Osa Peninsula Part I

[Alaska]

Hi guys, I’ll tell you what I know about Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. HT and LL, for the purposes of a motorcycle trip, I don’t know that I will be much help. I only visited 2 places: the small town of Puerto Jimenez, and Corcovado National Park. I spent 90% of my time in the park backpacking around. So, not a lot of road-lore here…

But for those of you interested in traveling off the beaten path and living out of a backpack, Corcovado was hands-down my favorite place in Costa Rica.

Puerto Jimenez:

After a daylong bus ride from San Jose (probably about 5 am to 5 pm), my pack and I tumbled out into the small town of Puerto Jimenez.

It was raining when I arrived, a good, hard tropical rain, the kind that turns the air white. No surprise there—Puerto Jimenez is the gateway to Corcovado National Parque, Costa Rica’s largest remaining stand of primeval, lowland, tropical rainforest. Consequently it has the weather to match. While I was there I saw sunshine to shame diamonds, and rain that knocked leaves off trees, and all in the same afternoon. The humidity was kept at bay however by a breeze off the Pacific; and as by this time I’d been in country for almost 3 months, I was used to climatic extremes.

(I was not happy about the weather range, of course, but I no longer distinguished myself to passersby by sprawling under a bush and blowing fern fronds about with labored breathing. Forget learning Spanish—getting used to the tropics, THAT was progress.)

Corcovado’s proximity lent a certain mystique to Puerto Jimenez. Brilliantly colored birds blew through the air like shreds of flame, and monkeys chattered and howled in the distance. I only explored PJ to the degree necessary to outfit myself for the days ahead, but even so, it was like I’d stepped onto the streets of a movie set. Mogadishu in “Black Hawk Down” and Eldorado in “The Rundown” spring to mind. The streets consisted of rutted red soil, hard-baked or muddy, depending on what the weather had done in the previous 15 minutes. The buildings were wood or cinderblock with roofs of corrugated tin that boomed in the rain. The people, well, as in all the non-touristy places I’d gone, I found the people to be lively and genuine, and thrilled to show you their home town.

In fact, later that day I ran into a tica I’d met in a pension in San Jose. She was excited to see me, but unfortunately her excitement had a Bernoulli Effect on her language use. What was already a quick-speech manner accelerated to gusts of 250 and 350 words a minute. I ended up mishearing her. What she said was, that she was on her way to visit her mother and would be back the next night and would love to see me. What I heard was that she was on her way to visit her mother and would be back in a week.

I’m not the brightest Spanish speaker in the jungle.

So hey, I figured I’d visit her when I came out of the jungle. She figured I’d come over to her home for dinner. End result—her dinner and enthusiasm went to waste, while I spent that time in the jungle getting peed on by monkeys who didn’t like my approach.

Ah well.

(to be continued)

[RXD]

It is a wondrous, magical, and untouched place for nature-lovers and adventurers. It has many places to enjoy such as museums, parks and much more. Some great restaurants are there for you to discover.

[edaviscr]

I just got back from Pavones, on the other side of the bay, and it is pretty awesome also. Totally laid back, off the beaten path, and incredible waves if you are surfer. Look up my buddy Johnny at Una Ola if you make it down that way...