La Costa Rica
The story is the same. All day on a bus, arrive late, some hassle finding a place to stay, ending up in a slightly peculiar hotel or hostel. This time, it was a hostel called Galileo in the La Sabana area of San Jose, Costa Rica´s capital. The rooms are about six feet wide, four feet of which is a bunk bed. Bathrooms are shared and are about twice the size of each bedroom. There`re "Smoking of Marijuana is Prohibited" signs on every flat surface but the place reeks of pot almost constantly. Reception has a wall of 50+ travel books in Hebrew, the billboard is covered in Hebrew notes, there`re Hebrew placards on walls. I asked if the owners were Israeli and was told that the owners and all workers are Colombian, but that 85% of their guests are Israeli. I guess Galileo is more highly recommended in the Hebrew guide books than the English ones.
After the first night, we got in contact with a family friend named Richard who lives in the hills outside the city. He has a small guest house that he has setup as a studio for his rolfing work and he offered to let us stay there for the few days we`d be in San Jose. A warm shower, a comfortable futon mattress, safety, and best of all, free. We set up camp there and then went back down into the city center to stroll around. For a country with legal 18+ prostitution, an unbelievably huge problem with under age sex tourism, descriptions by locals as "a city of whores," and guide book admonitions like "be careful -- any friendly woman you meet may be a hooker!" -- I was expecting more. San Jose feels like any other large Latin American city. If it`s really "overrun with whores" or whatever, either it`s fairly well confined to the red light districts or I just don`t know what real Costa Rican hookers look like. It`s possible, I think, that with it legalized, there`s less need for all the pageantry of electric blue eye-liner and fishnet thigh-highs. Maybe legalized prostitution means there`s something for everyone and they have a bell curve with standard deviations leaving you with a lot of average, rather mousy hookers that I see but don`t notice and only a few real outliers in micro-minis and 6" fuck-me pumps.
Alden was eager to see some nature the next day and I didn`t mind the idea. We talked about it as we wandered the city, eventually settling on Monteverde.
Monteverde is a very small town up in the hills somewhat close to San Jose, at the edge of a cloud forest area. Originally founded by Quakers (Friends) and still pretty heavy with their influence (schools, libraries, etc). It seemed chock full of interesting "nature stuff." A 5a wake-up got us down to the city and on to a bus leaving at 6:30a and we were in Monteverde by noon.
That afternoon, we hiked up to a tree with a French man named Phillippe and an American woman named Erin. "The tree" was highly recommended by one of the hostel owners. It was a very large tree which was completely wrapped by a strangler vine which eventually killed the tree inside. The vine is thick and strong, a "wood" itself, and the end result is that the lattice work of the vine which surrounded the tree remains while the inside of it, where the tree was, is completely empty. It forms a large tube, of sorts, soaring up into the canopy, which you can climb inside of and then climb up to the top of. I was the first one in, climbing barefoot and hoping spiders and snakes wouldn`t bite my toes. It took about ten minutes to climb the sixty feet or so up to the top, the tube opening up onto large branches where it was possible to stand and look out over the valley and town below. All four of us were eventually at the top, marvelling at how cool this was, birth canal jokes abound, looking down and remembering what the hostel owner said when he told us how to get to the tree: "If you fall, you`re DEFINITELY dead."
I have pictures which I hope will do justice to it.
We ended up spending the rest of our time in Monteverde with Phillippe and Erin. Erin turned out to be a photographer and screen printer on vacation from Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she works in a museum. Cool, casual, a seasoned world traveler. Phillippe lives outside Paris and works as a radio personality on a rock station, reviewing comic books, video games, and extreme sports. He`s a dynamo, bubbling with energy, babbling in English, Spanish, French, telling absurdly funny stories about "cafe con piernas" in Chile and why he has a pirate flag tattooed on his calf. (And his more serious side: we talked about Hakim Bey´s "TAZ," the sociopolitical side of anarchism, and Chomsky.) After the tree, the four of us on an hour-long guided tour at a "frog zoo," seeing 20 or so different species and learning about how some have poisonous glands filled with formic acid from eating ants and termites, and others (males) sing in chorus to attract a mate even though only one of them will get to do the deed.
From the "ranario" it was straight to a guided two-hour night hike through the cloud forest area. (Yes, we were hemorrhaging money to do all this stuff, minus the free strangler vine tree.) With an apathetic guide and the world`s worst flashlight batteries, we saw a few beautiful orange and black tarantulas, a sloth with a baby (so far up in a tree that it looked like little more than a brownish smear), a couple of snakes, and some sleeping birds (unmoving, like indistinct, little puffy sponges on branches). I`m not sure what my expectations were going in, but I felt disappointed. I wasn`t expecting to come face to face with a jaguar, but a monkey or even a brightly colored exotic bird would´ve been nice.
The next morning, it was the four of us again, going up to an area setup as a zip-line tour of the cloud forest and canopy. This was really a lot of fun. They have 15 zip-lines setup in the jungle, through the trees, or over the top of the canopy. You wear rain suits, strap on a harness, and then fly past trees ("like broccoli," the guide book says) as you zip through the air on a half inch metal cable 1500 feet long, one leather-gloved hand on the line to add friction so you can slow down before you hit the tree at the end of the cable. The day also included a "Tarzan swing" (I have video of both my turn and Alden`s) and a walk across some large suspension bridges up over the canopy. I suspect all the photos will look like, "Oh, boy... more forest... green...leaves" and not capture what it`s like to stand in the middle of the rain forest, surrounded by fog, every cubic centimeter around you teeming with life.
We returned to San Jose that evening so we could sleep another night at Richard`s before Alden had to go to the airport at 5am Sunday morning to fly back to the States.
After the first night, we got in contact with a family friend named Richard who lives in the hills outside the city. He has a small guest house that he has setup as a studio for his rolfing work and he offered to let us stay there for the few days we`d be in San Jose. A warm shower, a comfortable futon mattress, safety, and best of all, free. We set up camp there and then went back down into the city center to stroll around. For a country with legal 18+ prostitution, an unbelievably huge problem with under age sex tourism, descriptions by locals as "a city of whores," and guide book admonitions like "be careful -- any friendly woman you meet may be a hooker!" -- I was expecting more. San Jose feels like any other large Latin American city. If it`s really "overrun with whores" or whatever, either it`s fairly well confined to the red light districts or I just don`t know what real Costa Rican hookers look like. It`s possible, I think, that with it legalized, there`s less need for all the pageantry of electric blue eye-liner and fishnet thigh-highs. Maybe legalized prostitution means there`s something for everyone and they have a bell curve with standard deviations leaving you with a lot of average, rather mousy hookers that I see but don`t notice and only a few real outliers in micro-minis and 6" fuck-me pumps.
Alden was eager to see some nature the next day and I didn`t mind the idea. We talked about it as we wandered the city, eventually settling on Monteverde.
Monteverde is a very small town up in the hills somewhat close to San Jose, at the edge of a cloud forest area. Originally founded by Quakers (Friends) and still pretty heavy with their influence (schools, libraries, etc). It seemed chock full of interesting "nature stuff." A 5a wake-up got us down to the city and on to a bus leaving at 6:30a and we were in Monteverde by noon.
That afternoon, we hiked up to a tree with a French man named Phillippe and an American woman named Erin. "The tree" was highly recommended by one of the hostel owners. It was a very large tree which was completely wrapped by a strangler vine which eventually killed the tree inside. The vine is thick and strong, a "wood" itself, and the end result is that the lattice work of the vine which surrounded the tree remains while the inside of it, where the tree was, is completely empty. It forms a large tube, of sorts, soaring up into the canopy, which you can climb inside of and then climb up to the top of. I was the first one in, climbing barefoot and hoping spiders and snakes wouldn`t bite my toes. It took about ten minutes to climb the sixty feet or so up to the top, the tube opening up onto large branches where it was possible to stand and look out over the valley and town below. All four of us were eventually at the top, marvelling at how cool this was, birth canal jokes abound, looking down and remembering what the hostel owner said when he told us how to get to the tree: "If you fall, you`re DEFINITELY dead."
I have pictures which I hope will do justice to it.
We ended up spending the rest of our time in Monteverde with Phillippe and Erin. Erin turned out to be a photographer and screen printer on vacation from Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she works in a museum. Cool, casual, a seasoned world traveler. Phillippe lives outside Paris and works as a radio personality on a rock station, reviewing comic books, video games, and extreme sports. He`s a dynamo, bubbling with energy, babbling in English, Spanish, French, telling absurdly funny stories about "cafe con piernas" in Chile and why he has a pirate flag tattooed on his calf. (And his more serious side: we talked about Hakim Bey´s "TAZ," the sociopolitical side of anarchism, and Chomsky.) After the tree, the four of us on an hour-long guided tour at a "frog zoo," seeing 20 or so different species and learning about how some have poisonous glands filled with formic acid from eating ants and termites, and others (males) sing in chorus to attract a mate even though only one of them will get to do the deed.
From the "ranario" it was straight to a guided two-hour night hike through the cloud forest area. (Yes, we were hemorrhaging money to do all this stuff, minus the free strangler vine tree.) With an apathetic guide and the world`s worst flashlight batteries, we saw a few beautiful orange and black tarantulas, a sloth with a baby (so far up in a tree that it looked like little more than a brownish smear), a couple of snakes, and some sleeping birds (unmoving, like indistinct, little puffy sponges on branches). I`m not sure what my expectations were going in, but I felt disappointed. I wasn`t expecting to come face to face with a jaguar, but a monkey or even a brightly colored exotic bird would´ve been nice.
The next morning, it was the four of us again, going up to an area setup as a zip-line tour of the cloud forest and canopy. This was really a lot of fun. They have 15 zip-lines setup in the jungle, through the trees, or over the top of the canopy. You wear rain suits, strap on a harness, and then fly past trees ("like broccoli," the guide book says) as you zip through the air on a half inch metal cable 1500 feet long, one leather-gloved hand on the line to add friction so you can slow down before you hit the tree at the end of the cable. The day also included a "Tarzan swing" (I have video of both my turn and Alden`s) and a walk across some large suspension bridges up over the canopy. I suspect all the photos will look like, "Oh, boy... more forest... green...leaves" and not capture what it`s like to stand in the middle of the rain forest, surrounded by fog, every cubic centimeter around you teeming with life.
We returned to San Jose that evening so we could sleep another night at Richard`s before Alden had to go to the airport at 5am Sunday morning to fly back to the States.
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