Honeymoon Adventures, Take 3

I do not want to bore you with details, but this entire cross-cultural experience was mind-blowingly stretching, and thus good for me. We all get stuck in ruts, and mine, apparently, revolve around feeling safe and comfortable in my self-constructed boxes. I like to believe these boxes are impermeable, made of some sturdy metal or stone, but, in fact, I'm beginning to see they are composed of cardboard, or something with equal sogging and moulding potential.

Wednesday began bright and early with the sun (which rises around 5:30am). As Kyle ran down to the car to stow our over-night bag, he found it completely dead. The lights had been on all night. Undaunted, he asked the front desk if he could get a jump (this man is ever-resourceful, one reason I adore him). Sure, in about 30 minutes. Which, in Tico Time, indicates about 2 1/2 hours. Thus, our early morning, became a late-morning start.

Once jumped, we made great time in the good weather on the dirt, and then paved roads, back the way we'd come from the airport. We passed the two police checkpoints, where, once they saw (or heard) that we were gringos, they waved us on without question. We gassed up the Tracker in Liberia for about 45,000 Colones (indeed, this is why my conversion skills to Costa Rican currency did not work. Tens of thousands of what? How many dollars? I have no idea.). Then, the rains hit. Torrential, worse-than-we'd-yet-seen rains. The car wheels started pulling very oddly, only when Kyle removed his foot from the gas, and we had a few moments of hydroplaning on the ill-paved and -drained roads.

We found a roadside diner for lunch and experienced our first real problematic language-barrier. The menus were in Spanish, obviously, with no translation, and neither the woman running the diner, nor her daughter, could speak a word of English. I tried to find the names of some Spanish cuisine I know, but we ended up ordering stuff without knowing a thing about it. I got two tiny 5" tortillas with the most pungent, nearly stomach-turning cheese. They were cold. Kyle had ordered two plates of some slab of meat cooked with onions, a small salad with tomatoes, and some purply egg-salad-looking-thing in a side dish. We each exchanged one for one, so we each had a plate of meat and a plate of nasty-cheese and tortilla. The mystery meat was delicious and I kept reminding myself NOT to think of the fact that I didn't know where it came from. It's good, Lana. Focus on that.

Our journey this day took us toward the Volcano, one of the world's most active. Kyle was driving and so I trusted his planning-self to have mapped out the route we were to take. Indeed, he had. The shortest trip to the Volcano itself was by the road which traverses along the SOUTH shore of Lake Arenal, which lies to the west of the Volcano. The map, which indicated paved and unpaved roads all over the country, showed both the north and south routes were unpaved. Thus, we were not enticed North--the longer path--because, on the map, it looked identical to the southern path.

The torrential rain slowed to a drizzle, then lightened to fog, and, for a brief hour, the clouds lifted enough for us to see the rising giant before us. Vibrant plant life surrounded us at every bend, over every hill, on every vista, as far as we could see. A hundred shades and hues of greens and browns, flowers: red, yellow, purple, pink -- exploded from random places as well as small home gardens. The Tracker climbed the horrendously bumpy and pot-holed mountain roads with diligence. I couldn't help but compare the colors and hills with Ireland, and then, again when we passed a slow herd of cattle being tended by a single man at the back with a switch and a hat. Before we knew what was happening, we had climbed so high that it became hard to breathe, the oxygen was thinning and we were becoming slightly delirious.

As we followed random branching roads, we became lost a few times. Not every unpaved road that exists was the map, as could be expected, but the map itself didn't seem quite to scale and we often had a hard time determining where we were in reality and on the map.

The rain started up again around 4pm, and we were lost for the third or fourth time. The clay mud roads were beginning to be problematic and much steeper. When we stopped to ask directions, the first time we happened upon a utilities crew trying to fix a power line. The man had brilliantly blue eyes, which surprised me as most Latin Americans have daringly dark ones, and I suspected he might know some English. But he did not, and during our broken conversation, I realized he said that to get to the Volcano we had to go around the lake, that is, back the way we came and around the North shore. "At least an hour more," he said. "And, you are a very beautiful woman," at which point I blushed, said thank you, and joined Kyle in the car. We stopped in a small village, hoping a little shop owner could help us. The woman who emerged from the back was very old and had only a few teeth. When I showed her the map and asked how to get to the Volcano, I realized she couldn't read. She became very frustrated with my lack of Spanish conversation skills and closed her eyes, muttering, "Ah, Chiquita, chiquita, chiquita!" In her annoyance, she reiterated what the utility worker had said: go back, an hour more. "Derecha, derecha, derecha. No izquierda! Sola Derecha!" She was adamant that we only take Right turns, never a left, and we'd get to the Volcano in an hour.

Still unconvinced, since we had a map that showed a road going east toward our destination, we stopped one last time at a roadside store (the size of my guest room, which is to say, very small). A Tico youth who spoke excellent English explained it all to us. "There is a road, yeah, but you can't get there by car. Maybe by horse, but probably not this time of year with all the washouts and flooding. It's impassable." He gestured to a broken down bridge and we realized that was the way we'd been seeking. "You have to go around the lake, man, but that's only a couple hours more." Really, Kyle asked him, is it really just a couple hours. "No, ok, it's not. It's more like three." Which we took to mean at least four.

It was hard to believe we'd just spent four hours traipsing all over mountains, taking splendid pictures, and enjoying the beauty of this country, and we had to backtrack. A little aggravating. But that all dissipated when we reached the point where the south and north paths converged. What we found was the best paved road in all of Costa Rica. The north route was the way tourists traveled, and thus, they took very good care of it. Though still devoid of yellow or white lane markings, the paving was seamless and smooth.

Darkness descended and we continued with renewed joy. No more bouncing and jostling, bone-jarring chuckholes and boulders. We'd arrive late, yes, but the going would be easy. And food and a shower awaited us at the end. We were thrilled.

Or so we thought.