Quest to See the World

The last few days have been awesome. I originally went to Puerto Viejo so that I could do a jungle boat ride that was $15, but when I got there I realized that I´d be on the boat the whole time and one really can´t see all that much from the middle of a river. I think that´s the same boat ride we did on my tour in 1997 here and I was highly disappointed then because all we saw was a crocodile and that´s it. I decided not to do it and instead went to a lodge that had a frog garden. I walked about 2.5 kilometers with my big pack and when I got there, there weren´t any frogs. I even called in advance to make sure that I could check it out if I wasn´t a guest there, but the lady failed to mention that the frogs had left and they needed to go get some more. Oh well, it was a nice walk anyway. Next I hopped a bus to Cuidad Quesada, also known as San Carlos.

I arrived to San Carlos (Ciudad Quesada) around 7pm and stayed at Hotel del Norte for $10, I think, for a private room with shared bath, but the bath had hot water, a plus. The place was okay, nothing great. I walked around town, got some gum and a small tube of toothpaste and checked out the merchandise at a local convenience store. It´s always interesting to see the different things available in the different countries. They had some good coffee for sale for a really cheap price. It was produced by Café Britt which is a big exporter of gourmet coffee, but it had a different name on it. It was the exact same stuff I´m sure, but for less than $2 when the other stuff is much more. I didn´t get any though because I didn´t feel like lugging it around for another couple of weeks. I got some snacks for the next day and went and got dinner. I had the usual, rice, beans, fried green plantains, and salad. Sometimes I throw a piece of animal into the mix, but most of the time I just eat vegetarian. I also got a pretty purple blackberry milkshake made with fresh ingredients of course. I was going to take a picture of it, but didn´t.

The next day I decided to go to Los Chiles which borders with Nicaragua. They have tours to Caño Negro from there which is supposedly some of the best virgin wetlands in Central America. Again, the whole tour was going to be on a boat, it was only a 3 hour tour…a 3 hour tour, and it was $80. I decided against it, especially since that´s more than double my daily budget. I´d have to starve and sleep on the street for a couple of nights to stay on budget. Once again I was left not knowing what I was going to do next, but I didn´t want to waste anytime deciding. Even though I wasn´t ready to leave Costa Rica yet, just like I wasn´t ready to leave Nicaragua the first time or Panama, I decided to take a little adventure down the good `ole Río San Juan to the tiny village of El Castillo. I had a few hours to kill so I got my usual for lunch and used the internet. At 3pm I got a boat from Los Chiles to San Carlos, Nicaragua. It was a lovely hour long boat ride down the tree lined Río Frío. I could see and hear howler monkeys in the trees as we went by. Central America is such a magical place! I was a bit sad to leave Costa Rica because it´s such a beautiful country. As far as nature goes, it´s my favorite country, as far as people go, Nicaragua is my favorite. I still need to go to Rara Avis, Río Celeste and Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica, but that will be another trip.

I had forgotten so many of the things that make Nicaragua, Nicaragua. It looks so different from Costa Rica and Panamá. Those 2 countries are very comfortable places to travel because one can use U.S. dollars pretty much anywhere and they have better infrastructure.

As soon as I got back into Nica, I saw the run down buildings and dirty streets and more humble people. I felt so happy to be back. I had forgotten how great Nicaragua feels. I had been taken by Costa Rica´s beauty so much so that, to some extent, it made me forget about the different kind of beauty offered by Nicaragua and its people. I arrived at 4pm and thought that I´d have to stay the night in San Carlos, but was relieved to find out that there was a boat leaving at 4:30 headed to El Castillo. I had just enough time to change some money, get my ticket and hit the bathroom. Thankfully the bank in Costa Rica, Banco de Costa Rica, dispenses U.S. dollars from its ATM and I got out $140, otherwise, I´d be out of money right now because there isn´t an ATM here in San Carlos and the bank doesn´t change travelers’ checks. I changed $40 yesterday and am holding onto my last $20 in U.S. for the ´just in case´ factor. You´d be surprised how far $20 can get you in this country.

So I headed down river 3 hours toward the Caribbean Sea. There were 6 of us on the approximately 60 passenger long, skinny motor boat. I took advantage of the last bit of daylight and snapped some photos along the way. The others on the boat had fallen asleep. 2 hours later we arrived to the village of Sábalos on the left side of the river. Everyone on the boat got off and I asked where we were to make sure that I didn´t end up in the wrong place. Eventually 2 teenage boys got on the boat and we headed another hour downstream. By the time I got there it was dark. I got off and headed to the left down the walkway. There are not cars in the town and therefore, no roads, only walkways lined with houses and small businesses, some in old wooden shacks and others in newer cement block buildings painted different colors. I was looking for Richardson´s, but somehow passed it up and ended up at the end of the walkway. I asked a guy where Richardson´s was and he told me that I had already passed it. I guess I couldn´t see the sign indicating that it was necessary to make a right turn due to the darkness. As I was asking him I noticed that I was standing right in front of Hotel Victoria which looked quite nice and new, and also expensive. I had planned on having to rough it a bit, but went in and asked about the rooms anyway since it was already dark and I didn´t know anything about the town. A very friendly lady showed me a well kept, shiny wooden room with a private bath and single bed. It was $15 including breakfast, very pricey, especially for Nica. She then showed me a room that was a little bit bigger with a view of the river and a double bed and said that she´d give me that one for the same price. I said I´d take it. I could justify it since it included breakfast and it was nighttime. I had also asked her about tour info to the nature reserve nearby and she offered to call the girl who works in the tourism hut so that I could go on the one leaving at 8am the next morning. How could I say no that that courtesy? Lucky for me, there was another tourist going on a $55 tour into the Indio Maíz reserve the next day. I´d have to pay half which is better than the whole thing and better than the $80 it would´ve been to go to Caño Negro with a million other people. I decided to go.

At 8am I got into a 10 passenger motor boat with Orlando the guide, the boat captain and Malcolm from England. We headed down river and passed the spot where there´s a Nicaraguan flag showing the division of the border with Costa Rica. Nicaraguans are apparently very proud of the fact that the whole river belongs to them and the Costa Rican side only goes to the bank of the river. Once you get into the reserve the Nicaraguan side is all thick rainforest and the Costa Rican side is just open hills for farming. We got to the Bartola trailhead where the Federales have a post and the men with camoflauge and big guns greeted us. We walked for 2.5 hours in the jungle and saw a couple of different types of venomous spiders, a bunch of birds, a guatuza which looks like a giant guinea pig, a bright green and black dart frog, a red and blue dart frog, ants of all sizes, spider monkeys which peed on me a little bit and were throwing things at us and the white-faced capuchín monkeys. After being peed on by the spider monkeys, I didn´t want the white faced ones to get too close. The guide told me to watch out that the one above me doesn´t pee on me, so I started to run down the trail a little bit. Apparently they like to follow women, so one was following me in the treetops. I stopped and it went away without peeing on me or throwing anything at me. Those little things can be quite aggressive! We continued our walk along the river and saw some fish and a big green lizard related to the iguana (aren´t all lizards related to iguanas?). It was a quite enjoyable morning. I like walking around in the mud in the green, humid forest with big rubber boots. We got back to the trailhead and I saw a normal little cat there. The park ranger told me that there was another one and started to call it. It came out and I almost had a heart attack! It looked like a small jaguar with jungle-like markings and it was much bigger than an normal cat-it’s an ocelot. It quickly went back under the bush and was eating. The ranger went close to the bush and was calling it and it was growling at him, but he was laughing. They had saved it from illegal trade, but it could never learn how to hunt on its own so it just hangs out there and runs around in the forest and they feed it. We got it to come back out and Malcolm (the other tourist on the morning excursion with me) and I were taking pics of it and the ranger was playing with it and all of a sudden it attacked Malcolm´s leg and bit him. He was even bleeding, but it was just playing. I got away from that thing, especially since I don´t have health insurance anymore. After that we headed back up river to the town. I had only 10 minutes to decide which tour I was going to do the next day. Malcolm was going to do another jungle tour, pretty much the same thing, but it was $65 because it was a little further down river. I really didn´t want to spend that much for pretty much the same tour, even though Malcolm said that I could just pay whatever I could afford since he´d be paying the full price by himself if I didn´t go. Even though he gave me such a nice offer I decided to do a walking tour to a rural community 2 hours away toward the Costa Rican border where I would learn how to make tortillas. It was $16 since i was alone, but otherwise it would be $8.

In the afternoon Malcolm and I walked around and got a couple of drinks and then ate dinner later. We also watched a soccer game for a while. The next morning my guide picked me up at 8am at the hotel and we walked through the tranquil countryside, listening to the birds and howler monkeys, until we arrived to El Gavilán. There was a boy there pulling a nursing calf from its mother and he tied its head to the mother´s front leg and tied the mother´s back legs together and started milking it. He was 12 years old and learned how to milk a cow when he was 8. He gets up every morning and milks the cow at 5am before going to school. As we were standing there watching this boy, the guide asked me if i wanted to try. I was hesitant, but said-what the heck. I sat down on the log and the guy showed me how to do it. It was so disgusting! The udders were all wrinkley and gooey, but i tried for about 3 minutes anyway, but was unsuccessful. I was totally grossed out by it and left a loser. I don´t regret quitting because at least I tried. I wasn´t mentally prepared for it. All I knew was that I was going to be making some tortillas with a lady in the countryside, no one ever mentioned anything about milking a cow. They waited especially for me that day instead of doing it at 5am.

Next I went inside the house and learned how to make tortillas and fresh cheese from the milk that the boy had just gotten out of the cow. To make the cheese you add some pill that separates the milk and let it sit for a while. Then you come back about 15 minutes later and stir it and wait another 15 minutes or so. After that you push down on the mass that has formed at the bottom of the watery substance and then grab a piece and squeeze the excess liquid out. Once you get as much out as possible, you take it to the mortar table thing (you´ll see it in the picture later) and kind of knead it, add salt, knead it again and then form a U.S. football (as opposed to a European football-as in soccer ball) shape out of it and that´s it.

To make a tortilla it´s a longer process than I thought. You get some corn kernals and soak them for a while, then put them in a hand grinder to get kind of doughy stuff. Next you add water and make it doughier. Next you put it on the mortar table thing and grind it more with the stone mortar, adding more water. Once you do this you will have a smoother dough and you form the tortilla in you hand and then transfer it to a piece of plastic in the shape of a circle and finish forming the tortilla. once you have it nice and flat, you carefully remove it from the plastic and put it on the wok-like thing that´s hot over the fire. They don´t have regular stoves, they use real fire from logs to cook and no sink or running water either (you´ll also see these pics in time). By the 3rd one I pretty much had it down as to how to get the tortilla on the wok-like thing without ripping it. the tortillas were okay, but the ones I get with my dinners are much better. I got to eat it with the cheese and it was yummy. I also had pinolillo which is a drink made from ground dried corn and cacao seeds mixed with sugar. It´s quite delicious. I love to eat corn flavored stuff here because that´s the indigenous tradition. I had the 5 year old daughter who has never used a camera in her life take pics of me making this stuff, but the pics are actually pretty good.

I asked the lady if I could buy a breadfruit and her husband went and cut one for me. Talk about fresh! After that, the guide and I walked up to the church (it was on Sunday) and the school and then headed back to town. Wow, what another great day! This was one of my most enjoyable days so far. It was really interesting to see the process and get to make a tortilla, just me and the lady with the gold trimmed teeth.

After my great farming/cooking lesson I walked around town some more and took pictures of anything and everything. I decided to take the 2pm boat back to San Carlos (in Nica, not Costa Rica) so that I could use the computer and check out a different place. I slept in until 9am yesterday, showered, ate, bought a small souvenir and got on the boat. I got here at around 5pm and got a private room with shared bath at Cabinas Leyko for $7-big change from my fancy room in El Castillo. I uploaded about 500 pics, but don´t have time right now to organize and label them, so you´ll have to wait.

Yesterday afternoon I decided that I´m going to take the boat today back to Isla Ometepe to get one last dosage of monkeys before heading further north. The boat ride will be 10 hours across Lake Nicaragua. Malcolm is taking the boat too, but all the way to Granada which is 15 hours. I assume he got the early boat back here to San Carlos this morning, but I haven´t seen him today yet. He took the boat over and said that it´s possible to hang a hammock on the top deck and sleep. I bought a nylon one yesterday in the market for $4,  so I´m set. I also got a couple of bootleg CDs-yeah!

Today after typing this for a while and uploading more pics I took a break and walked down to get my ticket for the boat. On the way I stopped by the lady who sells ¨chocobananos¨ out of her house for $.06 each (a small frozen chocolate covered banana on a stick) and noticed that there were a bunch of bottles of nail polish sitting there. I asked if she polishes nails and said that here daughter does manicures and pedicures, so I asked how much. She said $1.25 just for the polish or $3 for the full pedicure. My polish was looking pretty horrible, so I said that I´d be back. After getting my ticket for the boat I got my first pedicure in my life. Now I have orange toenails and feel new again. I´ll have to get another haircut to feel complete. She did a great job and I gave her a $2 tip. What a deal!

The boat leaves in 45 minutes so I´m going to grab a plate of $.75 food before I go. I think i´ll have to get another one of those chocobananos too. It´s going to be a long boat ride. Hasta pronto.

Tags: Central America 2007, costa rica, Nicaragua, San Carlos

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Central America 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.