I have never prepared less for an international trip than this one. I’ve done more research to go out of state than I did for Costa Rica. The idea I had in my mind was that Costa Rica is a country whose economy is built on tourism so it must be an insular experience built for clueless tourists to spend money on vacation. And what’s more, I speak Spanish so that already makes me 100% more prepared than your average tourist, right? No, no it does not. In a shocking turn of events, not all Spanish speaking countries are the same. Who could have known? Not I, since all I did was put some extra money on my phone for the data I would need, grabbed my raincoat because my friend told me it was the rainy season, and headed to the airport.
I thought that living in a city of 20 million people that are constantly yelling at you what they are selling or playing recordings of what they are selling or ringing insanely loud bells or insanely loud whistles and basically being always and wildly overwhelming would prepare me for the aggressive selling culture of a tourism-based economy. I was wrong. The moment I stepped outside I was bombarded with so many taxi drivers talking to me at once that I just froze, which was the wrong move as it showed weakness and only encouraged the already heightened frenzy I was surrounded by.
My lack of research resulted in a faith-based system that I would be able to use my phone in Costa Rica, which was also wrong. I went to take out money from the ATM and realized not only did I not know what the local currency was called but I had no idea what the conversion rate was. Would $20,000 colones bankrupt me or be just enough for a taxi? No way to know now. Fortunately, the airport had wifi and I was saved at the last moment by globalization in the form of Uber.
I arrived at the hostel around midnight and was so excited to see my friends that I forgot we were obviously in a 10 person dorm with the lights out and other people sleeping and I greeted them in the traditional American way: by being loud and disrespectful of others nearby.
The rest of our trip was a weird magic despite obvious easily avoidable mistakes and lack of planning that I can only attribute to being a group of easy going people during the slow season with one good negotiator (not me).
The first thing I did as we set out the next day was forget my debit card in the ATM only to discover that American Express, my only other method of payment, is accepted almost nowhere. I did only slightly better than my other friend, who had forgotten to take her card with her before even getting on the plane. But through PayPal and traveling with one person who was able to hold on to a debit card for two weeks, we all managed to continue to get ourselves fed.
The only plan we had was wanting to see the sea turtles so set off to Tortuguero, a tiny island on the Caribbean. We paid for a private driver instead of taking the bus and thank the gods we did because I don’t think we would have ever made it otherwise. The last hour and a half was by boat. We entered the scenery that would become the standard backdrop for the rest of the trip and never ceased to amaze me. We passed dense, lush green forest and crocodiles became a regular occurrence. We saw birds and monkeys. The river would shrink and grow, but the water was always moving with an urgent velocity that suggested something just underneath the surface.
In addition to the other ways I in which I did not prepare, my beach body was not ready for this vacation. I thought that I could salvage the situation by doing more squats than I should ever do in one workout the day I left, but it turns out I looked exactly the same and was just in a lot of pain the following day. That night we took a tour to see the turtles, an animal that symbolizes slowness. Despite this fact, we went literally running the jungle to try and find these surprisingly speedy creatures with a group of French tourists who didn’t understand how we could speak Spanish if we were American. My quads rebelled with every step as I significantly lowered the group average and tried desperately to not be left behind in the jungle with no flashlight.
We still managed to find a turtle laying her eggs, and my first thought was, nature is gross and we should not be seeing this. It was like being an uninvited guest in a delivery room. But the turtle was incredibly large and moved in a weird almost mechanical way and I would still highly recommend anyone that has the opportunity to see a sea turtle laying eggs to do so.
After talking to some fellow travelers at the hostel we decided to head to Puerto Limón by boat the next day. If I have one piece to anyone going to Costa Rica it is this: travel times are double what is advertised. We passed through the forest and a woman literally climbed on me to get her low-quality picture of a monkey and I am still waiting for my apology. Five hours later we arrived at a dirt road with no sort of bus station or taxi service or town in site. All of our fellow travelers hopped into their prearranged transportation and took off.
We waited around and talked to one driver that told us there was nothing in Limón, but he would take us to Cahuita. We debated waiting to see if a bus or taxi passed and decided to just go with this guy and fortunately we did. The driver wasn’t lying when he told us there was nothing in Limón, we found out later from other tourists who ended up being stranded there due to protests that it is an industrial town.
But the protests weren’t limited to industrial areas, there were roadblocks everywhere that lead to delayed to the point of non-existent buses and resulting logistical difficulties for the rest of the trip. The labor unions were fighting tax increases and government pensions, mostly. Schools were closed and we heard rumors of violence from Costa Ricans we met but hardly saw the protests themselves. I was surprised when talking to people in Mexico and the US, no one had heard anything on the news and everyone’s reaction seemed to be something along the lines of, it’s Central America, what do you expect?
So we ended up in sleepy Cahuita, a Carribean beach on the edge of a national park, the only free park in Costa Rica as we were told many times. I also saw my first Sloth here! And lots of monkeys. We went snorkeling, everyone got sunburnt, and we saw a blowfish, a rockfish, and an eel amidst a parade of brightly colored and beautiful fish whose names I don’t remember.
It was also here that I went to my first Soda, a type of restaurant that serves cheap, quick local food. The lunch combos are called casados (married) and include salad, rice, beans, fried plantains, and your choice of protein. I have to admit I missed the spice of Mexican food even in my short time here but everything was really really good. We moved further south to Manzanillo, almost on the border of Panama. We stayed in a nice hippy hostel and went swimming in the ocean, where I managed to get myself cut up by being tossed onto rocks. A mistake I have actually managed to make before and swore to myself to never do again, but old habits die hard.
We passed through the surfer bro party town Puerto Viejo and stayed one night in Oasis, a hostel literally on the beach. At this point, I was sunburnt, cut up, eaten alive by mosquitos had a weird possibly heat induced rash, and was all around very ready to get away from tropical paradise.
We booked a tour for class IV whitewater rafting on the Pacuare where we didn’t die but the photos show we all thought we were going to at some point.
We got dropped off in Arenal at Selina, a hipster’s dream of a hostel that features a yoga area and movie room, both of which we used. All of the tours were really expensive so we went to the bus station to try to and get to the hiking areas but, you know, protests, so we ended up taking a private taxi. The coolest part of this area for me wasn’t the volcano La Fortuna itself but the hot springs surrounding it, including a thermal river.
Because there were still roadblocks, our taxi driver sold us on a “Jeep Boat Jeep” tour to get to our next destination, Monteverde. There was no tour, it was literally just transportation but the important thing is that we arrived and I got to go ziplining and see toucans.
We went hiking the next day in the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve. We had a vague notion that we wanted to go to Montezuma, a small town on the Nicoya Peninsula that day but no real plans on how to get there without a bus. A perfect example of the magic of this trip was when we just happened to meet two fellow tourists that had rented a car and were going to the exact same town that afternoon while on an observation platform and hitched a ride.
Montezuma is on the Pacific, and being from California I’ve always had a preference for this ocean. We stayed in another hippy hostel and ended up talking late with your typical international group of hostel goers. I truly dislike the repetitive small talk that makes up every night of every hostel I’ve ever said at where I end up staying up and talking. Where are you going? Where are you coming from? No, I mean, where are you from originally? How long have you been traveling? Did you know that traveling is the highest form of living? Because if you are not on a 1.5-year backpacking journey, are you even really alive?
On my left was my one of my least favorite kinds of human in the form of a rotund hairy Italian. A totally enlightened philosopher that low key negs at every opportunity, of which he has plenty because there is nothing he enjoys more than the sound of his own voice. With no context, he needed to know, “How old are you?”
“28.”
“Oh, you’re still young, you have plenty of time ”
“Yeah, I know. I’m not worried about it. ”
He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself knowingly at my self-assuredness. What I wanted to tell him is that when I wanted his opinion on my age or anything for that matter, I would ask but if these late night hostel conversations have taught me anything it’s that literally, nothing said in this space matters. As much as I tried to not interact with this human hacky sack and remind myself that this person had only been sent into my life to torture me, he did manage to get to me when he started in with how it was unfair to men the hostels have women-only dorms and no men-only dorms. When I tried to explain to him that women are constantly assaulted by men or under the threat of being assaulted, a fact he just didn’t agree with at all, men could also feel uncomfortable about women and isn’t that the same thing?
The next morning we had a few hours to kill before taking, what was in another bit of magic, an extremely easy journey back to the capital San Jose to fly out the next day. My friends were busy so I headed to the beach for what was supposed to be a solo walk but who should follow me there but my new best friend, the burly Italian. I have no idea why people that I obviously dislike are drawn to me, except that maybe I appear to truly dislike everyone when I first meet them.
Anywho, he mostly just wanted to talk about how his girlfriend had just dumped him (can’t imagine why!) and how he was such a great person for traveling alone. We came to a semi-secluded cove and he asked me if I wanted to try skinny dipping because he never had and he had always wanted to in a place with no one around but where it was against the rules. And why not, didn’t I want to be this wild daring girl who does crazy things and just has fun for his enjoyment? with him?
Sorry honey but that’s hardly my idea of adventure. I’ve been naked all over the place so I can’t “try” skinny dipping and I’m actually more free than you’ll ever be if your sad little fantasy is any indication of your lack of life actually lived. And fortunately for me, we were not actually in a secluded place, there were families passing by regularly. And lastly, my idea of fun does not include seeing the dicks of unattractive strangers. But instead of telling him he’s an idiot and I don’t perform for men in any aspect of my life, especially during my free time, I just said no thanks and we headed back to the hostel.
In a last bit of luck, we ran into our friends that had given us a ride from Monteverde two days earlier while we were on a ferry from the peninsula to the mainland and saw the most beautiful sunset of the entire trip. We had an uneventful voyage the rest of the way to the capital. We had some craft beer, said goodbye until next time, and flew out the next morning.
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