A Gringo Tale - Costa Rican Ramblings

March 10, 2016

                Morning comes early to San Jose. It begins as a murmur, a solitary train whistle, timid in the predawn, as it crosses town. Soon, motorcycles can be heard beyond the hostel courtyard, loud and jarring. Cars, horns vigorously applied, follow. Another train, less timid now that the sun flirts with the east, blare angrily at morning commuters.

                Between the raucous bellows of modernity, nature still lifts her voice in subtler, but equally rambunctious songs. The birds in the Parque Nationale fill the sky with their voices. The clock barely registers 6am. The sun, now fully risen, commands a start to the day.

                To find oneself hostelling after years away is a delight. You miss it, this brand of travel, this mentality of being, more than you could have realized. The globetrotting surfer chick from Tofino, chasing that perfect left hand curl in Pavones. The Tar Hell, turned hostel desk clerk, living in San Jose to learn Spanish. Their stories shared out over casadas and cervesa.

                Expansive public parks and well used wooded squares turn to diesel fumes and a long descending drive by bus as you exit the capital. The bus is full, hot, and slow. Mountains to foothills, foothills to coastal plains, plains to plantations; thousands of acres of banana become the backdrop to this landover voyage. Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita, in the sordid history of Central America, these names have all appeared to play their own dire role.

                The towns grow dustier, hotter, more remote. The tarmac disappears, replaced by gravel. Your bus is now standing room only, and people stand sweating, packed into place, cheek to jowl.

                La Pavona appears at last, after endless banana fronds, tin roofed shacks, washboard ribbed cattle, dejected in the heat. A ranchero turned way station, you leave the auto coach behind, and one of many dozens, board the jungle river boat. Long and shallow drafted as it might be, the pilot still manages to get it hung up on several hidden sandbanks.

                This is real jungle now. Dense foliage encroaches on the banks. A salty shows his long snout, then disappears beneath the flow. An iguana basks in the heat. Overhead, monkeys leap and dine.

                The camp is rugged. Rough dorm rooms, surrounded by the dark density of trees and vines. The people here, a real diversity of nationalities, researchers studying birds and beasts. A bevy of volunteers, of which you are one.

                A jungle walk, birds shy, sing from amongst the fronds. A deafening chorus of screaming yowls announce the presence of howler monkeys in the canopy. You have arrived.

 

March 16, 2016

                The day after a night turtle patrol starts with the clamour of Howlers, somewhere in the bordering jungle. Tired, but invigorated, your try to shut out the din of this nearby wild. Sleep is not easy.

                It had started as a walk on a windward shore. The Trades were keeping the night cool. Overhead, the moon and stars were bright, if canted at unfamiliar angles. Far off, over the Caribbean, clouds were massing, but opted to remain a distant threat. The delightful sea, violent here with currents, felt warm as it roared up the strand, soaking feet and pants. The ponderous landed leatherback was surprising, so massive was she as she pulled herself through the soft volcanic sand in search of a nest site. A relic, you think watching her, of a very distant age, more at home in pelagic seas than in this human plagued age.

                She is beautiful. Awkward and ungainly on land, her mighty flippers, so graceful at sea, pull her along, rutting the beach deeply, as though she is a piece of heavy machinery.

                Unable to find a nesting ground that suits her, she turns slowly, nose to the breaking surf. She heaves until she is gone again, at home again at last, in her element of salt water. There is no sign of her, despite the tonnes she must have weighed. One moment, there she is in the surf, waves breaking on her carapace, the next she is gone, a memory gliding away in the warmth of a phosphorescent sea.

                Fireflies spark to life in the tree line, matching the twinkles of phosphorous in the tide. One shooting star follows quickly after another overhead. The Big Dipper, still showing the way north, is a comfort to you, as it always is, even here on this night of tropical idyll.

                The offending troop of Howlers has fallen silent, but sleep, when it returns at last, is fitful. Finally, the sun heats the dormitory cruelly, it being a simple construct of wooden bones and light mesh, with a metal roof. Camp is no swank joint, no extravagance asked for, needed, nor missed. The food is plentiful, the people delightful. There is real camaraderie to be found in this place, far flung population though they might all be. Scientific flotsam, landing on Cano Palmo shores.

                A solo paddle north, up the canal in the rainforest shows you a scale of colour never found on a North American pallet. A wildflower seems to explode off of a tree limb which hangs out over the water. It is a spray of red and yellow, so finely built, delicate even. As you draw close, a basilisk breaks from hiding in the shadow of this picture perfect display. It is large and fast, scampering along the branches with ease. Its head fin and spine ridges stand out, its body so green it hints towards blue, and then it is gone.

                Black vultures have swarmed a shrub near the water’s edge, much lower than their normal canopy crowding roosts. You smell the reason for this before you see it; a dead caiman, belly up in the sunny shallows. It is not fresh, and the birds have been busy. The white belly is loud in the daylight, and it is a big one. What killed it is a mystery.

                The sun acts as a hammer now, abusing patches of your exposed skin that you missed while applying sun block. Time to get back, after seeing two crested guan grazing on fruit high up in the jungle canopy. Massive fowl, vibrant red dewlaps swaying in a stray ocean breeze.

 

Turtle Beach (a Haiku)

Beaches of plastic,

Turtles crawl, to seek the sand.

Sadness, this night fall.

 

March 17, 2016

                I am a sucker for a girl in a bathing suit. Especially one that smiles sweetly and is sexy as hell. This is how I now find myself swimming in the canal at base camp, treading in the brown stagnant water. The dead eyes of our local caiman glint dully from the far side of the dock. They are the danger we can actually see. There are worse things, smaller, microbial sinister gut wrenching bastards. But she was smiling, and she asked me to join her, so here I am. Cannonball off of the observation deck high above and all. The soundtrack from “Inside Llewyn Davis plays from the dock, so I suppose as these things go, this is well worth it. But I am still a sucker.

                A night off from turtle patrol led to several cervesas. Not the best of beers, but oh so cold, and here in our jungle outpost, oh so rare and good. An early alarm, preceded as ever by Howler monkeys, who are given to yowling as soon as the sun kisses the east, has me up and out on a jungle path, looking for signs of mammal life.

                The tracks are hard to discern; often just vague scratches, but Manuel, wealthy as he is in local jungle lore, knows the nature of every offending creature. Most seem to be armadillo, rooting along the forest floor. A few pig-like peccary have also crossed our path. None of the big ticket cats, the signs of which always set the entire camp to talking. But I am ok with that; I happen to quite like the little regarded armadillo.

                It is a close day, even early in the dawn time, amongst the dense trees. No breath of wind stirs the branches. So sweat beads up, and rolls down my back.

                Turtle training on the beach follows. The black sand sits to windward, so there is a fitful stirring to the palms and almond trees along the shore. But it is still humid. Hence the swim. At least, when asked that will be my official excuse, the heat. But of course, a smile.

                An evening game of cribbage finishes the easy day, before a return call to night patrol, the bell of which tolls again for me tonight. The card game elicits a lot of laughter with this impromptu U.N. of characters. The Dutch and French vie with Canadians for gaming supremacy. A very good evening.

                Night patrol is calling now. A damp night, but there may be turtles. That is always the hope that drives us.

 

“Crib” (a Haiku)

 

Humid night, boredom.

Cervesa, cards, laughter.

‘Fifteen!’ en francais.

 

March 19, 2016

                The jungle wakes with the night. It feels as though we are entering the heart of a single, aware entity, as if the dark ahead is a great beast in its own right. In a way, this is the truth; the rainforest is a great complexity of symbiosis. I feel, as the foliage engulfs us, an intruder here; this is not a place for hapless gringos. The muck sucks down our boots, palm fronds crack thunderously underfoot. In a place alive with night sounds, loud with them even, these trespassing steps ring out jarringly. The forest is aware of us, has marked our presence. I feel its distain, outsiders that we are. I cannot set that thought aside.

                We are looking for snakes. Jeroen is especially eager, but this tall Dutchman is not in charge of this little expedition. Manuel is the leader here; there is no question around this. He is a figure of real intrigue to me. Here he is a man of great importance, wealthy as he is with the knowledge of the forest. Tracking animals, catching venomous serpents, knowing what jungle signs herald danger. Here, he is a learned and respected man. Sadly, away from the seat of his power, he would be regarded as just another Tico. Such is the way of the world, I suppose.

                The five of us creep noisily through the dense brush. We shine our lights all about, searching for movement. Manuel points out a red webbed tree frog. As always, I marvel over the miracle that is amphibian life. Nothing in this world is more graceful nor so lithe. Jeroen holds the frog, showing its large nocturnal eyes, and red-streaked limbs. Its vibrant green body seems a gem of poisonous perfection.

                The smaller, equally gem-like cousin, the strawberry poison dart frog, can also be seen, dotting the jungle floor and columnar trunks of nearby trees. The red hued body almost glows under the glare of our lights. The care with which these tiny frogs attend to their young is a shock, nurturing each tadpole as they do, in a way that’s seems downright mammalian.

                A beetle alights on a log, and begins to glow. We switch off our hand torches, and the bug shines bright neon before us, a luminescent display. In many ways, this green glow is the most impressive feature of tonight’s walk.

                We find snakes as well. Not a large haul of them, but still a few. No fer-de-lance this time, which is both a relief and a disappointment. Jeroen has been telling us stories of the 1.7 metre long monster they crossed the week before. It attacked, and the team had run, prudence being the better part of valour. We did capture a coral snake, another venomous devil, ringed brightly with happy colours.

                The blunt nosed tree snake is the real treat. Needle thin, with a bulbous head, and massive protruding eyes, this little serpent is a constrictor which targets insects, lizards, and birds. The body is whip thin, thinner even than a pinky finger. No danger to us from the little guy.

                We exit the jungle as abruptly as we entered her. A lone opossum marks our departure. There is a collective sigh behind us. The gringo intruders have gone, and the night can go on as it always does; hunting, hiding, living, dying. The tarantula we scared down into her den will re-emerge, and an anole will die. Or not die, as the case may be. It is a beautiful hidden dance, in the dark beneath the canopy.

 

March 20, 2016

                Evening settles gently tonight. We sink into it laconically, in the way of tropical places. Clouds scud up high, blown in by Caribbean winds, and the light, softened to pastel hues, dances on the still waters of the canal. It is a moment caught between times, day easing off of stage west, night marching stoically in from the sea. I can hear the distant surf pound the strand, even though it is half a kilometre away, through a barrier of trees.

                Frogs and insects take up the call, singing as only the lusty can sing, trumpeting nights advance and their own desire. This is the pace of things here. Nature sings each day through its stages. None of the trees stir. The gloaming is close set with humidity.

                A black turtle crests the surface of the canal. A fish follows suit further up the waterway. Their expanding ripples stir the water, but that is all that disturbs the stillness of the mirror the water has become.

                The moon has risen to the south east, so close to full as to make no difference. Its radiant face stares up from the water with an equal intensity as it beams down from above. The dark pits that mar her face are clear, blemishes familiar, making her beautiful.

                All is steel grey now, iron hard and bleak in the way of evenfall, once all other colours have fled the sky. The moonrise has brought with it a breath of wind. A wind rise at night, when all is so hot and close, is a blessing. I wonder where this wind originated. What shore is its native land? 

 

March 23, 2016

                I have this fear that my enduring memory of these nightly turtle patrols will be of sore feet. Walking the 6 ½ mile transect twice in the course of a typical night (down and back, down and back) becomes a trial of Herculean effort. No matter the chosen foot gear, your feet become a sodden ruin. Trench footed, blistered, open sores weeping with each step, the sea water and sand abrading as you go. What’s more, I am soaked most nights to the waist, as the surf, extraordinarily violent at times, roars up the narrow black strand. Coarse granular volcanic glass, and salt, conspires to rub my thighs and scrotum, until they too ache with each forward stride. When the final long traverse of the transect begins, my eyes drop, and all I can feel is the ache that shoots through my lower half with my footsteps. In this state, I am not sure I would see a turtle mere metres away. More to the point, I am not sure I’d care if I missed her.

                In my head, I have taken to calling this masochistic final stretch of the patrol the “Eva Braun March”. I feel strongly that the First Lady of the Reich would have approved of the iron clad adherence to protocol. Each patrol is mandated to last for six hours, six hours of walking, the pace brisk, break times regimented and without deviation. Damn the pain, damn the sores, damn the chaffing! This Mein Kampf protocol is gospel, so I set my feet ahead one step at a time, and bear it. Come midmorning, when the heat and the sun become too much to allow for sleep, I will bandage the more egregious injuries, and dry my trench feet.

                Obviously, there have been a few fruitless patrols without a glimpse of a turtle. With this scarcity of marine shield-toads, the nightly jaunts begin to weigh on me, feeling like the essence of futility. The memory of the prehistoric she beast labouring over the black sand is distant. Hopefully this does not remain so. “Oh my God,” one of the other volunteers on patrol had said, seeing the hulking mother maneuver across the beach, back into the pounding surf, “this changes my life.” I cannot agree. I think that a line like that is a cliché people use to preface impressive moments. No one will actually change anything as a result of this nocturnal encounter, but I keep that observation to myself, despite the general annoyance I feel towards verbose clichés. Because the moment is impressive. Because the female leatherback, despite her gargantuan bulk, is the very image of vulnerability. Because this species, ancient already when hominids first sharpened sticks into rude tools, has dwindled to this: an occasional, isolated foray onto a moonlit tropical beach of volcanic sand, to seek a nest site, lay her eggs, and again disappear into the crash and ebb of the surf.

                Clichés and ruinous feet really do become secondary considerations when I think of her, there on the beach, scattering sand to disguise her nest, one last maternal gesture before she leaves her progeny to their uncertain fate. Even these late night Eva Braun Marches, fruitless as they have become of late, focus down to this one bittersweet truth: the leatherback may very well dwindle to nothing more than a collective memory in this modern plagued world, but I have seen them by moonlight, and they were wonderful to behold. Long may they continue to dance to this primordial rhythm.

 

March 24, 2016

 

                “Down the river of the windfall light.” Dylan Thomas rattles in my mind of late. Sitting out on the COTERC dock, watching the sun rise, light and wind stirring the canal below, it seems a fitting thought.

                King fisher’s, blue-red flashes, flit and dance above the turgid flow. The pitted concrete path to the boat house is alive with darting anoles and geckos, all furtive in their quest for a meal. A host of Montezuma oropendolas fill the tree canopy up the canal from my seat, their bright yellow tails proud in the soft dawn light. A single capuchin monkey shyly peeks out from a palm frond, to stare right at me. With subdued grace, he climbs off, making his way to wherever he feels he now needs to be. It is not here, watching me.

                Such is the pace of things here. The light, the jungle, the dull crash of waves on a distant windward shore.

                Adios.

 

March 25, 2016

 

                Cariari is a banana town. Blue collar, dusty, dirty, down and out. There isn’t a lot of money here, not for the Tico anyway. Huge signs at gateways to oceans of cultivated green trumpet foreign concerns: Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita.

                It reminds us of one simple truth: the history of Latin America is written in bananas and blood.

 

March 26, 2016

 

                The gecko’s friendly chortle welcomes us to the garden terrace at the Hostel Casa de Lis. Long gone are the humid plantation lands of the Caribe plains. We have made our way into the mountains again. Turrialba is an interesting town, tucked away in its valley at the foot of an active volcano. It has the feel of a wilderness frontier, although it is not, not really. But there is a rugged appeal to these higher places. And at night, looking northwards, there is a distinct lack of lights, with their haloed glow, throwing back the comforting night.

                Although it is now cloud shouldered, northwards sits Volcan Turrialba, which is simmering, coughing out occasional bouts of sulphurous gas and smoke, an old man hacking out a lung in the darkness. Northward also is Guayabo, the remains of a pre-Colombian city of 15,000 or so, who had developed a civic water system still functional to this day. Many secrets there to the north, in this darkness. A wild soul still, in high places.

 

March 27, 2016

 

                The traffic below the rooftop terrace is heavy and loud. There is a near constant stream of mechanised humanity on Hwy 10 as it wends its way through the small urban core of Turrialba. Even so, the soulless roar of a combustion engine is not enough to drown out the cacophonous babble of the parakeets which have come to roost in the stately, ancient palms that line the now dilapidated railway platform, relic that it is of a bygone age. In fact, the opposite is true, and these cackling birds, flashes of emerald, sapphire and ruby, quite drown out the squeal of tires and the roar of failing mufflers with their yammering.

                More of the birds come, parrots and parakeets both, come in their hundreds to these trees, whose great height stabs at the low sky of evening. Together, they lift their voices in a collective chattering yowl, which sounds the death knell of the day. The sun, unseen through the gloom of cloud, has passed to the lee of Irazu, and night marches in on the shoulders and hidden crown of Turrialba. It is this between time of shifting light and dark that the birds nightly (daily?) fill with song.

                It amuses me to see the palms, magnificent in height, so occupied in the gloaming moments. Once, the concourse below would have been alive with human traffic, and not this melancholy space left solely to the birds. The coffee barons who once held sway here in the narrow lands of mountain plantations, laid the tracks to get their crops of roasted gold to the sea, and out to a caffeine addicted world. No small feat, this railroad, winding through mountains as it does, into the dense tangle of rainforest below, until it met the sea at Puerto Limon. The laying of this metal artery would have been a nightmare in the making, a story told in lives, as such stories tended to go in times like those (as such stories still go in places far from the neon lights of the West).

                But that railroad is now closed. The coffee reaches thirsty markets by air, not rail and sea. All that remains is the concourse, and the elder palms that fill with parrots at day’s end. Spindly skeletal old tracks meander hither and yon, so grown in with brush and debris that they can scarce be seen. In many places, the tracks are gone entirely.

                A social flycatcher bursts into my view, a gleaming of yellow that seems to dance and weave in tight loops, getting a final late day feed before night truly begins. An ambulance roars by below, all sound and fury, a frenzied rush to be gone, to be where it is needed.

                The parrots battle back, winning again as their babble drowns out all else. I am where I need to be: on a roof terrace watching night approach, thinking on birds, trains, and cloud shrouded ridges that march upwards into the coming dark.