One of many
trip reports under the
SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie
Grow.
Email me at
ajs@frii.com.
Last update: April 2, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1992_1003_HighDivide.htm)
From an email reply a while after we got back from an Alternative singles group excursion to Costa Rica -- "9 people, 9 nights, no checked baggage":
> How was the trip? I'm dying to hear the details!
Thanks for asking. The trip was fantastic. Very full, rich, enjoyable, and long. Kind of hard to do it justice really even in a verbal description. I was thinking about writing it up as a trip report -- nah, it just wouldn't be the same.
So here are merely some "snapshots".
Squirrel monkeys and their young. Bananas 3c each. Anonas and other wonderful fruit never seen here. Hot and humid; but higher, cool and windy. Varied steep terrain, deeply eroded, a surprise every kilometer. Opening a coconut with a pocket knife while sitting in the veranda by the Pacific under a full moon. Guaro, rum, and lemon juice highball (pow). Hiking in the lush jungle -- mud everywhere -- and on the hot seashore. Swimming in the pacific; collecting seashells and moonstones. Sitting in a cool clear creek below the forest canopy being nibbled by tiny shrimp. Howler monkeys. Potholes, winding roads, difficult route-finding. Cloud forests -- hard to find the continental divide in the thick of it. Waterfalls! Diving through them. Sugared sugar cane candy. Rustic rooms, no hot water, some air conditioning. Immersion in Spanish, not fluent but able to converse, frequent lookups in a dictionary. Campesinos and their plantations -- bananas, pejibayes, papayas, coffee, coconuts, and unrecognizable tropical trees. Caballeros on their horses. Papayas the size of sandias (watermelons). Foreign money of a different order of magnitude. Excellent food, friendly people, simple and independent attitudes. Festivals, fiestas, siestas. Hot mineral creeks and active volcanoes booming. Learning to windsurf (and not succeeding) in 30 kt winds on gorgeous Lake Arenal. Living fences made of trees, or of aloe-like plants with tall stems. Funny looking brahma cattle. Iguanas. "You know you're far from home when you can't recognize the roadkill." Crowded rusty ferries. Coconut juice as a cold drink. Macaroon cookies. The all night noise and bustle of a central valley city. "They do sleep here, but they do it in shifts."
It was great. I wanna go back.
(Next trip report: 1993_0121-26_DeathValley.htm)