THE WILDS OF SOUTHERN COSTA RICA

I've been thinking that there should be a scale for the “wildness” of places. At the top of the scale, (or the bottom depending on your point of view), would be ultra organized modern cities and gated retirement communities. Not far removed would come the entirety of The Netherlands. The only so called wild in that country is the aptly named “Den Bos” (The Woods), which in other places would barely qualify as a large park. Not so surprising in a country where even the grass meridians separating roads on the highways are used to graze sheep...

At the opposite end of the scale would be the jungles, deserts, tundras where humans have had little or no influence on the environment. National parks and protected wildlife areas would follow closely. Although, despite the very real wildness that exists in such parks, the signposts letting you know that “Ye have now entered the wild, DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING”, does somewhat dampen the excitement of being in untamed territory...

Southern Costa Rica would appear towards the wilder end of the scale. The place is not totally wild, there are roads (mostly unpaved) with villages that have some version of modern amenities. But, my impression is that the human population there is borrowing space from the natural surroundings rather than imposing their will upon it. This lack of development could be due to the challenging nature of the environment but I suspect clever design is a more likely explanation. Back in the 90s, the Costa Rican government decided that most of country's future income should come from tourism. Even the Costa Rican currency, whose notes up to that point displayed pictures of their main exports, coffee and tobacco, were then changed to “eco designs” showing indigenous animals, fish and plants. And, to Costa Rica's credit, eco tourism is now a huge business.

The organized “eco adventures” we took part in were fun but it was the unplanned and random encounters with nature that brought the most pleasure. Outside our cabin in Dominical, nighttime brought out hermit crabs the size of pool balls. And during the day, iguanas would swagger through the brush and run up the trees. These scenes only a 2 minute walk from a Pacific beach with some of the hugest surf I've ever seen....

We heard and saw howler monkeys in a number of places. “Howling” doesn't begin to describe the sound they really make. Their calls sound more like a jet when flying low and directly overhead. We saw pairs of macaws in flight. (They say that macaws mate for life, and from the way they constantly squawk at each other while flying, I expect that bit of information is true !) Other birds we observed included flocks of brown pelicans and flying beasts so pterodactyl-like it was scary. Not too surprising that Jurassic Park was filmed mostly in the Drake Bay area of Costa Rica.

And, it was a boat trip we took when leaving Drake Bay that was my favorite bit of wildness so far. Access to the area is possible by road but slow and difficult so most people arrive/leave by charter plane or water taxi. This “taxi” is in fact a speed boat that first zooms across the bay, then turns up the Sierpe river to drop you off at a location where there are more buses and better roads. The trip would be worth it even if no practical reason was involved ! The Sierpe river is full of immense and dense mangrove trees. While there is no ground as such above the water, the roots of these trees are so huge and thick that one could walk across them. You wouldn't want to though... If there was ever going to be a convention held for venomous snakes, poisonous plants and just about any mythological beast a mind could conjure up, this would be the place. Major spooky !!

But, the apex of the trip is when the boat leaves the bay for the river. The Sierpe is a large and fast flowing river and it meets a part of the bay at the rim of a very strong Pacific ocean. To watch this natural conflict of relentless ocean waves pushing against a powerfully emptying river would be exciting enough from the shore. But, seeing it from the “inside”, on a small speedboat, is adrenalin incarnate ! How they even teach the boats' “drivers” to navigate this passage is beyond me. We literally had to thread our way between two surges coming from opposite directions, pausing long enough to get past one swell but not so long as to let the water push us back into the bay. In the middle of this maneuverer, there was the illusion of the waves moving backwards....

It would take pages and pages to describe all the natural sights, plants, insects and animals we came across. But, to quote a surfer, who was hanging out in a hammock talking to a friend on his cell phone, “Dude, you wouldn't believe this place ! Get off the phone, get on a plane and get down here now...”

Brett