Visit a Banana Republic

Pacific Ocean During a Rare Sun Break

Everyone should make the effort to visit a banana republic. Why? Well it’ll help you appreciate America more.

I recently visited Costa Rica where their money is made out of old beer cans and Kleenex. Here are a few travel tips you may not see in the guide books:

• The cash value of an American $20 bill is 10000 Colones. A colon is flexible in value depending on what you’re trying to buy. If you want a $2 ticket to get into a park it’s around 7500 Colones, for example. Don’t try to pay with American money because you’ll get change in hundreds of colones. Seems like a lot but it ain’t. It’s not a rich country so one easy way to make money is a confusing exchange rate.

• Don’t try to get around in a rental car. The roads are terrible. The drivers are terrible. They have millions of busses, shuttles, and taxis. Just get a pocket full of colones and be ready to hand over a handful whenever you see a bus driver. Even if he won’t pick you up just give him some money anyway. We Americans like to have control and freedom to move about on our own. I got a rental and a 35 mile trip can take over 4 hours unless you encounter traffic – then it’s longer.

• GPS – if you want to know where you are take a GPS. It’s essential in a rental car but it can be handy without one. GPS Saga appears below.

• Bathrooms are important – bring your own. The toilets in CR don’t work because Americans can’t deal with the requirement NOT to flush toilet paper. See, the sewer systems are so delicate they can’t handle TP. So if you flush TP don’t expect what you’ve always expected at home – sooner or later the toilet will rebel.

• It rains in Central America. Bananas need a lot of water and so do dense jungles. That’s why a lot of them are located in Central America. You’ll need lots of clothes if you go there because all your stuff will get wet. Especially if you put your suitcase on the bathroom floor.

Our room entrance at La Posada Jungle

• Best places to stay don’t mean the most expensive. In fact it’s just the opposite. If you’d like a nice room try to find a small place where the owner takes personal charge of most of the services. You can get a load of laundry done in a couple hours. Those big fancy smancy resort destinations will take 24 hours and there’s a charge to wash each and every item. Then they deliver it to the wrong room anyway.

• Telephones are a challenge. First of all don’t believe it when your trusted cell phone carrier promises you’ll have coverage. It’s a lie. If you really need a phone you have to rent one there and there’s a charge for each minute in addition to the rent. Plus, if other people are on the trip with you they won’t know your rented cell phone number unless you call them and tell them. That costs money. But their phone won’t work either so don’t even try it. There has to be a secret that I didn’t fathom. My rented phone had “No Service” but our guide on a jungle hike was getting calls. He knows the secret. I decided that I didn’t want to know the secret.

• Heaters in rooms don’t exist. Normally in a tropical jungle you might think heat wouldn’t be needed. But if you’re 6000 feet above sea level it can get chilly at night. But no heat. No fans or AC either. Just vent windows. That way you can hear every word from the people down the hall wondering whose laundry came to their door (it’s yours).

He had a nearby room but didn't bother us much.

• International Driver’s Permit – scam. Don’t bother. A valid American license is all you need to drive there. Plus more money. Your passport is all the identification you’ll need.

• Passports are required. You won’t get there without one. Airports and customs places have scanners and they swipe your passport photo page. That gives them everything they need to know. Just make sure you apply for a passport in plenty of time because “rush” jobs cost extra and you can’t get one at the airport.

• Be prepared for lines. I don’t know how many lines we stood during the trip. Mostly the lines are in the airports, but some are at the parks. I can’t imagine what it’s like in season.

GPS Saga: I got a Garmin last year when Amazon had a big price cut to help move inventory. Nice outfit for trips. (The one in my POV is built in.) I thought it would be good to take to Costa Rica since I would be renting a car. Actually you should take one even if you plan to use the busses.

Garmin doesn’t normally include Central America in their pre-loaded maps. But you can download them from the web. So I did. The instructions for transferring CR maps to my unit didn’t make sense. It wanted me to use something called Map Source. I remembered I had used that a few years ago so I hunted around and found the old CD. I loaded it on my PC and it actually worked (apparently). The message said something like “Congratulations you have successfully loaded Costa Rica on your device!” It required a 25 character password.

OK, so how do I verify that? I know! I’ll have it find a city that I know only exists in Costa Rica. Well, it couldn’t find it. Hours went by and still no success. OK, the message says the map was loaded successfully so I’ll just have to trust it. Besides I have a magic cell phone with GPS as a backup. What could possibly go wrong?

We arrived in Costa Rica and holed up in a motel at the airport the first night. Seemed easier to deal with the rental car first thing the next morning. Why pay rent until we actually need it, right? The following morning I went to the rental car office to pick up my 4WD heap. By that time I had accepted the fact that my cell phone that “would work just fine” would not work. The car rental office also had cell phones for rent. Cool.

As I rode over in the rental car company van I turned on my GPS to see how it displayed things. Well, by the time we arrived at the rental office it had not acquired satellites. There was another person in front of me so I stood by a big window to offer my GPS a clear view of the sky.

The person in front of me was not happy. The discussion was in Spanish but there’s a universal worldwide language called “Jerkola” and this person was fluent. He insisted on arguing with the one clerk for an hour. Even though I don’t speak the language I can understand when somebody is saying the same thing over and over again. It’s classic Jerkola.

During the extremely boring exchange I kept checking the GPS and it found itself after about 45 minutes. Great, at least that issue seems resolved. Now to hustle the jerk out of the way. I finally got my 4WD car rented and arranged for the cell phone to be delivered to the motel near the airport. Everything’s coming together.

When I started up the car I thought it would probably quit at some remote location because it sounded really bad. Then I realized it was diesel. Once it was out in the street it sounded a lot better.

The GPS turned out to be a real help. For one thing you can’t go places in a straight line. They have mountains and lakes and you have to go around everything; even cattle. The other problem is the horrible roads. In November they had 4 ½ feet of rain which means some of the hillsides were still covering some of the roads. Other roads have gargantuan potholes and most were just not wide enough, even where the pavement was good. So it was a challenge. Unless you are an absolute hard nose about having your own vehicle just take the busses. They crash rarely and the drivers know how to get around obstacles.

Anyway, the GPS saved us several times. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place where I was so confused about which way to go so often. When we left Monte Verde heading for Arenal Volcano I was positive we were going the wrong way. But eventually we found a town that was on the way and the landmarks kept coming up right. The GPS got us there. I was sure it was wrong. Lucky for me I decided to rely on it since I knew it was a small country and the worst we could do was still not too bad.

Here’s another tidbit for anyone who wants to visit one of these insect infested banana republics: go ahead and pay extra for a guide on jungle walks. We had a couple of really good guides and they helped a lot. Miguel at Manuel Antonio was the best. He pointed out varmints nobody else saw. The only problem was he was not interested in birds. The guide at Monte Verde Cloud Forest was interested in birds but couldn’t find any. At least we got some interesting information. You know they have bugs as big as small raccoons there?

Oh, and the rains of November weren’t really over. It rained a lot. Sometimes it rained so hard it woke us up at night. We live in the Greater Newcastle Metropolitan area where it seems to rain a lot, but it’s more of a persistent mist. Down there it really rains. People use umbrellas because raincoats get just as wet inside as outside. The only exception is in the high cloud forest where the wind blows constantly. Then you just get wet.

What about rapid transit? Nope! They have a four lane highway that runs thru San Jose and it’s regularly at a dead stop because some Jerkola in a rented car did something really stupid in front of a large truck. Crunch! Once that happens the local law comes out and chases everyone off the four lane. Bus and van drivers are good at avoiding those scenes. Luckily we didn’t spend much time in that mess.

They also have a toll road that’s four lane at random sections and sometimes not. The speed limit is in meters or something. It works out to about 50 mph. I was going 60 and cars went by us way faster than that. The biggest problem with the toll road is you need to pay cash and it’s hundreds of colones. Makes a guy nervous. “How much did we give that guy?”

You know what I didn’t see? Railroads. Given the condition of the highways (washed out dirt tracks in some places) I can’t imagine how they would keep two parallel rails from getting all jumbled up. My guess is Costa Rica won’t see rapid rail transit very soon.

Conclusion: Don’t go. If you do go take plenty of cash and dry clothing. Learn Spanish. It won’t do any good but it’ll give you the illusion you’re preparing for the trip. Oh, and say hello to Mike at La Posada Jungle.

Pool at La Posada on the Edge of Manuel Antonio NP

Web Sites:

http://www.laposadajungle.com/ Where we stayed at Manuel Antonio. Very quaint.

http://www.manuelantoniopark.com/mapk/english/photogallery.html The park and lots of photos.

For birds search Google images “Costa Rica Birds” and see hundreds of photos of birds. We even saw a few. Elin saw a pair of resplendent quetzals.

http://www.monteverdeinfo.com/ Cloud Forest. We stayed at Hotel El Establo – didn’t really care for it.

http://www.arenal.net/photo-gallery.htm Volcano area.

http://www.arenal.net/observatory-lodge/ Where we stayed at the volcano. It’s within the potential blast zone for the next overdue eruption!

Al

Here's the Jungle Near Arenal Volcano