Pura Vida

The trip to Costa Rica ends in Seattle-type weather, a steady rain, though quite a bit warmer. The rainy season began a few days ago, and, predictable as clockwork, about 4 p.m. every day the rains come for 2-3 hours. It kept everything a bit cooler for the past few days, though, which was nice.

We left Parismina for a three-hour journey that turned into a two-day battle with every form of obstacle the Costa Rican travel gods could throw at us.

As we headed back to the Central Valley, a traffic jam on the main road caused us to divert on a more scenic path that would also take us around San Jose traffic. It also took us down a road that was completely shut down by what we were told was an accident. We backtracked to a scenic little city called Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, where we decided to find a hotel and try for Heredia the next day. Should have been no problem, as it was less than 100 km away.

No problem? Right. In the morning we drove back down the road where the accident was, and this time the area was clear and wide open. Until, about 30km later, with no warning, the road was closed. So we backtracked about 100km to the spot of the original traffic jam, and headed up the mountain on an eerily empty road. Empty because, a few kilometers later, we found out the road was closed by a mudslide.

So we backtracked another 50km to the road we had taken from Cartago toward the east coast, a narrow two-lane highway now the main thoroughfare for every semi going in to San Jose. We spent about five hours doing a 100 km journey just to get to Cartago. The good thing was we got to visit the church at Cartago again and see La Negrita. The thing, I kid you not, is about 18 inches high. The stonehenge scene in Spinal Tap comes to mind.

The other downside of this little misadventure was it forced us, and by us I mean me, to drive through San Jose in Friday rush hour traffic at 4 p.m. (refer above to what time the rain comes every day now). Nerves frayed, and never knowing exactly where we were going because there are no signs and Costa Ricans only give directions with their arms (even to each other, I noticed), we somehow tracked down a sign to Heredia and, after two more hours, found our hotel in Heredia. The second day's journey took almost 11 hours and ended about 80km from where it started.

Heredia was great, a college town with a gorgeous cathedral and parque central, where we found a festival and market. In the morning, after taking in more of the town, we headed back to Alajuela and gave back the rental car in one piece. Not much else to do the rest of the day, as most things were closed for the May 1 worker's holiday.

Today, the final day of my journey, we took the bus in to San Jose to see the sites. There are so many buses from Alajuela to San Jose you just queue up and, when one bus is full, it leaves and the next one pulls right up. Great day to visit San Jose, as it was cool and, being Sunday, the crowds weren't too bad. We saw a couple churches, walked around the center of the Costa Rican government and went to the Museo de Oro, which has gold trinkets discovered in the area, some dating back 1500 years or more.

So that pretty much wraps it up. Hope you enjoyed, hope you all make it some day and experience pura vida, and hope to see you all in the states soon.

Slow creatures

For the first time, travel plans have gone slightly awry, so I have a little more time than expected to catch up on the blog, but only after a wonderful day amidst the slowest creatures nature has to offer.

We left Cahuita early yesterday and made a stop off for a great tour at a sloth sanctuary. Yes, you read that correctly. About a half hour south of Limon is a little place just off the highway that has dedicated itself to preserving sloths.

After seeing a couple sloths in trees from a long way away, it was nice to be able to get up close and see them, pet them. There's some video of the babies below if I worked this right. Sloths smile — who knew? The tour also included a canoe trip down a river, where we saw one sloth and a wide variety of birds, lizards and bugs.

But the main goal of the day was to find a way to the elusive Northern Caribbean coast. Once you get a few miles north of Limon, the coast is cut off from the mainland by a river, so it requires a boat to access. After 90 minutes in the car and another hour bumping along a road, we caught a water taxi to Parismina, the less known (but more easily accessed) cousin of the more famous Tortuguero.

After about an hour in this small fishing village, which has about 400 people, we learned a few important facts. First, the turtles come to the beach to lay their eggs at night. Second, a guide is required to take you along the beach. To protect from poachers, the police patrol the beach at night to protect the turtles, and they don't like to have strangers out there without someone from the town. Volunteers also come from all over the world to both Tortuguero and Parismina to help move the eggs, either to a hatchery or just around the beach, to keep them from the eager hands of the poachers.

We got extremely lucky with our guide. A young American woman (from Orcas Island, incidentally) was very helpful with information and also mentioned her boyfriend was one of the guides. It turns out her boyfriend, Jerry, is also one of the founding members of the group La Asociacion Salvemos Las Tortugas de Parismina (check out www.parisminaturtles.org for more info) and was a wealth of information during the tour.

We left shortly after 9 p.m. and, after walking along the beach (black sand, incidentally) for about an hour, we finally stumbled upon the biggest turtle I have ever seen, a leatherback looking for a place to lay her eggs. This creature was the size of a large coffee table and weighed about 800 pounds. She flopped around on the sand slowly, using her fins to dig holes in the sand. She never laid any eggs, but we spent an hour watching her until she returned to the sea.

We leave this morning on our way to Heredia.

Here is a video of some baby sloths (hit play below)