San Carlos and Isla Ometepe Nicragua

Muddy and Foggy, here I am at the top of the 4,000 foot Volcano Maderas in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua.

Moving north out of Costa Rica, I found myself on a small boat going up the Rio Frio, headed towards the boggy town of San Carlos on the southern edge of Lake Nicaragua. We debarked the boat, taking about as long to unload the cargo as it did to get there. Right away I knew I was in a different country; the customs office was a four room wooden shack on a dilapidated pier on the edge of town. The wooden slats that constituted the walls of this customs house were so shabbily put together that you could see through each one, not even tight enough to keep the bugs out I'm sure. Ducking down into the 2 foot by 4 foot hole that had been cut into the side of the building, I handed my passport to the customs official, and after 15 minutes of filling out paperwork he handed it back.



This brings up another point about life down here that will be particularly relative to people of my generation. Our generation has never really known life without computers infused into every wedge and corner of businesses, heck now the DMV even has the newest flat screen monitors. But life and economics march to the tune of a different drummer in Central America, and technology is not as pervasive and ubiquitous as we behold it in the United States. While they do have good computers and internet access in the cafes of many small towns across all of Central America, the connections are usually comparable to dial up and early ISDN. And the costs of such computers still remain too high for any government office and some businesses. As a result, all of my information was dutifully scribed in triplicate by the customs official whose whole job was to do this all day, every day. This process produces mounds of paperwork, and takes what seems like ages for the line of 40 people who would be there for the next 3 hours. Through situations like this, you begin to understand how Latin American culture in general moves slower and is never in a hurry to get things done ; it is a development of necessity because otherwise they would die of hypertension before they turned 30 waiting for stuff to get done.



I had heard that San Carlos was often a hot bed of mosquito activity, and not wanting to risk picking up a nice case of Dengue or Malaria (I hadn't taken my Malaria meds in a while) I opted for a little upscale place with air-conditioning. The AC was great, less because it was really hot, and more because it was going to keep the mosquitoes out.



San Carlos is town of about 10,000 people, and not really high on anyones list of places to visit, making it a refreshing change after Costa Rica. The town is on a hill overlooking Lake Nicaragua, which because of its size looks more like an ocean than a lake, and at the very top of the steep hill there is a domed central park of sorts with a typical church, police station, and surrounding shops. All of the streets here were on a steep 15-20% grade, except the ones running along the lake, which made walking around town quite of a task. There was no doubt about it, San Carlos was poor, and there was not a lot of change in site as the main income came from boats passing to other locations and sporadic small fishing. But the poverty also gave the town something more, it gave it an authenticity and purity. In towns where tourism has been allowed to run rampant you have kids, old men, and cripples asking for money on every street corner. With the easy money that tourism can give to some you get large drug problems, and with drug problems comes significant crime. Here in this poor town, there was a strong sense of community that provided social support and structure in ways that money cant. It was perfectly safe to walk around at night, simply no crime to speak of, and if someone did try to rob me all I would have to do is yell and people would come out of their houses able to identify the face of the robber. At night families sat around in their living rooms, which were usually the first room in the first floor facing the street. There they watched TV, ate dinner, and conversed for all to see. The doors were usually open to let the cool air in, and the windows gave you a perfect picture of what was going on. It was an openness in a comfortable community unlike any I had found before.



In the suburbs we build massive brick fortress right next to one another, and never come out but to mow the law or walk the dog. Then we retreat to our little castle on the hill, aghast if anyone calls after 9. What would we think if an unexpected guest rung the door bell at night? Probably grab a gun. The huge grass yards that we spend thousands mowing and maintaining create such distances between houses, that if you want to see someone who doesn't live in the immediate 10 houses, you have to get in your car and drive there. They are isolating places. In contrast could you imagine a suburban scene, or even a semi urban scene where people left their doors open at night, or the curtains off the windows?




Walking around the village that evening as the sun set, I ran into a 6'3" German and his girlfriend whom I saw on the boat from Los Chiles. They were doing a little traveling themselves, and an instant bond was created by our mutual physical freakishness compared to the average Nicaraguan. It was a celebration of fair complexion, blond hair, and ungainly height. After spending two hours in San Carlos, I confidently deduced that they were the only other foreigners in the town, and so I grabbed a bite to eat with Jentz and Mierka that evening. I turns out that they were in San Carlos as well to catch the ferry the next day to the Island of Ometepe. We both agreed that the small towns, while they lacked the restaurants, nightlife, or flair of the larger towns, were refreshing in their authenticity and simplicity.





The next day after a run, workout, and some picture uploading to the Ipod, it was time to catch the 2pm ferry. That may not seem like a lot to do in one morning, but prepare yourselves as I launch into another parable about doing business in Central America. You see... I have an Ipod that is programmed for a Mac computer, and while I could install the appropriate PC software for the Ipod, this would erase all of the music that is sustaining my sanity amidst a sea of reggaeton. I had planned on using my Ipod as an external hard drive to store all of my photos, and did not find out until I got down here that my Ipod will not work straight up with PC. AND there are no Macs in all of Central America because you cant install illegally copied software on these computers (there is not a single legal piece of music, film, or software in this whole subcontinent.) So I found a program that interfaces on PCs for Mac Ipods! I was saved right? Wrong? Once you find a connection that is fast enough to download said program in less than three hours, you have to find a computer that allows you to install software. 4 internet cafes later, I find one that allows me to install a program, so I'm saved again right? Wrong. For said program to work I have to restart the computer... I also did not know until I got down here that when most of these computers are restarted they erase the entire hard drive and start from a template. So now I have been through 4 different internet cafes, three hours of downloading a program, and it just erased itself! At this point I have to bargain with the Internet cafe owner to try to get them to change the setting. Half of the people running these shops have no idea how to change it, and the ones that do basically tell you to go screw yourself.



I have done this 4 times for uploading pictures to my Ipod, but there are week long gaps in my picture taking where I have spent several days trying to find a place to upload pictures... Welcome to life in Central America!


With all that behind me, I boarded a two story, 90 foot diesel steamer bound for the Volcano Island of Ometepe and debarked San Carlos at 2 in the afternoon. It was going to be another 10 hours until our midnight arrival on the docks of Ometepe. I paid the extra dollar ($5.30 total) and got a first class ticket, that had an air conditioned cabin, badly dubbed loud American movies, and a nice topside deck. Totally worth it. I took the opportunity to read up on a little Nicaraguan History, and listen to the entire discography of Bob Marley that I downloaded before I left. I also got to watch a beautiful sunset while sitting in a hammock overlooking the water. Later in the evening I caught up on a little Family Guy and Lost TV shows. I downloaded all the seasons to my Ipod before I left, and I have been rationing them as I go along so I will always have something to watch when I get really, really board. (like on a 10 hour boat ride across a lake in the dark)

Hauling fish onto the Ferry for the trip to Granada after Ometepe

Jentz and Mierka, the Germans, hooked me up with a really cheap hostel so we wouldn't have to look for one when we got in at midnight. The first night was spent in Altagracia, and the hostel will be one to remember! It was only 3 dollars a night, and so I should have been a little suspect. All 20 "rooms" of the hostel had a door that opened to the outside, and a nice wooden double bed. The problem was that the walls between the rooms of the hostel were actually just one, thats right, one, piece of sheet rock and exposed wooden framing. No paint, no mud, nothing, so I had one sheet rock wall on one side of the bed, and exposed wooden framing on the other. This too would have been livable until you get to the best part - there were no ceilings. All 20 rooms shared a common exposed roof, that was patched with trash bags. This was actually worse than dorm rooms, because the walls gave couples the illusion of privacy while at the same time I could hear every single whisper. Whispers aside, much worse was heard during the night I spent here, and so I thanked god again for my trusty Ipod!



There are actually two volcanoes that make up the island of Ometepe, which means "land between two volcanoes" One volcano, Concepcion, is active and the other, Maderas, is inactive with a lake inside the crater. The first night was spent in the city of Altagracia, pop.2000, underneath the fuming Concepcion, and the next morning I got up and went to the other town, Moyogalpa pop. 3000, to do some blogging. From Moyogalpa I caught the last bus at 430 across the land bridge to the inactive volcano of Maderas and the small coffee plantation of Finca Magdalena. It was from here that I was going to begin my muddy assault on the volcano of Maderas the next day at 7.


Finca Magdalena was equally rustic to the other hostel, but had enough character to more than make up for its faults. It is a working organic coffee plantation that is actually a cooperative between 20 or so families that have lived on the same part of the island for 4 generations. In addition to the coffee plantation, they grow Cacao, Bananas, and Mangos, and have taken their two story 10,000 square foot barn and converted it into a hostel. They rented out Hammocks ($1.50), dorms and single rooms ($4). My small 5' x8' single room had two sides that were part of the original 100 year old barn, and two added sides. They had placed a twin mattress on a 2 foot wide frame, and so I had to try not to get to close to the edges at night lest the mattress collapse in on me. Besides character, the Finca had some of the best views of the valley and the other volcano in all of Ometepe. They also had a restaurant right in the barn, with delicious meals prepared straight from ingredients grown on the farm, and 5 dollar bottles of Flor de Cana rum. That night I sat and played Gin Rummy with two steller guys, Dwight and Nathan, from California, and polished off a bottle of Flor de Cana. Turns out I would run into them again in Granada as the story goes, but I will get to that later.

Late to fall, early to rise, I shared a guide up the Maderas with an Austrian girl named Andrea at 6 the next morning. We were both in pretty good shape, but I can tell you now we weren't mentally prepared for the hike we were fixin' to get ourselves into. Guides had been required ever since a German guy died here 8 years ago after he slipped and broke his ankle. Our guide, Mario, said it was going to be a 8 hour hike round trip, which at the time it seemed like nothing. He neglected to mention that we were going to go from 50 Meters to 1,500 Meters, or almost 4,000 feet in elevation, and then we would have to go all the way back down. He also neglected to mention that halfway up it becomes a true could forest, and everything we touched would be covered in mud. So for 5 muddy hours we scrambled up the muddiest, wettest, rockiest, and steepest trail that I have had the pleasure of climbing while in Central America. Apparently in the evolution of Nicaraguan intelligence, they never discovered the great architectural feat of switchbacks. And so for 5 hours it was 2 feet forward, one of which would slip and one foot back... There are no pictures from this portion of the ascent because I was covered in mud and did not want to risk a muddy camera to add to my worries.



Mario had warned us that there would be no views from the top because it remains perpetually shrouded in clouds, which was fine, and as it turns out the last 1,000 feet or so reminded me of the lush cloud forests of Monteverde, Costa Rica, with green life everywhere on everything.



The lake at the top turned out to be more of a mud pit with water out in the middle, and to get to the water would require getting waist deep in mud. I was fully prepared to dive in until Mario said that underlying layers of water tended to suck you down like quicksand and I could die. I reconsidered. 3 more muddy and rocky hours later, we were back at the bottom, and got to see some monkeys back at the Finca, after we had just spent 8 hours looking for them on the mountain.


That night, exhausted and dirty, I decided I wanted a little more creature comforts than the barn at Finca Magdalena had offered, and so Andrea and I both decided to head down the road to the piece of land that bridged the two islands together. There was a small pretty beach called Playa Santa Domingo, and a cheap hotel of the same name where we both got rooms with private shower, hot water, and our own fans: it was heaven. The beach also had a perpetual 20 mph wind that blew constantly throughout the night, making it difficult to read on the beach, play volley ball, but perfect for cooling off from a hot day of hiking.





The next morning I was up with the sun to catch the first bus down the road, back to Moyogalpa where I had been two day prior, to catch a notoriously dangerous lanca across the lake to Rivas Nicaragua, where I was going to catch a bus up to Granada, one of Nicaragua most beautiful colonial towns.



For all the Sewanee folk out there who got to go Spring Party Weekend this past week, this is why I couldn't come, so I hope you understand.

M3

Sad News San Jose and back on the road

Trying to do a little catch up job, I also put a large blog up yesterday about Stewart's backpack getting stolen and then fishing in Jacó Costa Rica, so if you get a chance to read down you should check it out as well. If you have any advice for ways to better this blog, please just drop a comment down at the bottom. I have been getting a few spam comments with links saying "see here," advertising some computer programs, so please ignore this and don’t click the link because that will just make them keep spamming me. I don't know whether I should be flattered that I’ve gotten enough hits to warrant spamming, or pissed off?

While traveling it seems as though just when you think that you have seen it all, something comes along that blows your mind and changes your opinion of what different countries are like. This is particularly true in Latin America where randomness seems to be the norm, and it happened to me again that night in Jacó.

After a day of fishing, we decided that we would take a stroll around the city to admire some of the night life and see what this supposed party town was all about. I didn't fully understand the way that tourism, money, and irresponsible travelers had perverted the small economy of this town until walking down the street on the way to the bar. In the 200 yard stretch from our hotel to the bar at 9:00 pm in the evening, I was literally offered "weed, cocaine" or "ganja and white" no less than 10 times. Kids on bicycles no older than 13, old men sitting in the alleys, 30 year old street thugs, and plastic prostitutes all wanted to sell you drugs. This continued throughout the night and even in the morning as I went out to buy a cup of coffee; the drug dealers were on every corner in this supposedly safe city. You felt like you were being watched everywhere you went by the sunken eyes of addicts amidst an underworld of depravity. Everyone around just wanted to use you, and they saw you as only one thing: a meal ticket or another potential way to get their fix. The real true disturbing thing about the whole sub-culture is that its entire existence is due to white travelers like myself. And the more tourists that come in search of a good time continue to propagate and support it even today; simple irresponsibility does not do justice to how their actions destroy the people of this town.

The night only got better, for the next bar we went to was called "The Beetle Bar." It was a bar about 50 feet wide and 200 feet deep blaring loud reggaeton over the speakers while colored lights flashed off of mirrors and faux black leather seats with chrome edges in a dimly lit scene. There were maybe 20 other white men like ourselves, 20 local looking Costa Ricans, and no less than 150 girls in short colored plastic mini skirts with small skimpy tops. Every SINGLE one was a prostitute, and each one of them walked past you like a starving animal digging for trash, trying to get their own fix or next piece of food. We decided we had seen enough and high-tailed it back to the hotel for bed.

After a day of surfing and play on the Jacó beach, we got on the 3:00 pm bus headed back to San José. Craig had a flight to catch taking him back to his job in Birmingham, thereby ending our week of Costa Rican adventure. Craig made his 7:00 am flight and it was back to just Stewart and I for the remainder of the trip. While we regrouped for a few days, we had a chance to stay in possibly the nicest hostel in San Jose, located in a quiet neighborhood east of the city with embassies and universities. Called Bekuo, this place had their own wine list, a Japanese styled meditation garden complete with stone sculptures, all the cable TV, billiards, a huge California style kitchen, and furniture straight out of Ikea.

I did some blogging and Stewart went to the Embassy that day to get a new passport, but came back with some bad news. He could have gotten an emergency passport that day, but it only works to leave the country, and would not have been nearly sufficient for the trip to come. The real passport was going to take 10 business days (over 2 weeks at the time) and cost 100 dollars. He opted for the real passport, which meant we were both going to be stuck in Costa Rica for two weeks, with precious little time left after we had waited longer in Panama for Craig to get into Costa Rica. That night he also did some budget crunching and realized that he didn’t have the money to finish the trip all the way back to the US like he had originally planned. On top of this, taking buses all the way back the US from here would have cost more than a plane flight out of San José, and possibly taken 8 days. So... Stewart bought a plane ticket directly out of San José bound for the US in two weeks after he got his passport.

I was left with two options: stay in Costa Rica with Stewart for two weeks while he waited for his passport and then book it north, or split then and head north on my own, making my way through Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico solo. I wanted to finish the trip that I had started, and see all of the countries standing between me and the motherland. So Stewart and I said our goodbyes, I gave him 20 pounds of stuff from my backpack I didn’t need, promised to write, and I boarded a bus headed north out of San José towards Los Chiles, a small town on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

I was about 2 parts excited, 2 parts apprehensive and 1 part sad to leave Stewart for the open road of Central America.

Traveling solo is an entirely different animal than traveling with another person, family, partner, or tour group; not wholly better or worse, just very, very, different. The traveler is forced to interact and engage the local population and other travelers; when they go to eat, sit on a bus, hang out at a Hostel, walk on the street, or take a boat, their solitude makes them a natural target for the conversational hooks of others. The isolation also works to make most travelers more outgoing simply to have basic conversations, to tell someone about the places they have been and things they have seen. The judgment of foreign culture becomes an entirely different process, because all of a sudden you don't have someone to bounce your ideas off, or another presence to enforce the social norms of home. It is the traveler and the traveler alone who will decide how to perceive the new and strange. It is a more impulsive friendly type of traveling, because of a total lack of discussion about where the next stop will be. I have spent hundreds of hours discussing new potential places with Stewart and other people I have traveled with, weighing pros and cons, but now I can simply pick up and go when the wind blows too strong on my back. Then there is the obvious potential for loneliness and fondness for home, without that other traveler to hold up the reminder of familiar and comforting culture. In that sense it is a purer and more enriching type of traveling, no easy retreat to the known and familiar.

Staying in hostels makes the trip easier, despite the sometimes horrid conditions, because of the other young travelers from mostly western nations who you meet. With them you can have a good civilized English conversation, or go out to eat at a restaurant without having to bring a book. All of the travelers have different stories, but most are decently educated, interested in broadening their horizons, seeing the world, and having a good time. There are also more of these than you think in every corner of the Latin American world.

I headed out on a 5:30 am "express" bus to the hot humid border town of Los Chiles Costa Rica. I say "express" because that is what was advertised, but I have found that no bus is express unless all of the seats, and aisles, are jam packed full of people so that the driver can make as much money as possible. For 6 hours while headed north, the bus would stop every 2-5 minutes to pick someone up or drop them off. The trip could easily be made in 4 hours in a car, but would have cost a good deal more than the 3 dollars I paid for the bus. We got into Los Chiles just before noon and I found a nice comfortable place with air conditioning where I could veg out for the day and wait to catch a small boat up the Rio Frio to Nicaragua the next day.

Los Chiles was a remarkable little town out on the vast tropical plains that are northern Costa Rica, a border town with character which was a first for me. The giant nicely paved and marked road that had taken us all the way from San José to here ended about 6 miles north of the town at the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Despite the beautiful condition of the massive highway built all the way to the border, the Tico government refused to let anyone cross to Nicaragua by land here. Go figure? I mean this road is like only 10 years old, equipped with mile markers, roadside telephones, giant concrete gutters, and reflective lane markers. It is the Rolex of roads for Costa Rica. The last 6 miles sit completely unused, servicing the border guards and 20 so family farms, out in the middle of the hot sun like the vestige of a once great power (I ran to the border for some exercise is how I know that no one uses it).

Los Chiles is home to another testament from the past as well, for just east of the town is a 5,000 foot concrete runway (Google Earth it, it’s longer than the whole town itself!). Some might ask, now why would a town of 3,000 need a 5,000 foot concrete runway? The answer is that they don’t! This is a secrete runway built by the CIA in the 1970's to provide air support for the Contras fighting a civil war in Nicaragua that they ultimately lost. For the art majors out there, google "Iran-Contra affair."

This was my first night out of San José and alone in a dusty, hot border town with not another gringo in site. It was good. It was real good. Los Chiles reminded me of how I love small towns when I'm traveling down here. There are usually only 2 or 3 basic cheap options to choose from for a hotel, maybe 7 different places to eat, and 1 or 2 bars that are open at night. It really takes a lot of the guess work out of trying to decide where to stay or eat, and you can be content that everything is pretty much the same. It is also hard to get lost, because there might be 8 blocks combined in the whole town. The people stare at you because they haven't seen a gringo in a while, which is fine and helps to remind you that you are somewhere authentic by Costa Rican standards.

Los Chiles is a town of wide dusty dirt roads, and a town square that is actually a giant dry crunchy soccer field. Different groups of men and children were sitting underneath the various trees that lined the sides of the soccer field, not in a hurry to do much besides sit there and try to avoid the heat in the middle of the day while catching up on idle conversation. The kids would scream "HELLO" while riding by on their bikes and then quickly hurry away giggling to their friends. You could tell that everyone in town knew everybody else, and it had been that way for a hundred years. The town had one church, which doubled as the town's only school and faced the giant soccer field in the center. One to two story buildings in various states of repair/construction surround the soccer field, selling clothes, pots, pans, and just about anything they could get their hands on. There was a sign advertising Internet, but upon inquiring I found out that it wasn’t working: They said: “Come to think of it, we haven’t had internet for over 2 months now.” I said “Oh that’s swell, how’s business?” They said, “Well, now that you mention it, it has been a little slow.” Go figure? Nothing moved fast in Los Chiles...

The next day I woke up, went for a run, and hit up the customs office literally right across from the hotel where I was staying. If you think that a 6’ gringo is a site to be seen in a remote border town in the northern portion of Costa Rica, you are right, and I got many merit worthy stares to compliment this fact. Now imagine a 6’ 3” gringo wearing only his bathing suit and a pair of tennis shoes, blinding passersbys with his paleness, covered in sweat, and running down the street in the middle of town. Now THAT is a site to see, and every single other townsperson agreed. I no longer have any shame in Central America. I have decided that I am going to run every day until I get back to the US to give my constantly changing environment some regularity.

After getting my passport stamped in Costa Rica, I asked the border official what time the boat left for San Carlos, Nicaragua, my first stop in the next country. He replied, “When it’s full.” Great. After much prying, I finally convinced the boat company to give me a time, and they said not before Noon. Now I at least had 4 hours where I knew that the only boat for the day wouldn’t leave me!

I headed down to the boat docks about noon and boarded a 5 foot wide, 40 foot long fiberglass excuse for a boat that was going to take me 1 ½ hours up the Río Frio to Nicaragua and the small mosquito infested port town of San Carlos where I would sit for another day and wait for the bi-weekly ferry to the volcano island of Ometepe in the giant fresh water lake Nicaragua.

It turns out that boat drivers are a lot like bus drivers, and the more people they can fit on their boat, the better. This is disconcerting for obvious reasons, but I still got on the boat amidst the sacks of fruit, TVs, chickens, clothes, and dogs that people were taking to San Carlos to hock. The boat drafted maybe a foot before we loaded on, and after the 60 or so people, countless giant bags of god knows what, and livestock were on, we were drafting at least 4 feet, or 6 inches from top of the sides where I was sitting. I looked up, I had a life vest, I hoped to god I wouldn’t have to use it and loose all my electronics. The river and Lake Nicaragua were also home to the worlds only fresh water shark, a type of bull shark that migrates seasonally from the Caribbean up the same tiny river we were on and into Lake Nicaragua. This was also another good reason not to fall in the water!

Somehow the 300 pound man that was steering us down the river with a 60 horsepower motor skillfully glided the boat away from the dock and out onto the dark muddy river without getting any water in the boat. I could tell that he had done this before. Slowly we puttered down the narrow 50 yard wide river while exotic birds and monkeys played in the giant trees leaning over the banks. I was very much in the heart of the Nicaraguan jungle, and loving every minute despite the threat of capsizing. About halfway up river, the driver instructed us to all put on our life vests, which initially got me worried, until I realized that we were simply passing the guard shack at the Nicaraguan border, and there was a law in Nicaragua that you had to have life vests.

I knew that we had changed countries immediately upon staring at the guards standing on the 30 foot tall banks over the side of the river. Their guard shack was on stilts, and completely covered in camouflaged paint with camouflage plastic cloth pulled out from all sides, like they were hiding from planes. What? Were they at war? All 20 guards were decked out in complete camouflaged fatigues and each had a sub machine gun slung around their shoulder with their hand on the trigger, and the barrel pointed a little close for comfort towards the boat. The boat captain handed him our passenger manifest and sure as rain we were back on the river, able to take off our life vests (I didn’t).

One hour later the river slowly widened until the banks retreated behind us, and we entered Lake Nicaragua! Spread out like an ocean in all directions, the sun was just beginning to set and I could have sworn we were anywhere but on a giant lake in the middle of Central America. The waves picked up, and the last few treacherous kilometers to San Carlos were not easy ones.

They are fixing to turn the internet off where I am working (Nicaragua suffers from frequent and long power outages and right now I am on a generator), so I’ve got to go, but if I get some time this evening I will tell you about San Carlos, a small town on the southeastern tip of Lake Nicaragua.

Travel Safe!

Merrill

Jaco Costa Rica and fishing!

I got a chance to work on my surfing skills while in Jacó

With Craig in tow, Stewart and I were in "intense travel mode" since he only had a week to spend in Costa Rica, and this required maximizing every moment of each day to its fullest. This was done so that as Craig went back he would have volumes of memories, and it reminded Stewart and I of the importance of time while traveling. Long term travelers such as us often forget the blessing of time in these foreign places, something fairly easy to do. Sentiments such as "oh another giant active volcano," or "oh another extremely rare endangered bird, another idyllic Caribbean beach, another quaint group of indigenous locals, another amazing cloud forest, another 200 year old colonial church..." may not be said overtly, but are thought. The majority of travelers that I have met will most likely return to some western nation in months' or a year's time, and the traveling experience needs to be one that stays with you for the rest of your life; hopefully enriching everything that follows. However, maintaining this sort of appreciation for everything that you see is not easy, it requires a diligence and almost work like ethic. The veil of apathy is something that I see in myself at times, but as long as I remain aware of it I can take measures to remind myself of the opportunity in front of me. Stewart and I often did things called "reality checks" i.e. "Reality Check: we are sitting on lava rocks in the middle of the Costa Rican Rockies in pitch black darkness watching an active volcano hurl lava hundreds of feet in the air only to have it explode in giant balls of fire flowing down the mountain" or "Reality Check: we are sipping beers over a gorgeous sunset while watching a German ship pass through the Panama canal on its way to Japan." I think you get the Idea.

Some travelers unfortunately just travel so that they can avoid responsibility or whatever the next stop is on the road of life . This is particularly present in beach towns where you see people in their 20s and 30s who have been at the same hostel for months at a time. They have saved enough money to live in the Hostel, go out every night and get hammered, wake up at noon to grab a bit to eat, start drinking at 5 and get hammered again. They will do this for weeks on end. At least I know I don’t have it that bad.

Keeping these thoughts in mind, we left Monteverde on the 6:00 am bus to Puntarenas, from where we would change and catch a bus to Jaco. This bus, like many before it, had maximized their profit by fitting as many seats as possible in the 30 feet from the front of the bus to the back. This is fine if you are a 5 foot tall Tico, but when you are 6 foot 3 inch Nordic Viking it poses serious problems. To fit in a seat such as this, I have to sit up as straight as possible and literally wedge my femur bone in between the seats. Then the person in front of me tries to recline and can't because my leg is butting straight up to the metal in both seats, so they tell me to quit it... Quit what: being me? having a femur that is twice as long as theirs? Quit sitting in the seat? Eventually they stop because I am twice as big as they are and would win a fight. HAH! The sitting predicament leads to other problems such as bruised bottoms, prolonged numbness in my legs, tremendous lower back pain, and an inability to sleep. But good things come out of hardship: 2 dollars as opposed to 200 hundred for flying, great views of the countryside, and a memory that will last when other fade into the years.

5 hours later we were in Puntarenas, soon to be called Puta (son-of-a-bitch) renas. As we got off the bus, Stewart dove into the baggage compartment to grab our big bags, and as he did he put his small bag on the ground so he could fit in the compartment. I was watching it and had a good view of the general area when a large man (taller than me which is unusual!) came up and started telling me/yelling something about how we were not at the bus terminal. I was trying to figure out what he wanted and just as soon as that he was gone around the corner. Stewart came out from underneath the bus to see what was going on and we both realized that his small green bag was gone... We frantically looked around, on the bus, around the ground, around the corner to find the guy, but it was to late. The bag was gone. It must have been a two person deal, so while one distracted my attention from the scene, the other grabbed the bag. In the bag was Stewart's credit card, his camera with pictures from the entire trip, money, ipod, passport, and journal: basically his life for the past 2 months.

We ran through the market to see if the thieves were already trying to sell their new found goods, but it was a fruitless gesture. After dashing to the police station we realized that this too was going to come of nothing. The bag was gone and Stewart came to this realization fairly quickly. All that was left to do was cancel the credit card and file a police report to get a new passport. Life can change so fast, something that is easy to forget in the safe complacency of home. This is a generalization, but I feel that the people of many countries I have been to have a closer connection with the tenuous nature of normality, not surrounded by as many of the safety blankets that tend to come with life where I grew up.

Stewart was more up-beat about it that Craig or I, taking a "these things happen" approach, something that is always easier said that done. And he was right that these things do happen, there is a saying that there are two types of people in Latin America: those that have been robbed and those that will be robbed. It is a fact of life when there such disparity of wealth, and poverty is the norm not the exception. Craig and I were quick to not be downers and so we tried to cheer up as quickly as Stewart had. I can also count my blessings from this experience and hope that I will never be in a position where poverty or addiction drive me steal from another.

Not Stewart's actual face after it happend, but general representation on his outlook on life.

Even after filling a police report, we still made the bus to Jacó that we had planned on, and back on the road of traveling.

In the 1960's Jacó was a small fishing village on a western coast of Costa Rica with a relatively large pretty beach and not much going on besides great fishing. It saw the occasional traveler, and both walked away with a content feeling of beneficial cultural exchange. Then like a great tidal wave of wealth and local cultural white-out, the American came, and they came, and they came. Jacó became the pacific coast destination for vacationing Americans and other wealthy foreigners. They came to beach, they came to fish, they came to spend money, and just like that Jacó was no longer the domain of the Costa Ricans but now a colony within a county. High abundances of prostitutes and drugs would soon follow this gringo inundation, further solidifying its colonial status.

This is what we had heard, and after passing a mile of billboards and signs without a SINGLE Spanish word, I decided that it might be true. Best Westerns and Subways lined the main road that comprises the town center and runs along the beach. A giant resort called "Los Suenos" anchored the town to the north, and was home to the richest gringos who had help to move Jacó towards its present condition. I was okay spending my Latin America time in such an un-Latin place for several reasons: 1.) We knew what the town was going to be like before setting out on the road towards here, with no false beliefs that it was real Costa Rica. 2.) I had spent the last few months traveling through many other "traditional" towns and could competently recognize the difference. 3.) They had some of the of the best/cheaper sport-fishing on the pacific coast, and that was our real purpose for being here.

Yes, Craig, Stewart, and I were going to go 30 miles of the coast of Costa Rica in search of Blue Marlin, Sail Fish, and Dorados, and then use our innate manly power to fight them in for the catch. And then release them. Many people our age don't get the opportunity to fish like this, and so the experience was going to be all that more special.

Craig, Stewart, and I splurged and got a cheap hotel room with air-conditioning now that we could split the cost 3 ways in an effort to forget about the events earlier in the day. After a stroll around the local fish guides and little bit of bargaining we got the best deal we could on 30 foot center console, scheduled for 7 am the following morning.

The following morning we shared the van ride with another man from US going out to fish for the day. He has a really interesting story that I am not going to include on the blog because he is hiding in Jacó from the US government, but ask me and I will send the links to a few Vanity Fair, New Yorker, and recent Washington Post articles written about him. (On a side note: Stewart and I had read in the liberal lonely planet that all of the sports fishermen were down here for the legal prostitution in addition to the fish, and that their hotels were "high class brothels." We both reacted with skepticism, and both knew enough guys who fished to know that this was some kind of backpacker editorial contempt for rich fishermen. ) Then the guy from the US looks out the window and points at some 20 year old girl walking down the road and goes: "that is what I'm really here for, the young girls." We were both wrong, turns out that the Lonely Planet is always right!

Our captain and 1st mate were both native Jacóians, and were relatively younger, but we were assured that they were good at what they did and would catch us some fish. Out of the Los Suenos harbor 10 minutes later, we were boring away at the morning sky towards our objective: a sunken volcano crater 30 miles off the shore where all the Blues and Sails were known to hang out. We used the trip out there to catch up on a little bit of sun bathing in the morning rays before we all started to sweat like it was going out of style.

It seemed like not a few minutes later, our first mate was throwing out the lines. We had two sitting on the surface and 5 more at varying depths tied to the outriggers, a total of 7 lines for this 30 foot boat, a pretty impressive feat. The "fishing" that Stewart, Craig, and I had been doing up to this point consisted of pretty much sitting on the front of the boat in the sun. I don’t get the opportunity to go deep sea fishing that much (this might be the 5th time in my entire life) so I really enjoyed having a first mate there to tie up the lines and rig the entire set up, while the captain was in charge of finding our fish. I am sure I could learn how, but just haven't had the chance, although this will be the goal of the next trip I go on.

We watched as he rigged the boat and waited...

The sun got hotter and we waited...

and then and hour later it was like AHHH scream AHHH a bunch of stuff in really fast Spanish that boiled down to: get back here and reel in this fish. The drag of the reel was whirring like a siren Bweeeeeeeeee, a sound of excitement and call to action for all sport fishermen. Craig, Stewart, and I looked at each other to decide who was going to reel this one in, and somehow it was ME! 9:30 in the morning and we already had a sail on the hook. Dash like a flash I flew to the fighting chair, rod in hand, prepared to do battle with the beast.

The fish jumped and flew across the water, fighting the line, and sailed to its namesake. It was a back and forth for about 15 minutes, and then the fish started to loose will power, and I spent the next 15 slowing pulling it in bit by bit. The fight was complicated by the fact that my reel wasn’t secured to my rod, and so it swiveled around the rod as I reeled, hence the shot of 1st mate having to hold the reel in place for me. We got the leader and bill, but the fish had lost a lot of blood, and so we decided not bring it into the boat for the photo-op, hence the above shot Stewart took with my camera. One great fisherman (dad) once told me that after every catch, an obligatory round of celebratory beers were in order. And so at 10:00 am, we all cracked open our first Imperial of the day, and toasted to the captain and his 1st mate.

First catch day out of the way, the hesitation was off of our chests and we no longer had to worry about going home empty handed. Like clockwork we had the lines back out ready to catch another big one. Less than 30 minutes later another WEEEEEEEEEEEE on the drag, mad screaming in Spanish, and we knew we had another on the line. All of the dreams we had about pacific coast bill fishing were coming true. Again Stewart and Craig stared at each other, and Stewart said that he wanted Craig to have it since Craig was a fairly big fisherman. So Craig jumped to the hot seat with rod and reeled like there was no tomorrow. A good 30 minute fight with some aerial action on behalf of the fish, and we had one in the boat. A round of celebratory beers later, and it was 11:00, with 5 more hours of fishing ahead of us. It was shaping up to be a great day.

Captain Craig, and Stewart reverting to the basic medical school instinct of studying when bored.

Unfortunately these would be the only two sails we would see, but we counted our stars when our captain radioed the other two boats in the fleet to learn that those two boats had caught nothing so far! We took advantage of the breeze provided by the trolling to simply enjoy being in the pacific ocean out on the water. The 1st mate turned out to be a great fresh pineapple and watermelon cutter, washed down with some more Imperial. We did get to see some dolphins, a sea turtle, and lots of Sails who for some reason were not biting our bait.

Savoring a bit of Pinnapple

The end of the day came, and we headed back to shore with two sails under our belt, taking the evening cruise as an opportunity to enjoy some more delicious Imperial.

That evening we decided to continue living the sport-fisherman lifestyle, and headed over to the ritzy bar at Los Sueños resort to chum it up while watching the sunset over the yachts in the harbor.


While sipping scotch at the bar, we met a Canadian Real-estate agent who lived in Los Suenos and sold a lot of the houses there. This big cheery guy named Marcel Gauthier was as nice as he could be, and owned a company called "Costa Rica Dream Makers" http://costaricadreammakers.com He invited us back to his house where we spent the rest of the evening finishing a bottle Crown Royal with his sister, Dina Gauthier, who runs the business with him.

Productive day out of the way, we had one more day in Jacó to enjoy the beach before it was time to catch Craig’s flight out of San Jose, and try to get a new passport for Stewart!

Take care,
M3