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Capitulos
de Costa Rica (Saturday, 3/8/08)
Catarata
Del Toro
We’ve
only been in Costa Rica since December
16th; that’s less than six
months and we’ve already found it’s
ultimate secret! How’s that for being
peripatetic super sleuths? Actually,
truth be told, Alicia and I came upon
Costa Rica’s “Ultimate Secret” (That’s
what the eye-catching, green leaf-let
claims Catarata Del Toro is. The
four-fold brochure, which features a
picture of a 400 ft. cascading waterfall,
opens in the middle with a story in
English and Spanish and more pictures
inside.) unexpectedly. A gregarious
marketing manager, Donais Alfaro, who
served us after-hike drinks, recommended
we come back and try rappelling 400 feet
down to the base of the falls. Alicia
was excited about that possibility; I
wasn’t! You can contact Donais at info@catarata-el-toro.com
if you’re planning on visiting Costa
Rica anytime soon and want to indulge in
this “lifetime experience.”
So, Catarata Del Toro was certainly a
secret to both Alicia and me before last
Sunday. But not anymore! Ultimate
is a pretty heady word, but the hike we
took down into the crater, once upon a
time an active volcano, alternating
between paths of gradual descent and
steep steps, lives up to its reputation,
at least in my estimation. And I’ve
been on many a hike, back in the Pacific
Northwest with various amigos/amigas.
Right Art and Kevin? So, I’ve had a
little bit of experience in this regard,
but nothing seemed to prepare me for the
precipitous plummet and climb back up
and out of this challenging crater. It
made me feel my half-century old (Actually,
the big 5-0 is less than a year away for
me.) age status more acutely. (A little
bit of trivia: Did you know that Barbie
– the doll – turned 49 this
weekend?)
The brochure says: We welcome you to
Catarata Del Toro www.catarata-del-toro.com
, Costa Rica’s Ultimate Secret.
Located in the heart of the undiscovered
Saripiqui mountains. This magnificent
destination is surrounded by three (active?)
volcanoes and national parks (Parque
Nacional del Aqua Juan Castro Blanco and
Parque Nacional Volcán Poás),.
Come and explore this unveiled rough
diamond. As you walk through the trails
of this primary forest you will have the
opportunity to appreciate its countless
variety of plants and trees. Enjoy the
hovering butterflies, take your time to
spot a vast number of tropical birds and
experience the presence of fantastic
wildlife. There is a sense of inner
peace accompanying you all the way
Along
with the inner peace, I experienced
outward sweating and shortness of breath,
not to mention some adjustments in my
skeletal structure. (For a few days
after this hike, Alicia said her legs
were unusually stiff and it made walking
up and down stairs difficult and
somewhat painful.) I did spot a blue
morph butterfly, but no tropical birds.
At times I wished I was the butterfly.
Flapping my wings seemed an easier way
to visit this crater.
Our
hosts for the day were Lupita and her
son Francisco. We’d met them both
weeks earlier at the Jazz Café http://www.jazzcafecostarica.com/
in San Pedro, San Jose, where Alex, a
musically talented neighbor of ours here
in San Francisco de San Isidro de
Heredia, was playing guitar and singing
with his band.
“I
will take you to one of the most
beautiful places in all of Costa Rica,”
Lupita said to us that Sunday night when
she dropped us off at our house after
giving us a ride home from the Jazz Café.
True to her word, she and her son picked
us up early last Sunday morning and we
were off to Catarata Del Toro, though we
didn’t know it at the time, and
neither mother or son had furnished us
with an itinerary. It was exciting going
to a place that we’d never been before
and we welcomed the precious gift of
being shown this outstanding, verdant
country through the eyes of a local Tica
named Lupita.
Our first stop that morning was a Texaco
gas station where we didn’t get gas,
but snacks (peanuts and beef jerky).
“When I travel I like to have my
snacks,” bilingual Francisco said,
taking the wheel for the first leg of
our journey. He snacked the rest of the
day and offered us the same. Finally
I’d found my match! Someone who liked
snack foods as much as me!
Before arriving at the falls, we stopped
at a beautifully landscaped park in
Zarcero http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarcero
in Alajuela province, which is a
couple hours north from where we are
living. Parque
Francisco Alvarado
sits in front of the lovely,
elegant Iglesia de San Rafael, a 1895
pink and blue church at the town center.
The park is noted for its topiary garden
produced and maintained by a man named
Evangelisto Blanco (You can see a
glimpse of the gardener/artist with a
rake three pictures down on this
website: http://www.strayreality.com/crgrecia3.htm
. Senor Blanco (Mr. White) started
sculpting the park’s fragrant cipres
conifers, which grow in the higher
elevations, back in the 1960s.) Shrubs
in the park have been trimmed by him
into various animals (monkeys and
dinosaurs) and assorted abstract and
bizarre shapes.
“I remember my first visit here when I
was eight years old,” Francisco told
us and then crawled childlike through a
small opening at the base of one bush
shaped like a turtle. I followed him on
all fours! If you would like to see
pictures of the fanciful topiary at
Zarcero click on this beautiful (muy
linda) blog by Hilary Pfeifer: http://hilarypfeifer.blogspot.com/2007/12/road-trip.html
. Page down past the pictures of cow
statues to pictures of Parque Francisco
Alvarado.
At the same park, Alicia bought a
beautiful wooden puzzle box with a dart
frog http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0514-frogs.html
carved into it for a mere 5,000
($10) colones, along with some hand-sewn
finger puppets. While she bought
souvenirs, I stood in the park, looking
off in the distance at the landscaped
mountains. It took my breath away.
In her version of Spanglish with a
little help from her translating son and
our own knowledge of Spanish, Lupita
told us that, “We’re going to go to
someplace that’s even more beautiful
than this.” Hard to imagine, as we
drove away from Zarcero on initially
well paved roads, receiving a lesson on
the subtleties in Spanish translations
for nice (linda), pretty (bonita) and
beautiful (hermosa), past various rows
of neat houses and humbler looking
churches and one house that had a German
painting that Alicia remembered from her
childhood. Francisco had to put the car
into reverse to return to the painting
we’d driven by. It featured two
children crossing a bridge with a
guardian angel looking on to ensure
their safe passage. In the background is
a waterfall. Little did we know that
we’d be seeing our own waterfall
shortly and wishing we had our own
guardian angels on our hike into/out of
the capricious http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capricious
crater.
Winding up and down through those
mountainous country roads, both Lupita
and her son were fast drivers as most
Costa Ricans are. I wondered if they all
take driving lessons from the same
Rapido (fast) Driving School. Lupita was
at the wheel, having switched with
Francisco sometime after our park visit.
That’s when the road went from
perfectly paved to rocky, rutted and
rustic, but Lupita was intent on getting
to our next destination.
When we arrived at the falls, we paid
the more expensive non-Tico entrance fee
(5,000 colones, $10) each and proceeded
on our hike, which was relaxed and
fairly level at first and then got more
rigorous. There was a sign that warned
people not to proceed if they were
elderly, pregnant, or with disabilities.
Alicia thought that the sign should have
also warned off children under 13. She
was thinking about our three-year old
granddaughter, Laeden, and how she
couldn’t have navigated the steep
staircases safely without constant adult
supervision (i.e carrying her the
majority of the hike).
To our credit, Alicia and I both made it
down to the bottom of the crater and
even drank a wee bit of the water there,
which tasted lemony sweet as Donais has
told us it would. (Alicia thought it
tasted slightly salty and nothing like
lemonade.)
Lupita and Francisco waited patiently
for us on a higher level of the hike,
too tired to reach the bottom like we
did. When we returned to where they were,
all four of us slowly but surely climbed
back out of the crater like a group of
cave men and women from a time long ago.
After drinks (bebidos) in the falls’
restaurant, we settled into Lupita’s
car for a sleepy (not the driver, thank
God) continuation to our Sunday drive.
At one point, Francisco said he was
going to take a nap and that he’d
appreciate us not asking him questions.
We weren’t going to relive the driving
scene with a sleeping Clark Griswold (Chevy
Chase) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhEqGsVREe0&feature=related
at the wheel in National Lampoon’s
Vacation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GQSwMCHJNU.
Stopping at a diner-like restaurant
called Los Rancheros, where a bunch of
biker dudes were seated at the expansive
bar, Alicia and I both had hamburgers
that were overcooked. Lupita had a
generously portioned chicken dish and
Francisco had a chilled shrimp cocktail
with chips. Outside a variety of
motorcyles lined part of the parking lot
with one Harley in attendance.
Another hour of driving through lush
landscapes and breathing fresh moutain
air, then turning less fresh as we
approached San Jose, car exhaust
central, with its denser populated areas
and home through downtown Heredia, past
many stores that are now familiar to us,
and up to San Francisco de San Isidro de
Heredia and our home, where Lupita and
Francisco dropped us off with visions of
napping in our collective heads.
Tomorrow night, the one week anniversary
of our Catarata Del Toro hike, Alicia
and I are throwing a small dinner party
and Lupita and Francisco will be in
attendance along with other ticos and
ticas, including Alex and his parents,
who we’ve met here in Costa Rica.
I’m cooking my homemade lasagna,
something I haven’t done in a very
long time, at least not since we left
the United States last August.
A food shopping trip to Auto Mercardo
Friday night after school resulted in a
bill of 29,253 colones (almost $60) and
that didn’t include wine and beer.
With a can of tomatoes 1,120 colones (just
over $2) and a box of lasagna noodles
1,040 colones (over $2), food shopping
isn’t cheap here; it’s actually
comparable to the cost of U.S. groceries.
Our food bill would have been cheaper,
Alicia told me, had I decided to cook
more local Costa Rican cuisine (rice,
beans, some kind of meat or fish and
plantains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain
, which look like the bananas we’re
used to eating in the U.S.). Whenever I
get concerned about the high prices here,
Alicia reminds me that vegetables are
cheaper and fresher than in the U.S.
She’s right. Perhaps it’s a good
time to become vegetarians?!
I guess you Capitulos readers in the
U.S. have lost an hour this weekend,
springing forward? Here in Costa Rica,
the clocks don’t move back and forth
like they do where you are. Of course we
have to make some adjustments, figuring
out the new time difference between
Costa Rica and the U.S. (I think it’s
now a two hour time difference between
Seattle and Heredia?)
Next week, we’ll be on our way to
Panama because our three month visa is
up. One can’t stay in this country
legally past three months. According to
law here, we must leave the country for
three days and then re-enter getting
another three month stamped visa.
We’ll have to do this exercise again
at the end of June. Looking at the
bright side, it allows us to travel to
another country adjacent to Costa Rica
and see what natural wonders await us
there. And if it involves a potential
hip-replacing hike, we might pass,
preferring to sit in a soda and sip
coffee and watch the locals and tourists
stream by.
Written
by Joe Haviland
Edited
by Alicia Frank Haviland
Copyright
2008
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