Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

We decided to go out to Tortuguero, a national park on the northern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.  It’s a national park that is home to 4 different species of turtles, and the area is supposedly full of wildlife.  There are a lot of tours packages that take you out to Tortuguero.  They are expensive and we were not willing to spend a lot of money to get out there.  I had done a lot of reading on how get to Tortuguero independently.  It isn’t all that far, but it is relatively hard to get there since the park is actually only accessible by dirt roads and then a boat.  In the end it took us a 2 hour drive, an hour bus ride and then another hour long boat ride to get to Tortuguero and cost us only $10.00/person.  When we got there we wanted to line up a boat trip to go look at the wildlife: monkeys, sloths, birds, manatees, etc and spend a few days exploring the area.

In the reading I did about Tortuguero I also heard it is one of the worst malaria regions.  I was the master packer for this trip and picked the perfect clothes for us all.  William and Matthias have pants with zipper legs, so they would be cool during the day and covered up in the night.  For Julian and myself I packed light cotton clothing so we could cover up in the evenings.  We all had one pair of shoes that would be perfect for small hikes in the turtle reserve and stable enough for traveling by boat and bus.  We were totally informed and prepared for a couple of days in Tortuguero.  Or so I though.

What I didn’t prepare for was torrential rains.  We didn’t see a single mosquito in Tortuguero – probably because they were all hiding in their homes from the torrential rains.  I first started to realize I was unprepared when we got on the boat and everyone had rain ponchos, long pants and coats on.  We were all in shorts, tank tops and sandals.  Once we got off in Tortuguero Village we walked to a hotel, got settled and decided to start exploring the town.  At that point it was lightly sprinkling.  We went for a walk on the beach and were hoping to see some turtles.  It’s sort of the “off-season” for turtles but some people had told us we might see a few baby turtles on the beach.  Well, we didn’t see any turtles.  Suddenly it started pouring, and was showing no signs of letting up.  We sat in a restaurant and all had something to drink, but after a while we decided to just run back to the hotel as fast as we could.  By the time we ran the 50 meters back to our hotel room we were all soaked down to our underwear.

One thing we’ve learned about humid climates is that wet clothes in high humidity don’t dry quickly, and they start to smell fast.  There is a really rank smell that creeps in after about 24 hours and (luckily) we’re accustomed to it.  All my clothes were wet and stank, and the humidity in our room was making all our dry clothes slightly moist as well.  That’s when Matthias said “One night in this place and we’re out of here.”  It was kind of heartbreaking because it was such an ordeal to get out there, and I still had so much promise of it being really amazing.  But the rains were so heavy, it was impossible to do anything but sit in our hotel room and complain about how much it was raining.  There was a 2 km loop through the reserve where you are nearly guaranteed to see monkey and birds.  It would have been perfect for us with the kids.  2km is a great distance because even if they refuse to walk, Matthias and I can each take a kid on our shoulders and carry them the entire way.  But the trails were so flooded and muddy that they wouldn’t let anyone out unless they were wearing rubber boots.  So much for packing the perfect shoes.  Disappointed that this outing didn’t turn out like I had hoped, I gave in and we decided to take the 11:30 boat back. 

Matthias agreed to watch the kids until the boat left so I could go on the 2km loop by myself.  I ran through town, rented some boots, bought a rain poncho ($1.60 for a glorified garbage bag) and raced out to the trail.  It was actually more frightening than fun.  The first 400 meters were fine and clearly marked.  I knew a section of the trail was along the beach and then went back into the jungle.  But of course, there was no sign anywhere, no people and there were a zillion trails leading off the beach.  I had to be back by 11:20 at the latest in order to make the boat.  I had seen one trail that was a little more developed than the others, so after walking for about 10 minutes past that trail I finally turned back and followed it back into the woods, hoping it was right.  The section of the trail was even muddier and more flooded.  My boots kept sticking in the mud and at times there was no more trail, just water.  I was alone and it was dark since the jungle can be really thick.  And guess how many monkeys I saw.  Zero.  Guess how many birds I saw.  Zero.  Do you want to know why?  Because they are all not even half a stupid as I am and they don’t go out in that weather either.  

Despite the rest of the trip being a bust, the boat ride out to Tortuguero was worth the entire trip.  The boats are narrow (2 seats wide) and long (15 seats long).  We drove along a narrow river surrounded by dense jungle.  The boats are very tipsy, and they sit so low on the water that at times you are sitting at a 45 degree angle just inches from the water.  Most of the river was brown from all the rain, but in the densest parts the water was black – not much light gets through and the rain doesn’t fall there and stir up the water.  Normally they scream down this river, but occasionally they slow down to avoid trees or other obstacles in the river.  Luckily they passed out rain ponchos so we were able to stay fairly dry. 

It has been forever since I wrote my last blog entry and that’s good, because Allison is the one who can actually write proper English. Than again, right now I am feeling so miserable, that it is overdue to do some real wining and complaining.
As I write this blog we are all sitting in the Yoda Van in Zihuatanejo (if you’ve seen Shawshank Redemption you’ve heard of this place) with at least 120% humidity. We drove from 8000feet to sea level today. Let me tell you, right now I prefer the altitude! We have about 14 more days left at the coast and I am worried. I don’t know if I can drink liquids faster than I am sweating. Our fridge holds 12 beer cans and since you shouldn’t drink the water here I’ll be dehydrated by lunch time. We’ll have to think of something how to survive this environment. Than again, we have mastered obstacle after obstacle on this trip and I am sure we’ll find a way how to deal with this nasty humidity.
Let me now tell you my perspective of the last 2 weeks in Mexico, at least all I can remember, because we just met two Germans who told us that Tequila helped with severe perspiration. I think it just makes you care less.  Anyways, after a pretty awesome month traveling through the states I thought we were well prepared to conquer Mexico (after all I am German and I thought conquering was in my blood).We even had a very smooth border crossing and I called my dad right after we entered Mexico, while I still had reception with my cell phone. My dad told me how proud he was and that he was bragging to all his friends about his sons travels. Man, if he would have seen us only 5 minutes later, he would have rethought this statement. It only took 5 minutes to get seriously lost in Juarez (and also many other places). Within the 15 minutes I ran 2 red lights (I still do that, but not at the same pace) and I had several people give me looks and say things that didn’t even sound nice to a non Spanish speaker.
If you have ever driven in Mexico you are probably familiar with “Topes” (speed bumps) or sleeping policemen as they are called here. Those things are everywhere and impossible to see and the van takes a severe beating whenever I don’t pay attention to them. There are also a lot of potholes on the road, many so large that little kids could drown in them. All that in addition to the cobblestone roads makes driving here a real adventure. I am so glad that the Yoda Van isn’t just any vehicle, but an incredible piece of 1982 German engineering. We just passed 5000 miles today and except the cv joint which was no problem for the Wolf to replace, we had no problem with the Yoda Van at all.
My dad probably wouldn’t have been so proud if he had seen us being completely clueless where to stay (Allison already wrote about the hotel in Jiménez). One night we even spent 90 bucks to sleep at a Best Western. It took us 3 days of being in this country before we dared ordering real Mexican food from real Mexicans which ended our white bread and cheese slices dinners.
All of that and the fact that we wanted to sleep in a comfortable bed, do laundry, fill the Yoda Van with drinkable water made us look very much forward to visit our friends (Dave and Terri) in Ajijic. We where able to ask them a lot of questions and just relax and do a whole lot of nothing after our not so pleasant first days in Mexico. Dave and Terri have the widest bed I have seen and the four of us would have fit in it easily, but unfortunately they didn’t offer it to us unlike our friends Lynn and Daren in Las Vegas.  I think there is a reason why people in Seattle call him Dave the Prick and I still envy him for this title. We still had a very nice time in Ajijic. We went to the circus, had a lot of good food, we even had a babysitter for one night. Life was good again. We even had 2 good days after we left Ajijic. One in Patzcuaro and one in Uruapan. We lived within our budget and still enjoyed ourselves, but one thing we haven’t had yet so far in Mexico was one full day of sun. All of us started getting a real sun tan for pretty much the first time of our lives. We were only the second palest people at the pool and now it’s all gone. There is no sun in Mexico. Not only is there no sun, we are driving from thunderstorm to tropical rain to thunderstorm. It was fun in the beginning, but now it starts felling just like Seattle again.
It’s 11:23 pm now. Both the kids and Allison are asleep. The humidity
is still extreme and I am out of Tequila. That’s why I have to end it right here.

Two days later:
I had a very good sleep and a bad headache next morning. I thought we had seen the worst of the rain. Not even close. This day we had biblical rainfall. We weren’t really hoping to see the sun anymore, a break with rain was all we wanted. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t want to get wet. We were wet anyways from the humidity. I was more worried about the flooded roads. We asked Allison’s parents for the weather forecast and it didn’t sound too good, so we decided to try our luck in Acapulco. The drive took us 4 hours and for the most part we were driving in 10 inches or more of water (Thanks again Yoda Van. Several roads in Acapulco were closed, but we still made it to the beach and found a hotel (our search for a hotel room in Acapulco could be a blog entry by itself). We had another white bread and cheese dinner and a very good night sleep. The next morning when we woke up the unthinkable happened. The sun was out!