Costa Rica Part 4

The next part of our journey required us to fly back from Tortuguero to San Jose. This is often the case in Costa Rica because the roads are not very good (or completely non-existent) in many places. Sometimes, even if you only want to travel 100 miles up the coast, you still have to go back to San Jose, in the center of the country, and take a plane. We took our plane from San Jose to a place called Golfito in the SW of the country. This town was not our destination; in fact it was not even the place where we were supposed to land, but the air strip in Puerto Jimenez was closed, so Golfito it was.

Our plane this time was huge and modern boasting at least ten seats and TWO, count em, two pilots. Of course they still organized the seating arrangements based on the size of each passenger, but this one felt a lot less like a box kite with an engine. We were supposed to fly to another location to drop off a few people and then head to Golfito, but a most impressive bank of storm clouds turned us back. By the time we landed in Golfito, the weather there was sunny, warm, and of course, incredibly humid.

A taxi took us the mile or two from the airstrip to the ferry. The only exciting this about this bit being the way the taxi driver drove at full speed to the very end of the rickety wooden pier in his 20-30 year old conversion van. Stopping on the proverbial dime, he tossed us and our stuff into the speedboat that would take us the rest of the way across the bay.

When I think of ferries, I'm usually imagining the goliaths that carry cars around the Puget Sound. This ferry was, as I mentioned, a speed boat with some rough seats for passengers, and the luggage arranged to provide ballast against the heavier people. A boy who looked about eight took our fares, and then proceeded to chat up one of the other kids who was also a passenger. The ride was great fun. We went quite fast, and we were traveling over the kind of clear blue ocean that appears in the movies. The only sad part was not seeing the whales that sometimes frequent the gulf.

After reaching the town of Puerto Jimenez (motto: We're the "big city" around here even if we don't have any paved roads) we were bundled into an SUV driven by a friendly ex-pat German, and we began our trip up into the mountains. The travel agency warns female tourists to bring along a sports bra for this leg of the trip. The reason becomes immediately clear. The roads are not just rutted; they are full of huge holes that would toss you from one side of the car to the other if you weren't wearing the seatbelt. In places, small rivers wash over the road, and the car is past its tires in water. It was a very good thing that we hadn't had the chance to eat much that day because I was feeling fairly green by the time we arrived at Lapa Rios. Fortunately, one look at the view from the lodge, and any ill feelings were quickly forgotten.