Orosi - Costa Rica

Cooling down in the Highlands

After a month and a half on the beach, sweltering in the humidity and baking in the unabated sunshine, I, needed a break from the hot weather. Therefore, after thumbing through my Moon's Guide to Costa Rica, I decided to head to a small town in the chilly foothills of the Cartago mountain region and Cloudforest.

Orosi is a small village in a river valley by the same name that straddles the Tapatini Cloudforest to the East and Irazu Volcano National Park to its North. Most of the residents in this moist and chilly place are farmers growing coffee and fruits in the fertile hillsides along the river. What drew me to this particular location was it's proximity to San Jose, only an hour or so away by bus, but also it's relative obscurity among mainstream travelers. With no zipline tours or white-water rafting like other Highland destinations, Orosi has been left free of western development. What it did have however, and what drew my interests, was freshwater fishing for trout in its many mountain rivers.

Accompanying me, was a friend I had made in Jaco, a guy named Simon, who seemed, up til this point to have lived the exact same life as me, except in Canada. He's 25, graduating at the same time that I did (he even did a year abroad in sydney, Australia at UNSW, though he was the there the semester after I was). He had recently left his job back home and decided to get a one way ticket to Latin America. He started his trip around the same time as me (actually the day before I did) and was traveling roughly the same route as me too. And, as an added bonus he also had a friend flying in to San Jose at the end of the week and was killing time until they got here. So, when I told him about Orosi, he was game to come along, not so much for the fishing but for the weather. He's a surfer and, during his many hours spent on the water in the sun, had somehow managed to burn his retinas not once, but twice. He figured a couple days in a rainy mountain town might be just the remedy his burning eyes.

It was great, though not exactly what either of us had hoped for. The town itself was a one road hamlet that, though being virtually devoid of nightlife and a social scene was charming and inviting at the same time. We also found that our hostel had a language school with the best prices I had seen seen since Guatemala. The town was also dirt cheap (for Costa Rica). We paid $6.50 for a bed and about 25 cents an hour for Internet.

It also has some great hiking trails. We took trips to a local coffee farm and got a tour by Pepe, a 73 native who had been farming coffee his whole life. We also took another hike along a river to a natural hot springs. I was starting to think that maybe I could spend some time in a place like this, take some Spanish courses, volunteer at a local Finca, that sort of thing. Of course that would all depend on the fishing.

Convincing Simon to accompany me with a purchase of a six pack of tall cans, we woke up at 6am the next morning and took a bus 8km up a washed out dirt track to the small outpost of Purisil, more so a collection of huts than a village, and walked 3km along a pristine river valley near the entrance of Tapatini national park. We came to Kiki, a trout farm along the side of the road, and persuaded the owner to let us borrow some fishing lines to use in the nearby river. He told us there was no Trucha (trout) to be found there, but having heard otherwise, I persisted and he let us have some line and a hook (no rod though).

For the next three hours, Simon and I walked through fields of cow shit and chest high brush drowning bait in a fishless river. Finally, at 11:30am, satisfied that there was nothing else to do, we started drinking. By noon we had almost finished our supply of beer and decided we'd head back to Kiri, catch some trout out of there stocked ponds and eat lunch there.

Trekking back through the cow shit fields proved to be a little more trying after a couple tall cans and we emerged back on the road completely covered from the waist down in a brown clumpy liquid. We washed off in a nearby stream, Simon deciding it would be best for him to to just lye down in the water as to completely soak himself clean while I was satisfied with a quick rinse of the legs after which and we returned to the farm. With a slight bit of hesitation and constant supervision the owner allowed us to fish the ponds where I quickly landed two 13in trout. With a pond about the size of a kiddy pool filled to the brim with hungry farm trout it wasn't even sport. But, that didn't stop us from taking it up to the restaurant and having them cook it up for us as we guzzled down three more beers and a couple shots to celibate our catch.

Not wanting to embark on a drunken stumble all the way back to the bus stop in wet clothes, I cornered a group of young Ticos as they were getting into there car and asked them if we they were going through Orosi. This was a trick question because I well knew that there was only one road out and that had to go to Orosi, I thought myself very clever for this. When they hesitantly nodded I asked if we may then, since they were going that way anyway, get a ride. After they consulted for a few minutes, probably to consider the possibility of Simon or I becoming sick in their car, they put down some plastic and waved us in.

We got back to town and immediately went to the supermarket for more beer, though we both knew we didn't need anymore. We returned to the hostel drinking and playing with the local dogs along the way and promptly passed out in our bunks. That was at 4:30 in the afternoon. We didn't get up again until 7am the following morning.

So, while I can't say that our fishing venture was a big success, we both loved the town and our time there. I am seriously considering going back for a week or two for Spanish school and, yes more fishing, though this time I might bring along a proper fishing rod and leave the tall cans at home.

Jaco - Costa Rica

So apparently my luck was not as good as I made it out to be in my previous post. I say this because the job that I said I had, the one I so arrogantly boasted about attaining doing virtually nothing, yeah well, it kinda fell through. And, by fell through I mean I never really got it apparently. I called the boat owner, who sounded excited to have me aboard and gave me instructions to call the captain to make arrangements and a schedule. I did as told, but for four days, all I got was his answering machine. Then, when I tried to call the owner back he didn´t answer my calls either. That, coupled with my regrets about agreeing to be a bar manager for a local Mexican restaurant (essentially the same job I fled from back in the States) gave me enough reason to pack up my bag on a Thursday morning and catch the early bus out of town, leaving any an all obligations in my wake. So, finally, after two and a half weeks, I said goodbye to Tamarindo, without much to show for it.

I decided to head back to Jaco, the infamous town chronicled in an earlier blog as a prostitute and drug infested shit hole. You might be asking yourself, why would I, with all the amazing destinations in Costa Rica, select this one, and, it is indeed a good question, but I had my reasons. Playa Herradura, a town just 2km to the north of Jaco is home to the exclusive Marriott resort and Los Suenos, the biggest Marina in Costa Rica. I had received word that most of the countries charter fishing comes out of this dock and it would be the best place to seek employment.

After landing in Jaco in the early afternoon, I checked into the Hostel de Hann which turned out to be a great place. Complete with cheap clean rooms, a communal kitchen set on an outdoor terrace overlooking a small private pool, and FREE INTERNET! This place had all the extras needed for survival in this otherwise sad town. Plus, the people staying here were really cool and I made some friends right away. We all ended up socializing on the terrace after dinner and sampling the bar scene later on that night.

I awoke late the following morning and headed out to Los Suenos on an outbound public bus. This turned to be a mistake, as it took over an hour and a half to reach Herradura (remember, only 2km away) due to frequent stops to pickup (what seemed like) every middle schooler in Central America, as they headed home for lunch. So, close to midday I got off at the resort´s gated entry and walked 1.5km to the Marina.

Now, I am by no means an expert on maritime nor have I seen many Marinas, but Los Suenos has got to be one of the premier fishing destinations in the world if not the universe. Costa Rica is often considered one of the best locations for sportfishing and this seemed to attract the elitists of the sport. Every slip, and there were over 200 of them, was occupied by a boat worth well over a million dollars, some much, much more. An average day trip on one of these vessles cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000. Some of the best and most coveted fishing tournaments are held here each year earning it the reputation as the British Open of sportfishing. In a word, it was serious fishing for serious fishermen. I guess that´s seven words.

So image then, that a groggy-eyed, scruffy faced gringo, lobster-red and soaked in sweat from walking in the midday sun, comes panting up to your 3 million dollar Sunsetter mumbling something about wanting a job though he´s never worked on a boat before and could only do it for a week or so on account of having to meet up with his friend who was flying in to San Jose. Samuel L. Jackson would have a better chance at joining the KKK then I did of cracking in on one of these outfits. The funny thing is, I knew it, but I still persisted because I thought, if anything, it would be good to see what they were looking for and how much they paid. That would be a challenge in itself since the guards, seeing that I was not a person of affluence, wouldn´t even let me down on the dock for the first hour saying I needed to get someone to vouch for me first. Eventually, I was able to use my backpack as collateral and was given a pass and the illustriously opportunity to grace there platforms and talk with some captains.

I did interview on one boat, a 45 foot Yacht called the High Tide out of Incest Alabama or Roadkill South Carlina or some place like that. The captain was nice enough, and was indeed looking for help, but he wanted a deckhand with experience, a six month commitment, and a resume, non of which I could give him.

I stopped in at a charter office on my way out and asked the guy behind the counter if he knew anyway I could get on a boat for a week just to learn how to crew. He laughed in my face and told me that I needed six to eight months on a boat to really learn how to work a fishing boat and that I couldnt' learn anything in a week. He then launched into a pre-rehearsed speech about the idiosyncrasies of ocean fishing and how one has to have a vast amount of knowledge about boats, fish, and the ocean before even asking to be let on a charter. He then informed me that most of the mates at this marina had gone to the maritime academy to get there positions, showing that they were "really dedicated to the art of sportfishing."

I had to hold myself back from laughing as I walked back to the bus stop. I am fly fisherman and indeed believe in the subtle nuances of baiting, hooking, and landing a prise fish, but this guy was trying to turn paint by numbers into a Rembrandt. I coudn't tell if he was serious or if he was just trying to take the piss out of me. I hope it was the later because anyone who thinks that you need a PHD in Aero Science to put a little plastic thing with a hook in the water, drag it behind a boat where ever your GPS tells you to and drink beer until you hear the line snap forward has been out in the Costa Rican sun too long. Yet, then again, I can't knock it to much, seeing as that I have been trying, without much success I might add, to get a job doing just that.

So, with no possibility of employment and nothing tying me to Jaco, I think I´ll leave the hot sunny beaches for a few days and cool off in the chilly highlands and await my friends arrival at the end of the week.

Tamarindo - Costa Rica

Not originally part of my Costa Rican itinerary -- many independent travelers find it to be an overdeveloped tourist trap -- I opted to go to Tamarindo because a) Patrik, my Swedish surfing companion was looking for good waves and b) I, hearing they had a good stock of fish and sailboats, was looking for a job as a first mate. Additionally, I had visited Tamarindo on a family vacation two years before and wanted to see how it had changed in that time. Boy, had it.

When our dust filled bus rolled out of the foothills to the shoreline of Tamrindo with the last rays of sun disappeared over the horizon, I could see though the shadows and twilight that this was an entirely different place from what I remembered. Where mom and pop shops once lined the road leading into town now stood small mini malls and souvenir shops. Where once stood local restaurants sampling local flavors, now were American food chains like Pizza Hut, Burger King, and TCBY. I could see why backpackers and ecotourists would be turned off by this town´s blatant sell out to American Imperialism. And, along with this influx of conglomerates and high rise condos, crime and prostitution have also infiltrated the town. It leaves you wondering why the locals would allow this to happen.

But its not that simple, and many who live in Tamrindo, natives and transplants alike, are up in arms fighting developers to try and save what little of its previous charm remains. Many Gringos who live here, most of whom for over 20 years, are all part of local boards and community groups trying to stay this over-development. But, I'm afraid to say, they have little chance against the powers of Western money which the Costa Rican government welcomes with open greedy arms.

As a traveler however, Tamarindo is not that bad. There is a steady flow of young parting tourists and plenty of places to get a drink and with deluge of eatetiers, you get an abundence of choices at competitive prices. Plus, with a decent beach, and host of cheap apartment and room rentals, I thought this would be a good place, in spite of all its Americanisms, to settle in for a few weeks and find a job. I had asperations of becoming a deckhand or mate on a local fishing boat for a few weeks. That would prove to be a lot harder then I thought.

I spent the better part of two weeks looking for work without success. I would go down to the 'docks' in the early mornings trying to talk my way onto a boat but, being the middle of the high season, the captains already had there crew and didn't have time to train a new recruit. In town, there was a bunch of restaurants and bars but they couldn't hire you unless you had working papers, a thing unobtainable unless you lived in Costa Rica for two years or married a Tica girl, both of which I was not prepared to do. So, I waited. I sat around on my ass waiting for something to fall into my lap. I'd play in the local poker tournaments (a serious venture here since they send one lucky qualifier to the world seriers of poker every year. I'd fish though I had to pay for it., I'd party with Partik and a big group of friends at the hostel. I basically became a beach bum.

Finally, after two weeks, I had had enough and wanted to leave. But, the night before I was going to take off, I ran into the owner of a local bar. His name was Pablo and I had met him at a poker tournament at his establishment the week before. He had perviously told me he knew a few people who might need help on their boats and he would look into it for me. Not really caring at this point anyway I asked him if he had found anyone. He told me that he hadn't talked with them yet but he had some maintenance work he needed done around the bar, cleaning gutters, scrubbing patios, ext. and I could do it as long as I didn't mind earning Tico wages ($1.50 hr). Hell yes I minded. I didn't want to do hard labor in the hot Costa Rican sun for next to nothing. At the same time, I didn't want to be rude or seem snobby so I agreed to come by the following morning. It turned out to be the best carreer move I made since I'd been there.

Fist of all, it was a suprisingly great feeling to actually be working, forget the fact that it was for less then it cost to write to you now, it was work. Doing something productive and getting paid for it was a feeling I had long since forgotten. I found myself whistling while I fought off Iguanas on his rooftop, humming along with the radio as I scrubbed, and re-scrubbed his sap stained patio. Genuinely happy as I raked up his scorpion and fire ant infested leaves. It was great!

As I was raking the last of the leaves into a bag, he came out and told me that he had just got off the phone with one of his friends who owns a sailboat and he indeed needed an extra hand and I had the job if I wanted it. If I wanted it??! I tried to contain my excitement and said that sounded like it would be cool or whatever and was the happiest guy in the world. To top it off, after work, as a token of my appreciation I washed his car for free!

So the moral of this story is, if you sit around on your ass long enough, something good will eventually fall into your lap!

Malpais - Costa Rica

I had my reservations about going to Malpais. The Planet describes it as a surfers paradise but nothing special if you don't hang 10. This posed two problems for me. One, I am not much of a surfer and even though I am always willing to give it a try, I couldn't see myself falling in love with it and wanting to do it everyday. Second, I don't much like surfers and surfer towns. In my experiences in California and other places, they tend to be clicky and have an elitist, even snobby, attitude. But, having talked with more than a few people who had been there and loved it, I thought I would give it its fair chance.

Malpais is not like other tourist destinations in that it's not actually a town, but a series of small collected hamlets stretched out along a long dirt road for about 3 or 4 kms. Driving along in a bus, you'd pass by a collection of hostels, a bar, a pulperia (shop) and a few eateries before the road would dwindled off into forest and beach again for a few minutes until you came to the next encampment. But what it lacked in centrally located enmities it made up for with it's accommodations. One in particular.

Tranquillo backpackers is probably the best hostel I've stayed at in all my travels. Only a few years old, the place is brand spanking new with clean bathrooms (co-ed), a huge kitchen, sturdy beds, and a fresh coat of paint that gives you the impression that you're staying at a upper class hotel and not a $12 dorm room hostel. It gets better. They offer free Internet, a big plus for me since I spent a lot of time writing to you guys, free pancake breakfasts every morning, that you make yourself, and boy did I. I'm talking about pancakes as big as a car tire. It also had a pool table, ping pong, and DVD library, all for free! And, the icing on the cake, it every spare corner of the place was lined with hammocks. It had everything you wanted.

Plus, the surfers that I dreaded so much turned out to be some of the coolest, nicest people I've met on my travels thusfar. I made more than a few freinds who I would gladly invite to crash on my coutch in Cali and who extended an invitation for me to do the same if I ever found myself in there neck of the woods. Likewise, the town itself had an non nonse and unpretensious vibe that was evedent from the onset, just look at the restaurant signage.

The only problem was, that is all there was. After spending a week there, surfing or swimming in the mornings, lounging around in hammocks in the afternoons, and socializing over pool, and card games in the evenings, I began to get a little restless. Plus, though I never thought I'd say this, I was beginning to get a little sick and tired of pancakes. So, along a Swedish guy I had befriended there, we decided to move before we got adult onset diabetes from the sugary breakfasts and coconut cocktails.

Montezuma - Costa Rica

Getting the hell out of Jaco just as fast as I could, I took a bus, a boat, and another bus to Montezuma, a small outpost on the southern most tip of the Nicoya Peninsula billed as a backpacker place with a hippie vibe. After the serene experiences of Jaco I suppose I could have gotten off the bus at a stockyard in the middle of a swamp and it would have been an upgrade, but, standing in the town center, I could tell Montezuma had a vibe I could gel with.

Montezuma is more of a pueblo then an actual town, with a small park as it's epicenter, the bulk of the town is spread out within a few square blocks comprised mostly of restaurants, hotels, and a few small bars. Longhaireed street venders in hemp clothing lined these blocks pawning off there self made jewelry and crafts, always greeting you with a 'buenas' and a smile. It was small and simple, and that was it's charm, not pretending to be to be a big resort destination. It would if it could I suppose, but the steep zig zagging dirt track that leads you here has thwarted any developers plans for building up the area.

Just north of this 'center' there is a small beach that fronts a rocky break and a few backpacker Cabinas and tent sites. I found quarters in a sparse hostel that gave me a room big enough for a twin bed, a fan (on the wall) and, if you held your breath, a person. But it was right on the beach and $10 a night, so I couldn't complain.

Accompanying this welcoming vibe, were welcoming people, and within the first 15 minutes of being there, I had made four friends. A Swiss couple I met getting off the bus, and an American and Israeli when looking for a place to stay. We became a tight group from the start and had most of our meals together and most of our exploring as well.

The Swiss couple and I took a day hike to some nearby waterfalls which were a very impressive sequence of three cascades, one with a 40ft jump if you were feeling adventurous. Then the next day, we all set out to explore the series of beaches along the southern tip of the coast that eventually would lead us to Playa Grande, noted as being the best beach in the area with calm waters and coral colored white sand. We hiked for almost two hours, through forest reserves and along rocky headlands in search of this post card worthy stretch of beach only to find that it was nothing more than a long line of trash covered brown sand that was apparently also a nude beach. And when I say nude beach, I mean gay nude beach seeing as they both seem to be synonymous anyway. We spent the better part of the afternoon shielding our eyes from oily old Italian men with young Tico boys who waved to us (not with there hands) as they strolled by. Not what we were expecting, but an experience to log in our journals anyway.

After a few days in this place, I began to give serious thought to staying on here and finding a job. It seemed to have everything I wanted, a chilled out beach town with a mellow vibe (but not a surfer scene), with some nightlife and other activities if you got board. I asked around a bit and found that there was not real work to be found in town and that most of the boat activities (where I was looking to find employment) came out of Jaco. Well, there went that idea. So, when the Swiss couple said they were moving up to Malpais, a 2 hour bumpy ride up the coast, I decided that would be my next stop too.

Manuel Antonio to Montezuma- Costa Rica

After the Swiss Miss sisters took there leave of us in Dominical, the Berkeley bunch and I moved camp up north to the resort town of Manuel Antonio, a small plot of restaurants and hotels fronting a picturesque beach and the entrance to a national park by the same name. We got settled in, the Berkeley bunch again opting for a nice hotel on a wind blown bluff overlooking the ocean while I sweated it out in the hot, thick air of a hostel back off the main drag on the fridge of the jungle. After that, we got right to, as Leif so rightly calls it, 'work.'

'Work,' for us consisted of an early day time activity, for instance, a walk through the national park to commune with the white-face monkeys and sloths that lounge and forage through the trees, followed by a lunch --which always ended up being at the same place with the same tired waiter-- and then a good half day on the beach. This was considered the real work, "putting in time at the beach," an it was actually. You had to make sure to get equal distribution of ultraviolet light on all sides and get as much as your skin would allow without burning. This required lots of 30 SPF sunblock -- 40 for the face-- and cool off breaks under an umbrella or in the ocean. I'm not kidding when I say, it this is hard work.

A few day short of a full work week, the Berkeley Bunch had to get back to San Jose and take a plane back to the States and I moved on in search of sunny beaches on the Nicoya Peninsula. It wasn't that many kms away, but the journey would involve a least three buses, a cab, and a slow ferry to get there and, not being pressed for time, I decided to break up the trip and made a stopover in Jaco, midway up the Pacific coast.

Little more than a one road town with an uninspiring beach filled with drug pushers and prostitutes, Jaco is definitely lacking in the charm department. But, being the most access able beach town from San Jose (only 2 hrs away) it is a popular pace and the road is actually a four lane highway flanked by high rise hotels and teeming with old, fat American men on there yearly 'fishing' trip. The fishing, usually consisted of them going to the bar, picking out a working girl, drinking as much as possible and then heading off to there hotels. Occasionally they'll actually go out on a boat, so they have some pictures to show there wives when they get back home. I had the dubious honor of staying in a hostel just next to one such bar and had to pass by it every time I came and went.

On one such occasion, returning to my room after dinner, I turned the corner by the bar and almost stepped on a prostitute who was crouched down in the middle of the street with her (possibly his) mini-skirt rolled up around her/his waist as it urinating. startled, I stutter stepped by him/her barley missing the rather large stream that was flowing toward the gutter and too my amazement, she/he didn't even stop, move, or look away, it just stared back at me as if I had tripped over it's shoe while it was reading the Sunday times on a park bench. Classy place, this Jaco.

The next day, feeling compelled for some reason to move on, I walked over to the bus stop to await the next transport out of town. When I got there, I was welcomed by a young Tico boy who was also waiting for the bus. We chatted in my broken Spanish and I learned that he was a student who had a part time job at a pharmacy in the next town. He was nice, friendly and helpful, telling me where to go and what to see up the coast. We small talked 2 or 3 minutes, all the time needed to exhaust my Spanish vocabulary and then the conversation trailed off.

A few minutes later another kid on a bike pulled up and my young friend ran over to greet him. They started into an excited conversation, one that was moving too quickly for me to follow, and then the kid reached into his pants and pulled out a small but bulky hand gun. Needless to say, this sent a shiver up my spine as I was completely caught off guard. He handed it over to the guy on the bike who inspected it like it was his occupation and then, with a nod of approval, handed it back. Then, with a air of question in his voice he told him something. The kid looked around, first at me (causing me to break out in a cold sweat) and then around for anyone else that might be in the immediate facinity. Before I could begin to think what he was doing to raised the gun, cocked it and, with a ear piecing crack, fired into the bushes behind the bus stop. The shot echoed down the street and I turned around to see what the reaction of the people nearby would be. There was none. No one even broke stride, lifted a eyebrow, or cocked there head. Business as usual in Jaco I guess.

His friend took off and he sat back down, putting his gun back in his belt and shooting me a placating grin. When I asked him why a young student with a job was carrying a gun he again looked at me with a grin. "Es nesesario aqui, amgio, es nesesario," (it's necessary here, my friend, it's necessary). The bus pulled up a few minutes later and I was happy to to say good by to Jaco.