Orosi, Costa Rica – Surrounded by Heaven Itself

I stepped out of the bus at Orosi, and the first thought that came to me was: “Oh my God, I’ve stepped right into a scene straight out of a novel.”

This is what Orosi feels like. A small town in a small valley, surrounded by majestic lush green mountains on all sides. The streets are narrow, and the houses small and tightly packed. The weather is perfect, with a bright sun tempered by light breeze and ever-rolling clouds. The pace of life is slow, and there’s an aura of peace and serenity that seems to saturate the air.

One of the cheapest Spanish schools in Costa Rica is here, Montana Linda. It’s also associated with a hostel that goes by the same name, and this is where you’ll find the handful of foreigners in town hanging out. Other than that, it’s all Ticos (what Costa Ricans call themselves) all the time.

There was a festival in town on the weekend. It didn’t seem like much in the beginning: a couple of vendors setting shop next to a stage in the town center, opposite the main church, and next to a half dozen food vendors. Very small by anyone’s standards. But what the festival lacked in size, it made up for in volume. There was non stop action on that stage from morning till late at night for 3 days straight. Musical acts of all types, and dance companies from all the towns nearby.

Then there was the main event on Sunday: prior to mass, everyone in town lined up the streets with great anticipation. Slowly, the Virgin Mary Wagon appeared on the horizon. It consisted of a small pickup truck, carrying a tall glass enclosure in which a statue of Mary stood proud. Flowers adorned the rest of the truck, and as far to the sides as the narrow streets allowed. As the Wagon approached the church, the church bells rang in frantic rhythmic beat, people started cheering and clapping, and a few rocket-sounding fireworks exploded right in front of the church. The Wagon then backed up to the gate, someone proceeded to unlock the glass enclosure, and Mary was slowly removed and carried into the church to be present for mass in person. Most of the town followed Mary into the church. The streets were empty, except for the few non-believers who spent the time washing their cars instead.

An hour later, mass was over, Mary was carried back into her glass enclosure, and that signaled the beginning of the day-long parade across town. The Mary Wagon upfront, followed by a handful of four-person bands, interspersed with various dance groups, and followed by kids wearing bizarre-looking masks, then four Goth-looking teenagers on stilts.

The other leg of the parade took a different route through town, and consisted of a 4x4 pulling a long wooden wagon loaded with kids. The kids were simply ecstatic to be riding on this wagon through town. They passed the hostel a few times during the day, and every time they would scream and holler louder than the last. Oh .. the simple pleasures of life.

Yesterday, Keli and I drove the van up a dirt road on the side of one of the surrounding mountains, and found the perfect spot to spend the rest of the day and night. It was stunningly beautiful. We were all alone, literally embedded into the side of the mountain, surrounded by coffee plants and banana trees on the slopes on three sides, and with an uninterrupted vista of further slopes and far away lights on the remaining side. The shades of green colors were endless, so rich, and created a three-dimensional panorama so crisp, complex, and beautiful that there wasn’t even a point in trying to capture it by camera. Then the sun started to set .. the green colors started to meld, and our attention turned to the clouds. How the oranges and reds are reflected in so many different shades based on how thick each cloud is, and where it’s positioned relative to the setting sun. Then, as the sun went even deeper into the earth, the clouds reluctantly gave up their fantastic display of colors, and slowly switched to the varying degrees of sliver and grey as the moon replaced the sun being the source of light for those ever-changing sky murals. We drummed, we sang, like there was no one else on earth. It was a beautiful, beautiful night.

We’re staying here till the end of the week, taking a few Spanish lessons while we suck in even more beauty out of this little town. After that, who knows where the wind will take us ..

Santa Elena, Costa Rica - A Breathing Volcano, and a Laidback Way of Life

The Arenal Volcano National Park closes at 8:00pm, but we spontaneously decided to stay the night to watch the sunset rise next to the active volcano the next morning. With no camping gear or heavy clothes, sleeping beneath the majestic volcano became harder as the night progressed. The wind picked up speed, and blew mercilessly all night. It started out as a fairly mild tropical breeze, but then the temperature dropped and the wind grew stronger. It was one of the most exhilarating nights that I’ve had in a long while. We weren’t in any real danger. After all, it IS the tropics, and the temperature only drops so far. And the rewards were well worth it. We had the park completely to ourselves, we heard birds singing throughout the night, and best of all, we were treated to some amazing sounds from the volcano. As the gases are released from the top, the volcano makes some very dramatic sounds. They vary from thud-like sounds, to loud rhythmic breathing .. in and out – as if the volcano were a living creature. And then there was the orange-red lava flowing in streams every now and then. All in all, a night to remember.

Life in Fortuna (the town at the foot of the Arenal Volcano) is slow-paced, even with the bustling tourism. We watched a carpenter very deliberately install a piece of 2x4 wood paneling on a storefront: measuring and re-measuring the piece, cutting it ever so slowly with a hand sow. Then, realizing that he doesn’t have quite enough nails, he hops on his bike, disappears for a good 15-minutes, then comes back cheerfully with the extra nails. We never witnessed the completion of the job, but the setup itself must’ve taken 45-minutes or so. But here’s the part that matters even more: he never stopped smiling, AND the owner of the store was right there, and SHE never stopped smiling either. Those happy faces were all that was needed to tell a story of a culture that, for better or worse, has not yet quite reached the pace of the Western work-life. Right now, I personally feel that is for better .. way better .. way more liberating and ALIVE.

We arrived at Santa Elena yesterday, the gateway to the Monteverde Cloud Forest. Santa Elena is a small touristy town, hilly, and consists of a handful of narrow streets that never saw pavement. This is especially made worse by the fact that it rains here a lot (hasn’t stopped since we arrived, and it’s not even the rainy season yet). Which makes for potholes the size of moon craters, and gravel that is actually more like a soup of varying textures of mud and stone.

People here also seem fairly laid back, though they have caught on to Western pricing more than people in Fortuna have. Accommodations are still cheap, but non-local food, and things like park entrance fees, approach US prices. Well worth it though: there’s lots here for the eco-tourist, from transparent butterflies, to the old-growth Rain Forest, with its exotic birds, waterfalls, and long suspended bridges. I’ve added my first set of pictures at http://hany.com/ca, so check them out.

There’s one conversation that I had today that made me feel good about the equalizing concept of eco-tourism. This American woman was volunteering to be a tour guide at the Butterfly and Insect Museum for 2 months, in exchange for room and board. Of course she is also learning a LOT about native species, and interacting with people from all over the world. What seemed equalizing about this in a global sense is realizing that, yes, people come up from Mexico to the US in search of better jobs because good jobs are hard to find in Mexico. On the other hand, there seems to be an increasing awareness that things like the rain forest, and what it has to teach us, are also of significant value. Enough value, in fact, to draw Westerners to places like Costa Rica to work for almost nothing for months at a time. It is good to observe that the notion of “rich countries” is starting to expand, from one that considered only the developed Western world to be “rich,” to one that considers something like eco-richness in an under-developed country to also be on par.

San Jose, Costa Rica – City Behind Fences

We arrived to San Jose in rush hour. First order of business: find our hostel, which is clearly marked on the map in our guidebook. This simple task proved to be so illusive that it took us three frustrating hours to accomplish! There are no street signs in San Jose. When we stopped and asked about the street we wanted to go to, no one seemed to know. Worse yet, no one could even tell us what street we were on so that we at least get our orientation right. Asking a gas station attendant what street his own gas station was on led to a mini-debate that involved his friend, with no decisive answer to ever come out.

Later that night, while having dinner with a Costa Rican couple, we finally figure out what’s going on. People in San Jose don’t use street names. Instead, they describe locations and directions in terms of landmarks, some of which no longer exist. Street names have little meaning, including one’s own street!

Walking down the streets of San Jose, the most noticeable thing is how all houses – all buildings actually – are fronted with high iron-bar fences. Many have barbed wire on top of that. It’s like walking through a land full of small fortresses, except that immediately behind the fences, one sees all the usual signs of normal city life: a small yard here, a parked car there, a garden with a couple of trees, people hanging out on a porch. It’s as if someone decided to paint an average-size city through the filter of black bars of iron.

Talking to people we met, there is definitely a high degree of concern about crime, but only the non-violent one. Burglaries and thefts seem to happen quite often, but not murders or muggings. There’s a fear for losing one’s possessions, but not a fear for one’s personal safety.

There’s something surreal about being in the middle of rush hour traffic in San Jose. Despite the loud car horns and the many roaring buses, we can distinctly hear birds that are even louder than all traffic noises combined. Not sure what types of birds are so vocal, but their songs add a kind of serenity and peace that is not to be expected in the middle of such a bustling city.