Quien is mas treehouse? Life in the Costa Rican trees

Treehouse at Finca Bella Vista, Costa Rica; photo by David W. Smith

Remember the old Saturday Night Live skit, ‘Quien es mas macho?’ The contestants included Jack Lord from Hawaii-5-0 and Ricardo Montalban, who consistently came out on top.

Here we have a variation on that theme, with all the Costa Rican treehouses I’ve visited vying for the honor of being treehouser than thou.

One thing Ive noticed in my treehouse travels is that everyone has a different idea of what a treehouse should be.  Even the highest-ranking contestants–Finca Bella Vista, a sustainable treehouse community on the Southern Pacific coast, and Michael Cranford’s multi-level masterpiece on the Osa Peninsula–have philosophical differences about what constitutes a treehouse.

Cranford didn’t want to drill into the enormous Guanacaste tree that is now his home, so has his treetop home supported with wooden supports that go from the ground to the platforms that make up their home. Erica and Matt of Finca Bella Vista didn’t want support from ground so brought in experts from the States to rig their treehouses without support from below.

Here’s a sampler of the treehouses I’ve seen on this trip, starting with the whimsical and working towards the amazing feats of engineering and imagination.

1. The Treehouse Hotel in Arenal is fun but they’re not strictly treehouses—they’re cute little houselets up on stilts.

2. In Uvita, Tra McPeak from Memphis runs the Tucan Hotel, 100 meters east of the Costanera (the coast highway), a hostel with a restaurant, a pen full of rabbits, and high-speed wireless internet. They have a small wooden treehouse out front you can rent for $6/per person. The price includes hammocks but it’s extra for mattresses and bedding. Tra, who arrived in Costa Rica in 2006, says he built the treehouse for his kids but all the backpackers coming through wanted to sleep up there, so he now makes it available to guests.

Casa Arbol treehouse, Costa Rica; photo by David W. Smith

3. Humbert deSilva from France and Lisa Brouillard from Quebec have been in Costa Rica for almost 20 years. They run a small bed and breakfast, Casa Arbol, not far from Chacarita, where you turnoff to go to the Osa Peninsula. Their entire house is a work of art—Hugh makes the cupboards and the bed stands and the baths that look like something out of ancient Rome, not to mention the small treehouse that guests can stay in if they like. He never knows how a project will turn out when he begins it. He kept showing me carvings and rooms and tilework and saying, ‘When I finished, I saw that it was a”….swan, or frog, or a meditation on humanity.

4. Finca Bella Vista : a treehouse community in the jungle

Eric and Matt Hogan of Finca Bella Vista

A few short years ago Erica and Matt Hogan were camped in the mud by the Bella Vista River, up a rocky road to a spread of gorgeous but undeveloped land in Costa Rica’s Zona Sur. They weren’t sure what exactly was going to get them out of the mud, but dreamed of building a kind of Ewok village where they’d live in the trees and get to their neighbors’ houses via zipline.

Most people would have let that rather whimsical dream sputter and die, but Erica and Matt nailed it down and created Finca Bella Vista, a sustainable treehouse community with 82 lots available for people who want to live off the grid and in the trees. They’ve strung 18 ziplines, which they use fir both transportation and fun, but eventually there will be 45.

Treehouse at Finca Bella Vista, Costa Rica; photo by David W. Smith

We stayed in the first treehouse they built, and once I was 50 feet up in a structure cradled by three trees, listening to the roar of a nearby waterfall (visible from the top floor), I sighed and thought, This is it. This is the real thing.

5. At home in the trees: Michael Cranford’s treehouse on the Osa Peninsula

Michael Cranford and Rebecca Amelia were drinking margaritas in Boquete, Panama, talking about how as kids they’d retreat to the trees when they needed to get away. A few hours and numerous drinks later, they were sketching designs for a treehouse on napkins.

Michael Cranford's treehouse in Costa Rica; photo by Michael Cranford

Years later, the scrawled blueprints became reality when they hauled a few platforms built on the ground up into an enormous Guanacaste tree on their land on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica.

That was about a year ago, and Michael and Rebecca now live full-time in the trees, with Siete, a miniature husky, and Reina, an aging brindle boxer.

Breakfast nook in the treehouse;l photo by Michael Cranford

The treehouse is a true home, with a spacious, fully-equipped kitchen, guest bedrooms, an office for each of them, and a master  bedroom. Eighty percent of the wood used for the treehouse is downed hardwood from the jungle that is their backyard. They have internet and cable, flush toilets, and plenty of hot water in the shower.

They’ve seen a sloth right outside the kitchen, 3 kinds of monkeys—howlers, white face, and squirrel—come through regularly, and scarlet macaws hang out in the nearby branches.

They rent the place out occasionally—check their web site.

“I learned more about myself working with this tree,” says Michael, “than I have through any other life experience.”

Michael is a painter as well as an architect and visionary. “I moved down [to Costa Rica in 1998] to become an artist,” he says. He sold his painting contracting business in Colorado Springs, and gave himself “a window of 3-4 years to paint.” He painted 6 days a week.

That’s his goal this year, too—to do nothing but paint.  He created the painting below before he created his actual treehouse.

Mobbed by grasshoppers in a Guanacaste treehouse

There's no escaping the bugs in a house with no walls; photo by Erin Van Rheenen

Imagine a house up in the trees, open to the elements, with a view of a pristine stretch of Costa Rican beach. It’s Paul and Jeanne Pidcock’s house , on the Pura Jungla eco-reserve, where Ray Beise took a dried-up cow pasture and lovingly reforested it into something lush and beautiful. He sells lots to like-minded people who agree to abide by the eco-friendly rules of the realm.

Sound good? Well, yes and no. In theory, the idea of no walls (and of course, no windows, and no screens) sounds pretty cool. You are one with the toucans and the monkeys.

And, it turns out, an army of insects.

Things got ugly at dusk. It wasn’t so bad if you sat in the dark and listened to the wind. But if you turned on a light—to cook, to read, or to write, you were mobbed by flying insects, from no-see-ums to oh-my-god-did-you-see- that?

Where in Costa Rica might there be screened windows? Photo by Erin Van Rheenen

Leaf-green grasshoppers as long as my finger seemed especially friendly. They alighted on my book page, on my computer screen, and on the map I was studying to figure out the fastest road out of here. One crawled inside the bedside lamp I’d brought to the kitchen table (the lighting was dismal, probably because lights only attract bugs). The lamp was sideways so I couldn’t see the hopper’s body, but its long front feelers undulated out of the fixture as if the light itself had become insect-like.

When I conceded defeat and got up from my chair, I saw that I had sat on one of the poor little buggers.

Crash landing at Playas del Coco, Costa Rica

Rancho Armadillo, Playas del Coco, Costa Rica

“The Earth is moving at 285,000 miles an hour,” says Rick Vogel of Rancho Armadillo in Playas del Coco. “And the skies shift even faster here, down near the equator.”

We’re lounging poolside, sometime between dusk and moonrise. Rick has a 5-inch diameter telescope trained on Jupiter and its moons. You can see three of the moons clear as day. The stars, brilliant on this clear night, are reflected in the dark water of the pool. Full-size copies of pre-Columbian statues loom in the dim light, and night-blooming flowers broadcast their scent.

Although we haven’t been moving at quite the clip as the Earth, we’ve been on the road for weeks and have been traveling as fast as the Costa Rica roads will allow. And with the roads and bridges so much improved since my last grand tour, that’s pretty damned fast.

From the pool at Rancho Armadillo you can see the ocean; photos by David W. Smith.

It feels good to land for a few days at Rancho Armadillo, up the hill and out of earshot from Playas del Coco. In 2004 the Tico Times wrote that visiting the Rancho was “like visiting a friend with a really cool house.” I agree, but would add, a friend with a really cool house and 25 landscaped acres and fragrant ylang ylang trees and visiting monkeys and wireless internet and comfortable king sized beds and rainforest showers and breakfasts that include homemade waffles and huge platters of fruit. After he’d served us one morning’s feast Rick had to take some friends to the bus stations. “If the coatamundi comes around,” he told us. “Throw him a piece of raisin bread. Otherwise he’ll drag the whole bread basket away.”

Rick and his wife Debbie, originally from Detroit, bought the hotel in 1999. They didn’t expand—the place sleeps just 20 at full capacity–but they did refine. They planted more trees and flowers, and made sure that every detail was right—the good reading lights on each side of the bed, the small army of sunscreen and insect repellent bottles you’ll find poolside for your use, the field guides to local flora and fauna, and the star charts to help you orient in skies that are catawampus compared to what stargazers see up north.

Most of all, though, I appreciate the feeling that Rick gives you—that you have the run of the place. That you can swim at midnight and raid the honor bar whenever the mood strikes. “There are two rules here,” he tells us. “For each work email you answer, you have to do a shot. And you have to wake up at least once a day.”

Curubanda: History and future of a working farm turned ecotourism lodge

Curubanda Lodge in the Guanacaste hill country

Curubanda Lodge is a small ecotourism lodge in the heart of a working farm—Finca Nueva Zealandia–in the Costa Rican highlands. Its four modest but comfortable guest rooms are within spitting distance of the farm’s dairy, chickens wind their way through the gardens, and on your way back to your room you might have to push through the cows waiting to be milked.

Curubanda Lodge in Guanacaste is also a working dairy.

The Nueva Zealandia farm and dairy has been in the Brizuela family since 1930. At that time, there were few roads, and the family would take milk and cheese by oxcart to Quebrada Grande (often shown as Garcia Flamenco), a small town 13 km away, to trade for staples like rice and beans.

The 100-hectare farm stayed pretty much the same, says Wilberth Brizuela Chavarria, 34, from 1930 to 1980, with successive generations working the dairy and in the fields. The area was high and green enough for dairy cattle, but they also kept chickens and pigs.

In 1980, the government was offering nearby land at a very good price if the buyers would agree to help reforest the area (which had been cleared for farms and pastures) so that there might be a biological corridor between the two volcanoes and the two national parks. The Brizuela family bought up land around the original farm and increased their holdings to 350 hectares.

Another big change for the family farm came in 2000, when Wilbirth finished his business degree at Universidad Latina in Santa Cruz (on the Nicoya Peninsula). The price of milk is notoriously volatile, and Wilbirth came home with big ideas about how the family could diversify and not rely solely on the dairy.

A non-paying guest at Curubanda Lodge

Soon after 2000, the farm began its transformation from working farm to working farm that welcomes guests. They built four guest rooms (the best is on the second floor, with a deck, an amazing view, and a bathtub big enough for two). They built a large restaurant, created trails for walking and for horseback riding, landscaped the grounds so that part of it looks more like a hotel than a farm, and are in the process of relocating the dairy barn so it’s not within smelling distance of the guest rooms. (Right now it’s quite close, but the smell isn’t unpleasant, just earthy.)

Agro-Eco-Tourism, complete with mud wallows

Wilberth calls the new project agro-eco-tourism. “It’s a radical change for us,” he says, and indeed it seems as if they are working out some kinks. The guest rooms could use screens on the windows and the water pressure means that the impressive tub takes over an hour to fill up. Guests are fed extremely well but there are no choices—you eat what they’re cooking, and many meals have rice and French fries on the same plate. A friend who came up to watch the sunset drove into a huge swampy hole in the driveway that  was hard to see in the dark and the rain, and upon later inspection that was just one of many tire-swallowing holes. In the Costa Rican manner, Wilbirth smiled and shrugged, as if to say, Who’d be dumb enough to drive into those holes?

Curubanda Lodge: Slipping and sliding to the waterfall

Curubanda Lodge, near Quebrada Grande in the hills of Guanacaste

“Don’t be afraid,” our guide tells us. “It’s a little steep and slippery on the way to the waterfall, but the horses know the way.”

We’ve already come up a trail so muddy the horses sank in past their knees. There were stretches so steep I’d been hugging my horse’s neck to keep upright.

But I wasn’t complaining—yet. We were riding through a dramatic landscape that few would associate with Guanacaste or even Costa Rica. Swaths of dense forest alternated with green hills that might be called rolling if what they were doing wasn’t a lot more dramatic–let’s call them rock-and-rolling hills.  The air was fresco – cool and fresh.  Cacao Volcano lay before us, with Rincon de la Vieja Volcano at our back.

David and I and the guide had started out from Curubanda Lodge, four comfortable cabins on the Finca Nueva Zealandia (New Zealand farm, for the area’s resemblance to that country). We were just over an hour from the baking-hot town of Liberia (the hottest in all of Costa Rica), where there’s an international airport and more banks per square meter than anywhere else in Costa Rica, and two hours from the party beach town of Tamarindo.

If you’re not crazy about extreme heat or spring-break style revelry, then Curubanda is a breath of fresh and cool air. At well over 2000 feet, it lies in a perpetually green valley between two volcanoes, and is sandwiched between two national parks—Rincon de la Vieja and the Guanacaste Protected Area.

The path to the waterfall at Curubanda Lodge

We’re riding through what they call bosque seco (dry forest), though you wouldn’t know it from the rain squalls and the clouds scudding through. “The clouds here haul ass,” says a local expat rancher from California who’s been here a decade and says that the area’s microclimates are so very micro that it can be raining out his back door when the sun is shining on his front yard.

This morning we’re riding 3 of the farm’s 22 horses, trying to catch of glimpse of the volcanoes’ steeply sloping cones, and marveling at the view from the ridges—we can see over multiple ridges in myriad shades of green, all the way to the where the Pacific would be if the haze of the lowlands wasn’t obscuring it today.

We’re well-fortified with a farmhand’s breakfast—eggs, gallo pinto (rice and beans), toast, a plate of fresh pineapple, papaya, apple, and watermelon, and a dollop of delicious fresh cheese (the farm is primarily a dairy, with 80 Holstein, Jersey, and Pardo cows).

Still, I’m not feeling too good about the steep and slippery descent to the waterfall. I guess I could dismount and do it on foot, but one of the reasons they encourage exploring the area on horseback is that hay culebras (there are snakes, including terciopelos (fer-de-lances) and matahueyes (literally “ox-killers,” aka bushmasters). The lodge has loaned us tall rubber boots, but still, I guess I’ll take my chances on horseback.

Our guide is William (lots of people around here have anglicized names, though they may speak no English and have no English heritage). He’s from Nicaragua originally –we’re not far from the border here, and the clouds we see probably formed over Lake Nicaragua. He carries a machete to whack away some of the branches encroaching on the trail, and to have a weapon against culebras.

I take a deep breath and give my horse, Palomo, a gentle kick so he’ll follow the other two, which have begun to slip and slide down the narrow, root-encrusted trail. It’s not my first time on horseback but it’s the first time I’ve seen how horses can slide stiff-legged for yards and then right themselves. The horses nimbly pick their way over fallen trees, rocks, and through mud bogs.

We’re almost to the bottom of this steep stretch when the guide’s horse loses his footing. The rear feet slide out from under him and he goes down, sliding on his rump for several yards.

I pull my horse up short as I watch the spectacle. But William doesn’t bat an eye, just pulls up on the reins until his horse regains all four feet.

I turn to David. “I thought you said these horses couldn’t lose their footing.”

David laughs. “I guess I must have meant mules.”

Soon we dismount, clamber on foot down an even steeper stretch (No hay muchas culebras aqui, says William—There aren’t so many snakes right here), cross a small river, and round a bend to see a small waterfall cascading into a round pool. The mist from the falls drifts over to us, and we breathe it in, watching a blue morpho butterfly ride the currents of air produced by the falling water.

All photos by David W. Smith

The trail to the waterfall was steep and muddy, but it was worth the trip.

Tarpon fishing and caiman wrangling at Esquina del Lago

Hanging out at Esquina del Lago lodge on the Rio San Juan

During our week or so in Nicaragua we were based at Esquina del Lago, a river lodge with no hot water but plenty of rickety charm. Lodge owner Phillipe Tisseaux met us at immigration in San Carlos, then whisked us across the water. It was dark when we arrived at the lodge, and the life-sized crocodile on his dock was lifelike enough to make us back away.

After we settled into our modest room, we were fed a delicious meal of river shrimp (as big as crawfish) in a cream sauce that owed not a little to Tisseaux’s origin.

Born in France in 1949 and now a Nicaraguan resident, Tisseaux bought this spit of land at the corner of the Rio San Juan, the Rio Frio, and Lake Nicaragua in 2002 and opened the lodge in 2006.

Caimans on our very first night

After a dinner straight from the river one of Tisseaux’s workers, Minor, a young man of few words, said, “Come. The caiman.”

I thought he meant that there might be one on the wooden walkways jutting out over the water, a companion to the fake croc that had scared us when we arrived.

But he motioned us into a boat (you have to go everywhere by boat; there are no roads and not many paths during the wet season). We puttered out over the dark water to a swampy area a little ways upstream. To our dismay the young man went over the side of the boat and was thigh-deep in water before we knew what was happening. He went thrashing through the swamp, then came back with something in his hands. It was a small caiman, and he showed us how to hold it. It felt so alive in my hands. I wanted to get it back into the water, where it belonged.

Later Tisseaux would tell me “Minor’s crazy. He gets the babies, and how do you think the mamas feel about that?”

But Minor wasn’t satisfied with just showing us a little caiman. We motored over to another swampy area, where he swept a flashlight across the water, soon finding the glow of eyes that he was looking for.

“Es grande,” he said. “Voy por el.” He’s a big one. I’m going after him.

And over the side of the boat he went.

I was relieved when he came back empty-handed.

Tarpon fishing and the Esquina del Lago

Philippe Tisseaux at Esquina del Lago lodge on the Rio San Juan

Tisseaux, who has lived everywhere from Florida to St. Martin to Costa Rica, says he’s been ‘retired’ since 1989, but he never seems to not be working. His lodge has 6 rooms and he is building 4 more, he was on his way to a community meeting in San Carlos when we first arrived, and he seems to know everyone within a 100-mile radius and is well-informed about what’s going on in his adopted country.

He also arranges kayaking trips (or you can use his for free to do short paddles on the river or lake), and he can arrange trips to the Solentiname Islands, to local reserves, or downriver to El Castillo, the old Spanish fort built in 1675 to guard against pirates coming up the Rio San Juan from the Caribbean, into Lake Nicaragua, and on to the wealthy colonial city of Granada, which was sacked and pillaged innumerable times during the colonial era.

But his main business is taking people tarpon fishing in the Rio San Juan. He wants to protect that fishery and is adamant that the tarpon his clients catch be released unharmed. Others who fish tarpon in the area are more likely to sell it for less than a dollar a pound. Tisseaux is trying to convince the fishermen in the area that all the magnificent tarpon in the river are worth more to them dead that alive, since sportfisherman can catch the same fish again and again.

Esquina del Lago lodge has been featured in Field & Stream magazine, and CNN came recently to film a fishing show featuring the mythic and prehistoric-looking tarpon, called sabalo in Spanish.

We made friends with the fake croc after we showed him who was boss.

Fast boat to Nicaragua: Just us, the crew, and a dead man

Everything goes by boat on the Rio Frio: sheep, travelers, and (read on) a coffin; photo by David W. Smith

After we’ve waiting 3 or 4 hours at the Los Chiles muelle (dock) for the boat the Nicaragua, not one but two boats arrive: the bote publico, and the lancha from Esquina del Lago lodge. A big group from the U.S. is being shuttled from the lodge to Los Chiles after a few days of tarpon fishing on the Rio San Juan in Nicaragua, and we’re catching a ride back to the lodge.

But first, the crew helps the returning clients through Costa Rica immigration (easy as pan dulce), gets something to eat, and has a good long smoke or two.

Finally, the captain saunters back to the boat.

“Hay un problemita,” he says. There’s a little problem.

How little? I wonder.

“Hay un difunto,” he says in a low voice. “There’s a deceased person.”

So that was a coffin in the back of the pickup that puttered by while we were waiting for the rain to stop. And it seems the difunto needs to go where we’re going. In our boat.

No hay problema, I say. “El es muerto. Somos vivos.” There’s no problem. He’s dead. We’re alive.

The captain cracks a smile.

“Pero espero que no tenemos que hablar con el,” I add. I just hope we don’t have to talk to him.

“Porque es dificil converser con los difuntos,” says David. It’s not so easy to converse with the dead.

“Son muy serios,” the captain agrees. They’re so serious.

Loading a coffin onto the fast boat to Nicaragua; photo by David W. Smith

It’s not quite as funny when they start to load the coffin into the boat. It takes up a whole row—six molded plastic seats and the aisle—at the back of the long and narrow lancha.  A young man accompanies the difunto, and his face shows fresh pain.

We later learn that the dead man, the young man’s uncle, was a Nicaraguan who crossed the border to work in Costa Rica, in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui. He died of a puneleado—a knife wound—he’d suffered in a fight. The young man came down to Costa Rica to claim his uncle’s body, and to bring him home.

We start up the Rio Frio at dusk. Swallows swoop close to the water, picking off mosqitoes. A flock of parrots flies overhead. Herons and egrets stands sentinel along the river. Howler monkeys add their deep-throated call from the branches of dense trees.

Cormarants along the Rio Frio; photo by David W. Smith

David and I stand at the front of the boat, enjoying the cool wind as if dries our sweaty clothes. As we pass under a leafless tree full of black cormorants, it feels as if we’re part of a funeral procession.

The lights of San Carlos, Nicaragua, at the confluence of the Rio Frio, the Rio San Juan, and Lake Nicaragua; photo by David W. Smith

In less than an hour we see the lights of San Carlos across the water. We’ve arrived at the confluence of the Rio Frio, the Rio San Juan, and Lake Nicaragua (also known as Lake Colcibolco). The boat noses up to a rickety wooden building right on the water: immigration. We step out onto the wooden walkway and approach the lighted window.

Immigration office in San Carlos, Nicaragua

There’s no line to enter Nicaragua here, and the only other action is a policewoman, in heavy eyeliner and dangling earrings, asking the nephew of the dead man for his paperwork. No matter where you die, it seems, there’s paperwork before you can leave this world behind. We heard that most boat captains would have charged $150 to transport the body from Los Chiles to San Carlos, but since the Esquina del Lago boat was already making the trip, they charged only for gas.

As we present our passports, fill out forms in the dim light (where are my glasses?), and pay our $7 a piece entry fee, a tall pale man appears, floating over the heads of the smaller, darker Nicaraguans. It’s Phillipe Tisseaux, expat Frenchman, serial relocator (he’s lived in France, St. Martin and Costa Rica, to name a few places), and owner of the Esquina del Lago Lodge, where we’ll be based for a few days.

There’s silver stubble on his cheeks and his blue eyes are kind. “Do you understand what happened?” he says in English softened with French. He’s talking about our fellow passenger, el difunto.

Yes, yes, we assure him. We understand. People die. They need to be brought home. It was the least we could do, to share a ride with someone who needed it a lot more than we did.

Did you notice the name of the boat in the photo? The Amen.

Waiting for the boat to Nicaragua

The muelle (dock) at Los Chiles, Costa Rica

After a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with all the gringo trimming (thanks to Christine at Desafio Adventure), we left  La Fortuna early for a half-day wildlife tour of Cano Negro in northern Costa Rica, in part to get a ride up to Los Chiles.

From Los Chiles the plan is take a boat up the Rio Frio into Nicaragua, where we’ll spend a week or so exploring the Rio San Juan (the watery border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua), an old Spanish fort called El Castillo, and the Solentiname Islands, where in the 1980s Sandinista poet-priest Ernesto Cardinal taught locals his own fiery brand of liberation theology and also encouraged them to paint pictures of their surroundings. They’re still painting, and I’ve also heard that they are some of the staunchest Sandinista supporters in the country.

But good things come, apparently, only to those who wait.

The afternoon started off deceptively easy. Immigration in Los Chiles is the fastest I’ve ever left a country. We filled out a short form (the clerk loaned us his pen), got our passports stamped (there was no line), and we were on our way…to the town dock, where we would wait, and wait, then wait some more.

It was around 1 pm, and there was a chance that a boat would come for us at 2. Or so Phillipe, the French expat owner of Esquina del Lago lodge in Nicaragua, had emailed me. But he’d also outlined other options involving the bote publico (the pubic boat) from Los Chiles, Costa Rica, to San Carlos, Nicaragua. This boat, which costs $10, leaves at 10:30 am, 1:30 pm, 2:30 pm, and 3:30 pm. Unless it doesn’t. Maybe there aren’t enough people to make it worth their while, or the captain needs to run some errands in town.  And even if the boat does go, as the 3:30 boat that day ended up running, it probably won’t leave until 4 pm or so. Unless, of course, it leaves early.

Waiting at Los Chiles for the boat to San Carlos, Nicaragua

Meanwhile, we wait. A group of boat captains lounges at one end of the cement pier. One half-heartedly tries to get us to take his boat to Nicaragua instead of waiting for the public ferry. Someone asks David where he got his sunglasses. Ebay, David answers.  At the other end of the pier teenagers with drooping pants act out some sort of antic scenario that is supposed to distract us from noticing that they’re eyeing our bags. When they slouch by and disappear upriver we’re relieved but soon miss having them to look at. A tarpon jumps out of the green-brown river and slaps back down, making a surprisingly loud noise. The locals barely look up, but one informs us, “Sabalo” (Tarpon).

Thirty minutes later, an aguacero (downpour) relieves the boredom for a few minutes. Even under a corrugated tin shelter, it feels as if we’re in the eye of storm. It’s coming down so hard it’s bouncing off the cement and onto our legs, and then a sudden wind blows the sheets of rain horizontal.  Water floods the slab that is the pier, and we have to move all out bags onto a narrow metal bench right on the water.  The corroded pole that serves as a backrest barely keeps the bags from toppling into the river.

A young man with a sweet face smiles and shrugs, as if to say, “Wadya gonna do?”

A man peddles by slowly, one hand on the bike’s handlebar, the other holding an umbrella.

Ten minutes later, an old pickup truck with wood plank sides drives by with an oblong  box in the back. It’s swaddled in plastic tarps so it’s hard to tell what it is, but I imagine it to be a casket.

Two o’clock, when the boat from lodge was supposed to come, is long past. It’s looking like we’ll take the 3:30 bote public.  But it’s nearing that time and there’s no sign of anyone boarding.

A diversion drives up—another plank-sided pickup with a tarp roof, this one full of sheep. Two muddy teenage boys hoist themselves out of the back, where they’d been riding with the livestock, and make a run for the river, yelling and laughing. They dive in fully clothed (the one with rubber boots pulls them off first), no doubt to rinse off the sheep dung and mud.

Sheep about to head upriver on the Rio Frio

The driver gets out, stretches, calls mocking greetings to some of the boat captains, then motions for a kid captaining a lancha, a narrow wooden boat with ten or so rows of plastic seats in its hull, to take all the seats out. He does, and the man starts loading sheep, one by one, into the boat. They’re worth $150 each, we later learn, and they’re destined for a ranch upriver. The man knows just how hold the sheep so they don’t squirm out of his grasp or kick, but one unruly one gets in a pretty good kick.
When the boat takes off, he yells out, “Bon voyage, hijueputa!”

Have a good trip, you son of a bitch!

Photos (except of David) by David Webster Smith

Rancho Margot: elbow deep in guess what

Juan Sostheim, founder of Rancho Margot

I’d done yoga in the open air pavilion alongside the rushing Cano Negro River, soaked in a hot pool with views of the heavily wooded slopes near Arenal Volcano, and tasted the food that is grown and raised almost entirely on this organic farm and ranch. I’d even seen the agouti—a forest mammal like a giant glossy guinea pig—at the wildlife rescue center.

But I hadn’t yet stuck my arm into a big pile of compost.

Frederic, the 20-year-old son of Rancho Margot founder Juan Sostheim, was going to make sure I didn’t miss out.

“You’re elbow-deep in shit,” he smiled. “What do you notice?”

The agouti at Rancho Margot's wildlife rescue center

Suppressing my wisecracks (“It’s like being at my job”), I said that it didn’t smell so bad, and oddly, there were no flies buzzing around. But most surprising, it was warm in there. The deeper you went, the hotter it got.

That heat, produced by the breakdown of waste and hay and other organic matter, would make possible my hot shower later that day. And the lack of smell and flies? Frederic attributed it to the animals eating a balanced and organic diet.

Though you can go kayaking in Lake Arenal, horseback ride up to a lookout near the volcano, rent mountain bikes, or just chill out in your bungalow’s hammock, it’s during the hour-and-a-half farm tour that you really come to appreciate the grand experiment in sustainability that is Rancho Margot.

You can’t walk the ranch’s 380 acres without feeling, What a great idea! And also, I bet I could do that back home. On a smaller scale, to be sure. But with the same can-do attitude that makes this ranch and farm very much a work in progress but also a very successful one.

Here at the ranch, they try things, and if they doesn’t work, they try something else, all the while heading for greater balance with nature, less of a carbon footprint, and more of a self-sustaining system that is truly off the grid.

Already they provide for 100% of their energy and water needs, and about 90% of their food needs.  Energy comes from a variety of sources, including the heat-producing compost, biodigesters (huge hefty bags of animal waste which produce the methane that fuels the kitchen stoves), and from hydroelectric–big metal (Pelton) wheels turned by water.

We’re shown the chicken coop, the pig wallow, and the cow barn, and I can’t help thinking, These are cheerful chickens. Content cows. Pleased pigs.  They’re fed a balanced diet of organic grains and plants, and they all get out of their pens and into the field, the pasture, or (in the case of the pigs) the wallow on a daily basis. At mealtime, the milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt all come from these happy cows, and the pork and chicken comes from humanely raised and slaughtered animal. There are many vegetarians here (in fact the cook is vegetarian), but he provides options for meat-eaters at every meal.

Even more impressive are the extensive gardens, the nursery, and the fields that produce sustenance for guests, visiting student groups, and the farm employees. The open-air tomato shed provided a lesson in how to save your crops from insects without resorting to harsh chemical insecticides. Rows of marigold and basil, natural insecticides, stand guard on all sides of the tomato plants.

Rancho Margot is a work in progress–they’re still building two classrooms and a library, and constantly trying new things. But much has already been accomplished. In the last five years, Juan, his sons, and his workers have planted 500 trees, and acquired 600 chickens, 100 pigs, 18 cows, and 25 horses. They’ve planted feed for the animals—including ramio, buton de oro, and sugar cane—and food for the humans, from tomatoes and every kind of herb to a variety of native potatoes—yuca, teqisque, malanga, camote, and ñampo– that are not being planted much in this age of monoculture.

Camera vs. Tile floor at the Soda del Rio

In the fight between camera & floor, the Sigma suffered a decisive loss.

There are travel days when nothing goes right. On Friday afternoon, we sat at a table under the eaves at a little soda (a modest restaurant or cafe) in La Fortuna, a muddy one-horse town that is also the tourist epicenter for all things Arenal-esque, from river rafting to volcano-spotting (it hasn’t shown its sloped face in days).

Rain came down in sheets, bouncing off the sidewalk and misting our ankles even as we sat a few feet under the overhang. We’d ordered jugos de mora (blackberry) and guanabana just to rent time at a table, and I was trying to navigate Lonely Planet Costa Rica on the Kindle to figure out a place to stay that night.

David swept his backpack off the table to accommodate the glasses of juice, and one of the straps pulled his camera off the tabletop and onto the hard tile floor.

Craaaak! It didn’t sound good, and as he scooped his Sigma off the floor, his face told me that it didn’t look good, either. He spent the next several minutes checking all the camera functions, and I watched as his face became cloudier and cloudier.

Volcan Arenal is usually shrouded in clouds.

We were 2 days into a 2-month trip whose primary purpose was to do research and take photos for the 3^rd edition of my guide, Living Abroad in Costa Rica. David was the trip photographer. I’d left my piddly little Nikon at home, relieved that I could concentrate on research and writing and leave the visuals to someone more inclined in that direction.

But now  it seemed that David’s camera had fallen and couldn’t get up.  The lens was the problem. It had been so traumatized it now wouldn’t venture out of its shell.

He had a small back-up camera, but the files wouldn’t be big enough to reproduce high-quality color photos.

Here was the trip’s first major snafu.

We’ve spent the last few days figuring out what to do next. On the emotional front, David was seriously bummed, and I had to let him be bummed until he wasn’t bummed anymore–a lesson in non-attachment.

On the practical front, David bought a set of tiny screwdrivers at the local ferreterria, took the back off the camera and poked around, but had no luck in getting the lens to work.

We asked everyone we knew if there was a good camera repairman in town. No, but someone knew a guy in San Jose who came highly recommended. He didn’t answer his cell phone and wasn’t getting back to us. Should we drive back to the capital (4-5 hours on bad roads) to see if we could find this guy?

How about if David bought another Sigma on eBay and had it shipped down here? One acquaintance had a mail service (Aero Casillas) that has stuff sent to Miami and then brings it down to Costa Rica. But it can take from 10 days to 2 weeks to get a package. Other friends said they had small packages sent directly to their address in a nearby small town, with the same time frame—1 or 2 weeks in transit. Some vendors would ship internationally, some wouldn’t. And if customs got ahold of the package, well, you’d have to go to Calderas and know who to bribe.

Stay tuned for more in the camera-meets-floor drama. This experience is reminding me that nothing is easy, or fast, in Costa Rica. The country looks at our agenda and our bag full of high-tech gadgets, and it laughs. A big, rumbling lava-burbling-out-of-a-volcano laugh. All you can do is stand clear, and smile ruefully at how little control you actually have.