Advertisement
Published: August 2nd 2009
After spending a few days in San Jose I headed to the Nicoya Peninsula to visit my friend Derek. We studied together in Sevilla and both went to Colorado. He lives in the tiny town of Los Angeles. There are little over 400 people living in the town. Derek has lived there for almost 2 years volunteering in the Peace Corp. I arrived right in the middle of Semana Cultural, which is more or less a semi-organized town Olympics. During this week pretty much everyone stops working and they play games all day. There was everything from relay races, egg toss, checkers and an obstacle course to soccer, basketball and a three-point competition. The entire town is divided up into eight teams each with a name and a team color. They try to divide the teams evenly and there is a lot of debate over it, but of course it doesn't work out quite right. When I arrived I was put on the red team, the Gladiators; other teams had more creative names. The green team was Team H1N1 after the swine flu and the black team was Los Obamas. Everyone who wants can participate whether you are in elementary school
Semana Cultural
Some events were held here and all the others were on the soccer field.or pushing 70 so you could see just about anyone screaming their lungs out for their team. After experiencing the entire event it is hard to truly explain how seriously everybody took all the competitions. Each one could earn points so each game was a matter of life and death. Since I was one of a small handful of people who knew even the most basic rules of basketball I had to ref a couple games. After two or three Derek said I could stop, but the reasoning behind was because people were complaining about my lack of calls. The men and women each had their own games. Given the town's minimal knowledge of the game and their lack of coordination a foul could have been called every thirty seconds. I decided to call only the really hard ones. The women were especially vicious when they were playing, but as a ref I had to deal with the men on the sideline screaming whoknowswhat at me. Since they all knew Derek he really had to deal with it much worse than I did. Another example of their ridiculousness was perfectly shown during dodge ball. My team won that competition by
the way, but never in my life could I imagine grown men storming onto a dodge ball court interrupting the game to get in a refs face about a call. It was unbelievable. By the end of the week Derek was earnestly pissed off at a lot of people in town for the amount of complaining they threw at him. I did not blame him, but in the end they finished everything and my team ended up getting third place. Apparently is a big deal to place, so each of the top three teams were called up on stage the final night and given medals. That is definitely one of my favorite keepsakes from this trip.
After Semana Cultural Derek planned for us to meet up with some of his friends in a different part of the country to go camping in the rainforest. This worked out well since Derek needed to get out of dodge anyway. We went to the Osa Peninsula which is very close to the border with Panama. The entire southern half of the peninsula is a protected national park. This is a truly pristine environment. Costa Rica probably does a better job of protecting
Lunch Break
Derek getting pushed in the stream. the environment than any other country in Latin America. His two friends have also been in the Peace Corp. for the previous two years. Their Spanish is no different than the locals they live with. The four of us took off from the town of La Palma to a trail that would lead us to the middle of the rainforest to a ranger station called La Sirena. The first day was about an 18 mile hike. Luckily the terrain was plat for the most part, but it was a very long hike. We got in right before the sun came down. The ranger state is right on the coast and has a large covered roof area where you can sleep in a mosquito net or put up a tent. They have a small kitchen as well, but of course like all good national parks they emphasize taking all the trash and everything with you that you brought. It was extremely hot and humid, but being so exhausted it wasn't too hard to get some sleep. The next day we hung around the ranger station and did some small day hikes. There was a river mouth right by the ranger station.
Swimming in the ocean was not advised because lots of bull sharks and Cayman crocks feed right at the mouth of the river. That evening when the tide was coming in we went to the mouth of the river to hopefully see the bull sharks feeding. If it stays light enough they said you could see them all come in and they have a feeding frenzy with all the fish right in the mouth of the river. Unfortunately it got too dark to see anything but we did get a couple glimpses of the crocks. Over the course of the three days we saw many kinds of flora and fauna, all of which there is no way I can list right now. Of the animals I can remember they were: Toucans, Macaws, Tapir, another raccoon-looking, a baby snake(the most poisonous in Costa Rica curled up right in the middle of the trail), FOUR different kinds of monkeys(mostly Spider), Green and Black Poisonous Tree Frog, a big blue and black Beetle, Cayman Crocodile, plenty of other frogs and lizards and a few more things that are escaping my mind at the moment. We were also attacked by Bees at one point,
Ominous Morning
Sunrise on the final day of the hike. but luckily they were not Bumble Bees and did not sting very hard. It was still crazy for a little while running away from the bees through the rainforest. On the third and final day we hiked out to Playa Carate which was another 8-10 miles. Luckily we jumped in with a guide. He plays soccer with one of Derek's buddies in the town his friend lives in. He had us up at 5 am to beat the tide. I say we were lucky to have the guide because we really did barely beat the tide. There was a stretch of the coast where we were pretty much climbing on sharp-edged boulders. The tide was crashing in on us and we really had to hurry. We started with twelve when we left the ranger station and after we got through the part where we had to hike on the coast we only had eight. Don't worry, nothing bad happened to the others. They just had to wait about three hours on the coast for the tide to come down. We saw a couple of them in town that evening and they told us what they did. Anyway it was a
long stretch on the coast that we had to get through and our guide kept saying we had to move, but never showed a lot of anxiety. About the last 200 yards the waves were really crashing in on us and it was kind of scary and intense, but we made it completely soaked and were able to laugh about it right afterwards. From that point on the hike was not too bad and we concentrated a lot more on seeing animals. Having the guide made all the difference in the world. We saw a few things we certainly would not have seen otherwise like the Tapir mom and her baby as well as the poisonous green and black tree frog. The last thirty minutes of the trail was right on the beach. The Pacific was really blue and that was where we saw a number of Macaws flying around us.
I left the guys behind in Costa Rica and made my way to Panama City. It is a very aesthetic city, especially compared to the other Central American capitols. I did not spend a great deal of time there, but I did visit the Panama Canal which I
Group Pic
After the hard stuff and right before the final stretch on the beach. really enjoyed. The first sets of locks on the Pacific side are the Miraflores Locks. I was able to see a large cargo ship pass through them. Her name was the "Eternal Fortune" and she was coming from Hong Kong to somewhere in the Atlantic. There was also a really good museum there that gave a good layout of the history and construction of the canal. They have actually just begun an expansion to the canal. It is really going to boost revenue for the country and will create more jobs as well. This was news to me, I found out in the video they had showing in the museum. The expansion should be complete in 2014 which will be the 100th anniversary for the completion of the original Panama Canal. I spoke to my grandparents that evening about visiting the locks. They went through the entire canal a few years ago on a cruise ship. I believe it is one their favorite trips they have taken; not surprising given the fact my grandfather was an engineer. Someday I hope get back there and go all the way through it as well.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.112s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0613s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Jill Orr
non-member comment
Really enjoyable reading!
Your travel blogs are so nice to read. Paul, you are a good writer. Keep up the exellent explorations!