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Published: April 19th 2010
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Extreme water sport indeed
This wasn´t the worst of it, but I like the irony Well today was the first time I´ve seen sunshine in over a week... For the tropics we weren´t doing very well weatherwise.
After my tour finished on last Saturday, I had planned to head back up to La Fortuna as that was where most of the river-action was, and i wanted to go whitewater rafting. So after checking out of the hotel in San Jose I was left to my own devices for the first time on this trip... I wasn´t particularly looking forward to it because despite my attempts to master Spanish before I left, I barely understood anything beyond "hello, how are you?", and Costa Ricans didn´t speak as much English as I´d hoped (though I hate that I expect it).
But I managed to get a cab to the correct bus terminal and buy a ticket by joining the only queue I could see. From there I remembered the best way to figure things like this out is to look for other backpacks... Their owners are likely to be the same way you are, or at least more likely to speak English. So following this logic I safely made it to La Fortuna on a public
Spotted Eagle Ray
It´s hard to judge size here - it was probably about a metre and a half wide bus, which only cost US$4 for a four hour trip... Made me wonder how much a similar trip would have cost in NZ, or if you could even do it.
Getting off the bus and grabbing my bag, I noticed a Kathmandu pack with a New Zealand flag on it. So i flashed my cap (which has the outline of the country on it) and struck up a conversation with the owner of said pack - Cam. Cam was also carrying a fairly large dry-bag, so when I questioned him about it he confessed he had come to La Fortuna to work at a whitewater rafting place. Knowing that NZ was likely to have higher qualification requirements than Costa Rica, I figured the safety of an outfit with a kiwi on staff had to better than the rest, so I booked in with Cam´s employer a few days later...
When the van arrived at the hostel to pick me up there were already about 15 people in it. From there we drove to another hostel, where three guys who looked to be about mid-thirties and about as blatantly European as you could get (one of them was wearing
Nom nom nom
Turtle munching on coral a scarf! Just as an accessory... in 30+ degree heat, on their way to a rafting trip). Once we´d picked everyone up we went round the bus saying our names and where we were from and low and behold, these guys were Spanish. and how.
Once we got to the launch point, we had to split into boats - there were going to be four boats (and three kayaks puttering around helping anyone that fell in and looking ahead for obstacles etc... see, I knew this was going to be a well-run operation). There was one family of five, and another group of five or six people, so they were easy boats to put together, than a couple of couples, so off they went... Then when it came to me the guy asks if I´ve done rafting before, to which I replid "yeah, a couple of times"... "Right, you can go with them" and nods towards the Spaniards, who by this stage had stripped down to tattos and hotpants and were presently juggling with the oars...
There nothing like being thrown down a grade IV river with a guide who´s lative language is Spanish, and three mad spaniards
who don´t speak a word of English, to make you learn Spanish pretty quickly. Aliente - row forward, atras - row backwards, fuerte - harder!! To be fair, they were really fun, every now and then getting all riled up and banging oars above our heads, and chanting lords-knows-what to keep a paddling rhythm.
After the rafting we stopped off for lunch, where I sat back with the English-speakers, and one of them tilted their head towards the spaniards and asked me "do you know those guys? are they really rock stars?" classic
After all that excitement, I made my way back to San Jose in order to fly out to Cancun, en route to Cozumel. The flight got a bit bumpy cos we were flying through some bad weather, and once we landed it was pretty clear that the bad weather we not confined to atmospheric levels - it was bucketing down!! It got so bad that I suggested to the taxi driver that he might want to pull over and wait for it to pass, cos you couldn´t see more than a metre in front of you. But he soldiered on and dropped me at the
ferry building for the boat ride over to Cozumel, during which the swell was so big I decided if I took my eyes off the horizon I might loose my lunch.
Once safely on land (which was anything but dry) I walked the couple of blocks to my hostel and managed to stride over the worst torrents coming down the streets, but when I went back downstairs with the intention of crossing the road to the nearest restaurant for dinner, the gutters were so flooded there was no way I could jump over those puddles - I had to go back upstairs, put my flip-flops on and just wade straight through them.
These scenes continued for the next three days, with a few hours respite every now and then between torrential downpoars.
But luckily the one place where it doesn´t matter if it´s raining cats and dogs (my hostel doesn´t qualify - two out of the three windows leaked like sieves and the power went out at least once due to the rain... and don´t even get me started on the outside kitchen) is when you´re already underwater - scuba diving!!
Now, I hadn´t dived sine
the liveaboard in Thailand back in 2006, so I was feeling a little rusty. So on Thursday I went for a "refresher course", which was just reminding you about a few important skills, like what to do if you run out of air etc, and once the skills were out of the way, we just swam around the harbour a bit, getting used to the feeling again. It was a really good way to just get the old confidence back again after so long out of the water, and man! I´d forgotten how awesome diving is! I mean, I´ve been to some crazy places in the last few years, but there is NOWHERE more foreign than underwater. Just swimming around in the harbour was amazing cos there were a bunch of sunken ships and the ruins of the old wharf and stuff, so eery with the fish all swimming around them and stuff.
So the following day I went diving proper, out to the coral reefs for which Cozumel is famous. I opted to hire an underwater camera to see if I could capture some of the crazy critters that hang around down there, and in one dive, we
managed to see a spotted eagle ray, about four turtles, a nurse shark as well as all sorts of cool fish.
Then yesterday, while still in the rain, I went on a mexican cooking course, with this lovely old mexican woman - Josefina. It was great - we started with a trip to the local market to buy all the ingredients, then to the little tortilla factory that churn out fresh tortillas (although we just bought the corn-meal, cos we were making our own tortillas). Then back to her place were we learnt how to make two signature Yucatan (this part of Mexico) dishes - stuffed chillis (stuffed with fruit and pork mince, then covered in a creamy sauce... so yummy!) and this stuffed cheese dish which was introduced to mexico by the dutch pirates (who bought their big balls of edam with them from Holland), but then the mexicans put their own spin on it by wrapping it in banana leaves to cook it. So rich and cheezy... yum yum yum. So with too much food and a couple of mango margharita´s, we left Josefina´s looking for a hammock for a nice siesta.
which brings us to today - my last full day in Cozumel, and the sun finally comes out! Tomorrow I head back to the mainland to Tulum for the Cenotes, aka freshwater swimming holes in the jungle... or Where I Belong.
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Simon
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Yes, you can catch freaken buses in NZ. In January is cost me $41 for a seven hour trip between Auckland and Napier. Maybe someone needs to get her backpack out in her homeland once in a while. I don't know why I'm pretending to be offended, I'm not really. Keep up the epic writing.