Costa Rica

First few weeks of September, 2006

Arriving at night in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, I made my way to the hostel that I had randomly chosen from my Lonely Planet and immediately regretted my choice. It seemed to be run by sketchy pony-tailed American men in their fifties, one of whom showed me several dank, windowless rooms and I plumped for the one that made me feel least like I was in some Central American flop-house for Vietnam vets. I then tried to sleep until it was light enough for me to find somewhere else to stay, but had to contend with the water pump in the flimsy cavity ceiling above my room which went off like a motorbike starting up about every 40 minutes, and the blaring tv from the room next door. Oh yes indeed, the joys of budget travel....

The next day my revised choice was much better, but from the outside looked like a warehouse, surrounded as it was by high walls topped with razor wire, with access through a heavy door permanently manned by an armed security guard. I actually walked past it several times, despite having the address, it looked so unlike a hostel. I was eventually helped to find it by a random American who started talking to me on the street. He proceeded to tell me that he had been in San Jose for three weeks now, had been mugged twice in the area we were in and now always carried a can of pepper spray. I decided not to ask him why on earth he had spent three weeks in San Jose in the first place, and disappeared behind the fortifications.

Having a look around San Jose confirmed it as the Razor Wire Capital of Central America, if not the world, and after a couple of nights there a bus took me east towards the Caribbean coast and the small town of Tortuguero. To get to Tortuguero you have to actually take two buses and a boat, which leaves from a dock at the Geest banana plantation. Having grown up eating bananas with little stickers on that say "Geest" but not knowing what it meant, it was interesting to accidentally find out!

On the way I met Jonathan and Laura from London. I had to look twice at Jonathan on meeting him, as he closely resembles Jamie who is currently filling my BBC shoes in London. I thought for a moment that Jamie had thrown in the live music and events towel and run to the jungle, but no...

Jonathan, Laura and I booked a boat tour with a local guide called Pablo, which started early in the morning and lasted a couple of hours. As Pablo gently paddled us around the lagoons, rivers and canals that make up the terrain to the west of Tortuguero, he pointed out the wealth of flora and fauna that brings people to the area. We saw caimans, river otters, black turtles, lizards and numerous birds amongst the huge variety of plants and trees endemic to the region.

The following night we went to check out Tortuguero's other natural claim to fame, the nocturnal nesting of turtles on the beach. With our hired guide we went to a particular area of beach at about 10 p.m. to see if our luck was in. You could not use torches nor camera flashes on the beach, as these disturb nesting turtles. However, the guide had a red torch which apparently isn't as bad, and fortunately our night was a fairly moonlit one. Our luck was in; within 40 minutes on the beach we had seen not one but four Green Turtles.

Two were in the act of laying, one was starting to excavate her nest in the sand, and the fourth was hauling her 100 kg body back into the sea as quickly as possible, having completed the laying process. We watched one of the laying turtles pop about a hundred or so soft white eggs, each about the size of a ping pong ball, into the egg chamber of her nest which she had excavated in the sand.

After Tortuguero I headed back inland towards the town of La Fortuna, where the active volcano Volcan Arenal is situated. La Fortuna really is all about the volcano, which forms an impressive sight as it looms over the town to the west, belching out smoke and pyroclastic boulders. You can't climb up it; people trying in recent years have been killed on the slopes by hot gasses which shoot out of the ground there. So I took a naturalist-led tour through the surrounding cloud forest which culminates in a visit to an observation point at dusk, at which, if there is not too much cloud, you can observe volcanic phenomena. In the forest, we saw various wildlife including some coatimundis...

After playing hide and seek in the clouds all day, Arenal rewarded us with a perfectly clear view of it ejecting semi-molten rocks, glowing red and rolling down from the summit. When you see that, it becomes perfectly obvious why you can't climb the volcano! (To see the pyroclastic boulders, you might have to click on the pic of the volcano to enlarge it). At the end of the tour we visited the local volcanic hot springs, which have been developed into a kind of resort with several pools of varying temperature and, indeed, a swim-up bar! I was expecting something a bit more muddy and natural, but I have to admit it is nice to be able to buy a beer as you soak...

So then on to Santa Elena in Monteverde, an area some 1440m above sea-level and surrounded by cloud forest. Several companies have constructed systems of zip lines and suspension bridges in the forest canopy, and most people who visit the area take a look at the forest canopy from these wonderful vantage points. Zip lining is basically whizzing down a cable suspended between two points, holding on to a pulley. This I did with Aussies Tristran and Arlene, who had been living in London before taking off traveling. The weather was fine to start with, and some of the higher zip lines disappeared into the clouds which cloak the forest canopy. Unfortunately, later in the morning higher clouds opened up and we completed the zip lining in pouring rain.

I returned early the next day to walk the canopy suspension bridges, and found myself strolling around the forest canopy, totally alone in the morning sunlight. At one point in the trail there was a humming bird feeder, with several of these amazing little birds darting around it. Another of Monteverde's attractions was the frog and toad menagerie, where there were some fine examples of the Gaudy Leaf Frog, emblematic of Costa Rica. They were a little tricky to photograph though, as they were in dark glass enclosures and you couldn't use flash....

So from the cloud forest I headed downwards and westwards to the Pacific at Playa Coco, where I had heard there was the best diving in Costa Rica. I found an outfit that were doing a three-tank dive the following morning, and joined them. On the way to the dive site we were lucky enough to encounter a couple of Green Turtles mating on the surface, so we stopped the boat, everyone grabbed masks and snorkels and we all jumped in for a closer look.

The turtles' eventual reaction to this invasion of privacy was to slowly swim away, still engaged in the act. The male had what I swear was a look of irritated resignation on his face; I couldn't really see the female's face, as she was partially submerged. I decided that I had been voyeur to enough stages of the reproductive cycle of the Green Turtle for one trip, and was first to get back in the boat while my fellow divers continued to snap away with underwater cameras...

Further south down the coast was Playa Tamarindo, a purpose-built resort town constructed just back from some very nice beaches. Entering town down the rocky road on a bone-shaker bus I noticed that the town proudly sported a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a Subway, and suddenly the town's alternative moniker of "Playa TamaGringo" made sense. Every muscle in my body ached after being shaken about by the awful state of the roads, and felt sure that I was coming down with something. So I checked into a more-comfortable-than-usual room, assuming that I would be spending some time in bed, and went in search of familiar and bland food. Suddenly the fact that there was a Subway there seemed like a very good thing, and as it turns out I ate a turkey and cheese sub there every day! I am clearly a food snob only when it suits me...

It seems I did have some sort of mild virus, but that was soon dealt with freeing me up to get on with what I had come to Playa TamaGringo to do..... learn to surf! I booked some lessons and turned up the next morning to meet my fellow pupils, Sue, a pilot from Texas, and Franziska a German student.

Surfing was excellent fun, but painful. Very soon I was standing up on my extremely long learner's board and enjoying coasting slowly into shore. However, the board caused serious rashes on my inner arms, thighs and knees, and of course the salt water in the abrasions made it even more fun. Also, constantly pushing myself up on the board hurt my ribcage like I had been repeatedly kicked there! Other injuries included lumps on my head as the result of it meeting the business end of Franziska's board a couple of times, (not as painful as it sounds; training boards are made of foam). So although I ventured out a few times after the lessons to practise, the pain-to-fun ratio was too high and the fantasy of being some bronzed, rippling surfer dude quickly faded. I don't think blond highlights would suit me anyway...

Then I took a ridiculously convoluted 12 hour journey by bus and boat to get to Montezuma. This little beach community is not much further down the Nicoya Peninsula from Playa Tamarindo, but the terrain doesn't allow a direct road so you are forced to take a long route back inland, then south, then back out to the coast. On the way I met Rhodes, Melissa and Erin from California, and we went to a little "cost-effective" hostel that Erin had stayed at before.

Despite the rain, Montezuma was a pleasant enough place to hang out for a couple of nights before I returned to Razor Wire City, (different hostel this time, but still the same kind of security measures!), and my next flight up to Miami.