“Salsa not so Brava...”

Salsa Brava is the name of a very heavy wave in Puerto Viejo. The name translates to Brave Sauce, and brave sauce is needed indeed for those that tempt fate by riding this wave. This has been the only place surfing that I have seen people wearing helmets in the water. The wave itself breaks over a very shallow coral reef, just outside of the main town. Swells generated in the Caribbean Sea travel from the east through relatively deep water before encountering the sudden rise in the ocean floor, causing the wave to increase greatly in height and pitch forward onto the reef, often forming perfect hollow barrels. Sometimes the power of the wave sucks the reef dry, meaning that the base of the wave drops below sea level, exposing the sharp reef to the detriment of whoever may be riding said wave. This is a wave for the experienced or foolhardy, and I dare not set foot nor fin upon it as it beckons. Right now however, there is not enough swell to form any waves on Salsa Brava, so I would be content upon the beach brake mush at Playa Cocles down the road.

After enjoying a week in Dominical, we made the cross country trip to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean side. I had been looking forward to returning to Puerto Viejo nearly ten years later, as I had spent a month here with Ray and Peter, and had many memories of the area. One of the first hotels we checked into was the Hotel Agapi, run by a Greek man and his Caribbean wife, where I had stayed for an entire month with my two friends for $350 or $400. I was very pleased upon returning to find the wife Cecilia still there to show us around. I was somewhat frightened that she may remember me while touring an apartment suite identical to the one that I had stayed in before, as a few nights of mischief and some accusations of missing dinnerware had us leaving on not the best of terms. The price of $85 per night this time around however had us continue on our way for cheaper lodgings. The next day my focus would turn to the surf, although my expectations were rather low after leaving the pacific. My last sunset session in the water before leaving Dominical resulted in an injured shoulder due to some overconfidence in my duck diving abilities. Some overhead sets came through just as the sun was setting and I found myself caught inside. Earlier in the session I had successfully ducked under a rather large wave that broke right in front of my face, so I went into this slightly larger wave with gusto. I’m not sure what went wrong, but the wave forcefully removed me from my surfboard and decided that it would be best if I went tumbling under water in the other direction. The ocean also seemed to know that I hadn’t done any yoga for quite some time, so it took my right arm from off my surfboard and placed it ever so forcefully back behind my head. Ouch. I frantically tried to avoid several more large set waves in the near dark while the pain in my shoulder panged with every stroke. After wondering whether I would catch a wave before it became completely dark, I managed to get aboard a smaller roller that carried me back towards shore. So now I had two injuries in two days, and would become good friends with the ibuprofen bottle.

That morning we had left Dominical just after 8 am, not knowing for sure how long our journey would take us. Creeping up the twisting roads towards the continental divide, the temperature dropped steadily from the 30 degrees that had already accumulated in Dominical when we had left. The lowest the thermometer read was 11, just before we started making our way back down again. Quite a bit before that bone-chilling temperature, we had entered the realm of the clouds, and received a fine mist of rain which we had not been accustomed to for our entire trip thus far. We passed along some amazing views from high atop the mountains, and took a little break in the city of Cartago to look at a church, then continued along our way. We ate lunch just before Limon on a roadside soda for some of the cheapest food that we’ve had during our trip, though Denielle may have paid the real price later in the evening vomiting all over the bathroom. After driving across a couple of old railroad bridges on the wrong path, we soon found the road again and came into Puerto Viejo with a little time before sunset. The temperature was a cool 24 degrees, a nice change from the constant sweat inducing heat, both day and night, of the south western coast.

The water temperature of the Caribbean was cooler as well, as we soon found out the next morning. Overcast skies and cool Caribbean breezes helped to shape the surf into a messy pile of confusion. Nicole took Denielle’s board into the water for a while, but soon became frustrated with the 9 second swell. There’s scarcely time to catch your breath when waves are coming in every 9 seconds and you don’t know which way to turn. It took me a while to figure everything out as you would paddle for one wave, miss it, then turn around only to find another one directly behind it. Some prey confuse their predators by overwhelming them with sheer numbers. There are so many options available that the predator fails to hone in on just one, and ends up getting nothing. That’s the way that I felt out in the water, as though the ocean is throwing everything it has at you in hopes that you leave empty handed. You would try to turn and paddle for one wave, but then another would look better just the other direction and slightly behind, and then another still would be coming a tiny bit later. I soon figured out to select one of a set well in advance and hope that it worked out. The waves grew quickly as the beach was quite shallow, so you had to be on your game to stand up quickly before getting pounded into the sand, but then the wave would quickly fizzle out. So you would jump off into the knee to waist deep water and paddle back out again. There were a few longer rides however, and good times were had despite the ever growing crowds throughout the session.

That night we went into town and caught a movie at the internet cafe. A large screen is set up across the road, and you just have to purchase at least a dollar’s worth of goods from either the internet shop or the liquor store up above. So we got some seats during the last quarter of the new Star Trek movie, and caught Avatar in its entirety. The movie wasn’t the only entertainment, as soon two police on motorcycles came up the street and appeared to be watching the movie. These were soon followed by a police pickup truck full of police that all hopped out and came towards the crowd. They singled out two guys for some apparent reason and handcuffed them to the back of the truck. Then the police hopped in the bed of the truck with them, and drove off.

Today we took the car down to Punta Uva, a small beach about 8 kilometres south for some relaxing and snorkelling, sans snorkel. I remember walking here with Peter about 10 years ago to surf over the super shallow reef. So this time, with flippers and goggles in hand, I swam out and saw a plethora of tiny brightly coloured fish making their way around the different types of coral. Perhaps the most amazing site was a jellyfish about the size of a golf ball, gracefully making its way across the reef. I got close but not too close for fear of a nasty sting. We packed up from the beach and went down to Manzanillo where we had some gourmet French cuisine. Although I’m pretty sure you can’t claim gourmet when you use white bread from a store-bought loaf. Anyway, the crepes we had for desert were quite good. We returned to Playa Cocles, just outside of Puerto Viejo to watch the surfers before sunset. While the waves were less than half the size of the previous day, it was a nice relaxing end to our relaxing day. Now we’re headed back into town for a while, as Nicole is organizing an intra-country bus ride from the southeast to the northwest tip to catch her plane back home the following day. We’ll be heading off to Panama in the morning, and off to Boca del Toro for some island adventures.

Tyler.

“Music soothes the savage beast...”

Dominical appears to be the epicentre for circus freaks as far as I can tell. All kinds of fire twirlers and baton jugglers peddle their wares up and down the beach while drums, dreadlocks, and dirty clothes abound. I don’t know what it is about the place that draws these people, but it makes for a very unique atmosphere. Last night was St. Patrick’s Day, and we were celebrating not only that event, but also a birthday amongst our ranks. Ryan, one of the guys from Nicole’s Spanish school had turned 34, so we had gone out for an evening of dinner and live music. It’s kind of amazing what sort of green paraphernalia tourists had decided to pack all the way down here with them as there were large leprechaun hats, green glasses, and all kinds of green shirts. No green beer was to be found, be we were given complimentary green tequila shots that I can assure you was not near as pleasant.

The band playing that night, Los Borrachos Brothers and Sister, well exceeded my expectations for a small bar band in a town of no more than 800 people. Apparently they have appeared on stage and played along with the likes of the Greatful Dead, Phish, and others. Consisting of 3 people, there was a man on a mandolin, which was quite suited to the day’s festivities, another man on a guitar whom was also the lead singer, and a lady on an electric violin, or fiddle I suppose, the way she was getting on with it. The lady had enjoyed a long career as a studio musician of sorts, and her husband whom resembles the late lead singer of the Greatful Dead, touted that she had appeared on over 300 million albums worldwide for all kinds of different bands. She definitely had talent, and I quite enjoyed the evening’s music as they put unique twists on old rock hits that would take a while to recognize due to their unique sounds.

Denielle has been visiting the local yoga studio which offers everything from the standard yoga classes to the more adventurous interpretive dance and other hippy-appealing affairs. She is progressing quite nicely and will soon be a yogi in her own right when we return back to Calgary, floating slightly above the floor in her lotus position while balancing her chi. Aside from that we have been enjoying the beach, which is just a few degrees cooler than the surface of the sun during midday, but tends to cool off slightly in the afternoons when the excessive humidity tends to block out the direct sunlight. Nicole is at her last day of Spanish lessons, and is probably looking forward to a change of scenery. The Spanish family that she had spent the first week with came complete with creepy young guy that never seems to go long away from her side, to the delight of everyone in the Spanish school. Gerardo is everywhere all the time despite Nicole’s best efforts to evade him.

The past week has gone by deceptively quick. When we found Nicole on Saturday after our tortuous trek through the southern peninsula, we made plans to visit the Manuel Antonio National Park the following day. So we left town by nine in the morning, and made the quick 40 minute drive north into the park. This was quite a different experience than the Corcovado Park we had been to the week before, as throngs of tourists clogged the trails and paths, talking loudly with apparently no real intentions of finding wildlife, but instead drawn towards the picturesque beaches found within. Having no real expectations of finding wildlife, we quickly were greeted by a big grey sloth directly beside the main road-wide path. We would see a total of 4 sloths that day, including a mother and its baby clinging close beside. Many people come to the country hoping to see nothing else but this slow, very deliberately moving ewok-esque creature, so we felt very lucky to see so many in only one day. We also saw the standard howler monkeys and white-faced capuchin monkeys, an anolis tree lizard, and some iguanas to round out the day. The beaches there, once we finally found them, were quite amazing with white sand and turquoise waters slightly cooler than bathwater. Having exhausted all of the trails in the park, we made our way towards the exit which consisted of getting in a small boat pushed through some questionable water a short distance to the beach in town where we had parked. The sole purpose of the 1000 colone boat ride was to keep from getting wet from having to wade through, but an ill-timed push from behind at the last minute by our boat-man resulted in Nicole getting splashed with the less than clean water.

Our walk back to the car through the stifling heat brought us upon a large brand new tour bus that was trying to pull out of a driveway. Upon doing so, the bus driver fully engaged the nose of the bus into the pavement with a sickening scrape. Had he continued on forward, he would have escaped with no more damage, but upon hearing the contact, he changed his mind and reversed, fully dropping the front wheels into a gutter that caused the nose of the bus to make even more intimate contact. We left before he figured out how to remove himself and his bus from the situation, but I’m fairly certain that bus will have a new driver next time around. We got back in the car and headed to Domincal with plenty of time for Denielle to Skype her sister all the way in Australia. The magic of the world-wide interweb has been wonderful for us to keep contact with everyone throughout our trip, and I’m not sure what we would do without it.

The surfing in Dominical has been a mixed bag of emotions for me. The week started out with very little swell reaching the mainland, compared to the wonderful conditions we had just left in the southern peninsula. I was not that eager to get into the water with waist high waves that were closing out everywhere instead of providing a nice shoulder that could be ridden. The other day, Nicole, Ryan, Denielle and I all went down in the afternoon to Dominicalito, a small town just south of Dominical proper, where the waves showed more promise for getting decent rides. The swell was picking up throughout the week in town, but still closing out, so the slightly smaller Dominicalito surf provided for some fun surfing, although some of the locals may need some etiquette refreshers with respect to wave riding. Denielle captured some great pictures as always from the beach, and everyone had a great time. Last night I went out to the surf here in town which had picked up substantially, with head-high sets coming through and the occasional overhead sets, there was plenty of power to go around assuming one could make it through all the white water to get into the lineup. Strong currents and bigger waves made it difficult to stay in the right spot, but I quickly caught two amazing head high waves, one left and one right, that lasted for a couple hundred meters and provided for lots of fun turns. The waves were holding up for the most part, although I caught a few that quickly closed out, leaving you nowhere to turn. Then, after a brief lull of fighting the currents and getting into position, I had a nice big overhead wave coming in my direction. I paddled hard to the side to get in just the right spot, and turned to face the beach for the last few power paddles. The wave quickly grew behind me, and just before getting pitched forward off the steep vertical face, I sprang up and made the drop in. I carved a hard bottom turn to take me to the right and pulled up partway along the face, trying to race down the wall of the wave before the next section pitched forward onto my head. I could see the big powerful lip heaving up in front of me and initially tried to duck, thinking I had the speed to race past it, but soon realized that I was going to take a lot of unpleasantness on the head, so dove forward away from the crashing lip to the standing water in front. Apparently my body was not ready for this decision, as instead of breaking my entry into the water with my hands first, like a proper dive, my arms tried to correct my balance and flailed to the side, leaving my head to break through on its own. Already travelling so fast from racing down the face, my head snapped backwards upon impact and I heard a crack as it happened. After going through the spin cycle of the overtaking wave for a few seconds, I swam to the surface and grabbed my board, only to find that my left arm was completely numb from the elbow down. This was no good, and I became quite scared, so I caught the next broken wave’s white water back into the shore. My fears of left arm paralysis quickly abated as feeling soon returned as though I had just been sitting on my arm for too long. Today my neck is a little stiff, but not painful, so I’ll be back out in the water again, in hopes that the conditions are just as good as they were last night when my great session was cut short.

Tomorrow we pack up and head across the country, in a very non-direct manner, to the Caribbean town of Puerto Viejo, just next to the Panama border. We’re taking Nicole with us for the weekend, and then she’ll be taking a bus back to Liberia on Monday to fly back to the chilly north, whereas we will be departing into Panama for a few weeks before making our long trip home. So make sure all the snow is gone by the time we get back.

Tyler.

Death March...

We had planned to drive the 3.5 kilometres from the town of Carate to the park entrance, but a lack of a road forced us to park the car at the pulperia just off the road and walk the distance along the soft sand beach. This would mark the beginning of the self-inflicted pain marathon we had so naively looked forward to early in the morning. Donning a fully loaded backpack stuffed with over 40 pounds oftent gear, camping supplies and 10 litres of water, I had officially set myself up for disaster, while Denielle carried a smaller backpack stuffed to the brim with more water and our less than adequate food supplies for the journey. 37 degrees and very high humidity makes one wonder if it is in fact any different than walking inside your own body. The sweat is relentless, even from the beginning. The strong sea breeze is no match for the heavy loads and superfluous clothes. The smell being generated by our bodies is unholy, and really something to behold in the same way one would gawk at a roadside accident. Unfortunately we cannot escape the experience by driving away. After two days of no showers and constant sweating both on the beach and the confined space of our tent, we seemed to have opened some kind of Pandora’s Box of stink that that threatens to remain for the remainder of the trip.

The hike turns out to be 19.5 kilometres in to the ranger station, but we have no map and the trail becomes quite hard to follow in certain places. Thanks to the first 3.5 kilometres on the beach in thick wool socks adorned solely to protect against such things, blisters have already developed on my heels. I double up socks and apply bandages, but the heat and sweat easily negate the attempts of the Gore-Tex lining to dissipate the wetness. What started out as a most enjoyable walk through the jungle and along some of the nicest most remote beaches in the country has now turned into a death march. Knowing we need to cross one big river at some point before the ranger station is the only thing keeping me from pitching my tent on the beach and calling it a day. I’m pretty sure that there is a Geneva convention against carrying 40 pound bags for 20 kilometres in 37 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, and here we are paying for this privilege.

We finally encounter the river after an exhausting 7 hours of walking, and my feet are so sore that I can barely make it across the river with my bare feet on the loose-pebbled bottom. Each step is an excruciating act of mind versus matter, willing myself to proceed despite the pain. I try stepping up the bank on the other side but my foot slides in the pebbles back down to the water, scrapping my grossly wrinkled feet even more. Denielle laughs at my pathetic attempt to exit the river, not knowing the burning fire that engulfs my feet with each step. The straps of the backpack cut deep into my shoulders and upper back and I reach out to the ground to keep from falling as the weight shifts with my slide down into the river. I manage to get up, take off my pack and use my hands to shuffle myself up the bank like a street invalid with no legs, where I can now rest my feet atop my back pack. Imagine sitting in a hot tub for 8 hours and that is what my feet look like having been enclosed in my boot sauna soaked with sweat this whole time. Wrinkles like a satellite photo of the Grand Canyon splay across my feet in every direction, while the blisters on my heels that have opened up and reformed countless times send a white hot burn sensation to my brain. My body desperately wants to stop, but we need to press on as soon it will be dark, and one does not want to be lost in the jungle in the dark. I continue on the trek, still not knowing how far we have to go before being finished because we have no map. My flip flops ease the pressure on my heels, and the pain on the bottoms of my feet slowly dissipates as they dry with each step, but my body is exhausted from the daylong effort in the heat and humidity and finally the ranger station appears like an oasis through a parting of the trees. We have arrived, and now I can hardly walk. How am I going to make the same trip back the very next day?

We sign in, get our tent set up along the grass runway and have a meal consisting of cold beans from a can and cold mixed vegetables from a can split between the two of us. We would have eaten three times that much, but only had a peanut butter and jam sandwich and two granola bars each for the return trip. Apparently Denielle thinks I haven’t lost enough weight yet on the trip. Just as the sun is setting we finish our supper and could quite easily pass out from exhaustion now at only 6 in the evening. Denielle gets up and finds out that there are showers, so she goes to have one and brush her teeth. I go after, but find that my towel evidently was not packed, so I have to borrow Denielle’s tiny sham wow that is already wet. I would later find out that she grabbed my towel by mistake, leaving hers sitting dry in her bag while we both actually used mine. Not showering for two days before that and having the heat and humidity of the jungle had left me smelling worse than most things one could find in the jungle itself. Not to mention the salt residue from surfing in the ocean had left my skin sticky and gross, which played havoc with my groin area throughout the day, forcing me to adopt an unusual walk to ease the pain. Only those of the male persuasion whom have walked in wet swimming trunks from the ocean can relate to what I’m talking about. I would apply bandages along my inner thighs in the morning and hope for the best.

While showering I spotted what I thought was a snake sticking its head out close to a light on the ceiling, so I went back to the tent to grab the camera. Returning with the camera I found the animal had moved, and turned out to be a very large gecko. On my way back to the tent I was informed of some tree frogs and a snake that had been found on the edge of the compound, so I went to have a look. A small red eyed tree frog, a larger tree frog, and a very cool white and black striped snake where biding their time amongst the tall plants close to the other outhouse. It’s great when other people have guides, because you just go up to what they’re looking at and get the same experience for free.

We awoke at 6 am, had some granola for breakfast and packed up the tent. We walked down the runway back to the trail, with hopes that our tired and beaten bodies would make the trek. A little ibuprofen and careful bandaging goes a long way. I had also managed to adjust the straps on my backpack to fit a little better, and opted to wear flip flops to keep from getting the trench foot from the day before. 20 km in flip flops bought at a Costa Rican grocery store gets a lot of funny looks from the people wearing all the latest and greatest gear for their jungle trek. While we were walking Denielle commented on how she had removed three tiny little spiders from her leg that morning that had their heads dug into her skin. Looking down on my own arm I now noticed one of these “little spiders” that she was talking about. Never having had ticks before, I had always been quite frightened of them. Just the idea of some creature crawling about your body without your knowledge and then burrowing in to your most private of places and feeding, no gorging on your blood, is quite disheartening. I should have known after listening to the conversation in the tent next to us the night before. “Show me on this carrot where you removed the three ticks today...” Yikes! Seeing this tiny little guy on my arm after dealing with so many other kinds of bugs on our trip didn’t seem like such a big deal at the moment. So I grabbed his tiny little head between my finger nails and pulled him out. Altogether we removed 16 ticks between the two of us, some dug in, some just crawling around looking for a nice spot. At least we’re supporting the local ecosystem.

Despite the tick problem, we had a really good pace and were making good time, seeing lots of spider monkeys, spiders, lizards, and the occasional brown snake that darts in front of me across the path. Spider monkeys abound throughout the jungle, swinging from tree to tree with the greatest of ease. Much more acrobatic than the other types of monkeys, these are the most enjoyable to watch so far. Long arms and a very active prehensile tail make the fast canopy crossings seem effortless and breathtaking at the same time like crowds waiting for a trapeze artist to miss the bar and fall into the net. But these monkeys have no net and still make great leaps from precarious branches high above the forest floor. It would also seem that mosquitoes follow these aerial acrobats throughout the forest as we soon become pin cushions for the flying menaces while our heads are turned skywards for the monkey show. Or perhaps it is just that we only stop for long enough for the mosquitoes to track us down when we are in the presence of monkeys. But our goal of the day was the mighty tapir. Almost ten years ago a tapir peed on my friend Ray at the San Jose zoo from a remarkable distance. He denies that it happened, but Peter and I know the real story. That was the only other time that I had ever seen a tapir. We had encountered the rather large and unusual tracks of the great beast along the beach the previous day and even some fresh ones this very morning, but knew that our chances of seeing the mysterious mammal in person were slight.

Rounding a corner I spotted something large and black in amongst the plants and then looked to see a number of hikers stopped looking at the same spot. This must be a tapir, our target trophy of the day. Sure enough, we quietly walked forward and saw the rear end of this very large, very male tapir. Now prior experience of the distance with which a tapir can urinate had me staying well back for rear of getting the golden tapir shower that Ray had encountered nearly a decade before. Denielle saw that the path kept going along and curved up towards the tapir appeared to be going, so we quickly moved over to try and have the animal come towards us. Tapirs (tape-ear) are very unusual and quite hard to describe. They are ungulates, along with elephants, cows, pigs, deer, and moose, have three large toes, are a little bit bigger than a very large pig, with noses like a small elephant trunk. This one seemed quite large, coming up to over my waist. It slowly approached where I squatted with the camera, sniffing the air with its unusual nose in my direction while it plucked vegetation and fruit from the ground. To get close to the tapir, you must be like the tapir. Apparently not showering for a few days and sweating profusely in the jungle must make you smell like a tapir, because it kept coming towards me to investigate. I got some very good, very close pictures as the beast stood not more than two meters from me. I decided this was close enough and didn’t want to discover what the tapir would do to or with me if I had stayed, so I got up and retreated back to the trail.

We continued along at our fast pace, with renewed energy from the large animal encounter. It was no jaguar sighting, but it is what jaguars eat, and is one of the “if you’re lucky you’ll get to see...” kind of animals. We made it back to the car in just under six hours, much better than the seven and a half the day before, especially considering the state we were both in the night before. Arriving at our car however, we were approached by an old man who owned the property across from where we had parked. He said that we were going to get him sued for parking there. I thought he was joking at first, but soon realized that he was serious. He told us of the ongoing litigation with the lady that owned the road behind where we had parked, and that he had had nothing but nightmares dealing with her for the last few years, and that any time someone parked here it gave her ammunition for future lawsuits. We gave him our information and signed a statement saying that he did not give us permission to park there. We weren’t blocking the road and didn’t see it as being a problem, but hopefully he doesn’t have anything negative happen as a result. We’re in the clear because there’s nothing saying you can’t park where we parked and there were no tickets or official notices issued that could come back to us. Anyway.

Jumping back in the car, Denielle opened up a can of refried beans and spoon fed me like a baby while I raced along the roads in our rally car, splashing through river crossings and sliding around corners in hopes of making it back to Dominical for the evening. We needed to find Nicole who had been in Spanish school all week and try and figure out our plans for the next week. It was sad leaving behind such a beautiful place and such great waves, but civilization and showers were beckoning. We made great time and got a room for the night, however we were unable to find Nicole. Sleep came quickly and we renewed our search the next morning, and finally tracked her down in the town of Dominicalito, just south of main Dominical, walking along the beach. So now we’re just trying to figure out a place to stay for the next week here in Dominical, and then it’s off towards Panama on the Caribbean side. We might venture to Manuel Antonio National Park tomorrow for the day, and then it’s just relaxing and surfing on the waist high waves. Tough life.

Tyler.