CostaSwitza RicaLand

Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Costa Rica is full of Europeans this winter enjoying the excellent weather and the strong Euro in a dollar-dominated country. The dollar has been stable here for years, and you can use U.S. currency anywhere in casual exchanges for colones that adhere closely to what you would get in a bank. Those who come in with Euros are thus enjoying a 50% discount on what was already a bargain of a country. I met people from Britain, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, and The Netherlands. Besides their fiscal good fortune and sunny holiday dispositions, they share another trait: the ability to turn on a dime and flash anger at the foreign policy of the current American administration and revulsion at American people for having re-elected it. That’s something new I’ve noticed since this election…Europeans are no longer making a distinction between American policy and American people. They’re angry, and they’re angry with us as citizens of a rogue empire for not resisting it.

When, in the late sixties, it became apparent that the Vietnam War was a failed policy based on lies and that America was engaged in war crimes, many cities and most universities were engulfed in protest. Fifteen years later, Reagan’s covert war on the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the collectivos in Guatamala, and the rebeldes in El Salvador, while lacking the personal component of the threat of a draft to American youth, finally became so egregiously unconstitutional that Congress could no longer not react. Now, we’ve re-elected a cabal of extremists whose global machinations go so far beyond our past shameful actions in South East Asia and Central America that the whole world is involved, and they’re appalled at our complicity and complacency. Subtleties like red state/blue state electoral college, Democratic Party ineptitude, and moral value machinations mean about as much to them as the choice of nozzles in a firestorm.

Costa Rica walked a thin line in the 80’s between the Somoza family, the Sandinistas, the Contras, Cuban Exiles, the CIA, U.S. Military advisors, and National Security Council stooges like Oliver North. In 1984, President Luis Alberto Monge Alvarez flew to Washington to endorse Reagan’s pro-Contra plans, and Costa Rica was on the brink of a full-on military build up courtesy of Uncle Sam. Resistance from the people was swift and effective. They threw their support behind peace advocate Oscar Arias Sanchez who in 1986 restored Costa Rican neutrality and in 1987 won the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering a formal peace plan signed by all five Central American presidents which ended the conflict, despite Reagan’s callow efforts to sabotage it. In a speech before the U.S. Congress later that year Arias said the Costa Rican people “are convinced that the risks we run in the struggle for peace will always be less than the irreparable costs of war.” Today, this small, stable country is known as the Switzerland of Central America and, as I would soon learn, that’s as much because of its dramatic landscape as for its neutrality.

I landed in San Jose, the capital, with a bag full of motorcycle gear, a straw hat, some meds and not much else. A dirt bike was waiting for me at Wild Rider Rentals and I went there directly. It was a Yamaha TTR 250; a light, tough bike with high ground clearance, good suspension and brand new knobbies just as I had requested. The owner of the company, Thorsten, a German expat, assured me that the battery was charged and the engine tuned, and watched with slight concern as I surveyed the bike’s condition. Its chain, hoses and cables were good, but it was heavily scratched everywhere, the gas tank was dented, a side panel was bashed, a heat deflection plate was missing, a foot peg was bent, the rack was gone, and it was outfitted with cheap rear view mirrors. “It’s perfect,” I said with a grin, and his face lit up with surprise, both of us now knowing what I intended to do with this machine and relieved that neither of us were going to be fussy about its appearance now or when I brought it back.

In the morning I filled my backpack with essentials for a week, pulled on my armor, threw my gear bag on a rack in Thorsten’s shop, and got out my maps for a quick consultation. He took a look at my intended route directly west to the coast and shook his head, “I advise you against going over the Cerro de la Muerte. It’s a cloud forest up there, the pass is 11,500’, it’s always wet and foggy, sometimes you can’t see 50’, and it’s cold… real cold.” This was unwelcome news; I’d been planning my route for a week but without, obviously, paying enough attention to the topographical features on my maps. “An 11,500’ pass? Between here and the Pacific? It’s only 80 kilometers as the crow flies; that’s unbelievable.” “Yes but it’s true,” Thorsten replied with that Teutonic gravitas that makes you pay attention, “And believe me, that’s no way to start your trip. Let me show you a better route to the sea. I’m going to highlight the road in orange and the key towns in yellow because there are no road signs.”

And then I was away on a slowly descending northwest route from 3,800’ San Jose to sea level at Puntarenas where I caught the afternoon ferry to Guanacaste Province. As soon as I rode off the pier in Naranjo I was onto a dirt road and feeling the heat even though I had stripped down to nothing but mesh and ballistic plates. It was exciting; I was heading south down the Nicoyo Peninsula on a spider web of dirt roads through cattle ranches towards Cabo Blanco, the oldest and one of the least visited of Costa Rica’s wildlife preserves. It’s small in comparison to some of the mega parks that have been created to protect rich ecosystems and migratory patterns that don’t respect political boundaries, but in all of Costa Rica it’s the sole “Absolute Preserve,” one that can only be entered on foot, along a narrow and sometimes difficult to discern trail that winds for 5 kilometers from the ranger station through the dry tropical forest to the beach at the point.

Welcomed by the fearsome screams of howler monkeys who roar like tigers but are really harmless little guys with oversized throat sacs, I spent a couple of days there, recording the sounds of wildlife, and occasionally chatting with the volunteers. They were all female, all in their mid twenties, all pretty, and all from northern Europe. They had paid their own transportation to get to Costa Rica, to stay in a remote bunkhouse, eat rice and beans for two weeks, and groom the trail. At first I had to laugh at the existential absurdity of bringing fair young woman thousands of miles, handing them a rake, and sending them into the jungle. And, it is, in a sense, a Sisyphean task with the constant rain of debris from the dense canopy above, where competition is intense with ferns and vines and strangler trees all pushing up to the light, where birds and lizards and monkeys shred fruits and pods and leaves, and rip bark to get at termites and ants and bees. Still, it makes a difference. Certainly the trail is very neat in places, and without their work would disappear altogether within days, but I felt their presence in a more spiritual than practical sense…more acts of devotion in the cathedrals of nature than "Waiting For Godot" grounds crew... more perception than reality. Like vestal virgins in a roman temple charged with keeping the altar fire burning, their efforts set the tone. Most visitors walk the path as quietly as they can and speak in whispers. These bright young women infuse what so many come here to find, a lively experience of wildlife, with a larger sense of respect for the world outside us, and a true commitment to conservation.

When I left the Nicoyo Peninsula I headed south along the coast as far as Dominical. From Quepos to Dominical there’s a 40 kilometer dirt road that goes beyond washboard in roughness and has loose rocks the size of baseballs. I found that a steady speed of 70 km/hr kept me skipping over the tops of the bumps and I rode standing up to take the vibrations and jumps in my legs and so that I could see the obstacles coming on. I passed the few cars and trucks and buses like they were standing still. Every 10 kilometers or so there was a village and a school and since it was mid afternoon the kids were out and waiting for the bus. I’d slow down to 15 km/hr for the school zone and pass by a knot of blue uniformed kids who would jump and shout at the armored rider on the dirt bike to “hit it!” I'd stay within the speed limit through the zones, and then at the end, still within sight, I’d peg the throttle, bring the front end up and disappear in a cloud of dust and rocks. Later that night in Dominical, I drank beer in a bar with a German who spent 3 1/2 hours in a hot and dusty bus getting his kidneys pounded on that road and absolutely hated it. I did it in 40 minutes and absolutely loved it. That’s why I travel this way.

It was an open-air café on the beach and I had my maps spread out on a side table in the soft and salty night air, planning my return to San Jose for tomorrow. While the locals watched a televised soccer game at the bar, Cristof was packing a cigarette on the map with some herb he’d bought in the tourist town of Montezuma and planning on getting toasted. “Let’s get some more beer, man, and go have a smoke,” he said. “That's tempting,” I told him, “but tomorrow I’ve got to cross the Mountain of Death.” We both laughed at the ridiculous cliché, and then I showed him on the map where we were, where the Cerro de la Muerte was, what the elevation change was, how short the direct line was, and that there was no other route from here to San Jose without going all the way back up the coast. “Whoa, dude,” he said, like a real Californian, “the Mountain Of Death, man!”