Pepito the Clown

This Time Last Year

I'm up at 6am to watch the birds. The usual several species of Toucans; Chestnut-mandibled and Keel-billed as well as Collared Aracari (a smaller type of Toucan). We are ready to leave by 7.30am. Today we are to paddle the Rio Sarapiqui which is the river I screwed up big time last year. I lost my glasses and hat and abandoned after an hour and Carlos continued after that and almost three boats. These adventures will feature in the Blog shortly - it's not yet a year ago! The river was big that day so I'm apprehensive about how it will be today.

As luck would have the river is completely different and I can hardly recognise it. The water is much lower and much less violent.

The rapids are still a challenge though and we have to negotiate them with care. This year though we have Carolyn with us and she is a lot more careful and circumspect than Carlos was last year. At several of the rapids we stop to examine them before proceeding - this is standard practise, though not always possible. The rapids turn out to be a lot of fun until on one corner Molly somehow contrives to dislocate her shoulder. Her paddle jarred on a rock I believe.

Her and her husband manage to pull into an eddy and the rest of us stop to assist. It's fortunate that her husband is a doctor and knows the procedure for slipping it in. So do I now. You pull the arm down steadily and strongly and you hang on for however long it takes. Eventually the muscle relaxes and the joint goes back into the socket. This can take up to ten minutes.

Of course her arm is still sore so we make a sling. Carolyn then paddles with her - she can't paddle at all now, and I paddle down with her husband. We almost capsize at the next corner as I cut into the slow water too fast and at the wrong angle and the braking effect almost has us over. Sometime it's tricky to go back to tandem paddling when you've been solo all week.

After a while we decide to explore a side-stream and paddle up there until it becomes too narrow. We do find a pleasant shady spot for lunch.

It takes us about four hours in all to paddle back to our hotel which is on the river bank. This is the first time I've paddled this river so I'm pleased to get it under my belt. Other outfitters offer rafting on this river so you have an idea of what it can be like.

We laze all afternoon reading books and chasing butterflies.

In the early evening Luis and I drive into town to pick up some wine and beer for dinner.

This Time in 2007

I was up at 6am to take photographs of the city from this great vantage point. Couldn't get a coffee out of the hotel until 7.30 though!

After breakfast, Jim, Carolyn and I jumped a taxi down to Santa Ana and checked in with out friends there.

I got my laundry done and caught up with everything down at the Internet Cafe.

Jim left for the airport to go back to the USA but came back later as he was bounced. They gave him $350 for that!

In the afternoon I went with Taty and Pepito to a children's party. Taty does face-painting and Pepito is a professional clown. We drove across San Jose with a fully made-up clown driving like a madman and honking on his horn. Unbelievably he actually had a horn that sounded like a clowns car in the circus ring. I fully expected the doors to fall off. He drove like a lunatic too, even more so than most other people in Costa Rica. He weaved in and out of the traffic often with his head out of the window and laughing. Amazingly he got away with it and everyone else just thought it was funny. No road rage at all. Complete madness, and not something I shall forget in a hurry.

The show was great and I took a lot of shots for them.

Watched Costa Rica beat Panama at football on the TV. Dinner and bed.

14 Hours on the road (and river)

This time Last year

Everyone in the group decides not to paddle the Rio Toro today but instead to take a boat trip and admire the wildlife from a safe vantage point. The boat will leave Oscar's Mother's place in Boca Tapada and head north down the Rio San Carlos to the Nicaraguan border, then down the Rio San Juan to a place called Trinidad and then upstream on the Rio Sarapiqui to Puerto Viejo where we will stay for a couple of nights.

I, instead, will ride shotgun with Luis and the bus.

We go down to the riverside and wait for the boat to arrive. Once everyone is on board Luis and set off on our four hour drive. It's two hours before we leave the dirt road and it's quite a bumpy ride. We arrive in Puerto Viejo at about 1pm and get evryones luggage unloaded before we have some lunch. We are not at our usual place - apparently it is booked solid with bird-watchers! It'll be a bit cramped as Luis, Manuel, Carolyn and I are all sharing one room!

We pick them up in town at the ice-cream store about 4pm. They tell us they had a splendid lunch with camarones on the river-side somewhere and saw plenty of American Crocodiles. We don't often see these when we are paddling (just the Caymans) as they prefer bigger and slower rivers. These things can grow to about 5m.

We have a pleasant evening and share a bottle of run; Flora de Cana of course!

This Time in 2007

Today would turn out to be a very long travel day indeed.

We were up at 6am for breakfast and the boys arrived at 6.30am to cart our luggage through town to the dock. We me an Irish couple there who said that the 6am boat had failed to materialise. However the 7am boat was on time and we were soon on our way upstream to San Carlos.

We watched the green countryside speed past and looked at the dilapidated buildings that were scattered every now and then along the coast, We saw a huge Tarpon fish leap above the waves. It must have 1.5m long. after three hours or so we arrived in San Carlos and dragged ourselves round to Immigration before piling onto the boat for Costa Rica and Los Chiles.

It took and hour and a half to reach Los Chiles but as usual we were entertained by the birds and Howler Monkeys along the way. It took half and hour to get through the luggage check and then we found that the Immigration Office was closed. We missed the 2pm bus and had to wait for the 3pm Express. Express! It stopped every half an hour but at least we didn't have to change bus at San Carlos (Costa Rica).

Normally this bus ride would take about 5 hours but we got stuck behind a broken down Sugar Cane Truck and it took an hour to squeeze by as it was almost blocking the road. The bus almost became impaled on the truck but finally we got by. It was 8.30pm when we got to the airport in San Jose where we dropped off the public bus and Luis picked us up for the last hour to the San Gildar Hotel in Escazu. Here we dropped off Lee, Florence and Carlos and Luis drove me up to the Pico Blancas Hotel where Jim and Carolyn were staying. We had dinner and a couple of beers. What a long and tedious day. More than 14 hours on the road (and rivers!).