Roosters to Feather Dusters

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Hola agian....not really in San Isidro but its the closest place...when I go to add an entry it asks me to nominate the place and its not always there!...so we're actually at Domenical on the Atlantic coast...yes, another famous surfing spot!...quite a few surfistas around, the rest of the place is fairly westernised, again the ex-pats run the businesses, and here the places are really strung out .....halfway between the main road and the beach, a bit odd, its all still a few hundred metres from the beach...nowhere has beach views!...except for some places way up on the hill...maybe a conservation thing...about everywhere in CR is a park of sorts..ecotourism has been the big earner here and responsible for a lot of CR's income....and all the tracks off the main road are really badly potholed and they're all full of water, big rains yesterday!.
But back to the Carribean...Puerto Viejo is 60 odd kms past Limon the main port city for Costa Rico...coming intotown we come across huge compounds with mountains of sea containers...like Port Melbourne 10 fold...an old railway line runs down the middle of the road to the wharf area....it all seems remarkably quiet..maybe the business has moved on, only one container ship heading out, not the usual hustle and bustle you associate with ports.....then again, its v carribean....the town is pretty clunky, old timberbuildings with wide eaves and balconies....the usual mash of market stalls, street vendors and the array of dentists, lawyers, official offices.....a huge modern cathedral starting to dominate the city centre, a triumph of blue colourbond corrugated iron and massive concrete superstructure....just hope someone up there appreciates it....
On to Puerto Viejo, a sleepy little beachside town stretching along a couple of streets along the beach, lined with coco palms and the same old timber 2-storey, wide verandah, paint peeling, tin roofers...with a few localslazing around ...offering good ganga to all and sundry...a few cross streets run up away from the beach and gradually peter out into the rain forest....
The businesses range from shmicko-modern to badly decomposing and 90 % are bar/restaurants, accomodations and tourist shops...then theres 3 or 4 scooter and bike hires including Ray and his son from Wales who have just opened a scooter hire place and gave us a lot of inside info on the place.
Good tucker!..2 meals at Stanfords restaurant..owned and run by the vivacious and flirtatious Layli who is having some trouble keepingher chef's mind on the job...and not off the planet!..Italian (the chef) and goodwhen he's there!..also ate at Chilli Rojo, Andrew, pommy, trained in Canadia, lived in Thailand, married a Japanese and has fabulous food...theonly place I've et since Mexico just about that hhas good spices...Andrew has chilli, lemongrass, coriander and other stuff growing in the back yard...and mobs of fresh coconut milk...why isn't everyone using it?...most of the food is pretty bland..lots advertise CarribeanCuisine...butit doesn't seem to mean a great deal...maybe I missed something...
All around the town, and even out on the road, theres always little fires burning and the smell of smoke is constant and not unpleasant...but everywhere someone is rakinga few old cocos together, or a stack of wood, or just burn-offs out in the sticks...helps keep themozzies away too...and Dengue is everywhere!!...
On one of the street corners theres a kids playground behind a 2metre cyclone fence...donated by some charitable foundation from some far away land...bit out of place with a treated pine construction with climbing frame, plastic slides, little fortress towers, hanging walkways and so on....you know the score.....gradually getting overgrown, like everything here....this is a beach town in the off season, you're just waiting for the gardeners to come in and start tarting it up for summer...altho' you only have to blink and everything is overgrown here!...two little girls are desultorily swinging on the metal framed swing set.....even writing this I'm overcome with the lethargy of the place...
But when you sit down fora second, like in one of the bars, and just watch the people going by you start to realise theres a hell of a lot of people in this town...lots of touristas, and curiously about 5 chicas to every guy! ..hmmm....
Out on the road home again...they grow fence posts here!...no kidding, a great idea..they cut fence posts and whack them in the groundandwire them up...then gradually the posts set roots, sprout branches and hey presto...in a few months/years you've got a fence/wall of living vegetation!..too cool
Out on the road there are signs of big, big places...behing the massive walls and elaborate gateways....with driveways disappearing into the jungle with promises of huge mansions with unmentionably luxurious lifestyles...more horse studs I think..all over CR its catle country....sometimes in the middle of nowhere there will be a quarter acre sized block of cleared land with a 2 metre concrete fence, big gateway, and nothing else!...and its been there for a long time...what is going on?...
So, back to the title of this chapter...we caught up with Dave back in San Jose for a presso Wed night.....he had clients and the press coming to the hotel where we stayed, bikes linedup outside...Ted ran a slide show and we talked to the people, did endless set-ups on the bikes for the photogs, gave a few of the chicas rides around the block.....later we went out to research the clubs again...holy cow, more silicone than a Tupperware party...but all just good clean fun...we fled.....next morning the TV crews turned up, one was the most popular daytime show, sort of a Bert and Ernie or whoever...watched by 98% of Costa Ricans...so we ride around the local park following the camera man sitting backwards on Dave's bike!!...then the other crew helped us out by doing theirshoot on the road out of town...only way we would have got out!!...So tomorrow we'll be famous all over CR...but we'll be in Panama!!...bummer dudes.....
So the TV guys and Dave and George, who had come for the ride, turned back....propitiously as it turned out, but also I suspect a home ground advatnage, as a couple of kms further on we hit therain!!...and this was serious downpour, and nowhere to pull over...and no idea of how far to town...and the mountain went up, and up, and up...trying to see far enough ahead to pass the trucks...over the double yellows of course...the only positive is that the cops weren't getting out of their cars in the rain !!...and then I realised it was getting colder!...andthen seriously cold...hey we're in the tropics right?...we stopped at a roadside truckers type place...shivering!!...I'd had the grip heaters on for the last 20 mins....soaking wet, freezing cold, but they had bowls of soup, fabulous, great chunks of carrot, parsnip, other veges and hunks of meat....that was soo good.....then it started raining again but we decided to push on....
Anyway, we got down thru San Isidro and it was warming up...and we were drying out...it takes quite awhile to dry out, especially in the crutch when you're totally soaked thru'...not an altogether pleasant feeling...but I had taken the waterproof liners out way back in Mexico on the belief that wet is OK if hot...and it had proven so ...I just hadn't planned on cold!...I later saw that the mountain was something like 3500 metres high...no wonder it was chilly!!....Up in the mountains we hit rain storms, and rodethru cloud so thick visability was down to about 10 feet, and with wet visors it was tippy toe riding, sharp corners, trucks coming both ways, scary stuff...and the rainforest!...man this is rain forest with a capital J...talk about impenetrable!...you couldn'tmove off the road....back up towards Limon we stopped for abreak in the rainforest...there were tracks leading to the edge and a cross...we peered gingerly over the edge...all very crumbly...like the whole thing could collapseat any time...we inched to the edge and it just dropped away..... hundreds of metres below you could see the tops of the trees.....maybe a few seconds quicker than going over the copper canyon, but just as certain death!!
Soo much more racing around in the tiny.......but time to push on...might make it to the frontir to Panama today or maybe manana....hasta luego...
I hope you don't get this twice!!...forgot the links...Ted's got some more photos up at www.tedgrambeau.com and Grant's at
http:homepage.mac.com/gforbes3

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