40.0 A simple life...

We continued the Tortuguero theme by moving onto another Puerto Viejo, this time Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui where we booked the cheap room of a wonderful, but not budget, Eco Lodge. 'Eco' is very much the thing in Costa Rica where the national slogan is 'Pura Vida' - pure, or simple, life; everything has this slogan written on it, from the brown paper sleeve containing your cutlery in cafes or restaurants to billboard adverts for new cars which hardly qualify as simple or pure. Anyway our lodge was pretty cool - somehow we were given an expensive room for the price of the cheapest one. It was difficult to check-in at the lodge as the howler monkeys in the tree above reception seemed to object to us and, although relatively small in size, they make the sound of an angry gorilla on steroids. 

Costa Rica sells itself on eco-tourism. The eco-lodges, National Parks, nature tours are everywhere. For all this to work, you need the actual nature and there is a fair bit of it here. The industry goes as far as Nature Guides which is probably one of the major professions here. And as per everything else here, they don't come cheap!

Having not been able to wangle a second cheap night at the lodge we moved east to Arenal Volcano but didn't stop there - it was a convoluted route to get to the cloudforest of Monteverde. Convoluted because after about 10km on a gravel road we had to turn round as we didn't feel confident, just the two of us, with quite a wide river crossing especially not knowing what was on the other side of it. After turning round there was still a further 35km of severely broken/gravel road to get to Monteverde. What we put ourselves through for nature...

We went for a walk in the Monteverde Cloudforest Reserve. It wasn't cloudy and there are concerns for the cloudforest because of this, with the finger being firmly pointed at climate change. As with most things in Costa Rica entrance to the reserve is expensive even though we managed 'Elderly' tickets. Sometimes translations lack the necessary nuances... We saw a lot of very similar flora, not a great variety we must admit, and apart from one bird there wasn't much fauna on view either. The local guides have eyes, and telescopes to spot wildlife, but their hit rate didn't seem that great either. There are only so many times that you can bear hearing that such and such a plant is good for digestion or constipation. Or learning that such and such an animal lives here but you don't see them now because it's hot/cold/wet/dry/sunny/the wrong time of year. So effectively we paid 36$ for a walk in the park, having risked limb and life getting there on the gravel. But the one bird we did see did give us our Attenborough moment...

We were walking near canopy level on the reserve's only walkway bridge when we saw a lovely, quite large, yellow and black butterfly. We were not the only ones to see it. An equally lovely yellow bird saw it, snapped it in its beak and bashed it to death against the branch of the tree before swallowing it in three. Nature.

Being a tad disappointed with Monteverde we decided to continue risking limb and life on gravel roads and returned to Arenal. It took us a while to get out of Monteverde despite it being a very small place. The descent of a very steep unmade gravel road slowed us down a lot with Paul struggling to walk the bike down, whilst Françoise walked herself down. Paul often complains of itching inside his ears when he has the helmet on.  He says it feels like insects inside his ears. It never is. This time it wasn't his ears but the top of his head - the bit with the thinning hair. And this time it wasn't his imagination, as there was a rather large cockroach that had been nestled there for 20 minutes. No more helmets on the floor in basic accommodation. 

It is a lot more difficult for us descending gravel roads as opposed to climbing them. Especially those with turns on them as the desire, and sometimes need, to brake can cause us to skid and fall. So Françoise had to do a fair bit of walking again on our return to Arenal. Arenal is a volcano which, we find hard to believe, is only 7,500 years old. It became famous and a tourist attraction not so long ago when to everyone's surprise it went pop. Arenal is also a lake,  partly caused by a hydro-electric dam, and our accommodation overlooks it. We are actually staying just outside Nuevo Arenal as the original Arenal town was flooded with the building of the reservoir. 

We have been really pleased with our accommodation. We can hear the howler monkeys in the trees but we have only seen the branches move as opposed to seeing the monkeys themselves. But the birds! As the German owner tells us, 'Why pay to go to a National Park when...?' Agreed. 

We have now been on the road for five months and have covered 22,000km. We have had time off due to freighting the bike from Colombia to Panama. It is our longest continuous trip to date and it is getting longer. We have an outline planning to show roughly where we should be in order to get to Alaska mid-July. It was always going to be highly unlikely that we would be quicker than the outline, and probably no surprise at all that it's looking more like Alaska in August now if we keep going.

After a hard day on the bike, and some days are hard and have risks and definitely stress associated with them, we look forward to getting to our accommodation and cleaning up a bit. A shower is always appreciated. Gas water heating is not very prevalent here. Some of the places we stay have their showers linked up to solar panels so if you want hot water you need to get in there quickly before it runs out. However, what we have found recently is that a lot of them have electrically heated showers. We are not 100% sure how they work but the wiring leaves us worried. Risks on the road we seem to be able to manage,  but risks in the shower?

We feel it necessary sometimes to do some of the tourist things. So we went to a wobbly bridge park - sold as a canopy walk to hit the Nature button. It was quite pleasant, but there was more fauna to be seen on the road in the shape of raccoons or at our accommodation in the form of birds - we were warned... and we had acknowledged it. And we have now proved it. Twice. Nonetheless it was a pleasant day out and we felt sufficiently positive to stop off on the way back to the accommodation for coffee and coffee torte.

We prolonged our stay at what was proving to be a nature theme park every breakfast as we were enjoying it so much. We ventured out after the toucan display to a river we had passed a few days earlier. Clearly we are in very recent volcano activity territory and there are plenty of hotels advertising that they have thermal springs and spas. The river we went to was clearly geologically connected to whatever drives the volcano as the water was hot. Significantly hotter than a number of the showers we have had. So we sat around in a rock pool for a couple of hours with the river cascading past us. A lovely experience and for once it was free! Unlike the coffee torte on the return journey.

39.0 Costa Lot

In our token Spanish 'rica' means 'rich'. So we really should have known what to expect, Costa Rica was never going to be cheap... There weren't any great traumas on the Costa Rica side of the border and we stopped at the nearest town to equip ourselves with both Costa Rican cash and a local SIM card. We now have a collection. It is also becoming a routine of sorts. The place we stopped at was Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. Very much a party town and also one of retired Americans. It was advertising the 'only Caribbean island pub crawl'. The party town bit surprised us as cost-wise, this isn't the backpacker's paradise that is South East Asia. The equivalent to a Beer Lao, which in Costa Rica is an Imperial, is not that far shy of 3$US. Here the currency is the colon, named after Christopher Colombus as opposed to an intimate part of the body. 

America is everywhere here. They run a dual currency system with the $. Most things are translated into American, as opposed to English, 'Gated condo living - condo living is freedom'. Gated and freedom? There are also the young American tourists, primarily female, just so many Americans here, both tourists and residents - it's sometimes hard to spot the Germans who are also quite numerous! We are clearly American looking - Paul would love to have a summer suit and tie in his luggage pannier to go with his Panama hat to try and be more English as opposed to American!

In trying to respect a budget our choices re accommodation have become slightly constrained. Our first stopover was Cahuita on the Caribbean coast and it gave us the opportunity for a swim in the sea. Costa Rica isn't that big and doubtless we will also have a dip on the Pacific side too. We are now more hostel orientated as far as the accommodation is concerned. This means, amongst other things, that we have to look after ourselves for breakfast. Supermercado the night before or Cafe in the morning; that is the question!

Cahuita was also a National Park but we decided to skip a visit as we had our eyes set on a little adventure in the Tortuguero National Park further up the Caribbean coast. Tortuguero is one of those places where turtles come ashore in order to lay their eggs. It is a valid question to ask as to whether the turtles started coming to Tortuguero because of its turtle sounding name, or whether it was the town that was named after the turtles? We always knew that we would be out of season for the turtles, but there would be other things to see there. 

Getting to Tortuguero is a bit of a mission. It is a long sandpit sort of island that you fly onto with a small plane or you catch a boat. There are no vehicles other than bicycles on Tortuguero. So we had to leave the motorbike behind at the embarkation point which is on a tiny river in the middle of nowhere. It took us a few sweaty hours to get to the embarkation point but then everything got rather exciting.

For once something was reasonably priced here. 8$US a head for the boat ride to Tortuguero which was due to take about an hour and a quarter. Packing had been difficult - we didn't need tools or motorcycle gear on a sandspit with no roads. But we couldn't leave things unsecured on the bike in the parking even though it was guarded. The luggage we carried on to the boat was not the most stylish!

The river had loads of meanders. There were also tree trunk and rock obstacles in the river. Water level was a bit low so the captain had to lift the outboard in certain areas to avoid it hitting the riverbed. What he didn't do was slow down - he was clearly training for F1. The trip on the boat through the jungle was great - iguanas were sunning themselves on the sandbanks at the shallow side of the river meanders. We arrived in less than an hour and found Tortuguero to be quite densely forested - especially for a sandspit.

We had booked a number of tours for our extra day in Tortuguero. Jonathan our guide met us at the boat landing and took us through the labyrinth of pathways to our hostel. On the way to the accommodation we saw two Green Macaws flying overhead, a spider monkey in a tree and some yellow tailed birds with the strangest hanging nests

Our hostel was very basic. Our room  contained a double bed stuck against the wall with a bottom and top sheet, a small bedside table, an electric fan, a sheet on a broken curtain pole across a window frame with a torn bug mesh and two coat hooks on the wall. We also had two towels that didn't fulfill their primary function of drying and also, didn't dry once used. In fact nothing dries. We had a small shared bathroom with a tiny sink, a toilet you could only sit sideways on and a shower. Only cold water available, we are getting used to this. We told ourselves that we were living like locals...

It was very hot. And very humid. One of the things about cold water to wash both with and in, is that it doesn't seem to be very good at dealing with sweat from humidity. And nothing dries. Everything feels clammy. Serious washing will be required when we leave Tortuguero... Nonetheless, as we sat sipping our beer at a waterside bar, we felt very lucky indeed. Luck however failed us in the evening after it had gone dark as we ended up walking round in squares unable to find our hostel. As one would in London, we asked a group of policemen for directions. Their SIM card didn't work either.

There are no vehicles on Tortuguero so the police don't have any traffic duties. There are only 1,300 inhabitants in Tortuguero with a further 800 in the 'suburb' of San Francisco which is just across the river and from which people 'boat in'. Everybody knows everybody and there is nowhere to run to - going on our room, there is not much to steal anyway. So what do these policemen do? Is it so dangerous that they have to walk around in threes? If all they do is walk around the paths of a small village how come they didn't know where our hostel was, considering they must walk past it 50 times a day whilst doing their rounds? Is there a hidden side to Tortuguero where there is a murder a week like in 'Death in Paradise'? We think that the answer is that they sit in cafes talking to the lady owners all day. Very Caribbean.

In the end the lady from the beans and rice restaurant where we ate walked us back to our hostel as we had by then passed in front of her restaurant twice after having left it.

Our morning tour was in a canoe along the river delving into small tributaries and ducking, diving and swerving through the trees. It was super. Just to say that Jonathan and his younger brother Bertie were not only very good at their jobs as guides, but were probably the coolest guides if not the coolest guys on the island. So we saw a wide variety of bird life, howler monkeys, lizards and iguanas and a cayman. 

In the afternoon we went for a walk which first involved a very refreshing speedboat ride. We saw a crocodile, tiny red frogs and more bird life. In fact Costa Rica is all about birds.

And the theme continued in the evening with a toucan and a sloth being disturbed by our flashlights. We were sad to leave Tortuguero, but enjoyed the boat ride back with the same F1 wannabee captain and we could look forward to being able to wash and change our clammy clothes!

No cakes though on the island.

38.0 Correct Terminology

South America is South America and Central America is Central America and Latin America is Central and South America. And we are not quite sure yet where Mexico fits in to all this, but we have a couple of months to work that one out. So having flown into Panama City we are still in Latin America but are also now in Central America. We went to pick the bike up at the cargo handlers first thing Monday morning. As we hadn't had to disconnect the electrics we only had to wait for the bike to be fumigated, undo the ratchet straps, wheel it off the pallet and press the starter button. And thats what we did. But nothing happened. Panic stations. Memories of Montevideo. So try again. Nothing. And again. Still nothing. The sweat wasn't just due to the heat. And again, and this time the bike started perfecty normally as though it just wanted to remind us to treat it nicely and not send it on boats or airplanes. We were back at our hotel with the bike for midday.

Panama City. Some sort of bizarre cross between Dubai, Canary Wharf and Singapore, but with a schizophrenic Old Town thrown into the mix. Could be a wild card for a new F1 circuit. Lots of tower blocks everywhere as you drive in. Not many of the predominantly residential ones lit up at night. It's very hot here, in the thirties but with 75% humidity which tends to make it feel a tad hotter still. Not the conditions for a midday City walking tour. Having mastered the single line Metro as well as the buses we went walking in the Old Town ourselves. The schizophrenic nature is down to a very abrupt demarcation between an area that is immaculately restored and an area that is completely the opposite, that is itself further constrained by the glitzy tower blocks. It is a little more stark than the creep of gentrification.

We went to the Panama City Metropolitan Park and saw terrapins, a sloth and three baby monkeys, well at least their eyes as they were hiding in a hollow in a tree; but we suppose that we see squirrels in Greenwich Park and its each to their own sort of thing. 

 

We thought that as we were in Panama we had to go and see the Panama Canal despite it being a bit pricey. In fact, everything here is quite pricey. We hadn't realised that a new Panama Canal had been built and opened within the last ten years in order that new, bigger container ships could pass through. The new Canal runs parallel to the old one and can handle the current crop of container ships that can carry 13,000 containers, whilst the old Canal could only handle ships carrying half this many. The ships are manoeuvred in the lock by trains running either side of the canal.

We decided to go and see a nature reserve just outside of Panama City. An area where there was supposedly one of the highest number of different types of birds in the world. Hundreds. We hardly saw or heard one. And the cost to visiting the viewing platform was so extortionate we left straightaway and went back to Panama City for a coffee and cake.

After three days spent in Panama we had had enough of the big city and needed to be on the move. Everywhere seems so expensive for very little compared to what we have been paying, so we probably won't stay in Panama that long. This might be Central and Latin America but it is also little USA. The roadside signs are MacDonalds, Burger King, Papa Johns, Domino's, Starbucks and Cinnabon. The latter we tried as there was little else roadside and we needed a drink.  Two lemonades and two cinnamon buns were just shy of 14$ - it's US$ here as currency.

Out of Panama City we stayed in a cute little town called Anton Valle which was built in the caldera of an extinct volcano. It was also at 600m altitude which made all the difference as far as being able to sleep without Aircon is concerned - just a fan to move the air around. Sleep was however broken by a significant dawn chorus. Being in a caldera mean that the roads in and out were actually quite challenging - even on the PanAmerica! What was noticeable was that the supermarkets in town were staffed by Chinese. They also sold lots of Chinese food stuffs  - including steaming wontons at the checkout counter that you could buy in polystyrene beakers with plastic forks. They also sold those nodding Chinese cats and there was the equivalent of SeeWoo called Hong-Kong.

Next stop was a beach stop but as the accommodation had a lovely garden and a pool we never made it as far as the beach. It was only a stopover on the way to Boquete and as it was 35° at 0930 we think we really would have baked if we had stayed longer. We had thought that Anton Valle had noisy wildlife but Las Lajas was somethjng else altogether. Boquete was on the list of Panamanian 'must-see's. We know not why. Perhaps because at 1,000m altitude it was cool? Perhaps because of it being surrounded by coffee fincas? Perhaps because it was beneath Panama's highest volcano, Baru @3,500m? Whilst we were there you couldn't see the volcano because of the clouds.  That was our excuse anyway and we didn't feel like leaving the hostel at 23.30 to see sunrise over the crater - unlike some younger guys from our hostel . More than likely Boquete is a weekend bolthole for people from Panama City who drive here somewhat quicker than what it took us. But it really isn't much. Not a decent cakeshop in town.

There is an indigenous population here, the Ngobe and they do look and dress differently. We believe that there were issues prior to Christmas where the indigenous population were at odds with the government over the sale of mining rights to a Canadian corporation. Panama was closed for a while. 

Whilst in Boquete we visited a coffee finca. Just for a coffee, no tour involved. It was a very nice place indeed, it had a restaurant that dealt with wedding receptions and hotel rooms way above our budget. We left in the opposite direction to the way we had arrived and passed immediately through a very poor area where the Ngobe indigenous people lived. The juxtaposition was pretty extreme. 

The following day we set off for the border. It was rainforest/jungle almost all the way accompanied by the rain. This area, to the northern Caribbean coast is the Ngobe-Bogle  area and they are, we believe, responsible for governing it to a certain extent. It reminded us quite a bit of Laos with the timber houses on stilts in the jungle, except that in Laos there were a lot more domesticated animals about.

Our last stop in Panama was at Almirante and we stopped at a really nice place miles out of town on a ridge overlooking the Caribbean except that because of the clouds and mist we could not see much. But we saw loads of hummingbirds. Apparently we saw the Colibri type as they drink water and water had been put out for them in birdfeeders by the hotel.

We also had the visit of Mr Toad at night who was very large indeed. In the morning we could have breakfast with an abundance of birds around us from the tiny hummingbirds to the vultures circling above us, from what looked like swallows darting about to a pair of toucans who didn't look as though they should be able to fly with their gigantic beaks weighing them down. 

The road to the border was very rainforest again but this time we didn't need our were gear. There was some sort of ongoing political demonstration which basically closed a bridge to traffic, except motorcycles - we were waved through by whoever it was that was demonstrating. The transition into Costa Rica further down the road was relatively painless and uneventful for once.