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And Then It Leapt at Me With These Gigantic Teeth!January 22 - 26, 2001 -- Having seen Dad off on his plane, I turn my magical compass southward for Panama by way of Southeastern Costa Rica, enjoying the beach life for a few days before heading to my homeland...and finding a horrifyingly scary beast with gigantic teeth that I almost had to do battle with out in the jungle! Cahuita
At Puerto Limon, we stopped for a moment to dish up at a cafeteria slop line. I couldn't get over how different things were here from the other parts of Costa Rica. It might as well have been another country. In fact, the country it reminded me exactly of was Jamaica where I lived for six months after college building houses for hurricane victims. According to what I read in my guidebook, lots of Jamaican immigrants settled here. The houses were made of simple wood siding, a lot were raised up on stilts with simple tin roofs. Most of the people I saw walking around black and wore the brightly colored shorts, skirts and tank tops that everyone wore in Jamaica. It was definitely a blast from the past for me. After the gut buster at the cafeteria, we got back in the bus and headed south for an hour to the little village of Cahuita. I got a room for 12 dollars at the cozy Cabinas Palmer, run by a friendly guy named Jorge. I asked him where a good place to get a beer was, and he took me to his favorite bar where we shared a brew and chatted in Spanish for a half hour. The weather was decidedly more rainy on this side and the mosquitos were out in droves. That night, I hung out in the bar getting smashed with some Israelis from my cabinas and dancing to reggae. The only bad thing about the night was this one squirrelly rasta guy named Beto was literally running after me, trying to get me to buy 5 truckloads of marijuana or something and trying to intimidate me when I politely declined. The next day, the Israelis and I headed off to Parque National Cahuita, a pristine area of jungle with great beaches just south of town. The wind was pretty high, and lots of surfers were catching 5 foot waves right at the park entrance. This was Indiana Jones territory, and David, one of my friends, let out a terrible scream as I had to tell him that the feeling on his ankle was not a vine but a 3 foot skinny tan snake wrapping around his ankle. I'm not kidding. We walked 3 or 4 kilometers, scanning our paths more carefully now, crossing streams and stuff, hugging the beach most of the time and seeing lots of iguanas and lizards and those amazing flourescent blue butterflies that I had seen in the butterfly sanctuary in Costa Rica. I even learned a little Hebrew...ya fet (sp?, no relation to bobo fet)...which means beautiful.
Strange feeling. Is my trip over? Do I head back now? I mean, my trip had always been about the search...I had made no plans for what I should do after I actually found a sloth. Was I now screwed, blued, and tattoed? What do 3-toed sloths dream about? How can it sleep just dangling there like that? Talk about a setup for one of those horrible falling dreams...but this guy wasn't phased at all with dangling and sleeping. He even looked comfy. I'm thinking about the malaria pills that I should definitely be taking but am not, poisonous snakes, are those clouds signs of a hurricane or just a storm, stuff like that, and here is this furry little fella just dreaming away the afternoon, totally calm and content. I just kept my little thoughts to myself and didn't tell the guys what our sighting meant to me, because frankly I didn't have a clue, but I smiled to myself and thought about it the rest of the day. Another nasty rasta man encounter that afternoon....a guy wants to sell me grapefruits, and when I say no gracias, he says the equivalent of...NO GRACIAS! NO GRACIAS! say no like a real man you lily livered wimp! Sheesh, what about Bob Marley and let's get together and feel alright and all that hooey? Take a chill pill mister! Munch a grapefruit and relax. Dang. I guess he was just having a bad day or something, but I wasn't about to try to console him as he was still glaring at me. Another night at the bar, drunk and dancing. I figured out that if you move your pelvis in figure 8 on it's side pattern, you know, like the infinity symbol, you can shimmy your hips like the best of them. Dancing has definitely been more fun for me on this trip than it ever has, been letting myself go with it more and having a good time. The next morning, I got up, packed, and waited for the bus to Puerto Viejo, a surfer town bit further south. While I was waiting, I popped into this restaurant and ate a life changing good bowl of seafood soup. Soups are great in Costa Rica. I got into this cool conversation with the fifty something year old waiter who has been living in Costa Rica for 13 years by living on the barter system. He takes jobs waiting tables for no pay other than room and board, and teaches a bit of English on the side for whatever he can barter it for. His only income is the tips he makes serving up the food. Very interesting guy, and it showed me that if you want to live down here for next to nothing, it certainly is possible. Puerto Viejo
Let me just say, the burritos at Hotel Puerto Viejo are some of the best I have ever had anywhere. The cooks there are inspired, and it was a welcome relief from some of the fried grub I had been having to make do with recently (aside from the amazing soups). The burrito even had fresh salsa and sour cream, oh my. That night was spent chilling out and playing guitar, hanging with surfers, talking loads of BS. What a great place. The only drawback were the bed bugs nipping at me in my rustic little room, but oh well, there is lots more skin to bite where that came from. Friday morning, I had that itch (pun intended) to finally see Panama. I was only 50 kilometers or so away. 29 years later and finally returning for the first time. I had survived the raging battle with the maniacal sloth and lived to tell about it, crossing one more border would be a piece of cake, right? Heck, I was a dual citizen of Panama (I think), a native son, I could be president if I wanted! I needed to start picking a running mate and cabinet members. I needed to get a move on! I was ready to see the land of my birth. |
I got up Monday and walked to the bus stops heading toward the Caribbean Coast. A surly, twitchy guy at the staging area shrugged off my questions. This was only slightly annoying, but I was a bit alarmed when I found out that he was going to be the driver. Almost immediately after leaving San Jose, you enter a cloud forest on the eastern slope of the Continental Divide as it descends to the seas. This terrain was totally different from the oak studded hills coming back up from Quepos to San Jose. Tremendous jungle here folks. Trees, vines, Tarzan doing Tarzan stuff. Jane off doing Jane things somewhere in the distance. Rivers, some lime green, some brown and turbid from all the rain, ripping along everywhere. Dozens of them, anywhere from 5 yards to 200 yards across, many looking perfect for fishing or rafting. And then, after several harrowing swerves of the wheel by the crank addict bus driver, we are in the flatlands near the sea. It is sweltering hot, and there are bananas and pineapples everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of acres of them, with the occasional Dole or Chiquita plant to box them and ship them northward.
On the way back, I was just zoning out, enjoying the breezes and jungle noises, fantasizing about snorkeling or fishing or whatever. There were a couple of people hanging out by a tree, and David and Tal saw what they were looking at first. They were telling me, it's this animal, the name in Hebrew means lazy. A light bulb went off in my head, then I saw it half way up the tree, just dangling there asleep...a 3-toed sloth. Thoughts were racing through my head, holy smokes, I've seen the magical beast. This is what I had come all this way to see. I hadn't even thought about this part of my quest for awhile. Obviously it hadn't forgotten about me though, and when I least expected it, there it was. Mr. Sloth was off somewhere in dreamland, just like me in a way with this whole trip I'm off on. What to do now? Will the beast attack? Should I smite it with my mighty sword? It would have made better reading if it had leapt down on me with giant fangs visible, but hey, it just kept sleeping. Sorry loyal readers, that's the way the cookie crumbles :)
In Puerto Viejo, I checked into the Hotel Puerto Viejo for 5 dollars a night. This was a great place to stay, all the surfers hanging out and talking about the big waves, incredible food, and just sipping brews and reading. The next day, I walked down to the beach to a break called Cocle's, the beach break that the surfers make do with until the gigantic barrels at the reef break of Salsa Brava's starts going off. When I got to the beach and started looking around though, I'll tell you what, Cocle's wasn't for amateurs. I stayed out of the water to nurse the dry hacking flu that I had developed, and also because the waves were a couple feet overhead of the surfers when the sets came in. I talked to this lovely fluttery nymphlike thing for a few hours, and she actually swore up and down the real Mikail Gorbachev almost drowned at this very beach awhile back. You'll have to check that out for yourself. She told me lots of juicy Puerto Viejo gossip, showed me a flower that you could make a tea out of to see the face of the goddess, but if you got the dosage wrong, you'd go nuts...other fun stuff like that. She was part Cambodian and told me stories of how she got all sorts of racist comments from Costa Ricans, they all called her Chinee. When she tries to check into a hotel sometimes with her Costa Rican boyfriend, who is half black, they get really bad treatment. According to her and the Lonely Planet guide, blacks were actively discriminated against till they won equal constitutional rights in 1949, and many of those attitudes persist today. She's going back to Cambodia some day to find her father who she's never met. I wish her luck on the journey.