The Arrival
In Costa Rica, we had a reservation at an airbnb near Puerto Viejo north of San Jose, in the Sarapiqui region. However, the trip getting there was itself quite an adventure. After another harrowing shuttle ride from Antigua to the airport in Guatemala, a long wait for our flight, and making it through customs and immigration, we emerged from the airport in San Jose to the usual cacophony of taxi drivers looking for fares and people picking up their friends and family.
We searched in vain for what we thought was a pre-arranged taxi to our hotel. One of the taxi purveyors assisted us, trying to call the hotel but couldn’t get through. However, he couldn’t speak much English so he turned us over to another driver who had a little more English. Eventually, we asked if he would just take us to the hotel himself. About an hour from the airport, our driver took us down a pot-holed dirt road that paralleled the main road. There, on a wall, in the dark, was a sign with the name of our supposed hotel on it, but the gate was closed and there were no signs of life. The driver got out and tried the buzzer on the wall and tried calling the cell phone number on the sign, but there was no response. He thought that this might be the back gate and that there was another entrance around the other side, so he drove around a couple of blocks but there was no sign of another entrance. Back at the gate in the wall, he tried calling again. This time, someone answered but said he had no information about our reservation and didn’t come to open the gate. There we were in the middle of the night in San Jose with no place to stay. Fortunately, our helpful driver was able to locate another hotel with a room for us and delivered us to safety. The next day, we set off to find our airbnb and the adventure continued.
In the morning, we took a taxi to pick up our rental car and they provided us with a mobile hotspot for the car so we could use Google maps for directions. Apparently, there are no street addresses in Costa Rica. We also had a AAA map of Costa Rica we had brought with us. What could go wrong?
First of all, getting out of San Jose. We were not too far from a main road heading north but the hot spot was slow and it often made sudden jumps that indicated we had missed a turn. Also, there are almost no road signs, so the Google directions didn’t help much. We just kept backtracking to pick up the right road and eventually got onto the highway.
The drive north was, of course, narrow and windy, but extremely beautiful and we enjoyed many vistas of the countryside as we wound higher and higher into the hills. At one point, we stopped at a little village to buy bread and cheese and later had a picnic overlooking the valley below. We were starting to congratulate ourselves on surviving the night before and successfully getting out of San Jose, not realizing the obstacles ahead.
As we neared Puerto Viejo, the power on my iPad was starting to fade and the car charger for it wasn’t working and we still needed to find the airbnb. I had received a message from the host saying he couldn’t meet us due to health issues but the caretaker would let us in. The only directions to the place on airbnb was a Google maps link, but even from that it was not clear exactly where it was.
We knew it overlooked the river and it was near a biological research station and we were probably within a mile or so, so we drove through Puerto Viejo keeping our eyes open. We had to backtrack to make the right turn to go over the bridge and get onto the correct side of the river. In a bit, we saw the sign to the biological research station and turned to check down that road but no luck there. Going back toward town, we noticed another road turning off in the right direction toward the river so we tried that. However, once it passed a police station, it petered out into a rutted muddy trail and we thought it couldn’t be down there. On the way back into town, we noticed a tourist center and were able to talk to Rosie who knew the place we were looking for. She said to go back down that muddy rutted trail we had been on and look for a red door on the right about 800m. So, back we went, down the muddy trail looking for a red door. We kept driving but no red door. The trail became barely even that through a field and eventually brought us out onto another road where we talked to a guard at a gate who couldn’t help us but apparently thought we were a little loco going on that trail. We decided to retrace our steps just in case we missed something. Sure enough, nearing the police station again, we noticed a rusty gate opening onto a driveway towards the river. We decided to give it a try. At first all we saw was a shack with a couple of scruffy dogs in the driveway, but there, lo and behold, just beyond it was a bright red door on a building that matched the photos on airbnb. We were so relieved!
The caretaker, Miguel, waved us in and smilingly welcomed us. The house was quite a mansion in Costa Rican terms with a fountain in the living room, 3 spacious bedrooms, and a gorgeous veranda overlooking the river. It was a little shabby around the edges but we didn’t care. It was our home in the jungle and we awoke the next morning to some very strange sounds. We thought maybe a pack of jaguars was attacking, but it turn out to be howler monkeys in the trees.
The next few days, we took some trips into different parts of the jungle. Stay tuned.
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