The Mattercycle Diaries:
A Journey Through Latin America, Part 2

I left La Fortuna on Wednesday morning, after hiring a van service to transport me to the remote mountain village of Santa Elena. The van picked me up at my hotel at 8:00 in the morning and drove me, along with several other passengers, to nearby Lake Arenal, where we boarded a boat and were transferred to the other side. There we were met by more vans and driven, over very rocky roads, to Santa Elena.

This is a small town that seems to survive on tourism, cheese and coffee. It was actually founded in the 1950s by a combination of American Quakers who left the United States in protest against the Korean War and some local farmers. There is not a single paved road in the entire village, which makes for very uncomfortable rides to and from town.

In Santa Elena, I opted for one of the really cheap budget accommodations, which was ten dollars a night. My room was certainly not clean, smelled really bad, had no hot water and was filled with moths and ants. However, since I was only staying two nights, I decided that I would just make the best of it. This hotel had pulled a sort of bait and switch. The picture on the front was obviously photoshopped, and promised both hot water and cable TV...and had neither of those.

After getting settled in, I explored the town and then arranged to go on a night hike in the jungle to see all the nocturnal animals. Sadly, there were not too many out that night. I saw a few raccoons (boring, since we have those in the United States) a coati (which is actually a daytime animal and was just out past his bedtime), a tarantula, several katydids, a walking stick, and two huge wolf spiders, which are capable of jumping six feet.

The next morning, because my arm was hurting so much, I decided to go ahead and see the local doctor. She examined my arm and told me that it was not broken, and told me to keep it in a sling for three days and gave me some medicine. (I did not follow her directions on the sling, but have been taking the medicine.) While I was at the doctor, this guy who works there invited me to go to a local coffee shop that night to see some guy from Argentina who plays the sitar.

After leaving the doctor, I went to the cloud forest at Selvatura Park, where they have these suspended bridges that are way up in the canopy. I spent about two hours hiking on their trails but, sadly, still did not see very much wildlife.

That evening, I decided to take the guy from the doctor's office up on his offer and went to the cafe, where the Sitar guy was playing. I was far away from the tourist section of town, and was the only gringo in the entire place. I was getting a real taste of the local scene. (Incidentally, I also had to wear the sling while I was at the cafe because the doctor who examined me was one of the people I was hanging out with and I didn't want her to know that I was disregarding her medical advice.)

Early the next morning, I was picked up by a van service to be transported to Samara Beach (I am writing this post less than half a mile from one of the most amazing beaches I have ever seen.) The van services (called Turismos) are efficient and a good way to get around if you do not have a car. However, I have noticed that they do not always seem to plan things out that well. I have been in some Turismos where they cram 12 people into a tiny van made for ten and then, for part of my journey to Santa Elena, I was the only person riding in a 25 passenger bus.

After about four hours, I arrived at Samara beach and checked into a much nicer hotel, called the Casa del Mar, which is directly across the street from the beach. After getting settled, I went over and went swimming and met a group of people who were staying in the hotel. They have rented a nearby villa and we have developed a little social circle. Friday night, we went out for some of the nightlife and, I must admit, I overdid it quite a bit. I drank way too much but made it safely back to my hotel and actually felt (mostly) ok the next morning.

So, here I am at the beach, where I think I am going to stay until next Friday. There is a very active social scene here and even an anti-social recluse like me is getting to know people.

Now I am off to swim and spend the day on the beach (provided it doesn't rain like it did yesterday afternoon. If you want to know where I am, do a google image search for Samara Beach (the connection speed here is too slow to upload any pictures.) Later this week I am going to do snorkeling, kayaking, and maybe even try my hand at surfing. I was born and raised in Southern California and have never been on a surfboard in my life. Might as well give it a shot.

Hasta luego.

The Mattercycle Diaries:
A Journey Through Latin America

I am sitting here in an internet cafe in the small town of La Fortuna, under the ominous specter of South America's most active volcano, Arenal. I have been in this country for seven days now and have discovered that, unfortunately, the political climate here is not ripe for my planned revolution. The people here are far too content, and there is not an undercurrent of seething, peasant anger. So it looks like I will just have to enjoy my time here rather than attempt to have myself declared El Presidente.

I arrived last Wednesday at around 7:00 in the evening at the airport just outside the city of Liberia. The airport was small, hidden among the trees of the rainforest. Of course, the humidity was the first thing I noticed. It rains at least once a day here, sometimes more- to the point where you hardly even notice it anymore.

I shared a cab from the airport to Liberia with some other guy from the same flight and arrived at my hotel, the Hotel Guanacaste. At twelve dollars a night (including breakfast) it was certainly not a luxury accomodation. My room was barely large enough for me to move around in and I can't tell you the last time the linen was changed. The lack of hot water was also somewhat of a problem.

At the hotel, I met two French Canadian girls who invited me to go hiking with them the next day at the Rincon National Park. Originally, I had planned on spending the day exploring Liberia and taking pictures and such. After realizing that there was not much in the city to see, and also realizing that only a moron would turn down the chance to go hiking with two hot French Canadian girls, I agreed to join them.

We arrived at the park at 8 am on Thursday and our driver said he would return at 5 pm. Our hike took us past several thermal pools, waterfalls and within hearing distance of countless howler monkeys (although I was never able to actually see any). After about four hours of hiking, most of which was uphill on a very slippery and muddy trail, we arrived at a hot spring where we stayed for about an hour before making the four hour hike back. Strangely, it seemed as if we were also going uphill most of the way back. I'm not sure how that works.

That evening I was so exhausted that I went to sleep at about 9:30 in the evening. The next morning, I packed my things and decided to see if I could make my way to La Fortuna by bus. I walked down to the bus station after avoiding this shady character who offered to drive me to La Fortuna for ten dollars. Remember, kids, anybody who offers to drive you somewhere four hours away for only ten dollars is more than likely planning on robbing you.

The buses were easy to use and really allowed me to get a good view of the countryside and the people. It's funny...sometimes people jump on the bus and try to sell you stuff, ranging from lottery tickets and toys to rotten corn and bags of ice. I took the bus from Liberia to Canas, then from Canas to Tilaran, where I missed the last bus to La Fortuna by one hour and had to take a taxi the rest of the way.

The taxi driver spoke no English and I speak almost no Spanish. However, that did not stop him from pointing out various landmarks and giving me a detailed history behind them. Since the extent of my Spanish is limited to such things as "Hola! Me llamo Carlos. ¿Donde esta mi lapiz?" I could do little more than ask him his name and if, by chance, he had happened to see my pencil.

Once in La Fortuna, I checked into a much nicer hotel than the one I had stayed at in Liberia. This one is still only thirty dollars a night, though...and it includes breakfast, hot water, and cable TV. The hotel was more or less empty, so they gave me a good deal. I think my taxi driver also helped get me a lower price. There is a little dog here at the hotel, whom I have affectionately named Comeback, in honor of the dog from The Motorcycle Diaries.

There was a young German couple staying there (Wolfhard und Ellen) so I spent the evening talking to them. The next morning, I faced one of my greatest fears. There are these things called canopy tours, where you speed through the forest on ziplines suspended hundreds of feet above the forest floor. Since I am deathly afraid of heights, and also afraid of going really fast on cables through the forest, this was quite the challenge for me.

Unfortunately, I did not emerge unscathed from this experience. On the second longest zipline (which was about half a mile long), I lost control and came in way too fast, slamming both me and the guide hard into the metal post. The hand with which I was supposed to slow myself down had come off of the zipline and I did just as they instructed in that situation. However, because this particular line was so long, I had way too much momentum at the end. My left arm got majorly screwed up...although it is not broken, it has been almost unusable for the past couple days.

On the next line, I was overly cautious and slowed myself down too much, becoming stuck out in the middle of the line. So, there I was, hanging upside down hundreds of feet above the forest floor. That was probably the most scared I have ever been in my life, as I waited there in midair for the guide to come out and pull me in. As you can see, I was able to complete the zipline course (although it was certainly challenging with only one functional arm) and am now safely back on solid ground.

On Sunday morning, I made a two hour hike out to a nearby waterfall. Most of it was uphill, so I was drenched in sweat by the time I got there (sorry for the visual). Before heading down to the pool at the bottom, I walked up to an observation platform where I heard somebody say, "Matt?"

I turned and saw this girl who looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place her. She continued with, "I used to work with you...at McGraw-Hill..." and then I realized who it was. An old friend of mine named Michelle, whom I had not seen in 8 years, just happened to be at the same waterfall as me in Costa Rica. How random is that?

So, I hiked down to the waterfall with Michelle and her friend and spent about an hour swimming down there (I recommend against swimming underneath a waterfall when you only have the use of one arm...for future reference) and then caught a ride back to town with two New York City Police Officers (Michelle was excited about that, as she currently lives in New York). I had lunch with Michelle and her friend (who was pretty cute, by the way) and then parted ways, as they were on their way out of town and I had to go on a volcano hike in a few hours.

Sunday evening, I hiked up to the volcano with a guided tour and saw the lava flowing down. But even more exciting than that was the fact that I finally got to see monkeys! They were the spider monkey kind, and they were pretty far away. I snapped a bunch of pictures, but there's really only one in which you can see a monkey...and even then, it is blurry and looks somewhat like those sasquatch or loch ness monster pictures.

After the hike and volcano viewing, we went to a hot springs resort outside of town. It actually did wonders for my arm, and I was able to move it a bit more. (In case you are wondering, it still hurts, but I am using it to type this so it can't be all bad). One of the pools there was 152 degrees...there were kids daring each other to run through it. One of them dared me and, since I didn't want to look like a scaredy cat, I had no choice but to comply.

Monday, I spent the day relaxing around town. No hiking, no strenuous activity. Just strolling around and getting a feel for the culture. La Fortuna is very small and there is not much to do here if you are not off on some adventure somewhere outside of town. The town more or less shuts down at about 8:00, so I have been going to bed early and getting up early. One thing that I like doing in the morning is swimming in the pool at the hotel. It's very relaxing, swimming in the shadow of a volcano in the middle of a rainforest with rain coming down in torrents. I highly recommend it.

Today I faced one of my other fears...claustrophobia. About an hour outside of town, there is a system of caves called the Venado Caves. They extend for several miles underground and, today, I spent about two hours underground. There were parts where I had to get on my hands and knees and crawl through spaces so tight I could hardly breathe, and other moments where I was wading through chest deep, freezing cold water with god knows what swimming past my legs. Some of the spaces were small and had rivers of bat guano flowing through them, and others were these wide open caverns with vampire bats flying over head and swooping down within inches of my face. The little bastards.

Tomorrow I will be leaving La Fortuna and heading toward Monteverde. There is a cloud forest there that I want to explore. I am going to try to do an overnight hike there, but I am not sure if they rent the necessary equipment or not.

So, now that I have wasted two hours in an internet cafe just so you people could know what I was up to, it is time for me to go get packed and try to get my stuff ready for tomorrow. The clothes I wore in the caves today are disgusting and I am going to see if I can get some laundry done this evening.

Until then.

Vaya Con Dios, Mis Amigos

Well at 9:19 this morning, I will be boarding a plane and heading off to the country of Costa Rica. In the past, my travels abroad have taken me to different regions of Europe, with the exception of the time I traveled to New Zealand in 1999. Since I have not left the United States since July 2004, when I returned from a trip to Kosovo and London, I decided that it was time for me to check out another region of the world.

After considering the matter for about ten minutes, I decided that I wanted to go to Latin America and, after another ten minutes, chose to visit Costa Rica. Already, I am discovering how different this region is than other places I have been. In most of Europe, you can travel hundreds of miles by train with no trouble at all.

In Costa Rica, however, it can sometimes take as much as 8 hours to travel 50 miles. So, all the books I have been reading have recommended picking one or two regions and spending your trip exploring them. I am flying into the Guanacaste regional capital, Liberia. This is closer to the region that I wanted to go to and was actually a little cheaper than flying into San José.

I have the first couple days mapped out. I am going to spend one full day in Liberia before heading off to the Rincón de la Vieja Volcano National Park, where I plan to spend several days hiking around the rain forests, doing zip-line canopy tours, visiting the volcano, and rejuvenating my weary soul in the natural hot springs. There is not much to do in Liberia, but I want to spend a day getting a feel for the culture and the locals, rather than being one of those people who speaks loudly in English and gets indignant when they don't understand me

I have not yet decided where I will be going after I am done with the park. I am considering the village of Samara, which is located right on the Pacific Ocean. Apparently there are these grass hut bungalow things right on the beach there where one can stay for as little as 15 dollars a night.

(See...that's another reason I chose not to go to Europe this summer. 15 dollars a night for a room right on the beach, as opposed to 70 dollars a night for a squalid hotel room in the Earl's Court neighborhood of London.)

I have also told my parents that I am traveling there to start a revolution, in order to continue the work begun by Che Guevara. I say these things primarily just to get under my dad's skin...pontificating about how, for too long, the poor people of Latin America have been alienated from the product of their labor and how, at last, it is time for the dialectic of wealth and poverty to reach their violent conclusion. It is time for the revolution to begin!

The look on my dad's face when I say these things is priceless.

For my travel reading, I have picked up a copy of The Motorcycle Diaries (I know he was farther south, but he fought for all of Latin America...and so shall I!)

Perhaps I will publish my own reflections on my journey- maybe I could call it The Mattercycle Diaries?

Anyway, that's all for now. My next post will no doubt be written as I am skillfully dodging feces hurled at me by a disgruntled howler monkey.

Until then.