Friday the 24th, I woke up at approximately eight or eight thirty. Five seconds after my waking up, I hear my mom shout, “Lydian, there’s a cockroach in the sink! I need your help!”. So, I helped. I washed the dishes. This was my wakeup call.

Originally, we were going to work a little bit in the morning, till about ten or so, and then leave to get to the car rental place close to the airport in Alajuela. But, we changed our minds. It was only about nine o’clock when we left. We walked down the hill to the bus stop, got on the bus that went to downtown Alajuela, and then got a taxi. Just so happens, the man driving the taxi was the same person who had driven us home from yoga the night before.

Budget was one of the many car rental places where my dad had reserved a car, it was also one of the rentals that had good reviews. The man who was in there was friendly, but we decided that because the deposit was expensive ($1000 USD), and that we would have to find a different car rental place in the Alajuela airport area, or just deal with it. He said the all the car rental places had you pay the same amount of money for a deposit at most of the places to rent cars. He called one of them for us, and told us where the place was. We were a little apprehensive toward going to this new car rental place because my dad hadn’t read the reviews or anything like that. For instance, even though this place, Usave, was a car rental chain, that didn’t mean it had good reviews, and was probably okay to rent from…. Hertz had quite a few bad reviews for the one here in Alajuela!

As we were walking to this new place, we decided it would probably be best to go back to Budget instead of taking a risk. Nah, I guess we will go to this Usave place, let’s just try it… No, let’s go to Budget! Oh, whatever! Screw it, let’s just go to the Usave place, it can’t be that bad, right? During this decision making process we must’ve walked up and down the sidewalk at least five times as we changed our decision from one thing to the next. We probably looked pretty stupid, really.

In the end, we wound up going with Payless, the car rental located right next to Usave. It seemed like a good place overall, and I won’t comment about the car, which was very small and cramped, but it worked.

Here in Costa Rica, don’t worry about street numbers or anything like that, just follow the town names and landmarks, and you’ll be fine. And if you get lost in a city or something like we did, take all the turns possible going the way you were going originally.

Not long after successfully getting onto the Pan American Highway, I got frustrated with myself. Here I was, on the freaking PAN AMERICAN HIGHWAY and I wanted to take a nap. And put my headphones in. And do everything within my power to not pay attention. I was probably just overwhelmed, but my mom told me that it was fine if I wanted to take a nap and do such things.

I still paid attention. The arrival at La Fortuna was monumental, there was a volcano, and it was pretty, and nothing made sense, until we got to our house, which was also monumental considering we all got to get out and sit on comfortable chairs and beds for the first time in two and a half weeks.

Apparently, it hasn’t been spewing lava for two years now, kind of disappointing, but perhaps for the best.

The apartment that we stayed in was nice. It was clean, and things were comfortable, complete with a painted refrigerator. The only problem that I had with it was that there were no ceilings on the bedrooms, although there was one on the bathroom. This was a little bit annoying because if anybody talked, then you could hear them no matter where you were. Even if you whispered, if one strained their ears enough they would be able to make out the words. I suppose the good part of this was that it forced me be quiet for once, considering I have tendencies to be loud. I got to be loud though at a different time on this weekend trip, thankfully.

Jennifer-Day 13-Walking the Streets in Alajuela, Costa Rica

I missed a few days of writing because we’ve been either busy or really exhausted from being busy. Finding our way in and out of Alajuela for our classes takes quite a bit of energy right now. We’re still working with how to make our way home from the classes safely. If we take the bus from downtown Alajuela (which cost the three of us about $1.60 USD), we have to walk about 30 minutes up the street with the wreckless drivers to get to our home. If we take a taxi each night, it costs between $10 and $15 ($10 USD if we take the bus first from downtown to the MegaSuper and $15 if we just take the taxi all the way from downtown).

I talked with Francisco, (the van driver who picked us up at the Alajuela Costa Rica airport) about possibly giving us a discount if he drove us around a lot and he seemed a little turned off by the idea. I’m not fluent enough in Spanish to be a savvy negotiator either.  All I know is if I want John, Lydian, and I to get dropped off at the front door, we’ll have to pay about $40 USD per week to do it. According to Victoria, our landlady, it may be worth it because the bus stop at the bottom of the hill gets a little “dodgy” at night. And night, of course, happens around 6:00 PM all year round.

I’ve been trying to develop a reasonable plan to get us into and out of Alajuela from our little suburban jungle (complete with a lion, thank God, or we’d never find our house). The buses in Alajuela  run from 5:00 AM to 10:30 PM. The abastecedores stay open until about 8:00 PM every night along Calle Vargas apparently, except on Sundays. As long as we get to the street sometime before 8:00 PM, it seems likely that the street would still be relatively safe because there would be places to go for help (maybe?). It’s a long walk to the top of the hill after doing 2 to 4 hours of martial arts or yoga downtown.

Last night we took a bus part of the way home to the MegaSuper and then caught a cab. The taxis run 24 hours a day, but they get more sporadic the farther away from downtown Alajuela we get. We pass through the San Jose barrio (neighborhood) on our way to Calle Vargas and I’m wondering if we should try disembarking from the bus there and then catching a cab. That might be a little cheaper even still, but we’d get to end up on our doorstep instead of a mile and a half away from home. The only problem with the San Jose barrio is that the bus that I’m familiar with stops in this desolate little area that’s covered with gang graffiti. It seems rather rough looking through the bus window on our way to downtown, but I have no real experience with the place other than peering through the glass. I hate experimenting with the safety of new places without having a big can of bear spray on me or a 900 volt tazer. It’s not like we’re in Nicaragua or Iran or something, but when it gets dark out, it feels irresponsible to perform dangerous experiments like walking along new streets in unfamiliar Costa Rican neighborhoods.