'Pura Vida' in Costa Rica

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'100% natural', this is the attractionthat draws the hordes to Costa Rica. More than 27% of the country is protected and severe penalties are enforced for tree-felling, hunting and illegal animal trade. This is not to say that it does not still happen but Costa Rica is noticeably greener and less developed than it's northerly neighbours.

The 'pure life' is what Tico's strive for - keeping it natural and taking it easy has allowed the nation to live up to it's namesake 'Rich Coast'. The name was given by the Spanish who received a hefty gold bounty during an exploratory trip here. Upon discovering little actual mineral wealth, the country was largely left alone and avoided the bitter battles and heavy colonisation of other nations. By these standards the past has been relatively calm with only a few uprisings and a brief civil war to speak of. In 1929, women and blacks were even allowed the vote, the military was abolished and the National Liberation Front even received a Nobel Prize for Peace. Now, every Tico has the right to a free education and health care, though some are still living below the poverty line, it is rare to find beggars on the streets.

Immediately after crossing the border, I could see the difference, for example, the nice cafe with a tasty looking buffet and clean toilets. The countryside was green and dense with foliage, towns are cleaner with nicer shops and no street vendors. The houses looked better cared for and bus stations are less frenetic.

Our first port of call was Playa Samara and since Trish and I had met hostel owner Brian on the bus, we went to stay at his place. Now our pockets noticed the difference, the only hostel in town was three times what we've been used to paying - from $5 up to $15 (at least breakfast was included)! The Nicoya Penninsula on the Pacific Coast is a prety spot but not very authentic. There has been a lot of foreign investment here and some beach villages are now purely American furnished with Subway and Starbucks. Despite it's devlopment and popularity with surfers I still woke up to the roar of howler monkeys and watched iguanas feed on left-over fruit peelings from breakfast.

Further down the coast at Playa xx we took the remnants of last night's barbecued chicken and enlisted the help of local boys to taunt the crocs into snapping for it. They tied said chicken to a rope and dangled it over the swamp tempting the scaly beasts out from hiding. I thought it was a bit cruel to keep on jerking the rope out of the croc's grasp but the reptile always won, sometimes snapping a piece of rope into the bargain. As the boy's bravado grew, so did their antics, they lured one scaly beast onto the path much to the horror of the onlookers, who had now pulled over to take a gander. The boys were egging each other on to climb the mangroves, hanging with one hand and dangling the rope with the other. Both a diabolical and hilarious morning's entertainment!

After Samara, we rushed to the capital San Jose for Trish's last stop before her flight home. It's not the prettiest of cities and we were disappointed to find most of the museums closed. Tramping around the city in the pouring rain was not too much fun either until I found a shop selling cheap plastic ponchos - I chose a green number, it's deeply fashionable!

The Gold and Jade musums were expenive but informative excursions. The numismatic sectioln actually made old bank note illustrations interesting and we learnt a lot about the significance of certain plants, ie. Laurlllel indicates xx powere and an oak tree signifies strebgth. I will say they have some incredibly detailed artistry on their notes historically tracing coffee productionl and fruit exportation and today illustratin dolphins and hammerhead sharks.

So itwas goodbye to Trish and hello to Suzanne who whad eventually caught up after her passport episode. A word of note; 'She-wees and mosquito nets are an unnecessary burden in Central America. Although the 'She-wee' finally got used as a Guaro funnel; Trish refused to wear the mosquito net as a veil on her final pub crawl.

Perhaps the most culturally high-brow expereince I've had recently was to the Art and Design Museum's opening exhibition of Spanish design - 100 gloriously cool chairs!

Caratago is less than an hour away from San Jose the capital but feels a lot more relaxed - apart from the idiot revving his motorbike outside the hotel at 3.00am. Cartago is most famous for its Basilica which houses a much revered black Virgin who has proved her amazing healing powers. The most devout, or most desperate, shuffle up the aisle on their knees to ask for help, an annual pilgrimage here sees more than a million people arriving to pray. The other attraction in town is the Lankester Botanical Gardens, which feature a stunning array of well-maintained tropical plants and an orchid house.

The leaflet for Vocan Irazu made it sound very attractive, and indeed it was but the $8 bus journey and $10 park entry were a bit steep. On the plus side it was cold and windy up there which can be a welcome change after weeks of sweltering heat. The crater lake is a luminous green but can also change, chameleon like, to green depending on chemical variants. After you've looked at that, then a walk around the scrub of the peripheral crater is quite nice and we found a dead armadillo and saw baby hummingbirds. 'Listen to the magic of nature' says the leaflet, well I was trying but there happened to be a rockband and TV crew recording music for a commercial on this day.

Having exhausted all the possibilities of Cartago we moved a mere 12k down the road to Orosi, not even worthy of it's own headline in the LP. Probably a good thing because it was the prettiest and most authentic place I went to in Costa Rica. There was one hostel/Spanish school in town and plenty of hiking/bathing activities - without the high price-tag of elsewhere. The self-guided hike to 'High Mountain pass' was a 6 hour tramp through small villages, pine forest and a coffee plantation, exiting through someone's farm with a 'prohibido paso' sign on the gate. Unfortunately the swimming holes and natural hot springs had become torrents of raging water with all the rain. What a lovely hostel though, rustic and rural, the rooms were a hodge-podge of different materials and grass grew up under the corrugated plastic walls and I was woken by the slightly unnerving sound of a horse snuffling just outside the window. The people of Orosi couldn't have been friendlier and had plenty of time to stop and chat over the sale of carrots or ice-lollies.

From here we took a long and convoluted journey to Puerto Viejo, silently wishing we'd gone back to San Jose instead of taking the scenic route. The famous 'Rocking J's' hostel had a sign on the gate warning customers not to leave alone day or night. 'Yes, there have been a lot of robberies, I wouldn't stay here' said the receptionist. Neither did we and took a taxi back to town. Next morning we headed out to hire bikes for the jungle cycle ride to Manzanillo, just on the edge of town a large crowd was gathered and cops were taking pictures of last nights murder victim, who was only half covered by a blanket. 'What body' said the guy on reception in our hotel, 'Oh, that body, just a local, just a gang, nothing for you to worry about'. Right, kind of changed the atmosphere though to be honest, I didn't like the place to begin with. Far too developed from the little surf town it began life as, now just shops, restaurants and dodgy rasta guys hanging around on the street. So the next morning we headed for Panama and so the rest of this blog continues three weeks later...

...After the torture of a freezing cold night bus from Panama City, I was glad to be crossing the border and heading to the Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsular. It is a much revered destination for it's diversity of wildlife, described by the National Geographic Magazine as "the most biologically intense place on Earth". I based myself in Puerto Jimenez a small town on the Golfo Dulce. Virtually all of the peninsular is national park and the wildlife knows no limits; I spotted seven Scarlett MacCaws in a tree by the airport and there's a crocodile lagoon in the centre of town where the hungry crocs wait patiently under the mangroves for one of the young Herons or Ibises nesting above to fall.

The tours in Costa Rica are extraordinarily expensive so I decided to go it alone for the day despite the poisonous snake/scorpion/wasp warnings. The entrance to the park is 3.5km down a spectacular beach, amongst all the hiking shoe prints I tracked those of a puma on the wet sand, saw spider monkeys in the trees, an unidentified bird of prey, a brown snake slithered accross my path and the forest floor was alive with lizards and hermit crabs. I also saw what I thought were a family of peacocks but I actually think were Great Carrasows - I guess this is what you need the guide for! Apart from the strong waves they tell you to keep out of the sea because of the viscious bull-sharks that roam the waters here. Maybe it was the red shirt that I was wearing sending out a warning signal but I kept seeing a pair of Scarlet MacCaws screeching above me through the forest canopy.

The people in town are very proud of where they live, 'there is no delinquency here' said Emlia, the dueña of Hotel Oro Verde and promptly invited me to visit her home. So I had a tour of their Finca from husband Ascension, 'Chon' for short which is the most 'Grand Design' without the 'grandness' I've ever seen. They have basically built a house with no walls, even the bathroom opens outwards onto a view of the forest, the lounge is open to the warm air (no one round here would steal anything they said) and the bedroom is a tent on the sleeping platform. We ate star fruit and guava from the garden, admired the stunning view and talked about following your dreams.

Last stop Monteverde, a cloud forest reserve founded by a group of Quakers avoiding national conscription in the US. They set up a dairy herd and protected the forest, though the beauty has attracted the tourist hordes and yet again the backpacker is priced out of activities, well those like me who refuse to pay $17 to see some trees. As it was, I took the only 'free' trail out of town up Cerro de Amigos and was lucky enough to see a pack of howler monkeys in the trees; normally they are hard to spot despite being able to hear their howl for miles around. Bad luck for the French guy at the hostel who'd shelled out $30 for a tour at 6am and saw nothing.

So, adios to Costa Rica it's certainly an excellent destination for flora and fauna and a great introduction to Latin America for the seasoned tourist. Though for those who like things a bit rougher round the edges, it's a bit too easy and clean...so off I go, back to dirty chicken buses!

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Photos

Dancing in the rain...
I was so happy to finally get the poncho I'd been searching for for ages!

Hello Coati!!
They're famous for being tame, and greedy, ths one even let you stroke it!

Puma prints on the beach
I know this for a fact - the warden had a chart!

What a view!
This is what happens when you hike in a cloud forest zone in the rainy season!