Osa Peninsula Part 2

[Alaska]

Osa Peninsula Part 2

Since I’d arrived later in the day I rushed to buy supplies. Fortunately there were a couple small stores near my pension wherein I bought some basic staples—bread, peanut butter (always hit or miss—some places carried it, and other parts of the country didn’t seem to know what it was), cheese (had to eat that fairly quickly b/c after a couple days of sweating in its wrapper it resembled orange cow-glop—not the most appealing meal), and of course the inevitable pasta, rice, beans and fruit.

Not knowing what awaited me in the jungle on the morrow, I decided to hit an odd 50’s style soda for my supper It was 3 walled with the 4th open but railed. Inside was a checkerboard tile floor, funny metal stools with red plastic padding and faded posters of north American rock and roll stars from the 50’s and 60’s. Latin American pop-rock blared from the kitchen, but they made a mean hamburger. In my journal I have the starred notation, “best burger I’ve had in LAm or NA.” Could be, or maybe I was just starving. My state of starvation has been known to skew my dining memories, and not just in CR.

I stayed that night in a pension with thin walls that didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling—fairly normal from what I’d experienced in most of the country. The other occupants stayed up late blasting music both inside the pension and outside on the front porch. I recall there was also some beer consumption, though I turned in early because I was beat from riding the bus, and my ride in the morning for the park left at 5 am. Even so, Iwas kept up through the wee hours by a couple making love on a squeaky bed somewhere down the hall, and a damn rooster that started crowing somewhere around 3:30. It was with a sense of bleary eyed relief that I got up at 4, checked and packed my gear, and went outside to pace and wait for the truck taxi that would take me to the edge of the park.

[HonkyTonk]

AK, your post brought a couple smiles...

"...best burger I’ve had in LAm or NA."

I just got done with a 2 day deep south motorcycle ride where the heat index was 115+ degrees. I'm stir fried and brain fried and checked out an O'Charlies. All they had on draft in 23 oz. was Bud Best beers I've ever had!

Caracas: No sleep and dogs barking all night long and the paper thin hotel walls of the next room told the tale, and I didn't need to be in there to know exactly what was going on at any given time.

Life SOTB, gotta love it!

[Alaska]

I hear you, Tonk.

[Alaska]

I waited about an hour, joined in my pacing vigil by several other gringos bound for the park—a couple Canadians and a couple other Americans. The Canadians were a pleasant, middle-aged couple traveling very light—they carried only daypacks while us three Americans were carrying everything but the kitchen sink. I don’t remember much about the American guy other than he was a muscular, haughty dude, but his girlfriend was the kind to sear memory, a knockout to match the best I’d seen in-country. Looks and figure to match Carmen Electra. From California as I recall.

The taxi came more or less on time (one thing I noticed about CR was the buses/shuttles ran close to their appointed hour around 50% of the time.) It was a charter of sorts associated with the park; you signed up for it at the park office in PJ. It was a truck instead of a bus as the roads between PJ and the park entrance were pretty rugged; they’d autographed the cab with red mud splashed to the top of the windshield. The bed had slatted sides and a rectangular cage like you see on African Safari trucks. We tossed in our packs, vaulted aboard, and stood braced against the cross struts for the ride. My head and shoulders loomed over the cage like a long-haired giraffe. I hung on fiercely as I’d already been on a number of this type of truck ride and knew what to expect. Lose your balance on that first lurch and you would bounce around like a sack of beans and never regain it.

The driver gunned the engine and popped the clutch and we were off with a gear-grinding surge. From the start there was a lot of tossing around. The road in town was rutted but the roads out of town were hard edged canyons. The Osa Peninsula is known for its mining—gold, actually—and so there is a lot of truck traffic that tears up the roads.

We raced along muddy tracks/roads screened by the trees and brush that edged a lot of fields. The sun was coming up by this point and for a brief time, while still low on the horizon, you could see the actual sun-beams lancing through the thin foliage to roast those fields. It wasn’t long before they started to look hot, and when the sun was high enough they turned into low bush ovens. We were cooled by the wind of our passage but I wondered uneasily if I was packing enough water for this first leg. I expected to cover about 18 km between ranger stations this day but didn’t know what to expect as far as effort. I knew it would be flat and on sand (I’d be hiking on the beach much of the way, according to my Lonely Planet guidebook) but no guidebook description ever prepares you for the true demands of the actual terrain.

[RXD]

Osa Peninsula is the best place for enjoying your holidays. The region has lush primary rain forests and a complex system of freshwater and marine resources. It is a wondrous, magical, and untouched place for nature-lovers and adventurers.