Pura Vida

Whereas the earlier parts of my trip have focused more on cities and ruins, my time in Central America, particularly Costa Rica, has been mostly about nature. Costa Rica has an amazing level of biodiversity, and since there's not much else to do besides check it out, I have been "forced" to slather on the ol' mosquito repellent and, like, go outside or whatever.

And it has not been a let-down at all. Costa Rica is a highly developed country, in comparison to other places in Central America, and tourism--particuarly nature tourism, and the often-misused term describing its cousin, "ecotourism"--is priority number one for these people. Obviously they can't guarantee that you will go into a forest and see a ton of animals, or that if you go to hike up a volcano it won't be pouring rain on top of you, but the sights here are so amazing they barely need to worry about that.

My Belgian friend Joris, who was my roommate my first year at Stanford, is here with me and persuaded me that it was a good idea to rent a car (he is a management consultant and he's paid to make things more efficient, which I guess goes for this part of the trip as well). Despite my initial misgivings (would Che Guevara ever use Avis?), I went along with it, and I'm glad I did. We have been able to cover a lot more ground, and go at our own pace. And Costa Rica is a safe and easy place to drive, so it's no big deal.

For me, a major highlight of the trip was the area around Monteverde, in the northwestern part of the country. Monteverde was initially a settlement of Mennonites from North America who went to Costa Rica because they were against the war in Korea and didn't want to fight. Costa Rica, by the way, is a very consciously anti-war country. It doesn't have an army, and people can't carry guns. The President (Oscar Arias) is a Nobel Peace Prize winner for brokering peace within El Salvador (I think). Very cool. Monteverde has the double distinction of being at the forefront both of Costa Rican pacifism and environmental protection.

The town of Monteverde is right next to a big nature reserve and "cloud forest." We first did what's called a "canopy tour," where you harness up and then fly over the forest on a zipline. It was awesome, a total adrenaline rush. At several points we were 90 m above the forest, and the lines were up to 700 m long. The best part was the end of it, where you do what they called a "Tarzan Swing," grabbing onto a rope (with a harness on and stuff) and then jumping off a 20-foot cliff. I was sure I was going to die. The picture here is of Joris; the picture of me doing it is on his camera.

We took a night hike there as well, but there weren't that many animals because it was "too windy." The poor guide was a little frustrated, and spent too long showing us moths, sleeping birds and tarantulas cowering in their holes. It was kind of disappointing, but we totally made up for it the next day. We went to the reserve for a 2-hour guided hike, which turned out to be one of the highlights of my entire trip so far. Our guide, a guy named Carlos, was very knowledgeable about the area, and his enthusiasm about nature was infectious, particularly on that day. This was apparently a red-letter day for the Monteverde Reserve, because we saw so many animals that Carlos was practically jumping up and down with his bird-watching telescope device. We saw three (!) quetzals (pictured here, taken with my camera), which are endangered species--amazing green and red birds native to Central America. We also saw bellbirds, which are also endangered. We saw a family of howler monkeys running through the trees RIGHT above us. We saw tarantulas, millipedes, larvae of different things, walking sticks, an agouti (a type of rodent), several turkeys (not like the kind we eat at Thanksgiving, but they were still big) and a ton of different kinds of butterflies. Apparently it's super hard to see quetzals, so we were really lucky.

Our guide in Monteverde, as well as the other guides and hotel administrators that we have had contact with along the way, have been highly professional and incredibly knowledgeable people. Aside from knowing English impressively well and being able to articulately explain the intricacies of the ecosystems of Costa Rica, they have been unfailingly friendly and nice. Most have gone out of their way to make our trip a pleasant experience. They make travelling in this country almost disconcertingly easy (I need to remember that I can't get used to that!). Costa Rica is a great place to go for people who don't necessarily know Spanish but want to go to an interesting, far off destination. It's safe, accessible and easy to travel here (I think I have seen more gringos than Costa Ricans, actually...that might have annoyed me if I hadn't just come from Colombia). It's refreshing for me to see my compatriots enjoying Latin America en masse. Costa Ricans like to say "pura vida" ("pure life") all the time--they use that to say "cool," or "ok," or "no problem." It really works.

From Monteverde we drove to La Fortuna, which is a town at the foot of Arenal, one of the world's five most active volcanoes. It spews lava all the time, and it's really spectacular at night. Apparently Arenal supplies 45% of Costa Rica's energy. We also spent some time at some hot springs nearby. I had been to hot springs in Chile, but this is Costa Rica, where tourist attractions are more like destinations. So these hot springs had a restaurant, swim-up bars, massage areas, 9 pools with different temperatures, and saunas.

Oh, and on the way from Monteverde to Arenal we went to Viento Fresco, with four waterfalls. And we swam under one of them. It was great.

Now we are back in San José, because we are flying to Guatemala tomorrow morning. San José is impressive for how unimpessive it is. There are very few buildings higher than 3 or 4 stories, at least in the center--I'm assuming due to earthquakes. But it's a very agreeable town (it totally feels like a town, like Temuco or something), and doesn't have the unpleasantness of the "zona rosa" with gringo bars jumbled up next to slums. There are plenty of nice, unpretentious places where ticos (that's what Costa Ricans call themselves, probably because it's annoying to say "yo soy costarricense") and gringos mingle and where it's sometimes even hard to distinguish between the two. Which is a nice change. I hear Guatemala's a little different though.