By morning, the ocean was still as calm as a lake. Here is the sunrise.

There were tons and tons of sportfishers out, and the wakes of their boats was about the only movement on the water. It was wonderful. Mike is prone to seasickness, but he was feeling great. Although, he never tried to read, not wanting to push his luck. Instead, he watched the horizon intently.

Not too long after sunrise, Mike saw a school of dolphins in the distance. Then he saw a sailfish. A little while later, he saw another pod of dolphins. This pod swam up to the boat and rode the bow wake for a few minutes. Since the water was so flat and calm, we could see them especially clearly. It was really exciting for all of us, but especially Mike.

At 1030, the seas picked up some, but it was just small swells and the ride was still nice.
Mike saw dolphins again around lunch time, but they just passed by and didn’t stop and play. And at 1400, he spotted a 4th pod. This time two of the pod came and played on the bow for just a minute or two, then swam off. Once again, we could see them incredibly well. At 1430, Mike spotted a turtle. A little while later, he noticed a bird hovering around the boat that hung around for at least a half hour. The bird must have thought we were a fishing boat.

As the day wore on, the seas picked up a touch more, but it was still a good ride. At around 1630 we saw not one, but two pods of dolphins. The first set stayed quite a while and played on the bow, but the second set just quickly passed by. At 1530, we saw yet another pod of dolphins that also passed by quickly. Mike wins the “best sea life spotter” to ever have been on Kosmos. It makes us wonder about how much sea life we have missed out on seeing since we generally don’t watch the horizon consistently, just scan around us every few minutes to make sure there is nothing to hit.

We paralleled the shore all day, close enough to clearly see land. The mountains are pretty. The landscape seems to be getting dryer the farther north we go. After sunset, it was another pitch black night. The seas picked up a touch more.

At around 2100, the wind suddenly jumped from 0 – 2 knots real to 9 knots real, hitting us on the starboard nose (front right quarter of the boat). By 2130, we could feel the waves also seriously increasing. By 2230, the wind was about 11 – 15 knots real, with gusts in the 20’s. It was suddenly a very bumpy ride. Since it was so dark, we couldn’t see the waves, but they felt like they were small, sharp and frequent. The motion is similar to what we experienced in the Med, and actually, the drastic change in waves in such a short timeframe is also similar to the Med.

At 2320 we made a slight turn, which changed the angle the waves were hitting us by just a little. The waves were still coming from the right corner, but now they were closer to the nose than the side. That definitely made the ride more painful. Our speed slowed by a full knot. We had been cruising in the high 6 knot range at 1700 RPM and we were down to the high 5’s at the same RPM. We started taking a lot of water over the bow, with the windshield consistently hit with sea spray.

The wind continued to steadily increase. By around midnight it was up to 16 – 17 real, still with gusts in the 20’s. When Mike came upstairs to do his watch, he reported that he woke up with a sore hand from holding on to the edge of the bed so tightly in his sleep. He had a dream that we told him the sea sickness pills we gave him were really placebos and he was avoiding seasickness all on his own power.

At around 0600, we turned again, this time enough so that the waves were now right on the nose. The waves instantly felt bigger and we were definitely bouncing up and down more violently. Eric doesn’t do well in head seas and immediately started to feel bad. Mike astutely commented that when the waves were coming from the corner, there was a little bit of a side to side motion in addition to the bouncing up and down. When we turned into the seas head on, the side to side motion vanished altogether. Mike didn’t like the stronger up and down motion, but seemed to be glad there wasn’t motion from multiple directions anymore. Mike wasn’t sick at all, which surprised us all, most especially him. It must have been the dream, proving to him his own power of personal strength. Or it could have been the real seasickness drugs that he was taking like clockwork.

By 1000, the winds were up to 20 – 27 knots real, with gusts in the high 30’s. The sea spray was coming over the bow like crazy.

Eric was sitting in the helm chair when an especially large wave came over the top of the pilot house and in through the hatch, leaving Eric pretty darn wet. Of course, we closed the hatch. By then, our speed was down to the high 4’s. Mike stared intently at the clock, willing time to go by faster. Eric and Christi have learned the hard way not to do that – it just makes you more miserable to see time drag on so slowly.

At around 1100, we neared the entrance to the bay and the winds picked up to a consistent 38 knots real. Unbelievable! Hmmm…. This is not good. When Eric had made his list of potential places to stop along the west coast of the Americas, San Juan del Sur had not been on the list. The cruising guide made it sound pretty bad, mostly because at this time of year there are consistently strong winds and the anchorage didn’t sound like it was protected enough. Ralph, the crew member on the Nordhavn 57 we mentioned in the marina in Colon, had told us that the cruising guide was totally wrong about San Juan del Sur. Ralph is an American who currently lives in San Juan del Sur. He has a sailboat that he keeps in the bay and assured us that the bay is sufficiently protected and that the town is great. He strongly encouraged us to go to San Juan del Sur to visit him and we added it to our itinerary.

The entrance of the bay is surrounded by big dry, brown hills covered with trees that look dead. A few houses dot the hills on the left side of the entrance, and other than that, there is pretty much no development at all. At about 1130, we turned into the bay. Even with the protection of the hills, the wind was still screaming at 34 knots. We hope to God Ralph is right about sufficient protection, because right now it was looking pretty dicey to us.

We had emailed Ralph and told him our ETA, so he was watching for us. When he saw us come in, he hailed us on the radio and instructed us on where to anchor, telling us to pull uncomfortably close to the shoreline and put out as much chain as we could. We did as instructed. We dropped anchor at a place that looked to be pretty darn far from any of the other boats in the anchorage, but when Kosmos settled in, it was too close to another boat. Christi went back out into the wind and pulled up the anchor. Pulling up anchor turned out to be a delicate process. We were so close to shore that Eric couldn’t gun the engine too much, but the wind was pushing us back so hard that Eric absolutely had to consistently drive forward to keep slack in the chain. Once the chain was up, we picked a new spot, just as close to the shoreline, and again dropped anchor. This time Kosmos settled into a better place.

To be continued…

After our walk, we headed out of town. It was time to get back to Kosmos in Golfito. We headed northeast towards San Jose, again guessing at where we needed to go. We drove through mostly farmland. They seem to grow a lot of sugar cane around here, although there were many other crops we couldn’t readily identify. After only making a couple wrong turns, we connected with the Pan American highway shortly before reaching the big city.

Now would be a good time to mention that the main highways tend to have pretty good road signs, but the smaller roads generally don’t have good signage. Over the last few days we frequently stopped and asked locals for directions. Everyone was always friendly and always tried hard to help us find where we were going. Also, on the whole, the roads are pretty darn good. We only went down a few bad roads, all duly noted. Also, there is a lot of traffic on the roads, much more than you would expect in even the most remote places. There is also a lot of trucking, which makes sense since they export so much agriculture.

Once on the highway, we knew exactly where we were going, which took a lot of stress off. And, the biggest stress relief of all was that it was sunny and bright out. We did hit a little bit of fog at the highest altitudes, but the fog wasn’t thick and visibility was OK.

There was a lot of work being done to the road in the most mountainous of areas, so there were a few short traffic delays. Big swaths of foliage has been destroyed along the side of the mountain. We aren’t sure if they are reinforcing the cliff walls to prevent landslides or if they are trying to cut the cliffs back to widen the road. At one point, while we were stopped, we could see a crane up on the hill above the road shoveling dirt. We watched a steady stream of dirt and rocks come flying down. We were glad we weren’t getting pelted with the debris.

We stopped at a cute café near the mountain peak and had casados for lunch. The food was some the best we have had in all of Costa Rica so far. Tico food is not at all what we had expected. We had expected it to be more or less the same as Mexican food, including being incredibly spicy. But Tico food is definitely different, and definitely mild. Even their bottled sauces are not spicy, closer to a Worcester in the sense that it is flavorful but not spicy, than to a Tabasco type sauce. We have noticed that restaurants geared for locals, serving only Tico food, are really inexpensive. Restaurants geared at tourists, with more varied menus, tend to be similar in price to the US. For that matter, tourist activities are also comparable in price to the US.

We made it back to Golfito in the late afternoon. We were happy to hear from Tim that the battery never dipped below the 50% mark and never needed to be charged. Yay. The solar panels really do work! Tim delivered us back to Kosmos. We got ourselves situated on board and sat outside to watch the beautiful sunset. We decided we were too tired to go out for dinner and crashed early.

This morning we were out the door at 0730. We wanted to get all our paperwork done before it was time to return the car. We got copies of Mike’s passport at Land and Sea, then headed over to the officials to start the check out process. The bank wasn’t open yet. Neither was immigration. So, we went to the grocery store and stocked up on food for the passage. Then we dropped Mike off at Land and Sea, along with the groceries, so he could work in the cruiser’s lounge on a paper for one of his MBA classes.

After dropping off Mike, we went back to bank. This time the line was short and we were in and out in a half hour. Then we went to immigration. Someone arrived literally seconds before us, so we had to wait while the only immigration officer took care of his paperwork. By the time our paperwork was done, it was time to return the car. Darn. We caught a cab back to the duty free zone to check out with customs. Then we caught a cab to the port captain and got the all clear to leave. Phew. Costa Rica has almost as many stops to make for check out as check in!

We caught a cab back to Land and Sea and paid our bill. We grabbed Mike and the three of us went out for a farewell to Costa Rica lunch at the marina next door. After lunch, we went back to Kosmos, got the dinghy up, and pulled out of Golfito at 1430. Since we were leaving so far behind schedule, Eric decided not to bother re-rigging up the paravanes. It was supposed to be calm, so we wouldn’t need them.

At first, the wind was 6 to 8 knots real on the nose and there were small, choppy wind waves in both Golfo Dulce and in the ocean that made the ride a little bit lurchy. Really, the waves were small and it was a nice ride overall, but lurchy is not a common feeling for us. Shortly after sunset, the wind died down to 1 – 4 knots real on the nose, the wind chop vanished, and the ride became almost silky. It is wonderful. As of this writing at 2330, it is pitch black out. The moon should be rising soon, but hasn’t yet. It is cloudy out, so for the most part the night is black, but every now and again the stars peek out from behind the clouds and glow brightly against the black sky.

And, a blog question:

Q: How do you clean the keel coolers? What do you hold onto?
A: There is really nothing to hold on to. You kind of have to lean your upper body against the hull and tread water to stay in place while you work. We have tried just about everything for scraping the coolers and we have decided that the 5 in 1 painting tool is the best. There are some oddly angled knifes that can get in the crevices better than just a plain scraper tool can.

We all piled into the van and met everyone else already inside. We were surprised to find out there were 5 staff for 5 only passengers. Two were to be in the raft with us, one was the van driver, one a rescue kayaker, and one a photographer who would be kayaking around us and taking photos.

Turrialba is supposed to have some of the best white water rafting in the entire world. So, we expected it to be a short drive over to the river. At first we were on a nicely paved road, and the scenery was much the same as we have seen the last couple of days. Here are a couple shots we took while driving.

The three of us were surprised at how far away from Turrialba we had driven when we finally turned off into a national park. The driver paid the entrance fee. Ah, we thought, we must be here now. But we weren’t. It was still a long drive over to the river, on a bad, windy dirt road that required us to drive slowly.

The nature reserve is beautiful, with thick, rich forest. At one point, one of the staff noticed a turtle in a pond off the side of the road and pointed him out. Being in the middle of the forest kind of makes you sad about the fact that so much of the forest in Costa Rica has been cut down and is now just plain grassland.

We finally pulled up to the river after a solid hour and a half of driving. The river looked to be pretty low, but we were assured there was still plenty of water for a good ride. The staff got the kayaks and rafts ready, then handed out helmets and paddles and did the safety lecture. The lecture was pretty dull until the guide said “if you fall out of the raft you could get trapped underneath it. If you do get trapped, this is what you need to do….” Christi perked right up at that. What? You can get trapped under the raft and drown? Christi resolved right then that she wasn’t going to fall out. Period.

While the raft was still safely onshore, we all piled in and practiced our strokes. The guide called out commands, such as “paddle forward” or “backward”, and we all responded with furious arm motions. Eric was in the front along with another passenger, Christi and Mike were in the middle, and the two staff were at the back. Confident we knew what we were doing, the guide pushed us off and into the calm, smooth water. Within a few seconds, we happened upon the first rapid, a small little guy. The guide went through the entire repertoire of commands, making sure we fully grasped what we were supposed to do when each command was called. We made it through the first rapid without anyone falling out, so we were off to a good start!

We drifted along for a couple minutes on the flat, calm water before coming to another rapid, this one bigger than the last. The instructions that the guide called out seemed a bit counter-intuitive. In the dinghy, we always try to take waves head on, but we took this rapid sideways. The orders were rapid fire, with him screaming “forward”, “backwards”, “forward” so fast that we could only get a paddle or two in before we had to switch directions. We got splashed with water and it was cold, much colder than Christi cared for. She reaffirmed her resolution to not fall out.

We paddled for about 2 ½ hours before we took a break. During the calm sections, we peacefully floated along, enjoying the mostly pristine scenery.

We passed by a couple of eco-tourist hotels totally in the middle of nowhere and went through an Indian reservation. Rather than using bridges to get over the river, the Indians use zip lines, which we found really interesting. We passed a number of pretty waterfalls. At one point we were ordered to paddle right into a waterfall, where Eric was completely and totally drenched. Our guide steered us into a waterfall a second time, this time targeting Christi for the drenching, but she was wise to the trick and managed to avoid getting directly under the waterfall. Here is Eric with the waterfall that drenched him in the background.

We saw several interesting animals, particularly birds. One kind of bird makes unusual looking tear shaped nests that actually hang off the tree branches, looking something like giant Christmas tree ornaments, and there were lots of them in the trees. Once in a while we’d paddle a little to straighten ourselves out, or to gain a little more momentum before hitting a rapid, but for the most part we just drifted.

As nice as drifting along was, the rapids are what made the trip thrilling. Sometimes we’d go for several minutes between rapids, sometimes they would come one right after another in succession. When going through a rapid, we almost always paddled vigorously. Some of the rapids were small, comparable to what we experienced in Bali (http://kosmos.liveflux.net/blog/2008/02/05/whitewater-rafting-trip-in-ubud/). Most were medium sized, which gave us a rush without actually making us scared. And some were really big — category 3’s and one level 4. On those we often thought someone might fall out of the raft and a couple times thought the raft might completely flip. We’d be ordered to get as low as we could in the raft and everyone would duck for cover, while still simultaneously trying to paddle with all our might. We’d be doused with water coming up over the sides of the raft. But no one fell out and the only thing that went wrong was at one point Christi accidentally smacked Mike in the face with her paddle. He saw stars for a minute, but recovered just fine.

Here are some shots the photographer took of us on a rapid. The first is entering it, the second is in it, and the third is coming out of it.

And here are the photos of a different rapid. Once again shot one is about to go in, shot two is in it, and shot three is leaving it.

We found out quickly that the rapids can be deceiving. Sometimes we’d approach one that looked small, but turned out to be a biggy, and other times a rapid would look huge and really be a piece of cake. The steering continued to be counter-intuitive as the guide navigated us around hazards he knew were in the water but we couldn’t see from the angle we were at. We frequently looked back to see rocks and other obstacles in the middle of the rapid we’d just come down that we hadn’t seen from the other side. Twice we went through amazingly tight passes, so tight we doubted we could clear it. Often, it looked like we were going to crash into the giant boulders on the sides of the river, but our guide was really good and actual contact with the rocks was pretty rare. The few times we did crash into rocks or caught the bottom of the raft on a rock or other obstacle, the rugged little rubber raft would just bounce and slide right off of it with no problems. Why isn’t our dinghy as durable?

During the whole ride, the safety kayaker was always close to us. He was in one of the smallest kayaks we have ever seen – very fast and super maneuverable. Every time we were drifting, he would practice his tricks, doing Eskimo rolls, flinging himself out of the water and catching air, etc. He effortlessly glided down the rapids, making them look easy. He was so good and absolutely fascinating to watch. Christi went through a kayaking phase once and could truly appreciate how much skill his tricks required.

We stopped for lunch on a sandy beach. The staff flipped over the raft and used it as a table. Right then, it started to rain. The staff went to work preparing the food while the clients rested. They are skilled at chopping, too! We watched as they made a tuna salad with cucumber, made fresh guacamole, and sliced up mangos. They laid it out on the table with beans, cheese, tortillas, bread and lunch meat, trying hard to keep the food dry with the rain. We like this photo of the staff making lunch because it gives you a good sense of the setting.

The clients were all wet and cold. Christi’s hands were numb and she found a warm rock to defrost her hands on while lunch was being prepared. Mike and one of the other passengers were already starting to feel sore from all the paddling. As soon as the food was ready, we ate quickly and were back on the water within a half hour. This time we switched seats, with Mike and Christi in front and Eric and the other guy in the middle. We were all paddling with the opposite arm now, too. Within a couple minutes everyone agreed that the front seat is more thrilling, kind of like being in the front car of a roller coaster, but that the middle seat is more comfortable, particularly in the rapids. In the middle you can brace yourself against the raft better than you can in the front. Also, you don’t get nearly as much water splashed on you in the middle. And, most importantly, you can hear the commands a lot better in the middle seat than you can in the front seat.

The second part of the trip had significantly less rapids than the first part did, and most of them were small rapids, though there were a few doozies that came out of nowhere. The second half we actually paddled quite a lot in the calm sections to keep our speed up. As we were quietly paddling during an especially long stretch of flat water, Mike commented that he felt like we were in Apocalypse Now and was braced for the arrows to start shooting at us.

At one point we came to an area with a rocky cliff overhanging the river. The staff asked if anyone wanted to climb up to the top of the ledge and jump into the river. Only Mike volunteered. He hesitantly climbed up to the top of the 20 foot ledge and quickly jumped off, making a big splash as he entered the water.

Instead of retrieving him up right away, the staff let him float down the river for a little ways. He floated under a waterfall, which was neat. Mike said it was fun and was surprised at how strong the current was and how fast he moved down the river.

After a few minutes, they loaded him back into the raft and shortly thereafter, we found ourselves in a town. Within a couple more minutes, we had pulled over to something along the lines of a rugged boat launch where the van was waiting. We had done a total of 18 miles, most of it before lunch. The second part of the paddle only lasted about an hour, which was fine. Mike and the other sore guy were glad about. They mumbled something about being eager to get back to their hotels to take some vitamin I. Christi was really cold and eager to get into dry clothes. The men all hoisted the raft up the ramp and over to the van. The crew went about loading and securing the rest of the gear while the guests went inside a bathroom in a bar to change into dry clothes.

It was a long drive back. Right after we were dropped off at our hotel, we found a near by restaurant and had dinner, then went back to the hotel and crashed. We were all really tired.

Christi took a deep breath and waited for the signal. They said go and nudged her a little. She thought “This is insane”, and suddenly she was in the air, screaming at the top of her lungs as she initially swung down towards the ground, then went flying up towards the highest branches of the trees surrounding us. She clutched onto the rope for dear life, praying it didn’t break right then. The staff had a hard time getting her slowed down and stopped. She kept flying back and forth for much longer than most everyone else. Finally, they got her stopped and unhooked.

Then it was Eric’s turn. Out of nowhere, the wind picked up and it started to drizzle a little bit just as he was getting harnessed in. When he jumped, he let out a loud yell that resembled George’s scream from “George of the Jungle”. It was a bit garbled because he had a hard time overriding the instinctual scream that rumbled up from his gut. But most everyone in the group knew what he was attempting and it got a laugh from the spectators. As the staff grabbed at his feet to try to get him to slow down, they yanked one of his shoes off and it went flying into the jungle behind us. That got another laugh from the crowd.

Then it was Mike’s turn. And it right then, the drizzle turned to real rain. Of course, the rain didn’t affect anything. Here is Mike looking contemplatively at the rest of us below.

Mike jumped off the platform and quietly swung away until the staff stopped and retrieved him. Here he is swinging happily.

Christi and Eric were surprised that he didn’t make a peep. Mike tried to look on the ground for Eric’s shoe, but trying to focus on the ground was making him a little nauseous, so he abandoned the effort. Once Mike was down, the group was herded over to the next zip line, the longest one yet. Eric hung back and waited as a couple of the staff members went searching for his lost shoe. Fortunately, they found it. When they picked it up, they found a small frog inside it and showed it to Eric. Check out the cool colors.

We all really liked the Tarzan swing. We thought it was an awesome change of pace. There were four more zip lines, two of them being the longest runs of all at 984 feet (300 meters) and 1410 feet (430 meters). On those two, the runs were so long that you couldn’t see the ending platform from the starting platform. You just jumped off, hoping that there really was an ending platform somewhere out there. On those two runs, we also got to incredibly fast speeds. They were awesome! All in all, the adventure park was a fun experience and we are all eager to go again. Here is Eric nearing the end of the longest run of all.

We took off our harnesses and piled into the bus. On the way back to the hotel, the bus driver spotted some Howler monkeys in the trees and pulled over so we could watch them. There were at least four of them, and they were the most active Christi has seen yet. They were all jumping from branch to branch and climbing up and down the trunk. We got really good looks at them and enjoyed watching them. But, again, they weren’t howling.

When the bus dropped us off, we checked out of hotel and got lunch in downtown La Fortuna. Then we headed southwest towards the town of Turrialba, which is pretty close to San Jose. We decided not to go back through San Jose and instead took the mountain roads around the big city. The clerk at the hotel had assured us it would be faster and easier to avoid San Jose and its traffic. We estimated the drive would take 4 hours. We left La Fortuna at 1400, figuring we would arrive in Turrialba at about sunset. Once again, Eric was driving by instinct and sense of direction instead of using a detailed map. His instincts had been spot on yesterday and the day before, but today they weren’t quite as sharp. We made a few wrong turns that combined cost us quite a bit of time. At one point, we were driving along towards what we thought was a connecting highway. When the highway didn’t materialize, we turned around and drove back about ½ hour, only to find out we had turned around just a mile or two shy of the highway. So we lost a full hour with that detour.

At another point in time, we noticed that we were being followed by a truck full of late teen boys, so we pulled over at a store to let them pass. They parked behind us. We killed time by asking the locals outside the store for directions and chatting with them for a few minutes, asking them if they knew the boys who were following us. The boys eventually drove off.

While we took completely different roads today than we did yesterday, on the whole, today’s drive was quite similar to yesterday’s – lots of undeveloped land, some farms, some residences, and a few small, non-descript towns. Just like the rest of the country, the quality of housing varied drastically. For part of the drive we were on fairly straight roads, but a big chunk of drive time was spent on steep, winding mountain roads. Fortunately, there was no fog, though it was cloudy and did rain on and off for most of the afternoon. This is a nice picture we got of the countryside.

It got dark while we were on some of the windiest of the mountain roads. While it made navigation a little harder, driving at night was fine. The highways don’t have sidewalks, and there are often pedestrians walking on the roads. One of the reasons why they warn tourists not to drive at night is because of the potential hazards with hard to see pedestrians. There were, indeed, people walking on the road after dark, but they were careful to stay off to the side of the road. At around 2000, we finally pulled into Turrialba.

Like Heredia, the streets are one way with visible signs, but the streets aren’t as logically organized in a nice grid as Heredia. Because the streets were difficult to navigate, we had a hard time finding the hotel. We looped around downtown several times before finally figuring out where the hotel was, and more importantly, how to get to it via the one way street system. We got to see a lot of town as we drove and it reminds us a lot of Heredia. The buildings are all packed in close together, and are mostly older, but well maintained, and 1 – 3 stories tall. There are bars on every window and door, though there isn’t as much extreme stuff, like razor wire, as in Heredia. Also, there seems to be less residential mixed in and amongst the commercial here. Pretty much everything in town was already closed. We suppose it is safe to say this isn’t a wild party town! Something that struck us as odd is that there are a lot of shoe stores in this little town. You’d think we were in Italy with all the shoes.

Once we got to the hotel, we dropped off our stuff. The clerk at the hotel told us to take our car over to a nearby fenced parking lot with a 24 hour security guard. There was a truck in the parking lot with livestock, which we found amusing. We walked around in search of a restaurant for dinner. We hadn’t noticed much as we drove, so we pretty much settled for the first place we came across that was open, a small bakery. We scarfed down some empenadas (meat stuffed in a puff pastry) and headed back to the hotel. Tomorrow was going to be another active day with an early morning start, and we needed our sleep.

At 0730, we headed over to the little restaurant on the hotel grounds where we were served Gallo Pinto, the traditional Tico breakfast of two scrambled eggs accompanied with a big mound of rice and beans mixed together, a piece of cheese, and a piece of pan fried ripe plantain. Butterflies flitted about while we ate. It was almost surreal.

Yesterday, we booked a zip line canopy tour for this morning. At 0930, a van picked us up and took us to their facility on the slopes of the volcano just outside of downtown La Fortuna. We stepped off the bus onto a covered patio where several staff members were waiting with harnesses and leather gloves we were told were the brakes. The three of us were amongst the first to be strapped in, and we waited while everyone else in the rather large group was harnessed in.

Then we were marched over to a little zip line set up just a few feet above the ground, basically two cables strung between two trees. A staff person demonstrated how to do it. Let the staff person clip your harness to a pulley on one of the cables, sit back almost like you are in a chair, and hold the other cable with the leather hand break to control your speed. The demonstrator glided effortlessly across the cable and showed everyone how to stop. Then each one of us did a practice run, which went quite smoothly. Even though we were close enough to the ground that we could stop and stand up, it still was a thrill to go flying down the cable. Stopping was a piece of cake. Here is Christi on the practice run.

As we came off the practice run, we were loaded into a truck. We were lucky because we were one of the first to do the practice run, so we got a seat on one of the benches inside the truck’s bed. The people who were at the tail end of the practice run were strapped into benches on the outside of the truck bed. Many staff members also strapped themselves onto the exterior benches. We were surprised by the number of staff that went up with us.

The little truck was so loaded down with people that we couldn’t believe it was capable of moving at all, let alone climbing a hill. We were surprised when we saw how steep the road was, and shocked at how far we climbed up this steep mountain road. Every time we caught a glimpse of the view below, La Fortuna was smaller and the countryside around it more sweeping. After what seemed like forever, we finally made it to the end of the road and everyone piled out. Did we mention that we were really high up?

We all marched up a set of stairs probably equivalent to a 2 ½ story climb, which led to a large platform. We all stood in line on the platform and watched a staff person hook himself to the line and go zipping off. When he was safely landed and unhooked at the other side, another staff person hooked on and zipped off, and so on until only one staff member was left on the platform with us

Then he started allowing the clients to go, carefully hooking each person in and reviewing the procedure before sending each person on their way. Once again, they only allowed one person to be on the cable at a time, and it seemed to take a long time for the clients to get unhooked from the cable on the other side, which was making the line move slowly. We somehow managed to be the very last ones in line, and it was getting to be a very long wait. We were starting to think that if things continue to progress this slowly, this wasn’t going to be all that much fun.

Finally, it was Eric’s turn. He was hooked in, went flying down the line, and landed at the small platform on the other side. Flying is probably the right word, because it did kind of feel like flying. It was a tad bit scary to be so high up in the trees, but with the two cables and the harness, he knew it was safe. It was definitely a rush. Then Mike went. Here he is nearing the platform at the end of the first run.

Christi was the very last to go. She was one of the many who had a hard time getting herself unhooked from the cable on the other side. She was really stuck, and to get her unhooked, the staff member had to actually pick her up and hold her up in the air by a few inches as he unhooked. Now she knows first hand why the line was moving so slow.

As soon as we unhooked from the first cable, we were immediately attached to another cable and sent on our way again. Here is a photo of each of us on the second run. Christi is first, just launching off the platform. Eric is second, in the middle of the run. Mike is last, at the end of the run just before stopping.

There turned out to be a total of 10 runs before we got to the “Tarzan Swing”. Each run was progressively longer, steeper, faster and more thrilling. Initially, we were completely surrounded by dense forest and couldn’t see how far it was down to the ground below. But after the third or fourth run, we came out from the forest and found ourselves above a cleared field that was a long, long, long way down, which added to the thrill.

Another thing that added to the excitement was the sound of the pulley moving along on the cables. The faster we went, the louder, more high pitched, and fervent the whine became. We never had to wait for more than 3 or 4 minutes, so we never lost the momentum of the excitement, and it just kept getting more and more fun.

The first run was 98 feet (30 meters) long and took about 5 seconds. The longest run before the Tarzan swing was 640 feet (190 meters) long and we’re not sure how long it lasted. It seemed like a long time, though! They definitely were smart about warming people up. After doing the shorter runs in the dense trees, we never hesitated to go on the long runs with nothing but air below us. Had we started on a longer run, we may have had doubts, and if we started with the longest run, Christi probably would have chickened out.

At a couple of the platforms, we saw cool looking birds. One was hanging out in a tree. Another one was gracefully gliding through the air right at our eye level. How crazy is it to be eye level with the gliding birds!

We found stopping was not nearly as easy when you are really zooming along at very high speeds. Christi had an especially hard time with stopping, frequently making contact with the tree at the end. She never “crashed”, but usually hit the tree with her feet and bounced back off of it while the staff member grabbed at her to help interrupt the momentum.

Since Christi was last, after she went, the staff person would zip in right behind her, then cut to the head of the line, and zip over to the next empty platform, ready and waiting for when the group started to come through.

Just as the zip lines were starting to lose their novelty, we came to the Tarzan swing. Here we had to stop and wait in line again. By the time we arrived, more than half the group had already gone, so the line wasn’t very long. At first, we couldn’t see much. We watched as someone walked out to the edge of a platform, was handed a rope to hold on to with her hands, then was also harnessed to the rope. Then they pushed her off the platform and she screamed like crazy. Christi’s stomach did a flip flop listening to the scream.

After a couple more people, we were close enough to see over the edge of the platform. The ground was a long way below the platform edge, far enough that a fall would result in at least every limb being broken in multiple places. Three or four staff were waiting on the ground directly below the rope, and much of the rest of our group was watching intently from off to the side. As soon as the person jumped, he was swinging wildly through the trees. The momentum was taking him very high up into the air, almost as high as the platform, as he went back and forth. He screamed a few obscenities as he registered the shock of not being on solid ground anymore. After a couple passes, the staff started grabbing at him to slow him down. Once he was slowed down enough, they took hold of him, stopped him, and unhooked him. It looked so intense. Wow. And we thought the zip lines were a rush!

To be continued…

The guide pointed out a small fern that curls up when you touch it. Of course, we can’t remember what it is called now. When we were in Tahiti, we went on a tour where the guide had pointed out that same plant to us, mentioning that it was an introduced species, not indigenous to Tahiti. Now we know where it came from. We also spotted the plant in Tonga, too. The guide also showed us a species of elephant ear plant with the biggest leaves we have ever seen.

Here is a shot of Eric and Christi near the end of the hike, when we were on higher ground than we were in the group shot.

Once we were done with the hike, we headed to a view point to watch the lava flow. Again, the guide suddenly told the driver to pull over. This time it was to see Howler Monkeys in the trees. There were three of them, we think, but unfortunately, we didn’t get a good look at any of them. They weren’t howling, so Mike and the rest of the group missed out on hearing that haunting, tortured cry they make. We got back in the bus and went down a very bumpy dirt road. We bounced around so much that our guide joked it was a free full body massage. These must be the kinds of roads Lonely Planet warns about. We pulled over again to look at a toucan perched elegantly in a tree. They really do have gigantic beaks, just like the Fruit Loops character. He flew away shortly after we spotted him. We also saw some wild turkeys running around.

We came to a section of the road where there were quite a few buses congregated off to the side and many tourists milling about. This must be the best spot to watch the lava flow from in town since it looked like every tour group in the area was here. We were near the base of the volcano, in a scenic spot with a river in front of us and lush, green forest all around us. The cloud cover was still there, but it only covered the peak. It was close to sunset when we all clambered out of the bus and took our place amongst the other tourists.

Where we stood was probably pretty comparable in distance to where we had been positioned the night we watched the volcano in Stromboli from aboard Kosmos http://kosmos.liveflux.net/blog/2008/12/02/passage-from-lipari-to-rome/. We had been impressed with the view that night, and had high expectations for a comparable show tonight. At first we couldn’t see anything. The guide pointed out occasional small patches of what looked like dust being kicked up near the peak and explained those were the lava rocks tumbling down the hill. As it got darker, the lava rocks became increasingly visible, glowing redder and redder as the sky went from dusky to almost pitch black. Since the peak was covered, we couldn’t see the eruptions and the lava shooting up into the air, which is the best part. Nor did the clouds turn vibrantly orange like they did in Stromboli. But, every few minutes we would see a small trickle of red rocks rolling down the mountain, becoming less and less bright the farther down they went. Oftentimes, bigger rocks would break into smaller pieces as they bounced their way down the hill. There were two streams that the lava rocks seemed to follow, but only once did the lava flow down both streams at the same time, indicating that was the only really big eruption that took place. The eruptions were generally about 3 – 5 minutes apart, but we never actually heard any rumbling, which we thought was odd. We were told that we were lucky to be able to see as much as we did. Often, the whole volcano is socked in with fog and spectators can’t see anything at all.

Mike was really impressed and thought it was a super cool experience. Of course, this is the first time he has seen an erupting volcano in person. Eric and Christi are jaded now. They thought it was a dud. Stromboli had much more impressive lava flow, with lots and lots of lava running down the mountain in multiple streams with every eruption, even the little ones. All we got here was a few rocks with each eruption. And in Stromboli we could hear some of the rumbling, which makes the whole experience feel so much more dramatic and powerful. And of course, we thought Stromboli was a total letdown compared to our life changing experience on the rim of Mt. Yasur in Vanuatu http://kosmos.liveflux.net/blog/2007/11/09/active-volcanoes-and-the-john-frum-sing-along/.

After only a few minutes of watching the volcano in the dark, we were whisked away for the next part of our tour – the Tabacon hot springs. The bus took the bumpy road back to the main road, and a few minutes later we filed into a crowded gift shop and waited for the guide to buy us tickets. The line was long. This was obviously a popular place. At about 1900, we finally had our tickets in hand and could enter. The grounds are gorgeous. We immediately fell in love with it. There is a natural hot water river that flows down from the volcano, and the spa has sculpted their grounds into a series of hot water pools fed by the river. The landscape is full of beautiful ornamental plants that are thriving and verdant, giving you a sense that each and every pool is a secluded paradise of its very own. The various pools are separated by little waterfalls, and some of the pools are accessed by small footbridges going over the waterfalls. It looks like the Garden of Eden. Of course, our camera battery died, so we have no photos of it.

The pools themselves are a mix of man made and natural, with part of the pools natural formations, but completed with man made materials. So, part of the pool will have a concrete bottom, and part of it will be gravel and/or sand. The water is a delightful temperature, like a Jacuzzi, but too hot to sit in for more than a few minutes at a time. Most of the pools are shallow, somewhere between ankle deep and thigh deep.

In most of the pools, you can sit underneath the waterfall. The amount of force from the waterfall is shocking, especially because they really are quite small. Most of the waterfalls exert so much pressure that the water pushes you into the pool, and it takes a tremendous amount of energy to actually keep yourself perched under the stream of water. Eric and Mike had contests to see who could stay closest to and longest under the more forceful falls. A couple of the waterfalls were easier to sit under. Under those, it felt like several angry masseuses were all massaging you as hard as they could at once. It was really nice. All of us sat under one in particular for a long time, enjoying the back & shoulder massage. One waterfall even had a big ledge that went underneath the waterfall, so you could completely pull your body behind the stream of water and simply watch it tumble past you without it actually touching you. Oddly enough, watching the water run was almost hypnotic.

The waterfalls all make misty, steamy air, and if you sit anywhere near them in the pool, as you breathe in, it is like being in a steam room, only better. You can actually feel your pores opening up. Being under that one waterfall definitely was like being in a small steam room. But, if steamy air isn’t your thing, you could move to the far end of the pool and breathe in regular night air, sweetly scented by all the pretty flowers.

We bounced from pool to pool, spending a few minutes in each one. We hit every hot pool in the complex at least once, and we made multiple visits to our favorites. There is also a cold pool on site that is not fed by the river, which Mike went into but Christi and Eric passed on. Mike said it is cooler than the others but not cold. After about 40 minutes, we felt pretty cooked and moved on to the man made swimming pool. The swimming pool is also not fed by the river. The water in it was temperate and comfortable, just right for hanging out in for a long period of time. There is a single waterslide attached to the pool, and we all gave the waterslide a few goes, which was really fun. We probably looked silly next to all the little kids using the slide, too.

At 0830, we were supposed to eat dinner at the spa’s buffet. At 0800, we decided we were starved, so we got cleaned up and went to dinner early. It was a nice buffet. At 0915 we were picked up and delivered back to the hotel, where we slept very well after such a relaxing hot bath and massage. It was a good day, indeed!

On the way out of town, we did a quick drive up and down some of the more prominent streets to at least get a glimpse of this supposedly great city. As in most towns in Latin America, there is a large town square near a big church, but we didn’t see anything else that looked particularly historic or noteworthy. Heredia looks like an average town. We were literally the only car on the road. Ticos (Costa Ricans) must not like to go out early on Sunday mornings.

There is a two lane highway that connects Heredia to the airport. We found the road and headed out of town. On the outskirts of Heredia there were quite a few very nice, American suburb style homes on big lots. We also drove by a few track home developments in gated communities. As we traveled on, the rest of the road was an odd mix of residential and commercial/industrial. There were some really nice homes next to some scary looking industrial buildings that you would suspect might ooze toxic waste out of them. But, hey, maybe the house was there first.

We made it to the airport at 0615. We suppose that on weekdays during rush hour, traffic along this road is probably bumper to bumper, hence the 40 minute time estimate. The airport looks like every other major airport. We retrieved Mike and were quickly back on the road, heading northwest along a main highway. Mike brought us a new camera, which we are really excited about. We had looked all over Panama, but hadn’t been able to find a suitable water resistant model. Yay! No more blurry pictures!

Beyond the airport it is mostly industrial, then the farther you go the more residential it becomes. Gradually, it changes to a mix of residences and farms, and eventually becomes mostly undeveloped land with some farms and residences here and there. And, of course, we passed through a few small towns along the way. Once out of the industrial area, it is a scenic drive with lots of greenery. The forest areas are thick and lush. The cleared areas are fields of rolling hills with Kelly green grass. There was just a touch of fog, and the early morning light was hazy and soft, so in the cleared sections, it looked like England. Actually, it was quite foggy out, but somehow the fog level was always above our line of sight and we generally had a clear view of the road. The road is very nice and well maintained and it was a lovely drive. We still didn’t have a map and were driving by guesstimation.

We had estimated the drive to La Fortuna would take 5 or 6 hours, so we were pleased when we pulled into downtown La Fortuna at about 0900. La Fortuna is another small, but spread out town, kind of like Golfito. Our hotel was a few miles beyond downtown. We were all instantly charmed by the hotel as soon as we saw it. It is a cluster of adorable little cabins with pretty tropical landscape, lots of exotic birds flitting about, and horses grazing on the grassy areas. We knew we’d likely be turned away, but we figured we may as well ask if we could check in early. The clerk said no problem. By 0930, we were in our cabin, enjoying the stunning view of the volcano across the road, and perusing all the tourist brochures we had picked up in the lobby to figure out what we were going to do while we were here.

The reason we had chosen this particular town is because Volcano Arenal is ranked as one of the most active volcanoes in the world. According to Lonely Planet, you can sit in your hotel room at night and watch the lava flow down the mountain. We were disappointed to find out that used to be true, but two years ago the lava flow had shifted direction and now goes down the opposite side of the mountain. Oh well. It is still a pretty view, even without the lava flow. The tip of it was completely enshrouded in clouds, and as the morning went on, we watched the cloud cover slowly burn away until almost the entire peak was visible.

The clear view of the peak only lasted a few minutes, then the cloud cover came right back. By 1100, we had all our tourist activities lined up. The first thing on the agenda was lunch. We headed a little further out of town to a restaurant the hotel clerk had recommended. We all got casado plates. This time the side dishes were black beans, rice, a green salad, half a hard boiled egg, a piece of locally made cheese and a ripe fried plantain. We all got batidos for our beverages. We drank a lot of batidos in Panama, but we forgot to mention them. Batidos are basically what we call smoothies — fresh fruit blended up with sugar and milk (though you can get water instead of milk). Most restaurants have a big variety of fruits to choose from, such as pineapple, mango, papaya, etc, and some even offer mixed fruit batidos.

After lunch we joined a tour group. A small bus picked us up from the hotel and took us to a national park at the base of the volcano, not very far from the restaurant we had lunch at. As we were driving along, the tour guide suddenly told the bus driver to pull over. The tour guide had spotted a pack of coatis at the side of the road, and quickly ushered us out of the bus to get a look at them. It looked like there were nine of them in the pack, and they were not afraid of us. They seemed happy to pose for pictures.

The guide told us these were definitely females because the females live in packs with their young and the males are loners. He went on to tell us that Coatis eat just about everything and that they were sticking around in hopes we would feed them. Feeding them is illegal, but some people still do. Interestingly, Coatis are not nocturnal like most of the rest of the raccoon family.

After a few minutes of fawning over the adorable little creatures, we piled back in the bus and in a few minutes arrived at the preserve. The parking lot we were dropped off in has a stunning view of the volcano and everyone stopped for photos before we started on the hike. While we were snapping away, the tour guide explained that Volcano Arenal was dormant until the July 1968. When it suddenly erupted, it wiped out a three towns around its base. Since then, the volcano has been consistently active, spewing and sputtering from one of three different craters. Which crater it spews from seems to shift every few years, hence the reason for the change in views from la Fortuna. Over the last 10 years the volcano has become less active, with less lava flow.

He also pointed out some craters in the ground near the parking lot and told us that the craters created by giant volcanic rocks that hit the ground during the 1968 eruption. Once we were done snapping photos, we set off down one of the many hiking trail. Our guide was excellent. He stopped and pointed out many of the trees, bushes and flowers that are indigenous to the area, telling us various information about each, such what they are used for. Some of the trees were so huge they were almost unreal, and they formed a canopy overhead that filtered out most of the sunlight. We saw several trees that had the cactus that looks like hair living on the branches. He also pointed out birds, animals, and assorted other critters in the forest and told us about them. Here is Mike, Christi and most of the tour group on the trail.

One of the species he dwelled on was the leaf cutter ants. When we saw them in Panama, we thought they were interesting, but after watching the demonstration of the ant’s strength, we now think they are amazing. Leaf cutters are definitely at the larger end of the ant spectrum in terms of overall size, but their heads are absolutely enormous, totally disproportional to the rest of their body. They also have mandibles that can carry a tremendous amount of weight in proportion to their own body weight. The guide picked up an ant and a stick. He got the ant to grab the stick with its mandibles and we watched in amazement as the ant held on to the stick for a long time. The stick was incredibly large and heavy for such a little guy, but he held on! We forget exactly how much weight he said they could hold, but it was an impressive number.

Our guide also pointed out a termite nest. As we mentioned, in our Indian River Nature Preserve post, termites sometimes build large nests inside living trees. The workers go out and consume cellulose, then come back to the nest and regurgitate the cellulose to feed the rest of the colony. Different species of termites get cellulose from different plants, but as we all know, dead wood is a common food source. The workers get in and out of the tree nest via a shallow tunnel dug under the tree bark. Interestingly, the termites have undeveloped eyes and are essentially blind, but they can sense light and don’t like it. Our guide figured out where the termite trail was and scratched off some of the bark, exposing the line of termites in transit. The termites went crazy, running for cover. The guide said that the termites were already at work building a new covered tunnel and within minutes would be done rerouting their trail and back to regular work. Likewise, if the nest somehow gets a hole in it, the colony will immediately repair it so the termites are back in the dark. Then the guide picked up a few of the fleeing termites and ate them. He tried to convince us all to taste one, too, but there was only one taker in the group, who said it didn’t really have much taste.

Amazingly enough, our guide spotted… to be continued..

At about 1630, we rounded a bend a saw a huge city below. This must be San Jose. The road quickly descended and dropped us into the heart of the city. This was where we got totally confused. Lonely Planet has 4 detailed maps of San Jose, each of a different neighborhood, and we had a hard time finding the map we were on and figuring out how it connects with the map of where we were going to. Part of the reason we couldn’t figure out what map we were on was that we couldn’t find a street sign anywhere. Eventually, we managed to get oriented and had a vague idea of where we needed to go.

At one point, while the light was red, some street performers ran out into the intersection and juggled what looked like bowling pins until the light turned green. That was definitely amusing.

We found the right street and followed it. It happened to be heading downhill and we saw that ahead there were thousands of people standing in the street, completely blocking traffic. Hmmm, this could pose a problem in our route.

Needless to say, we made a turn and tried to figure out how to navigate around the shindig. The road we picked dead ended a few blocks down at a park. We saw what looked like a set up for a concert in the park and quite a bit of security around. We turned again and found ourselves trying to navigate through a maze of short streets with bumper to bumper cars, a lot of pedestrian traffic, and no street signs to help us figure out where on earth we were. Whatever was going on was definitely big and seemed to encompass several blocks. We eventually weaved our way out of the traffic jam, figured out where we were and found a street that was going northeast, the direction we needed. Here is a random shot taken while stuck in traffic.

Our overall impression of the city was that it is pretty average all the way around. We passed through some nice areas and some not very good areas. There are old historic neighborhoods that have been fully restored, but other old areas where the buildings are crumbling. There are new, modern and upscale sections, as well as other newer sections where the buildings appear to be cheaply slapped together. There were neighborhoods of little one stories and sections of high rises. Nothing looked especially bad, and nothing looked third world. Conversely, while we did see some nice buildings and areas, nothing stood out to us as especially stunning.

The vast majority of the people walking around town were teen-agers, especially near the special event site. The teens in Costa Rica look identical to the teens in America – same hairstyles and fashions, same body piercings and tattoos.

At this point, we were in between maps, so we didn’t know exactly where we were or where we were going. We just knew we needed to go northeast. The area we were driving through looked like suburbs. As roads changed direction or ended, we kept making turns to try to continue in the general northeast direction. We pulled over at a gas station and asked for directions and found out we had made it to the outskirts of Heredia. Yay!

Heredia was founded in the 1570’s, shortly after the first settlement in Costa Rica was established. It was inhabited by Spanish aristocracy and later became a wealthy coffee producing area. San Jose, which would later become the nation’s capital, was not established until almost 200 years later. Today, thanks to urban sprawl, Heredia has become more of a suburb of San Jose than its own separate city. We chose to stay in Heredia instead of San Jose proper for two reasons. One, it is close to the airport. Two, Lonely Planet described Heredia as a super great place — a sophisticated high tech business area, a fun university town, and a rich historical center all in one.

We had planned to do a couple hours of sightseeing before checking into the hotel, but the drive had taken two hours longer than we anticipated. It was now close to sunset, so we decided it was best to go directly to the hotel. From what we saw, Heredia didn’t look that great. Like most urban areas, the buildings are packed in very close together. They range in size from 1 – 3 stories, with most being 2. Most buildings are older and well maintained, but there are a few new and especially nice ones. There seems to be no zoning at all, so you have a house, then a restaurant, then an auto mechanic, then another house in a block.

What was disconcerting was how locked down everything was. Every single building had bars on the doors and windows and heavy duty security fences along the property line. Many properties had razor wire topping their security fences. There were no cars parked on the street. None. They were all tucked away behind the locked fences. The prison-like fencing took away all of the city’s charm and made the city feel downright scary. Heredia is supposedly a much safer area than San Jose, but visually speaking, you would assume this is the more dangerous place. Like San Jose, there were a lot of people walking around. Being as it is a university town, it was no surprise that most everyone on the street looked to be in their late teens or early 20’s.

Fortunately, there are street signs here. After going in circles a few times on the one way street system, we pulled up to our hotel, a cute white old house with blue shutters. It was just after 1800. The sun had just set and the sky was getting dusky. Phew! We made it before dark! The clerk on duty buzzed us in through the gate, and after checking us in, had us park our car inside the fence.

We asked for a restaurant recommendation and he suggested an Italian place a few blocks away. It was a great evening for a walk. The weather was quite pleasant. It was cool enough for jeans and a sweater, but certainly not cold, and not nearly as humid as it was along the coast. Sadly, the restaurant was closed. We walked a few more blocks and found several Chinese restaurants, but no other kinds of food. Not even Tico (Costa Rican local cuisine). We hadn’t mentioned this, but in every town we passed through, we saw a lot of Chinese restaurants. In fact, we saw more Chinese restaurants than Tico, which we thought was weird.

Chinese usually isn’t our favorite cuisine. We asked a local for a non-Chinese recommendation within walking distance and he couldn’t think of one, but told us which of the Chinese choices was the best. We wound up going there. The food was OK overall, though they did have a pineapple won-ton sauce that was especially delicious. The portion sizes were unbelievable! That restaurant may very well win for serving the biggest portions of any restaurant we have ever been to. And it was dirt cheap.

We debated going sightseeing after dinner, but decided we were too tired. We had gotten up early and needed to get up early again tomorrow. We decided it was best to go back to the hotel and go to bed early.

At 0830, Tim arrived. We showed him how to run the generator and what the normal water level is in the bilge. He took us to shore. Our car was supposed to be delivered to us at Land and Sea at 0900. At 0940, the car finally arrived and by 1000 the paperwork was done and we were on the road. Our rental car is a little Suzuki Alto, powered by what we are sure is two hamsters on a wheel under the hood. We have our doubts it can make it up Costa Rica’s mountainous landscape.

We checked at two different places for maps, and neither had one. Sigh. We had to work off the maps in Lonely Planet, which are small and only have details for selected areas. Today’s plan was to drive to Heredia, just north of the capital city, San Jose. Judging from the map, we had estimated it would be a 4 hour drive. Katie and Tim told it would be closer to 6. It actually took 8.

To get out of Golfito, you can take an unpaved road over the mountains, or you can take a nicely paved road south to the end of the mountain range, then head inland and back north. We opted for the nice road, despite the fact that it is more distance. It is hard to tell for sure, but we think it was an extra 60 kilometers to go around. But, we had our doubts the car could take an unpaved, hilly road.

Golfito is much, much longer than we had realized. Beyond what we thought was the edge of town is a string of residences on big lots, with patches of undeveloped land here and there. The house range from small shacks to giant American style mansions, and we saw just about everything in between. The biggest percentage of homes, though, are simple one story concrete bungalows. We were pleased to find that the road was excellent.

The mountains actually flatten out fairly quickly, going from giant and insurmountable pillars to gentle plains in a surprisingly short space. The road inland came shortly after the mountains vanished and took us to the Pan American highway, a two lane road which runs all the way from Panama to Nicaragua. We turned north on the highway.

As we drove along, we noticed it was mostly farmland, with a few residences and some patches of undeveloped land. They seem to grow a lot of pineapple. We also saw some coffee, sugar cane and banana (or maybe plantain) plantations. There were a lot, and we mean a lot of fires on the various farms. We know that farmers sometimes burn the land before planting crops, so it must be the burning time of year.

As we progressed north, we noticed we were also slowly gaining in altitude, as well. The foliage in the undeveloped patches of land was definitely changing. It was becoming less jungle like and more forest like, less hot, humid and moist and noticeably cooler and drier. The whole feel of the area was completely different than Golfito, and we hadn’t gone very far yet. The road was great – well kept, and mostly straight with some gentle curves here and there. We were flying along and thought we would make it in less than our estimated 6 hours.

We came to a small town called Palmar Norte. It was lunch time and we decided to stop here since we weren’t sure when we would get to another town. We drove around a little bit, checking out our food choices. It looks kind of like a lower middle class, blue collar neighborhood in America. An outdoor restaurant with a covered patio, very brightly colored décor, and really interesting statues caught our eye.

Christi was feeling adventurous and ordered something she had never heard of, called an emparedado. She was most disappointed when a simple sandwich came out. We thought the Spanish word for sandwich was torta. Eric was also adventurous and ordered mixed fajitas. The fajitas weren’t Mexican style. Instead, the pile of mixed meat had finely chopped tomato, onion, cucumber and cilantro mixed in and was served on a bed of tortilla chips and topped with a big dollop of sour cream.

Once we got back on the road, the landscape really changed, looking like a dry mountain forest with no resemblance to the tropical jungle we had just left.

The road began to parallel a river, which was incredibly picturesque. The scenery was what you imagine Colorado to look like more than what you would expect Costa Rica to look like. We followed the river for a long time. We could visibly see the change in altitude as the river gradually went from being right next to us on the ground to far, far below us. We were still making great time. Here is a shot of the general scenery of the area.

Then we came to Santa Isabella, which is a fairly large, non-aesthetically pleasing city. Just past Santa Isabella, the scenery changed once again. Suddenly, the road became steep and seriously winding, always moving farther up and up with no dips down. There was a visible line where the foliage suddenly changed – the plants were bigger, greener and more densely packed, and didn’t seem as dry. And about one second after noticing how much moister it was, it started to rain. And about one minute after it started to rain, we rounded a hairpin corner to see a huge truck overturned. It had slid off the middle of the road and was resting up against the side of the mountain, leaving enough room for us to pass it easily. The driver is lucky. Had he slid to the other side of the road, it would have been a long, long, long way down. A tow truck was there, probably trying to figure out how to right the truck on this massively treacherous curve.

Shortly after we passed the truck, we had climbed so high that we were in the middle of the cloud bank and our visibility seriously deteriorated. So, it’s raining, foggy, and we were on a dangerous windy road, which is pretty scary. But it gets worse. There was a fairly large amount of traffic on the road, and much of it was slow moving big rig trucks. Cars in both directions were passing these big rigs, which was really frightening since there was such little visibility. But they were often passing on blind curves, which was terrifying. Needless to say, we were moving slow, and were beginning to worry that we wouldn’t make it to our hotel before dark. We had been warned multiple times that we should not attempt to drive after dark in Costa Rica. After being on this road, we completely understand why.

The road situation never really got better until we reached San Jose. While the rain was light most of the time, there were plenty of points in time where it came down very, very hard. The fog varied in thickness, sometimes being so thick we could barely see the car ahead. And we just kept climbing up and up. At one point we checked the altitude on the GPS and saw we were at 10,650 feet. It had gotten to be pretty darn cold. We had the heater on and were wearing our flimsy jackets. We had to stop at a checkpoint and roll down the window to talk to the officer and we thought we’d freeze. We feel sorry for her that she has to stand in the cold rain. It is amazing that at sea level it can be so ungodly hot while so cool farther up.

To be continued…

We were told not to wear any kind of sunscreen or bug spray or lotions or perfumes because the animals will rub up against you and get the toxins on their fur, then ingest the toxins when they clean their fur. We were careful as we got ready to not put anything on that could be potentially harmful to an animal.

We had booked the trip through the ungodly expensive marina. The nice man who arranged the booking told us that we needed to take a water taxi there, which would cost $100.00 USD. $100??? “How far is it?” we asked. “5.5 miles”, he replied. Figures. So far as we can tell, Golfito caters to high end and low end tourists only, with not much on offer for middle of the road people like us. For example, under the “Activities” section in Lonely Planet is camping at $15 per day USD (three meals included) or fishing at $750.00 per day USD. And that is pretty much all the activities listed. Since the marina is definitely one of the pricier spots in town, we figured they were just trying to screw the dumb tourists with an exorbitant water taxi ride.

We said we’d take our own dinghy. We normally don’t like to take our dinghy so far, but we felt like we had no choice. We were given a tourist map that had the rehab center marked on it. You know, those cute, cartoonish-like maps that point out all the touristy things to do in the area. The tourist maps tend to be drawn freehand, not to scale, and are often skewed so things look closer/farther/bigger/smaller as suits their purpose. There was no legend/key on it at all to give an accurate sense of distance, but we figured that the map would work out OK since we knew how far we needed to go.

So, this morning we left at 0730, figuring we’d make it to the sanctuary by 0900 with no problems. The sanctuary only does one tour daily at 0900, so we didn’t want to be late and miss the tour. We motored through the small channel that led us into Golfo Dulce and headed north in the bay. We watched the shore closely, but it just didn’t line up with the map. When we got to the 5 mile mark, our eyes were peeled for anything that looked like it could be the sanctuary. The landscape is mostly sheer cliffs covered in dense jungle foliage that rise dramatically out of the water, but here and there are small beaches with a little building tucked discreetly in the trees.

At the 7.5 mile mark we came to a small stretch of sand that looked like it could be the right place. And we saw a building with a small sign posted in front of it. Aha! We must have found it. As we always do with a beach landing, we pulled into shallow water, got out and walked to the beach, floating the dinghy behind us until she hit the sand. The shore is littered with thousands of fairly large rocks, and as we were floating her in, we could hear her banging up against the rocks. On shore, we assumed our usual positions to pick the dinghy up and carry her up the beach to a safe spot. But, we found out that Christi could not pick up her side of the dinghy at all. The new engine weighs significantly more than the old one and she just couldn’t manage the extra weight.

It was an outgoing tide, so we figured that it was safe to simply leave the dinghy where she was and put out the anchor. The dinghy wouldn’t go anywhere. But, being as the tide swing here is about 15 feet, we were worried about getting it launched again once the tour was over. Maybe we could get someone from the habitat to help us launch it. The first photo is facing north, the second facing south, both taken from where the dinghy was beached.

We walked over to the building and were disappointed to see it was a hotel. There was a local boy sitting on a bench in front of the hotel. We asked him where we were on the map and were really unhappy to find that we were still quite far south from where we were trying to go. Given that the map is imprecise, it was hard to judge distance accurately, but we’d guess we still had another 3 miles to go. It was now 0940. Three miles would take us another 45 minutes. If we showed up at 1030, would the habitat tell us we were too late and turn us away? And, we’d probably still have the challenge of the rocky shore to contend with.

The boy invited us to walk around the hotel’s grounds, saying we’d see all the same animals here as we would at the sanctuary. We thought that sounded like a great plan, that is, until we eyed the dinghy. The tide was rapidly going out. Kosmopolitan was on completely dry ground now, and would need a fair amount of dragging over the rocks to get her launched. And this was within 10 minutes of beaching her. If we hang out here for much longer, we could very well be stuck until the next high tide. We decided we needed to leave right then and go back to Kosmos. We practically ran back over to the dinghy and tried to launch her as gingerly as we could, wincing each and every time she bounced over the rocks. We were relieved when she was floating in water deep enough that we could get in and start her up.

We really enjoyed the ride back. On the way up, we were focused on looking for our destination and hadn’t paid much attention the plants and wildlife. The jungle is lush and gorgeous, filled with exotic and interesting looking plants. The air is sweet and aromatic, almost intoxicating. You can almost feel how clean and full of oxygen the air is as it infuses with your lungs. We saw several types of beautiful birds, but are sad to report we couldn’t identify any of them. We also noticed quite a few low buildings that were barely visible behind the vegetation. In and amongst enjoying the scenery, we did beat ourselves up some. We kept asking ourselves why we didn’t try to make arrangements for a land taxi to take us to the sanctuary. It simply hadn’t occurred to us at the time, and now we were feeling pretty dumb for not doing so. Here is a shot of Eric driving in Golfo Dulce.

When we got back to Golfito town, we went to lunch at a restaurant that is supposed to have good local food. We weren’t sure what we were expecting in terms of typical local décor, but this definitely wasn’t it. It looked like a fast food restaurant with Formica tables and small vinyl bench seats, white walls and colorful trim. We both ordered casados, which is the most typical meal served in Costa Rica (also popular in Panama). The word “casado” literally means “married”, but in terms of food means a “set meal”. You could choose beef, chicken, pork, fish or liver, all served with black beans, rice, a small green salad, a pasta salad, and a pan fried rip plantain. Eric got fish, Christi got chicken. Both sauces were red, but the sauces were very different from one another. Christi’s was quite bland, and she thinks the chicken was boiled in the sauce. Eric’s sauce had mushrooms and bell peppers (capsicum) and was more flavorful. The fish was cooked separately and the sauce put on after. The pasta salad had a lot of mayonnaise, as well as corn, carrot, and just a little bit of fish in it. It was surprisingly good. The best thing on the plate was the plantain. It was yummy! The portions were quite large. It is definitely a hearty meal at quite a low price. The picture is of Eric’s fish, but Christi’s chicken looked almost exactly the same, except for no mushrooms and bell pepper in the sauce.

We again considered hiking in the mountain reserve behind Golfito, but once again decided it was too darn hot outside for vigorous exercise. Instead, we went back to Kosmos and got her ready to be left alone for a few days. Most everything we did was part of the usual routine, but one thing that isn’t standard is we brought the dinghy up and secured it. Tim will take us to shore tomorrow, and it is safer for the dinghy to be up and away.

This will be the longest we have ever left Kosmos without being plugged into power, so we decided to clean out the refrigerator and will turn it off in the morning. We left the refrigerator on in France because it was cool out and the fridge didn’t have to use a lot of energy to stay at proper temperature. But here it is roasting hot, so we think the fridge will suck too much electricity. Plus, the weather has been cloudy, so we can’t count on the solar panels working to full capacity. We also packed for tomorrow’s trip.

We have done a lot of whining lately about spending too much time aboard and are afraid that we may have given the impression that we don’t enjoy being on Kosmos. We want to clarify that we love Kosmos and love being aboard her when it is calm. However, when an anchorage is rolly, we prefer to spend more time on land. Too much rocking makes us blue. When we got to the calm marina in Colon, we were instantly over our depression that developed in the San Blas and were happy to spend the majority of our days on board. Likewise, when we arrived here in Golfito, we instantly overcame our depression from Panama City. Since arriving here in Golfito, we have chosen to spend the majority of our days aboard, and are more than happy to do so. It is really a fantastic anchorage.

It was a pretty sunset.