Costa Rica has a wet season and a dry season. The trip was amidst the wet season so most afternoons ended with rain showers, sometimes violent thunderstorms. These were largely responsible for the washed-out roads which plague the country. Eighty percent of the roads are unpaved. Road signs are few and far between. There's a transnational road, Route 1, which connects Central America but it's typically only one or two lanes each way.
The temperatures during the day stayed in mid-80s and the humidity was always present. The units had fans in the rooms but no air conditioning, and it got a unpleasantly hot each afternoon until the rains came. Fortunately, I signed up for lots of day tours so I usually wasn't in them then.
The time share, the Condominios Villas Palmas, was located near San Jose, the capitol. The place had 12 units, each with three bedrooms. Initially, I didn't see many others and thought the place was pretty well empty but the meet-and-greet the next morning showed that the place was actually full, probably 35 people in total. Most were from the United States -- North Carolina, Connecticut, Washington state, Hawaii, etc. We had a smattering of people who spoke Spanish but we were overwhelmingly English-only. There was only one smoker in the crowd. (The units themselves were non-smoking.) Participation in the main scheduled tours varied, sometimes as many as 25 went to them.
There were four tours that made up the primary tour package:
(1) An afternoon tour of San Jose, with a stop at the National Theater,
(2) A day below the Arenal Volcano, including three hours at the Baldi Hotsprings,
(3) A four-in-one tour including the Poas Volcano, a rain forest hike, jungle boat ride, and the Braulio Carrillo National Park, and
(4) A coffee tour and the Bird Zoo Wildlife Rescue Center.
In addition, I signed up for another two tours:
(5) Canopy tour on a zipline (a high-wire strung between trees), and
(6) A Pacific Island cruise aboard the Calypso Catamaran.
It was going to be a very full week!
Most of the tours included visits to stores. (We figured there was some store payment to the tour company for taking us to each of them.) Costs were often measured in the native currency, the colone, but others were measured in dollars. Most of the bigger stores provided conversion tables. 515 colones was worth about a dollar. The smallest bill was a thousand colones, about two dollars. The smallest coin that I saw was 10 colones.
Just about every structure in San Jose and the major towns is surrounded by a fence, bars, and razor wire. Some places had guards, some even had guard towers. One day, we passed a bank with two guards outside, one carrying a large rifle. One of the toll booths had a rifle-carrying guard as well. I wasn't allowed in the bank (you have to pay an exit tax when you leave) without showing identification.
The orientation session claimed that it wasn't that San Jose was a crime-ridden, but if you didn't protect your place and everywhere else did, you would be broken into as the weakest link. The explanation sounded singularly absurd and oppressive to me, until I considered that the federal government has done exactly the same thing with every government building. If a building wasn't protected by concrete, guards, and cameras, then terrorists will blow it up no matter how inconsequential because the one they *really* want is protected . Both DC and Costa Rica were way too protected, although it seems that Costa Ricans were generally happier than people in my capitol.
As it was, I found out afterward why crime was considered so low. They don't bother to prosecute anyone who steals less than $500 worth of stuff -- you can cut crime way down if you define the word too stringently. It's also said to be the case that you're not prosecuted if you no longer have the goods on you. Someone in our party said he saw a guy at the grocery store check-out line who was found to have a lot of stolen groceries under his shirt. The guy, confronted by the store security guard, dropped the stuff at the counter. The store guard called to the police standing just outside of the store but they basically ignored him. Later, they ran after someone else. So it goes.
Day 1: The first day was pretty slow. My neighbor Gail dropped me off at the airport for a 7:58am flight. The plane landed in Atlanta, which was bathed in smoke from forest fires. From there, the flight went directly to San Jose. The total length of the trip was about 7 hours. A cab ride took me to the villa before the rains started. I laid down briefly and woke up hungry five hours later. The villa's guard didn't speak English but eventually I found myself at Denny's. I went back there several times during the trip.
Day 2: The morning began with an orientation session led by the tour group operator. This was the first introduction to the other residents. Afterward, we took our turns signing up for the various tours. They offered a primary package of four tours -- listed above -- as well as offering four alternate tours for the days off and then ten other day tours as well as two overnight tours. The day tours varied in price from $25 to $99. Most included a meal or two or a snack. Because the rains frequently started around 2pm, the tours began early -- some as early as 6:10am.
Since the morning was already spent on the orientation, the city tour didn't begin until noon. Most of the time was spent just driving around the city in a tour bus. We stopped three times -- the first two times being at stores (way too much time on shopping).
The final stop was at the National Theater (Teatro Nacional), an amazingly beautiful place. It was conceived in 1890, when a Central American tour by Spanish-born prima donna skipped the country because it didn't have a decent enough performance venue. The ruling coffee barons levied a tax on coffee exports to finance the building, which was completed in 1897. The Neo-Baroque structure, made of ten species of hardwood, has beautiful statues and paintings.
Afterward, twelve of us were dropped off for dinner at a Brazilian steak house.
Day 3: We hopped on two buses and went north along Route 1. We ran into a traffic accident and eventually ended up small side streets around it. That cost us close to an hour. My bus was the larger, slower bus. (Since we had more people, our bathroom breaks were longer, shopping trips took longer, and we had less maneuverability on the sometimes treacherous streets.) I had signed up for a side trip along a canopy bridge because most of the trips weren't going to involve seeing wildlife which is a favorite activity of mine but the delay from the accident cost me that. As it was, the bus encountered a three-toed sloth slowly walking across the road and that was a highlight of the day.
After a shopping stop (which, surprisingly, I enjoyed even though Costa Rica doesn't have a Costco
Afterward, we were supposed to drive up beside the Arenal Volcano, Arenal is the country's most active volcano. It ceased activity by the 16th century and stayed as such until July 29, 1968 when an earthquake awakened it. The 5,400-foot conical high volcano smolders continuously and minor eruptions occur almost daily. At night, it can look like a firecracker as it spews out red-hot lava, which drips down the northwestern flank. When we were there, however, clouds masked the peak and we didn't get to see anything.
The trip back was supposed to be fairly uneventful but a heavy rain hit us. The driver gallantly made it through the blinding rain and fog until we were stopped along the two-lane road by a traffic accident which had just occurred. A loaded sugar cane truck, which was driving in the center of the street instead of its lane, had broken an axle and blocked the road. The smaller bus, being faster, had already gone through before us so they made it home on time. Our driver tried to get around the truck but the space was too small and one of our tires went off the road. Since Costa Rica doesn't have paved shoulders, we got out and pushed the bus out of the mud. It backed behind a milk truck, which was directly behind the sugar cane truck, and waited. Some vehicles were small enough or had enough wheels to make it passed us but basically we were stuck there for two hours. There wasn't much traffic on this road, despite it being a primary route, so there were only a dozen vehicles that ended up stuck on either side of the blockade. The truck behind us was filled with (mostly) live chickens -- I estimated there were 11 x 8 x 5 containers, each containing two, maybe three chickens. The bus group was all fairly jolly and we told jokes as the time went on -- the theme song to "Gilligan's Island" was a big hit. We got back to the villa around midnight.
Day 4: After the really late night, some of the folks had signed up for a trip beginning at 6:10am but, fortunately, the bus for my canopy activity didn't start until 8:30am. There were nine of us that had signed up for this trip. Our driver, Chico, didn't speak English so we didn't get much in the way of explanation on the way to the canopy.
The Canopy Adventure is a zip line tour of one of the cloud forests. Zip lines are high wires which are strung up between trees in the forests. You're strapped in a harness and locked onto the wire, then let go down the wire. The trips were fun, the harnesses secure, and the adventure very safe.
In addition to our group, there were two other groups in attendance. Each group got different-colored helmets (in part so they could organize the photos they'd be selling us later more efficiently). The largest group (in yellow helmets) was a Baptist church retreat. The smallest group (in orange helmets) were three women, one of whom got very upset that I was taking pictures of everyone. She said she didn't like strangers taking random pictures of her. I have no idea what was wrong with her. Since groups were coming down the line in somewhat random order, I thought I was taking pictures of my group (in blue helmets) and accidentally photographed her which bothered her to no end. I told her I'd delete the pictures -- which I didn't want to do at the time because I'd already taken others -- but I ended up taking fewer pictures in general because I didn't want to accidentally take hers again. It was difficult taking the pictures because it was relatively dark in the forest, you had people coming out the trees straight toward you -- you never knew where to focus or how much to emphasize the person relative to the breath-taking backgrounds -- and harnesses often got in the way. I would have appreciated taking a lot more pictures but the photophobe caused me to slow down considerably. Afterward, one of her group came by, told me again that the woman was upset, and forced me to find and delete the last set of pictures in front of her.
I'd never deleted pictures from this camera. (The only other time I'd had to delete digital pictures was years ago with another camera at a Jethro Tull concert.) Before I went digital, I had been on a whale-watching trip off Cape Cod. I had my trusty 35mm film camera. Another guy had a digital camera. I took about six rolls of pictures, some of which came out very well. The other guy, however, commented that he didn't know why he even bothered taking the pictures because the slow focusing with a digital camera meant that he never got the whale as it leapt from the water -- only the tail as it went back in. At the end of the trip as we were getting ready to get off the boat, he tried to delete some bad pictures. Unfortunately, he accidentally said "delete all" instead of "delete last" and he lost everything from the trip. That experience caused me to delay buying my first digital camera and to vow that I would only delete pictures from the computer, not from the camera.
Fortunately, the tour operators also took lots of pictures (the orange group didn't consider them strangers) and they sold our group CDs containing about 135 images. We had four subsets in our group so we bought four copies of the CD -- they charged you $20 to $40 per CD depending on how many people were in your subset. I bought the CD to get pictures of myself and also because I wasn't sure how my own pictures were coming out.
It had begun to rain as we drove back to the villa. Unable to take a walk to get lunch, I took another five-hour nap. I awoke at 9:30pm and again ended up at Denny's for lunch/dinner.
Day 5: This was called a four-in-one tour. It started at 7:00am and included a bunch of places but the key points were the Poas Volcano and a jungle boat ride.
Parque Nacional Volcan Poas is the country's most visited national park. Created in 1971 on land that was previously used for cattle grazing, the 25 square mile park encircles Volcan Poas. The volcano, one of the world's largest active volcanos, was created more than a million years ago and it is active every 40 years or so.
The ride up to the volcano summit is along a windy road with views of coffee plantations and valleys. From there, a five-minute walk takes you to the edge of the crater. The crater is 895 feet deep and a mile wide. Within it is contained an acidic turquoise lake (which changes color based on the acidity of the volcano) and fumaroles.
Unfortunately, when we got to the volcano, we were hit by a heavy rain which made everything pretty hairy. A school group of small children had arrived about the same time and most of them had raincoats. Some of us were properly prepared but others were wearing garbage bags and others just got soaked. So it goes.
Afterward, we visited a beautiful waterfall and a hummingbird station before taking a jungle boat tour. The jungle boat tour was pretty cool. They took you out on the river and traveled down it for awhile, pointing out a variety of animals. For me, the highlight was a bunch of tiny bats hanging from a tree trunk along the shore. But we also saw spider monkeys, large iguanas, a variety of birds, and a small alligator-like creature called a caiman.
Since it happened to be my birthday, ten of us went down to a restaurant across from Denny's and had dinner. Not being a people person, that was pretty exhausting and I slept a lot that night.
Day 6: This day included a tour of the Doka Estate and a zoo. The Doka Estate, located on the lower slopes of the Volcan Poas, was established in 1929. Owned by the family of the founder, Don Clorindo Vargas, it has six square miles of coffee bushes. The permanent staff is about 200 but during the picking season (October through January), they bring in 3,000 temporary workers, mostly from Nicaragua, to pick the beans. Doka sells much of its output five years in advance to Starbucks Coffee. They say they restrict the amount sold to Starbucks because they don't want to be totally dependent on them.
The guide mentioned that the growing season had changed dramatically over the years, and he blamed it on global warming. He said the beans here were ripening earlier now, at a time with rain (bad for the beans) and a time when the laborers were busy picking other crops (they also pick pineapples and such). The prime growing areas were now higher elevations which were harder to afford now. They were worried about the future of the crop. Coffee, at one point, had been the primary industry in Costa Rica. It has now dropped considerably -- falling behind tourism (the leading industry) and microchips (Intel has a major plant here). Pineapple is also a major crop here.
The privately-owned Zoo Ave Wildlife Conservation Park covers 145 acres. It has the largest collection of tropical birds in Central America. It also has a variety of mammals (deer, peccaries, pumas, tapirs, crocodiles, caimans, and snakes). Many of the birds were confiscated from poachers or otherwise were rescued by the National Wildlife Service. Personally, I don't like photographing animals behind cages so my interest in the zoo wasn't that high. But some wild birds and lots of beautiful plants made the adventure more entertaining.
It turns out that our guide, Jeffrey, and one of the drivers, Juan Carlos (who was also a photographer), were both avid birders so they spent a lot of time in the nation's parks looking for wildlife.
Day 7: This day started very early (6:00am) and included a drive out to the fishing town of Punta Renas. From there, we were taken by a catamaran, the Manta Raya, off to Tortuga Island. Along the way, we passed lots of interesting islands in the Gulf of Nicoya. We had lunch and four hours at the beach before being taken back. I got burned on my back because of basic stupidity on my part. Nicely enough, the rain held off until we got back on the bus.
Day 8: This was the flight home. It included a four hour lay-over in Atlanta. I got home in the rain which everyone here was happy to see. Right. Anyway, that was the 8,420-picture trip.
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