Costa Rica 4: The Mountains, Nicoya, and Coming Home

7-31-2008

Hotel Bula Bula, Playa Grande, Costa Rica

After we grabbed my parents at the airport in San Jose, we headed up into the cloud forests. This part of Costa Rica was entirely new to me, despite my two previous trips. It's a peaceful area of cattle farms amid steep green mountains cut by deep river valleys. Fog, rain, and cool winds dominate.

Poas Volcano Lodge is a truly unique hotel. This custom stone home is set high on the side of the volcano and surrounded by European dairy cows. The temperature hovered in the low 60s and fog or rain partially obscured views of the valleys below and distant mountains. Two massive stone fireplaces burned in the evening and a tasty home-cooked dinner was provided by the staff.

After Poas we drove to Villablanca Cloud Forest Lodge. This wonderful little hotel is miles out in the idyllic farm country to the northwest of San Jose. It consists of small, very classy cabins, each with its own small fireplace and a view of the cloud forest. There's a nice restaurant and bar that supposedly has a nice view of Arenal, though it was far too foggy to see anything but wind blown fog all around the restaurant. We saw an agouti, which looks like a giant rat, on the trails and a coati (coatimundi?) foraging on the grass outside the cabins. The coati is odd creature that wears the mask of a raccoon, has a long sneaky snout, and the long dark tail of a monkey.

It was too cloudy to see the main crater at Poas, but the clouds parted, as if by magic, when we arrived, after a long hike, at the viewpoint over a small lake in a side crater.

In Monteverde, our coffee tour was the highlight of that region. Juan Leton and his daughter Joyce showed us his three hectares of land. Of this small plot, two thirds is held in conservation and the remaining hectare is planted in shade grown organic coffee and mixed salad crops. Bananas are used as the shade crop. He hand picks much of the crop himself. He gets $5-$7 for each 1' x 1' x 1' box of red berries. It takes about an hour to pick this amount. When he hires workers, he pays them $2 per box. During the harvest season, he picks from 6 AM until 4 PM when he takes the coffee down the San Luis Valley to the cooperative processing plant. This area is sunnier and drier. Each coffee plant takes about three years to come to maturity. Two types of fungus are his primary enemies. One results from too much rain during the rainy season. Ironically, the other is caused by an excess of intense sunshine or dramatic temperature changes during the dry season. Since he is a Fair Trade producer and is strictly organic, his only solution is to chop infected plants down. Then they re-sprout healthy from the base, though it will take two years until the produce again. Most of his fertilizer is provided by the various salad crops and fruit trees he scatters throughout the coffee plants. The cooperative will process the coffee for him and roast it, but he leaves the red berries to sun dry for his personal supply. I bought a pound of this for Matt and Kristin.

The whole area is covered with thick cloud forest and very steep mountains cut by multiple streams and rivers. The roads in and out of the area are unbelievable. It's hard to imagine the original Quaker settlers cutting their way into the area. Even now, most of the land is left in forest and cows graze in small patches up and down nearly vertical green slopes.

8-2-2008
Hotel Bula Bula, Playa Grande, Costa Rica

Tamarindo is not the same sleepy beach town I remember from 1995. Large hotels, Century 21 sales offices, sizable gringo homes, TCBY Yogurt shops, and impressive surf shops are scattered along the beachfront and in various neighborhoods surrounding Tamarindo and Playa Grande. The beach in Tamarindo itself is completely blocked from inland views by a wall of tourist development. This despite the fact that the paved road does not extend into the townhouse developments and swamp just behind town.

Playa Grande, about 6 km north of town via the beach and 8 km via the road, boasts about twenty large homes today but a Century 21 map and loads of "Sold" signs on small lots suggests that it has been parceled up into about two hundred home sites. At least that aren't destroying the beachfront forest because the beach is technically a national park (Parque de Las Baulas, the leatherback turtle). Still, the houses are built right up to the beachfront behind a small wall of trees. There are so many homes coming that pollution is almost certain.

The surf break itself is the most sensitive to tide I've seen. It is worthless for surfing except for an hour or two on either side of high tide. As a result, unless high tide falls around sunrise, you're hard pressed to surf much. Moreover, the surfing crowd converges on the small area with the best surf at just the right time. It was like surfing Trestles at home, except the wave wasn't as good. I'll stick to Playa Hermosa next time.

I had a typical gringo tourism adventure yesterday. I unloaded the surfboard and stowed the ignition key of my rental SUV in my surf trunks. The car doors automatically locked after I closed them. Only then did I notice that the door locks in my rental SUV were home door locks, not auto locks. No one at Tricolor Car Rental warned me about this and since I was using a remote control up to that point to enter and I exit the car I hadn't noticed either. Anyway, after hitching a ride back to the hotel I called the rental company. Their response: "I don't know that area well, you'll need to find someone who makes keys." With the help of my hotel, I called a local locksmith, Miquel. He arrived on a brand new 125 cc motorcycle, of which he was clearly very proud. As he tentatively ferried me back to my car on the little bike, I asked him how long he'd been driving a motorcycle. I wasn't at all surprised when he said "Dos Dias." Ten minutes, one long spool of carefully bent wire, and $50 later and I was on my way again.

Our greatest adventure came about on the last day of driving when, thanks to my ability to speak at least a little Spanish, we became aware that the Interamerican Highway was blocked because of what we thought were landslides (in reality, a bridge was out). This forced us to drive up into the mountains, around Lake Arenal and Arenal Volcano, and then back down into Santo Domingo de Heredia to our hotel. While the drive was slow and infuriating at times, we saw incredible scenery that we would have otherwised missed. We were even treated to a clear view of Arenal during one of its gentle eruptions, though we could neither see lava nor hear the explosion. In all it took over nine hours to drive to our hotel and we arrived tired after darkness fell.

8-5-2008
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida International Airport

As a surfing destination, Playa Grande has problems. The surf was too tide-dependent. It breaks only within about 2 hours of the highest tides. The rest of the time its not worth paddling out. The hotels, as a result of stringent environmental regulation, are set too far back from the beach for viewing the ocean. This keeps the beach looking great, but it makes it impossible to check the surf without getting in your rental car or taking a long walk.

Strange how airplanes jet us so quickly from unfamiliar worlds back to U.S. Airport World. Interestingly, I immediately feel relaxed and safe now that I am back in the land of fast food and fast people. Trying to translate Spanish all day is exhausting, especially if you’re not particularly good at it. Still, I’m proud of my continuing improvement. By the middle of the trip I was able to carry on basic conversations with taxi drivers and people we met. I added many words to my vocabulary. It’ll be interesting to see how many stay with me.

Looking over the shots of our trip, I notice that the photographs are infused with vibrant color. Costa Rica is a richly colorful place covered as it is with thick vegetation and blessed by nearly constant rains. The cars, houses, and people too are colorfully adorned. Costa Ricans seem to me to be quiet, almost stolid in character when they interact with you, but they love the group energy of parties, sporting events, holidays, and music. I think the colors of the landscape, their brightly painted little houses for example, must somehow draw from this love of community.