El viaje en coche: Quepos to Dominical via Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio

We had the most amazing day at Manuel Antonio National Park on the second day of our road trip, 9-6.

(For people wanting to embark on a similar adventure, complete with Ticos, it{s worth noting that nacionales get a significant discount on park entrance fees, so while Manuel Antonio cost me $10 to get in it only cost the boys $4 each, which seems right to me.)

Immediately on entering the park the tour guides start to hit me up, but I said no because of the cost ($20-person). It took about 15 minutes of passing people with guides, using large monoculars to look at wildlife that I couldn{t see, before I wheedled my way onto a monocular to see a sloth ("a sloth?! I{ve never seen a sloth - can I look?") and paid my $20 to join an American couple and their guide, Henry.

A sloth!!! The distinctive black and yellow diamond shows he{s a male, I think he has 3-toes.

Henry showed us lots of things I never would have seen myself, including this mama wolf tarantula curled up in a leaf with her hundreds of tiny babies.

He also knew lots about plants which I loved. The boys got a kick out of looking at the sloths too, especially Marcos, and once Henry realized the 4 of us were a package deal and that they were Ticos, he was totally cool about it.

Henry

When we get to Playa Manuel Antonio ("3rd beach") we say goodbye to Henry and find a lovely spot of soft sand in the shade of almond and coconut trees. I get in the water first, then Cesar and Jose, then Marcos. The boys race and frolic in the clear, aquamarine water. I have never seen more beautiful beaches than here in Costa Rica, a seemingly endless array of stunningly beautiful beaches, each different, some better than others for swimming but all stunningly beautiful.

I decide to modify a saying of my folks: they say, "we can sleep on the plane." I say, "we can sleep on the beach."





Being an American and a jew and myself, I start thinking in shouldas and couldas: I shoulda gotten here sooner, I coulda had more time...but it{s so much more fun being here with friends, and I couldn{t be here with them now without the car having broken down and having to spend all that time in Nicoya. So I push those thoughts out of my head and sure enough, they never come back for the rest of the trip. Regret is so NOT pura vida.

Marcos sends me to find a couple of rocks and shows me how to gently bang open the almonds. The nuts are small and moist and taste only vaguely like the hard almonds we get at home.

Cesar suggests we walk further into the park to see some more beaches - Cesar loves beaches, when he says "playa" he chews the Y so it sounds like something delicious. We walk on and they ask a young park employee about the trails. The young man says something about the trail being closed because it{s very steep and slippery and dangerous, I catch something like "no recomendido", and we{re off, of course.

As we head down the trail, which is indeed very steep and slippery and washed out in places but on which ropes have been placed to hang on to, a young turista starts following us down the hill. I say hi and she says she{s been wanting to come down this trail all day but didn{t want to do it alone so, when she saw us head this way, she followed. Her name is Jill and she{s from California, of course, and I invite her to join us.

What we found at the bottom was one of the most exquisite beaches I"ve visited in Costa Rica: Playa Puerto Escondido, a completely solitary beach in two parts, separated by a rocky point that{s impassable at high tide. Cesar led the way and the rest of us scrambled across, Jose and Marcos gallantly helping Jill across.

We{re all hungry, we skipped breakfast and don{t have any food with us, so Cesar knocks down a dozen young coconuts for us to eat. He cuts diamond holes in them with a pen knife, and we drink the water, which is light and sweet and refreshing. Then we break them open by throwing them against the rocks, rip through the tough fiber with our teeth, and spoon out the gooey jelly that is the baby coconut meat. It tastes like jism.

We spend an hour or so on the beach, swimming in the limpid water, then climb back out of Playa Puerto Escondido and part ways with Jill, walking back along the beach to the car.

We head to Dominical for the night, where I get a great arroz con mariscos at a soda called Junior, quite possibly the best meal of the entire trip, and where we finally buy a surfboard strap so we can get the board out of the car. We get a nice airy cabina for just $20 for all 4 of us, with a private shower and a nice front porch with hammocks. Cesar and Marcos have to share a double bed (una cama matrimonial), but they{re practically brothers and it doesn{t faze them.

Dominical

Dominical at sunset

Ethical tourism question

Ethical tourism question: a friend of Cesar{s (Jairo) wants $100 to take me on a tour to a beautiful town called Punta Islita 2 hours from Nicoya tomorrow. That{s afer I put $50 of gas in his tank today for a much shorter tour. Karo and Ernesto say that{s way too much money, that he{s taking advantage of me (a seriously bad thing in Nicoya) and I shouldn{t do it.

Jairo

I agree that he{s taking advantage of me (four of us were able to do the Pavones trip for $100-150 per day), but he{s a business owner and a married man with two kids, and he knows what things are worth and how much money Americans have because he works for the rich ones who have nice houses and gardens in Nosara.

My options are limited - I may or may not have a bicycle tomorrow (Cesar lent the one I was using to a friend but said he{d get it back today, I don{t see it here), but it{s too far to ride to the playa (60km each way), and there{s no place in Nicoya to rent a car or moto.

There are plenty of buses to Samara but that{s a pretty boring beach with lots of tourists, I wouldn{t want to spend all day there, especially not alone, how boring. I{d much rather take a trip to Islita, which is supposed to be beautiful coastline reached through beautiful, remote roads and which has - according to Lonely Planet - an open-air museum of contemporary local art organized by a local hotel. Odds are the art is mostly for tourists and not very interesting, but wouldn{t it be a quick if there were something wonderful?

The entire trip would include 4 hours of driving on some really bad roads and crossing a couple of rivers (assuming there{s no heavy rain and they{re passable), as many stops as I want to take pictures along the way in what Jairo says is beautiful and different countryside than the rest of Nicoya, and time on one or more beautiful playas and in the beautiful limpid water of Costa Rica for the last time this trip, and possibly for many years. Plus as much food and beer as I want. And Jairo knows the names of all the trees and birds because he{s a gardener.

What should I do?

Road trip (el viaje en coche): Nicoya to Quepos

So, after that 6:30pm entry on Monday 9-5, we made the following stops before finally hitting the road:

1, we went to a lumber yard to get $ for Jose and a large, strange man got in the car with us and to an ATM, from which he paid Jose and left

2, Dona Francisca{s so Cesar could bring something to Karolina and say goodbye to Santi

3, picked Marcos up at his house

4, An ATM for Cesar to get cash

5, someplace for Marcos to get something

6, Cesar{s friend to get the surfboard straps, but he wasn{t home so the surfboard stayed in the car with us,

7, MaxiBodega for beer and charcoal.

We hit the road at 7.20pm and drive through the green tunnel of forest leading northeast from Nicoya, over the Puente de Amistad and over to the Costanera Sud, onto which we turned south toward Pavones.

It{s like driving through the forest with a tribe of fairies - masculine fairies, like the ones in Middle Earth. Marcos looks especially like a fairy, with his long, skinny limbs and pointy ears and chin.

Nothing has prepared me for the experience of listening to Ticos talk to each other. It{s so fast, emphatic and casual, it sounds little like the Spanish I learned in school in Oaxaca. I revel in it, swim in it, as it fills the air in the car like smoke.

Cesar has his neck wrapped in a towel because he says he{s coming down with the flu, just like me and Karo. Jose starts sneezing an hour or two into the drive. Cesar jokes that the trip is going to be a health fiasco, and they all laugh. I translate slowly in my head and laugh a minute later.

The soundtrack is playing on Cesar{s ipod - Roots music of great energy and clarity, with positive upbeat messages about the future, and political content for the work class. I like a guy called Rastamanuel. Later the playlist shifts to rap, including a Cuban band I really like called Orishas.

The pace and scale changes drastically when we hit the Costanera, a 20th century transportation artery: a well-maintained road designed to carry people where they want to go without requiring them to interact with the people whose land they pass through - so stunningly different from what I have been seeing and loving about Costa Rica.

We drive straight through to Jaco, where we stop at 10.30 for a quick, cheap dinner at a soda, and Marcos lovingly reads the whole menu aloud. I tease in Spanish that Marcos is always talking about food and they laugh and take up the theme. I recognize the word for vulture and then I{m completely lost.

Later, though it{s not raining and I don{t hear thunder, every 10 minutes or so the entire sky lights up with sheet lightning. The boys seem not to notice. Jose later tells me there{s a lot of lightning in September and October. The word for lightning is relampagos, pronounced ray-LAMP-agoss!, which is clearly onomatopeic.

The recommended hostel in Quepos was full, as was the hostel they recommended, so we ended up at the 3rd hostel, with an itty bitty room with 2 bunkbeds and separate bath for $10 a person.



I couldn{t sleep and wandered around in my nightgown on the terraces outside, and then someone closed our bedroom door and I was locked out for the night. I spent the night on a couch outside, cuddling with the hostel puppy.

Costa Rican health care: worked for me

A week ago I had a bad sore throat and feared it could develop into strep, and I wrote about going to the pharmacist to ask for antibiotics.

I{m happy to report the pills she gave me worked a charm - sore throat was gone by the 4th day.

Road trip to Pavones

We got back to Nicoya this afternoon. How can I describe this 7-day road trip to Manuel Antonio, Bahia Drake and Pavones with 3 beautiful young Costa Rican men? A dream of sun, sand, water and friendship. The nature was wonderful, and sharing it with these young men, who had never seen this part of their own country or been so far from home, made it all the more wonderful.

More to come as I download pictures and try to wrap my head around the trip....

Costa Rican health care

I{ve had several conversations with people about health care, but this is my first need for an enounter: a sore throat that feels a bit like broken glass when I swallow, and a low fever last night, and exposure to a coughing baby a week ago, and Karolina having a cough, which all makes me think I might be on track to a throat infection, which scares me because I{ve had a very bad, painful one with a high fever and I don{t want that to happen on the road.

So I check my Lonely Planet and see that pharmacists in Costa Rica, as in England, can prescribe medications so I don{t need to make a doctor{s appointment and pay a bajillion dollars and-or wait all day, I can just go to one of the 20 different pharmacies in town and get antibiotics.

So I ride my bike down the very far and very dangerous highway about 7 blocks (seriously, everywhere is muy largo from here to a Costa Rican) to the first pharmacy I see, and tell the very pretty young pharmacist that I{ve got a sore throat that feels like broken glass and I think it might be an infection and I{d like antibiotics.

And she, in her gentle, smiling, respectful way, listens and then tells me that my symptoms don{t, in her opinion, merit antibiotics but that she{ll give me two other things instead: to knock out the infection, 4 tablets of something called Etoricoxib, which I{ve never heard of, to take once a day. And then a dozen throat lozenges to suck on every 4 hours, also to help knock out the infection, called Decatileno, which I{ve also never heard of.

I{m a little nervous but she{s so NICE and so CERTAIN that these will work, that I pay my $4 and cross that errand off my list.

Background: From what I can see, Costa Rica has a system in which the government acts to ensure that everyone can get health care, everybody pays something into the health care system through employment taxes when they{re working, and there seem to be plenty of private medical practices. Everyone I{ve talked to says yes, everyone in CR can get health care if they need it, and they all seem proud and happy to be able to say that.

Un partido de futbol y vamos a la playa, at last!

It will come as no surprise, I{m sure, to anyone who has spent time in Costa Rica, that it{s 3:30pm on Monday and we still haven{t left for the long-awaited road trip to Pavones. Cesar, Marcos and I are all ready and just waiting for Jose to get back from having his car smogged.

So, I{m eating a delicious tamale procured by Marcos, the kind wrapped in banana leaves, writing this and continuing to learn the art of patience and quedarse bien.

Yesterday I went to watch Marcos play a soccer game with his team, Los Piches (I think a piche is like a duckling, but not sure), in the yellow jerseys - Marcos is in #10, against another Nicoya team, La Familia, in the red jerseys. They played on a beautiful field surrounded by jungle and hills, with women serving up huge plates of chicken and rice for just $3 and cold beers for $2. I watched and took pictures from the shade along the sidelines, in air scented by wild guavas that carpet the ground like yellow plums.

And of course, because it{s Costa Rica, the ball occasionally goes flying into the jungle and has to be retrieved.

Raymond rode over after the game and the 3 of us then rode over to Bar Eli to meet up with Cesar, who arrives later on the back of Bana,s motorcycle. The five us out hang out and listen to Bob Marley, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, just passing time. They greet friends and passers-by from the open bar, we look at the map and talk about our trip to Pavones. I want to dance and realize that, in Costa Rica, pretty much everything is ok as long as you don{t hurt anyone, so I go outside and walk up and down the street grooving quietly to Bob Marley.

Bana leaves and the 4 of us ride to another bar because Marcos is hungry (as usual) and wants ceviche. Marcos gets cranky because Cesar negates his half-dozen bar suggestions and we go instead to a bar Cesar chooses for its proximity to his house, taking Marcos further from his house. The dynamics of their friendship, which is very close, become clearer. Cesar rides on Raymond{s handlebars, his flip-flops dangling off his brown feet. We head down Nicoya{s main street, which is gritty and semi-industrial, with lots of traffic of all modes entering the road from every side. We pass a white horse, unsaddled, grazing by the side of the road, halter trailing through the grass.

It starts raining heavily soon after we get to the second bar and Bana rides up on his bicycle, shirtless. He draws up a chair and wipes his stunning torso down with napkins before putting on his dry shirt. Being with these men is sometimes like being in a Playgirl calendar come alive. They flirt with our pretty waitress, who brushes off the artless advances of Raymond and Bana but bats her lashes at Cesar.

The rain is torrentail and it gets a little chilly in the open bar - we{re all in tshirts and shorts and they boys all start talking about how cold it is, hunching their shoulders and shivering. It{s probably 70 degrees F with a light breeze.

It{s 4:00 and Cesar and Jose have just rolled up with the car. They{re doing a load of laundry and god knows what else. Cesar has just told Marcos that we{ll be there in 20 minutes to get him. That{ll be a miracle.

UPDATE, 4:43: Cesar is still washing clothes and looking at himself in the mirror. Jose is dropping Christian home. Marcos is supposedly ready and waiting at his house. And this is after several mutual verbal agreements that we were positively, definitely leaving this afternoon as soon as Jose{s car was ready. Just sayin´ ...

UPDATE, 6pm: we{re clearly dealing with a very different concept of time, here. Jose is here and teh car is loaded, but Cesar is still gathering his surfing gear. Then we{re going to pick up the long-suffering Marcos, whos been ready since before, then to a friend of Cesar{s to pick up the straps to hold his surfboard on the roof - for now it{s wedged diagonally through the middle of the Toyota Corolla, which is about to contain 4 adults (well, sort of). Then on to MaxiBodega to buy beer and charcoal and THEN, finally, on to Pavones!!

Mountain Bike Ride to Barra Honda National Park, or, Balls Out in Costa Rica

Today I went on a great bike ride with Marcos and his friend Raymond.

El equipo cycliste de Nicoya

Of course, because it{s Costa Rica, there was a mechanical breakdown and emergency roadside repair made possible by the kindness of Costa Ricans, who seem knit together by a sort of kinship expressed in the term Mae. It reminds me of the cousinage in Mali.

We saw black Howler monkeys in the trees above us. I watched them and they watched me. I love their hooting, groaning calls in the hills all around us, and this was the first time I{d seen them.

There was a lot of climbing, and sometimes I just had to walk my bike. AT one point it was so steep that Marcos had to walk, too.

We had to carry our bikes up slippery mud trails through limestone ankle twisters.

Raymond is super-strong and carried my bike up a particularly steep bit of trail for me.

We rode to Barra Honda National Park, which is famous for its underground caves, in what looks like limestone. We didn{t go in the caves, that costs $35 for a guide and it{s not always open in the rainy season, but we rode to the mirador (viewpoint) at the top. It was beautiful - the entire valley of Nicoya spread out below us, green and pastoral as England, with the Gulf of Nicoya and Isla Chira in the distance.

We came down in a torrential downpour and got soaked to the skin and beyond.


Now relaxing and watching the US - Costa Rica football game at home with Marcos and Raimond, while Cesar does a beer & BBQ run and Karo & Ernesto (the grownups) go to bed.

(And yes, I did it in Tevas.)

Vamos a la playa

After three car-less days during which Cesar and I were both stuck in the house, with my only options not very good ones (take a bus to Liberia to rent a car, an expensive 2-day expedition because you have to buy the ticket the day before if you want a seat) it was a great relief when Cesar announced that his friend Jose has a car and is willing to join us for a week-long road trip down the Pacific coast to Pavones. I buy the gas, beer and food, Jose provides the car and we all go have a good time - that{s the deal, and it seems to work for everyone.

A couple of days ago the 3 of us took a daytrip, a test drive if you will, to the beaches northwest of Nicoya. Once we got off the main highway, I started to hang my head out the back window like a dog snuffling up all the bright, moist, lush swathes of green grass leading into fields and rough-barked oak trees.

We passed two boys riding a white horse down the road, the older boy letting the toddler in front hold the reins, serious and watchful, the baby alight with joy. Further on, a man in a blue shirt herds a dozen white cows from atop a handsome chestnut horse, dog at his feet.

So full of life, this country. Pura vida.

We stop so I can take photos at a cemetery in the hot sun, then hit the road again and pop open the first cold beers of the day, with Tupac pumping on the radio. I learn how to say Crank It! in Spanish (Volumen!).

We drive through a shady hollow and past an old couple sitting out on the porch of their blue house, in matching rocking chairs on either side of their open front door, he{s talking and turned slightly towards her, his skin dark and his hair white and bushy.

AT lunch, I learn that Jose is studying business administration and plans to work in HR. The big question facing all the young college graduates when they finish school is, do they move to the capital city, San Jose, where the jobs are, or stay in Nicoya which they love and face a much harder time earning a living. Cesar has already decided that he{s going to stay in Nicoya when he gets his law degree, because he loves it here and doesn{t like San Jose. But the tattoo artist and his wife moved to San Jose from Honduras because there{s much more work there, and they love it.

Back on the road, listening to great music from Calle 13, a Puerto Rican rap band. We pass a field where ducks and white egrets feed in the puddles at one end, and horses graze at the other. A slender young man with brown skin and periwinkle blue shorts stands, arms akimbo, watching the birds.

Finally we{re driving through the town of Potrero, a sleepy little Tico town with good restaurants (looks like) and lovely scenery. The road is graded dirt, pretty good but Jose is keeping it slow, driving about 20 kph.

We drive right up to Playa Portrero, past a breezy soda that would be every gringo{s dream but that doesn{t even merit notice from Cesar and Jose. It{s an ordinary little beach, with a man wading in with fishing nets at the far end. He seems to be fishing with the pelicans swimming nearby, but I can{t figure out how. I wade out in my dress to talk to him and take pictures. He shows me the best spot to see the pelicans roosted in a tree on the cliff above us. Later I take his picture with his wife in front of their tiny shack on the beach; they{ve been married 30 years.

We leave Playa Portrero and head north toward Playa Azucar, which I said I wanted to see, but when we crest a hill and they see that we´re a good 10km from the beach by dirt road, they turn back to find a closer beach. This turns out to be Playas Danta and Dantita, two lovely black and white sand beaches fronted by mangroves, not marked on the map or in Lonely Planet and with no other people on them. We while away an hour, the boys sitting on tree trunks and chatting while I play in the magically limpid waves.

Yesterday was Jose{s birthday and he stayed at home, so I finally got my nerve up to ask if I could borrow the mountain bike that´s been in front of the house all week. Turns out it belongs to a friend of Cesar´s and it´s in baaad shape - like a bike that´s been to Burning Man and back, the mechanisms are all caked with the fine clay dust of Nicoya. Only a few of the gears work and the seat is way too far from the handlebars for me, and hard as steel, but the brakes work and the tires are solid so off I went, with the requisite warnings from Cesar to take care (¨Cuidado!) and that it´s very far (muy larga) and dangerous (muy peligrosa) (which I have come to think must be the standard Tico response to any question regarding transportation between where you are and anywhere else). We have agreed that Cesar is my little brother but he acts more like my big brother, which is fine and dandy with me, I love being taken care of.

It turns out to be a lovely ride, a 25-30km loop along small roads through some of the tiny towns on the outskirts of Nicoya. One town is marked only by a school, another by just one house. I stop and talk to a farmer planting corn in his field the old way, with just a gourd full of corn kernels and a long stick with which he makes a hole and drops the seed, then covers it with his feet. He asks if I´m single and if I´ll go dancing with him. I say I think we should meet for coffee first and discuss our career goals, and the romance founders from there.

School lets out, and for a while I´m riding with dozens of children in blue school uniforms. Some of them smile and wave, some shout rude things about my mother (I think, who knows), some simply stare.

I got back to the house safe, sound and proud of myself for my big ride, and with my butt bones so sore I can barely sit.

In the evening, Jose helps Cesar and Karolina do the big 2-week grocery shop, since Ernesto has the family´s only working car, and then Cesar, Jose and I go pick up Marcos and head out for an evening drive to drink beers on the beach at Samara, about 40 minutes south of Nicoya. Jose is a good driver and has great tunes, but he drives very fast on these tiny, dark roads, and I see why traffic accidents are the number 1 cause of death in Costa Rica. (Foreshadowing NOT.)

Playa Samara is glorious - it´s a new moon so it´s very dark, and the tide is very far out. I leave the boys to their beers and their conversation and walk out barefoot on the velvety soft wet sand for what feels like hundreds of yards, into the perfect water, just deep enough that I can feel the pull of the riptides around my ankles. The air and the water are both the perfect temperature, so that there´s no physical discomfort whatever - neither too hot, nor too cold, something that strikes this northern Californian as a miracle. There´s no one else on the beach, and I´m so grateful for the 3 men at my back, who make it possible for me to be here, alone, in total safety.

I love listening to Costa Ricans talk - when they get going, they speak a rapid patois that sounds more like Italian than Spanish, it´s so expansive and so full of laughter. And they are so kind to one another, and to me.

Jose y Marcos

I am, of course, hopelessly infatuated with Cesar, who is an absolute dreamboat of a man, and the best talker of them all. SIGH. It´s a young person´s country, though - women my age are grandmothers.

It´s an interesting place to reflect on growing old as a single woman. Compared to Ticos, I have so much money, but my life must seem so empty to them, because the center - la familia - is missing. My life doesn´t feel empty to me, but it certainly plays into my deepest fear.