Lukalips



Troy Lukkarila's Costa Rica Log

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Getting prepared for the trip to Central America. I have two distinct goals. First goal is to find and hire a monkey to bring back to the states. This monkey will become my personal ass-wiping monkey. The second goal is to see one of those colorful dart frogs.

Should I bring underwear or just go commando?

Thursday, August 26, 2004

Goodbye Jacksonville, Florida. Hello San Jose, Costa Rica. I exchange my American currency for the Costa Rican Colones and am handed back a pile of bills with the number 10,000 on them. I'm not sure, but I may be rich.

Who'd have guessed that they speak some kind of crazy language down here? Apparently it's called Español. This just might make communication difficult at times.

It's quickly evident that the Costa Rican government is not big on providing street signs. So in order to find places, you have to count streets. Probably gives the cabbies more business.

We find a restaurant containing locals (Ticos) enjoying tasty looking food. Bingo! The chicken is awesome! The coffee is good and strong, too. Hope this is just a small taste of what's to come.

I hate to be a whiner, but the diesel fumes in this city are really out of control. Tracey, mi amiga, and I both get a headache and go to bed early.

Friday, August 27, 2004

Take the bus to a town named La Fortuna, which sits under the active volcano Arenal. The bus ride is long and the roads are curvy. Thank God for Dramamine.

I see my first wild Iguana.

We stay at the Cabinas Sissy. I don't know what Sissy means. Our room is painted sea-foam. It is slightly larger than the bed. Hot water is provided in the shower by a showerhead that contains heating elements. Wires come out of the wall and are spliced to the showerhead with common electrical tape. Seems like an accident waiting to happen. Here in the states an inspector would laugh his ass off before he closed you down.

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In the afternoon we hire a guide to take us into the rainforest. We spot our first monkey. It's a spider monkey. It's jumping through the high tree canopies like the skilled acrobat it is- that is until it misses a branch and comes crashing through limbs and falls to the ground. Is he dead? No, he gets up and climbs back up the tree.

"Do they fall out of the tree often?" I ask the guide.

"No."

"Well is he drunk or something?"

I guess we were just in the right place at the right time to witness the graceful event.

We're here in the rainy season and, believe it or not, it rains quite often. The rainforest remains a damp place with a suitable name. I expected to get bombarded with mosquitoes, however they aren't too bad. They are nothing compared to going to the woods in Florida. The guide tells me that it's not the mosquitoes you have to watch out for. You have to watch out for flies that lay eggs in your skin. A week later the cute little larva painfully emerge. Our guide knows this from personal experience. Sounds yummy.

We hear the thunder of the Arenal volcano, but we can't see it release smoke or lava because the top of its cone is hidden in the clouds. Hopefully we'll get a clear day before we leave. It's possible that we're only hearing thunder and that the guide is lying to us.

The volcano creates hot springs on the side of the mountain. There are some swanky health clubs that let you enjoy them for a steep fee but it's worth experiencing. Sitting in a hot spring in the rainforest, it doesn't look or seem real. No, it looks like something Disney would create. I half expect to be greeted by animatronic animals singing campy songs.

Back in La Fortuna I eat some kind of meat for dinner. It isn't bad I guess when it's covered by enough hot sauce.

Saturday, August 28, 2004

Another day in La Fortuna. Staying in a placed named "Sissy" hasn't made me less of a man... I don't think.

Today the plan is to hike to the top of Cerro Chato, a dead volcano with a lake in its cone. The guides in the tourist shop insist that we can't make the trek without them. "Very difficult," they say. We scoff at them and say we'll take our chances and go on our way. We don't need your silly little guides!

Keeping with Costa Rican tradition, there are no signs indicating where the trailhead just might be. Tracey and I take our best guess. We walk for miles on a path through cow pastures. After an hour and a half of walking, we decide we've taken the wrong path. Just as we were about to turn back, a couple of guys emerge from a hidden trail that enters the rainforest. We're back in business. Soon we're on a treacherous trail in the dark, misty, thick rainforest. Our boots sink in the mud to our ankles. What fun! I wouldn't change a thing!

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When we reach the top, we can't see the lake because the mist is too thick. We're soaked. It's getting late and we need to get back before sunset. I'm hungry and I'm tempted by the pretty red berries, although eating them probably means certain death.

Back in La Fortuna, we clean up and head to the one and only Mexican restaurant. It looks pretty, and the margaritas are strong (more like a Mexican martini, really). Tracey orders Chile Con Queso, and they bring what amounts to tasteless melted cheese in a ramekin that quickly cools to a semi-hard lump. When the burritos arrive, they're accompanied by french fries. Now we know we're in a foreign country.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Today is whitewater-rafting day. We ride in a van out to the river with another American couple, and a guy with two boys from Connecticut. The guy is very touchy/feely with the boys- hugging them and kissing their heads. I start to wonder if he's a member of NAMBLA but it turns out they are his own kids. I guess he just loves his kids. Go figure.

The other couple in the van is from L.A. The man is a quiet gentleman- probably in his fifties. His wife was originally from Argentina. She's a bit younger than him and quite a bit louder. She has giganticus breasties which she proudly displays.

The Argentinean woman tells us in explicit detail about her cats. She hired a pet psychic who told her one of her cats suffered from some kind of pancreatic problem. So she took the cat to a real veterinarian who figured out that the cat simply needed a tooth extracted. Now most people would come to the conclusion that the pet psychic is bogus. I mean, come on, the psychic wasn't even in the right area of the cat! But, for our busty Argentinean L.A. woman, somehow the psychic was validated simply because he knew something was wrong with the cat.

The pet psychic also told her that one of her cats named "Cheers" didn't like his name, so he was acting out. The psychic said she needed to pick a more distinguished name, and so she received a message from God, and renamed the cat "Cristobal, you know, like Christopher Columbus."

The pet psychic also said her cats were sad because they were feeling useless and they needed to be assigned jobs. So now each kitty has a different task. One cat gives tours of the house when they have guests. Another cat warns her when there are bad birds in the yard. "You praise the cats when they do their job and they get so happy!"

Her quiet husband then pipes in. "Now you know why I need a psychiatrist!"

The cats also get their regular adjustments from the kitty chiropractor. No, I'm not joking here- she really has a chiropractor for her cats.

As we wait for the rafts to be delivered, I watch a couple sitting next to the river. She's cute and to me looks to be out of his league. She's has her back to him while he works feverishly on a zit on her back. After going at it for ten minutes or more he successfully extracts something. There it is on his finger and shows her the prize, which she delicately puts on her own finger and examines. Then he licks his same finger and applies spit to the infected area. Yeah, spit. That'll cure it.

On the raft I meet a guy from Finland who tells me that my Finnish last name has probably been modified because it's not spelled like the Finnish would spell it.

He's traveling with an Indian guy who now lives in Finland. The Finnish-Indian says "shit" a lot, but his English is better than his compadre.

As we ride in the van back to La Fortuna, I notice that the people of Costa Rica put more faith in your average car driver than we do in America. They walk on the side of the thin roads allowing cars moving at suicidal rates to narrowly miss them.

I see another damn Iguana, but still no dart frog.

Back in La Fortuna at night I run into the guy who loves his kids. It's a very small town.

Monday, August 30, 2004

There's no direct public transportation to Monteverde, so we bite the bullet and pay $25 to a tour company. Normally you can get anywhere in Costa Rica for a couple of bucks. The tour company's billboard advertises that on the trip you ride in a jeep to the lake, then take a boat, then take another jeep. Sounds like fun. Turns out the "jeep" is just another minivan and we pack in it with other people. In fact, I've not seen one true jeep in Costa Rica. In the bus we meet a girl from good old Jacksonville, Florida. She was one of the lucky ones who got out and now lives in New York City.

We board onto a pontoon for the boat portion of the journey. We get some of our best views of the volcano from the water. About 30 minutes later the boat arrives at a mud embankment that we have to scale in order to get to the road. I'm amused that our expensive transportation involves climbing up a mud bank. I've even more amused watching people who brought several suitcases try to do it.

There are vans waiting for us to complete the journey to Monteverde. There is also a little store selling drinks and snacks. It has a bathroom and Tracey has to take a pee making us the last ones to get in the van. Tracey gets the front seat and I'm stuck on a tiny bouncy fold out seat that only reaches halfway up my back. The van bounces on the rocks in the dirt road and I'm bouncing worse, inadvertently providing comedy for anybody watching me trying to do my best to stay on the tiny seat. There's no doubt the back of this chair will sever my spine by the time we reach Monteverde and Tracey will have to drag me and my paralyzed legs on whatever trail we hike.

If that's not grueling enough, sitting next to me (on a real seat) is an Indian girl from Canada who now lives in Houston, Texas. She's studying to become a lawyer and by coincidence, the old guy sitting next to her is a lawyer. They talk incessantly, but neither has anything interesting to say, and with no detectable sense of humor. When will I die?

The lawyer's wife, sitting across from him and wearing a lot of makeup, decides to join the conversation. She mentions that she doesn't like taking the public transportation in Costa Rica because the people at the bus stop look so seedy. She follows up by explaining that she's no wimp, either, because she once took the subway in New York all by herself.

We arrive in Monteverde and by some miracle I can walk. Praise the Lord!

Johnny is the son of the owner of the Pensión Manakín where we're staying. We talk to him for a bit and he seems to take a liking to us. He gives us his best room. Says he built it with his own two hands and lived in it. Not a bad room, but it does smell like sewage. I'm thinking the plumbing might not be ventilated properly. We keep the bathroom door closed.

The room backs up to the rainforest. The door has an inch or more gap under it. I expect to wake up next to snakes, but only spiders manage to find their way in.

Canopy tours are very popular in Costa Rica. In various areas of the forest, a quarter mile of cable will be tied to two trees. A tourist, who puts it in the back of his/her mind that safety standards in Costa Rica are probably not near what they are in the U.S., hangs from a pulley and slides down the wire at a high velocity. So that's exactly what we do.

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After the canopy tour, we're ride back to Monteverde in a van while it pours outside. A guy on motorcycle, but no helmet, passes us on the muddy road pulling in front of us just in time to miss another oncoming van. He loses it. From my vantage point I see feet and wheels fly in the air. It was a ballsy move that ended in a spectacular wipeout. Our van hits the brakes in order to not smash him and the bike up worse. I'm expecting to see exploded skull, but instead the guy gets up laughing, hardly skinned up at all. Just another day for him.

It's getting late and we're not sure what to do. We roam around the small town for a while. We decide to get a couple of beers and in the bar we run into a couple who was in the van with us. We have a few drinks with them. Beer is REALLY cheap! They're from New York City. She's pretty good looking, but he's a scrawny guy with bad gums. Another guy with a girl out of his league. They met in a dance class. That should give hope to scrawny guys with bad gums everywhere--join a dance class.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

We devote the day to hiking in the Monteverde cloud forest.

We see the following:

← A wild ferret

← Mouse

← Spider monkeys

← White-faced monkeys

← Flock of green parrots

← Squirrel monkeys

← Dung beetle with dung ball

← Leaf cutter ants

← Army ants

You got watch those army ants. They're vicious little fuckers.

We see some monkeys, but none of them get close enough to hear my proposal.

Walking back from the cloud forest we run into the Indian/Canadian lawyer wannabe from Houston. She walks with us and starts talking... and talking... and talking. She repeats herself several times so she is either not very smart or she thinks we're not very smart.

The people here in Costa Rica are very nice. I think I'm starting to get the hang of their crazy language. They say "buenos dias" to me so I say "Buenos Aires" back to them. Then they shake their head and say "idiota" which I think probably translates to "brave traveler."

Back in the little town, which consists of two streets, I visit some of the shops. Many of the places play music that features the pan flute. I suppose this is where Zamfir sold those millions of CDs he supposedly sold. I guess it's the sound that's associated with the rainforest. However, to me, the feeling is kind of lost when you hear the pan flute playing Hotel California.

I run into the kids of the guy who loves his kids. They're excited to run into me. It's like we're old friends. I think they took to me because, like me, one of the boys is sporting an old style Atari shirt.

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

The plan for today is to go to Rincon de la Vieja. It's a volcano surrounded by hot mud you can jump into. The bus leaves at 12:00 so we have a couple hours to waste. So we hit the Frog Pond. I finally get to see a dart frog, but because it's in captivity I don't count it. Then we go to the World of Insects. The most outstanding bug was the bloodsucker. The guide would not stick his hand in its cage, but he got it riled up with a stick. The nasty creature is at home in water as it is on land. It's a very large bug with a painful bite. Hope I don't find out firsthand. It would be kind of cool to see somebody else get bit, though.

Thanks to this crazy language they speak down here, we manage to get on the wrong bus and end up headed for the dreadful San Jose. DAMN!

Ok, new plan... Tomorrow we'll head for the Pacific coast. Manuel Antonio, here we come!

Thursday, September 2, 2004

Once again, the bus leaves at noon, so we decide to eat in San Jose. We pick a dirty little Nicaraguan restaurant. WORSE MISTAKE EVER! Tracey orders something that sounds like it might be like a quesadilla. They put a cold tortilla in front of her topped with raw onion, a slice of cold tasteless cheese covered by gobs of mayonnaise. Totally inedible. I get the standard rice and beans. The rice has a pile of dry, fatty stinky meat next to it. There is no way any of that meat is going to find its way to my mouth. So I eat on the rice and beans, which were old and hard. Neither of us really touches our meals so we get up to pay. I can tell the owner is a little miffed that we didn't eat our delicious meals and says a long string of words in that crazy language I can't figure out. I point to my stomach and say "malo" and that seems to appease him. Then, I'm ashamed to say, we go to Burger King. Nicaragua, I'll try not to hold this little incident against you. If the food is really this bad in your country I'm going to start sending you cans of Spaghettios as soon as I get home. It's the little O-shaped pasta in a tasty tomato sauce that kids love.

We catch the correct bus this time.

Why do I always end up sitting across from an old guy who incessantly picks his nose? Is my Karma so bad? Then he's rolling and rolling something between his fingers. Yeah, we know what you're rolling. I'm getting nauseous and the curvy roads aren't helping. Once again, Dramamine to the rescue.

At night on the beach we stop by a bonfire. It was built by a man who seems to be the Latin version of the Dennis Hopper character in Apocalypse Now. He speaks 50% in English, 50% in Spanish and 100% in crazy talk. He makes a circle in the sand around his fire then he makes rays from the circle. I say "sol." He says, "No! No! No! It's God!" He says a lot of other stuff, but I just can't figure it out.

The cicadas here are blue with stripes. Very pretty. I feed a couple to a very large toad that hangs outside our room.

Friday, September 3, 2004

It's not daylight yet and I about jump out of my skin. There's a howler monkey somewhere outside the window and he's doing just what you'd expect a howler monkey to do--howl! It's loud! Sounds more like a man changing into a werewolf than a monkey to me.

From Manual Antonio we walk all the way to the town of Quepos so we can cash some travelers checks. I'll be damned if we don't run into the guy who loves his kids! Small country!

In the afternoon, we rent a sea kayak from one of the Ticos. Our goal is to paddle out to an island. Damn thing is farther than it looks! Paddle. Paddle. Paddle. When we finally get out to the blasted thing I notice that there's a cave in the side. So I say something really stupid. "Let's paddle inside that cave!" So that's what we do. The water level quickly rises and falls. The waves are pushing us violently into the cave against the cave wall. I now realize the people get killed like this. So we paddle out and LIVE! Glorious life!

I think I see a whale. Tracey thinks I see a log. Well that log looks like it has a fin. No, it's definitely a log she says. Next thing you know, the log is spouting water. We paddle to the water spouting log to find it's a big-ass blue whale and her baby. I mean we're about 15 feet from this whale and her calf. We're dwarfed by these creatures as they rise and sink. They don't seem to care that we're here. This is an amazing moment and I'm so in awe that I don't even have a smartass comment to make. I do not even say once that I wished I had a harpoon.

When we get back to the shore we're tired and dehydrated. There's an old guy who sells chilled coconuts. He cuts off the top and drops a straw in them. I think we look silly walking around sipping from a coconut, but they really do taste good. They only need to figure out how to carbonate them.

It gets dark early in Costa Rica. At 6:00pm it is night. We get the flashlight and walk down the road in search of the elusive dart frog. We're walking toward a fancy gated hotel. It's one of the nicest in the area. A black Mercedes speeds down the road and makes no effort to avoid the large puddle next to us. He splashes us good and pulls into the gated hotel. I watch him get out of his car. It's no surprise--he's a big fat obnoxious American. I instantly hate him and begin plotting his untimely death.

We see no dart frogs. The small frogs are very loud yet almost impossible to see. We do, however, see several larger frogs. I love the sound they make. Haven't heard it in the states. Whup... whup... whup...

Saturday, September 4, 2004

Today we're devoted to hiking in the Manuel Antonio National Forest. We see three three-toed tree sloths.

Finally we meet up with a group of white-faced monkeys. I get the attention of one of them and we begin serious negotiations. I offer him a chance to live in air conditioning with all the junk food he can eat! It's the good life, man! All I want you to do is wipe my ass when I need it!

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He ponders the offer... [pic]

Ultimately, he turns down my most gracious offer. Stupid monkeys.

Our waiter tonight speaks pretty good English. He tells us he's been to Jacksonville, Florida. He said he once waited on Jimmy Buffet and he is even mentioned in one of Jimmy's books. Now he's mentioned in this little document except I forgot his name.

From our dinner seats on the patio, we watch the Latin Dennis Hopper stumbling around.

Sunday, September 5, 2004

We meet Bill. He's an American. He's a round man who sits smoking under a beach tent and sells fishing excursions and snorkeling trips. He's a fast talker. Tells us he made more than $100,000 on this little business. He also tells us he once played pro baseball. We book a snorkeling trip with Bill. Bill says that another guy is going to be joining us. That guy turns out to be none other than the asshole I hate who splashed us with muddy water last night. Small town. Perfecto! Now I will have my chance to kill the man.

Asshole takes his Mercedes while me, Tracey and two other girls squeeze into Bill's compact car. I see the Latin Denise Hopper and I say to Bill, "That guy is quite a character!" Bill tells me that the Latin Dennis Hopper gets drunks every night and sometimes he gets abusive when he's drunk. Says he hates to punch out a drunk but he's come really close several times.

We're dropped off on the side of the road. We have to take a trail for about a quarter mile down to the water. The Mercedes asshole has a wife and a little baby. The mom carries the baby all the way down to the water by herself. What a guy!

To get to the dive site, the girls and I ride on a yellow banana boat that's pulled by a small fishing boat. I think we all look silly with a giant banana between our legs. The Mercedes guy, his wife and the frying baby ride in the fishing boat.

We snorkel. I'm waiting to make my move. I'm a pretty good swimmer and I can hold my breath for a long time so I'm pretty sure I can pull this off, but we're only in the water for a short time when the fishing boat takes the Mercedes asshole, his wife and baby back to the shore. Damn, no murder today. I float and look at the fish and the fish look at me.

After the snorkeling trip we take a cab back into town, pack the backpack and wait for the bus to take us to Quepos where we can hopefully catch a bus to San Jose. At the bus stop the Latin Dennis Hopper approaches us. "Why you leave?" he asks. "This place is beautiful." I have no good answer that I can explain in a couple of words. It doesn't matter for the Latin Dennis Hopper's attention is quickly redirected to a woman waiting on the bus. He smiles and tries to give her a big hug but she kindly pushes him off.

We catch a bus to San Jose. Turns out to be a non-direct bus. Shortly after leaving Quepos it turns off the main road onto a narrow dirt road. It's slow. The road is curvy. The bus stops frequently. It's crowded and hot. The only relief comes on those rare occasions that the bus reaches 30 miles per hour and we get a breeze. It is soon evident that we're in store for a very long ride.

On one stop a man enter the bus wearing a shirt with something written in English on it. At first glance I think it says, "I survived 30 years of Cher." Turns out it really says, "I survived 30 years of her." I don't know who "her" is but it sure would have been funny if it said, "I survived 30 years of Cher."

As usual, the afternoon rains come. The Costa Ricans shut all the windows in the bus for fear that they get a drop of water on their dry selves. So now we're basically going down the road in an armpit on wheels. But we're in luck. The downpour causes a giant mudslide to block the road. The bus can't pass. There's a lot of talking in that crazy language and we finally figure out the plan to wait for the other bus coming the other direction and they'll exchange passengers. All the nice, dry Costa Ricans get out of the bus in the rain and cross the great mudslide on foot. While people are trying to navigate the mud, hordes of guys on dirt bikes and four wheelers appear from nowhere to challenge the mudslide. They're wrecking. Mud is flying everywhere. The chaos is beautiful.

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Another bus arrives. The exchange is made. We park our muddy selves in the seats. The problem is this bus isn't going to San Jose. It's going to some other small town I've

never heard of. Supposedly we will be able to catch a bus to San Jose in this little town.

We're successful catching the correct bus (we think) and it's another curvy ride, but this time we're on pavement and this driver takes the bus to the limits. He thinks he's driving a sports car. He passes on curves. Bags are sliding around. I believe there's more than a good chance we won't survive the night.

Monday, September 6, 2004

Today we visit the volcano Poas. The most outstanding feature is a small blue-green acid lake in the volcano's crater. It hisses and smokes. It makes the air smell like sulfur, and makes your throat hurt--or it might be Tracey blaming it on the volcano. Not sure.

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There's not much to do here at the volcano. There are a few short trails to hike. The information center is entertaining because all the English translations are littered with grammatical errors. Some sentences make no sense at all. Makes me wonder if the person who did the translation told them he/she was an English expert and nobody ever checked them out.

At night we throw in the towel and eat at Pizza Hut. It's our last dinner in Costa Rica. Two hours later I get wretched stomach cramps for the first time since I've been in Costa Rica.

Wednesday, September 7, 2004

Goodbye Costa Rica. Here's to the people who briefly come into your life, make an impression and you never see them again.

Today is the long, boring journey home without seeing a dart frog and without my ass-wiping monkey. I'm not looking forward to the flight, but I am looking forward to hot water, a washing machine, air conditioning and Internet access.

Days and Days Later

Surprise!

No electricity. Cold Showers. Reading and writing by candlelight. Hurricane Frances did a number on Jacksonville. I'm roughing it more than I did in Costa Rica. It's a good thing I didn't bring home that monkey, because he'd be pretty pissed since I promised him an easy life with air conditioning.

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Added 9/17/2004.

Through a little research in the Internet I found that bloodsuckers are actually called assassin bugs or kissing bugs.

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I stole the following description from

Assassin bugs, sometimes known as conenoses or kissing bugs are killer insects that feed on blood or other insects. The kissing bug label comes from the insect's ability to steal a blood meal by piercing the lips, eyelids or ears of a sleeping human victim. Assassin bugs have a flat, narrow body, with an abdomen that is sometimes widened in the middle. Its long narrow head holds the deadly weapon it uses to prey on its victims - a segmented proboscis (beak).

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