Santiago is a city like all other cities - it has some fine old buildings, some 1970s pure grot and some wonderful ultra-modern constructions; it has McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Blockbuster Video, fast food galore, graffiti, litter, rich areas and poor areas. Like most hot climate cities, it has some most peculiar smells. The one point of difference from all other cities we have seen so far stands sentinel over the entire country of Chile - The Andes.What were we doing in Santiago - we were making contact with a receiving agent for our TC which we had shipped from New Zealand way back in late November 2007. We arrived on the first of January 2008, the TC was supposed to have arrived on the 30th December 2007, so we thought we had been really clever with our timing. We’ll skip the details, but we ended up not knowing where the car was, whether it had arrived on the 23rd December or was due to arrive on the 5th January, or indeed whether it was still sat on the wharf in Cartegena in Columbia or whether we would ever see our TC again.
In sheer frustration we moved from Santiago to Valparaiso, the receiving port, to make contact with a branch of the company who would actually deal with the customs paperwork. They were efficiency epitomized and we cannot thank them enough for their efforts on our behalf. We had a carnet for the TC issued by the RAC in the UK; Customs wanted to see and photocopy the carnet, but never stamped the first page entry. That at least saves us from the palava of having it stamped out of Chile. We hit the road on Thursday January 10th, over a week behind schedule.
When I say we hit the road, that is what it felt like. Valparaiso does not do road signs. Nor does it do lane discipline. What it does do is horns. Lots and lots and lots, all day and all night. We developed the theory that if they have time to sound their horn then they have had time to think about it and therefore to avoid us. Valparaiso is a busy working port where the navy are also based; it sits on a very narrow coastal strip surrounded by a series of 42 hills, all completely covered in shacks cheek by jowl with mansions, everything clinging to the hillsides, some so steep they are served by funicular railways. It is a maze of narrow streets full of hawkers, pedestrians, cars, buses, lorries, taxis and donkeys and carts. It is mayhem.We had applied our minds to how we were going to get out of the city but not how we were going to find the main road back to Santiago to connect up with the Pan-American highway south. We were also totally unprepared to the way Chileans reacted to the car. Classic cars never venture out onto Chilean roads alone, they always travel in convoy in organized rallies. We met a Chilean owner of a 1950 Citroen in a service station and he explained this fact, and that he was surprised as anyone to see us on the road.
The TC seems to charm everyone. They wave and shout and yes, toot their horns, hang out of car windows to take photographs, drive alongside for ages to take more photos, overtake us and slow right down to take more photos and slow down some more so we overtake them so they can take some more photos. It didn’t take long to get completely fed up with this lark. We couldn’t stop anywhere without drawing a crowd, out would come the cameras and mobile phones. They all want to know “what year”? It must already be the most photographed car in all of Chile.
The TC car opens doors that no modern car ever could - it allows us to find out about the Chilean people. Despite most not speaking a word of English and us not speaking much Spanish at all we managed to communicate. Our first overnight stop was in a cabin on a sort of campsite set in a beautiful location very much like New Zealand. The lady patroness clucked over us and the car like a mother hen, into her kitchen to meet her adult son, have some freshly made raspberry juice, where are you from, aaahhh Neuvo Zealandia, beautiful car and more.
Our second night was at a cheap and cheerful campsite out in the middle of truly rural Chile where the horse figured large as a means of transport. We didn’t know what to make of the other people staying on the site; it was so cheap we assumed they were not the so well-off. Up they came for a chat and a look under the bonnet. We learned that we were talking to a teacher, a car mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. And then all their families. We have learned not to assume anything about Chileans, only to accept their bigheartedness. They have been delightful.
The Pan American Highway is, so far, like a dual carriageway with toll booths every 50 kms or so. It has a hard shoulder and the relentless lorries, service stations at regular intervals where you can get fast food, all the usual stuff and also a hot shower for free. That is where the familiar ends. You also get pedestrians walking the hard shoulder, cyclists, horse and carts, bullocks and carts, donkeys loaded to the gunnels, mostly coming at you presumably for safety. At one service station we saw a bloke on a horse pull up near the pumps, dismount and check each hoof rather like checking his tyre pressures, remount and set off down the highway.The TC ran fine at first. It still had half a tank of NZ petrol mixed with 97 octane unleaded Shell petrol from Valparaiso. We filled up again with 97 octane unleaded Copec petrol, Chile’s own brand of petrol. We started to have misfire problems, it seemed at full throttle uphill, or when the car ran hot. It had been hot when we first set off on our trip, but it didn’t seem hot enough to cause a misfire. It wasn’t exactly like fuel evaparation, and we have always had spacers and a heat shield anyway. We also fitted an oil cooler especially for this trip. We checked the plugs and the middle two were filthy black, the outer two nearly as bad. A cleanup didn’t do any good, neither did checking the distributor, or fitting a new set of plugs.
The last fill-up was in a small rural village where the 97 octane must have stood unsold for who knows how long. The car mechanic on the camp site discussed this with us and he thought, via two interpreters, that the fuel was probably to blame, but he thought it was the octane rating alone that would be the cause. He recommended we use 93 octane; indeed he made several return visits to hammer home the point!
Our next fill up was at a Pan American Highway service station, Shell 95 octane and sure enough, no more problems. In NZ we run the TC on 96 octane. We expected that octane ratings would be an international standard but maybe not. We still don’t know if the problem was caused by the brand or the octane rating or whether we had a bad batch of old dirty fuel.Heading down the Pan American Highway we passed from hot dry Mediterranean style country with vineyards, stone fruit orchards and acres of maize through to beef, wheat and forestry, tracking the cooler temperatures as we headed south. It got to near lunchtime and we needed some food supplies. The next exit was for a blob on the map called Temuca so we took it. Bad, bad move. It was like a foreigner driving up the M1 motorway and pulling of at Sheffield to find a supermarket, only someone has uplifted all the road signs, no entry and one way signs, every Godamn sign, and then ending up close to the city centre and then, guess what, he gets pulled over by the police.
We showed our passports and the Temporary Import permit we were given by customs and told under no circumstances to loose. They were happy with that. Then Roberto asked one policeman “Super Mercado”. Up fronts a man, explains that he is a plan-clothes police officer, shows us his badge and follow me in my unmarked car. We must have looked worried - the uniformed officer said what translated into “don’t worry”. So, the plain-clothes officer takes us to a shopping mall, finds us a safe parking spot and stops the other cars to let us in, gets the security officer on the case and shakes us heartily by the hand - twice - and wishes us luck.So, not looking a gift horse in the mouth, we went into the shopping mall, filled up with a cooked lunch and supplies, safe in the knowledge that the car was being watched by a security officer. We had forgotten to lay a trail of sugar to find our way back to the car but it was easy to find. All we had to do was head for the crowd and flashing of camera bulbs. The security officer must have felt overwhelmed by the interested crowd the car had drawn and rung for police assistance. Next to our TC was a police car. Here we go again, passports, Temporary Import permit, writes it down in his book, hearty handshakes, smiles all around. “Segura” he says, looking worried, we remove the tonneau to check, “segura” we reply, yes, all is still secure.
We had planned for security problems well before the car left NZ. We hope to take the TC to countries where the population are renowned for their light-fingeredness. As the Footprint guide states - “spare no ingenuity in making your car secure”. They were talking about your normal modern lockable alarmed sort of car, not an unlockable totally unsecure TC.We were primarily concerned about removable bits of the car so we Locktited on the headlamps. We replaced the wheel knockons with the MGB wingless type. We decided to leave the side lights, mirrors, badge bar etc; it is a TC and we didn’t want to bastardise it with modern make-dos.
As for our personal possessions, that was a whole different ball game. We had already made undercarriage storage boxes so that gave us space for items no more than 4” deep. We already had a pair of boxes beside the diff, along with the space the side screens normally occupy. Above those storage areas we had made a box in the rear of the TC which formed a parcel shelf with a lift up lid. We made the lid lockable using window locks.We fitted a footrest with a drop down door covered in carpet so it looked like a normal but shorter footwell. Inside this space we stored electrical items all wrapped in ziplock plastic bags. Underneath the dashboard we already had a security area with drop down base, that housed important documents, cash etc.
We used to run the TC with a normal chromed luggage rack with hangers for carrying cycle panniers. Cycle panniers just would not do for this trip so we made a fibreglass box with three vertical compartments to add strength, roughly the same size as a fuel tank so it looked like a part of the car. Over the fibreglass lid we fitted a custom made hinged luggage carrier made of angle steel that would padlock to a steel frame and hence make the fiberglass box impenetrable. The box accommodated the tent, other camping equipment, spare oil and anything else that would fit in.
The spare wheel and carrier fitted to the rear of the fibreglass box and a spare tyre fitted onto the luggage carrier. We also bought a tough waterproof large holdall with a steel mesh overcover that we could padlock to the luggage carrier. That was for anything we bought along the way. We carry only food and anything that can be easily replaced on the parcel shelf in the car. We also made a new gearbox tunnel cover out of plywood to form a shelf, that carries two plastic boxes full of stuff we need to be easily accessible.
The Lake District was our target for the end of the first week and here we are, camping by lake Villacura with Volcan Villacura behind, if we could see it. Right now it’s shrouded in cloud but on the postcards it’s a classic snow topped cone. We usually like to test ourselves by dragging ourselves up mountains but this one is different. First of all its 9000 feet high. You have to be a member of a mountaineering club, have ice axe and crampons and all the other clobber, employ an official guide and sign a disclaimer so that if the volcano blows its top and you fry to a crisp it’s your own fault. We’ll give this one a miss.
The target for the coming weeks is Tierro del Fuego.
Since driving to the Lake District, we know that the TC really must be the most photographed car in Chile.
Puerto Montt is the southern end of the Pan America highway. It is also where we buy tickets for the ferry to get us to the start of the Camino Austral, a gravel military road built on the orders of General Pinochet, which runs from Puerto Montt to O’Higgins way down south in Chilean Patagonia. It is here that we need to do the final preparations on the car.
We pondered long and hard about the type of tyre we should fit. Some advised us to fit taxi or light commercial tyres for endurance. We were also advised that such tyres would wear us out, that they are unforgiving and would not help the rest of the car or us to survive lousy roads. We already had a perfectly good full set of Avon Turbospeed radials 185 x R16 92S fitted that we had run for a few thousand miles already.
We carry a puncture repair kit, the injection kind that pumps a glycol based substance into the tube. Later we found something called Blu Goo, a water based product that you put in your tyre as a preventive measure. It sloshes around in the tyre until you get a puncture, which it instantly seals on contact with air. The Blo Goo went in the night before we set off on the Camino Austral. A foot pump is an obvious accessory. We also carry a couple of spare tubes.
We had landed into part of Park Pumalin, a huge nature reserve where puma and condor live in peace. The cabanas and restaurant building had been designed to fit into the landscape unobtrusively. What a gem of a location, sat at the foot of high pyramidal tree-clad mountains and on the edge of a fjord. So peaceful and quiet, no electricity, no internet, no cellphones; just the flap flap of sea onto gravel beach.
We found a welder easily, every frontier town must have one somewhere. He quickly did a welding job on the plate and added a thin supporting plate for extra strength. He helped us fit it to the car, shake of hands and exchange of a small sum of money and after an hours delay, we were off on the road again.
Dodging huge earth moving equipment, massive boulders just blasted out of the rock face, potholes galore, mud and anything else the road could throw at us, we started a hairpin accent of a mountain pass. We still don’t know how the TC got around some of those bends. The descent was no easier. Then we hit a level stretch, horribly corrugated. That was the final straw that broke the welds. Off with the mounting bracket and continue on appalling roads for another hour, then finally tarmac as we headed for Coyhaique, darkness and the first cabana we could find. Stuff camping, just let us hit the sack.
We were on the edge of a part of Chilean Patagonia that we had been looking forward to for a long time - to drive the shores of Lago General Carrerra. We were not disappointed. Words cannot describe the iridescent aquamarine of the water, or the surrounding mountains. The western shore was sublime. About half way along the southern shore the landscape changed to drier, parched scrub-bush covered semi-desert; not to our liking at all. It was hot, the road was impossibly bad, the TC was misfiring (still on 95 octane), the engine was overheating with the steep gradients taken in first gear to mitigate the effects of currugation.
The day we left Ushuaia, Mother Nature had a bad case of PMT; she was already throwing the furniture around in a fit of the vapours. We set off in sleet which rapidly turned to horizontal snow as we gained height to cross Paso Garibaldi. It was so much colder, but as we dropped down to the northward side of the mountains the snow gave way to clearing skies and a screamer of a wind. The sun came out but it was still cold; I spent the morning as I was to carry on the rest of the day – clinging on to the hood and nearside sidescreen with both hands.
Routa 3 runs northwards parallel to the Atlantic coast all the way up to Buenos Aires. The plan was to follow routa 3 up to Commodorio Rivadavia for a couple of days and then strike across Patagonia WNW to Bariloche in the Argentinian Lake District.
Heavy goods vehicles do a lot of damage to the road surface, hence all the improvements. The bits they haven’t got to yet were just as damaging as ripio. Instead of constant vibration we would manage 80kph, dodging potholes, ridges, gouges and all manner of contortions but sometimes we just couldn’t spot them all and that is when the suspension took sudden and severe shocks at speed.
There were a lot more rheas around in big pre-school nursery groups with a couple of adult care assistants to keep them under control. They seemed to favour the road verge, possibly because the sparse vegetation was greener from the rain runoff. What a nightmare keeping tabs on so many youngsters.
The further west we traveled the greener and more mountainous things got; the drive northwards to Bariloche parallel to the Andes was fantastic. The Argentinian Lake District knocks the Chilean side into a cocked hat. The town of Bariloche perches over Lago Nuhuel Huapi, a huge lake with “fingers” that spread in all directions. Buildings are in the Swiss chalet style, sometimes to the point of pastiche.
After the green and pleasant scenery of the Lake District, the landscape gave way to the dry and dusty barren stuff again. Something strange happened to the price of petrol somewhere after Bariloche – the price rose by 40%. Nothing to do with geography, transport costs etc, just a plain ordinary price rise. How’s that for inflation?
It was on one of our peestops that we spotted our first South American snake. Now, we know that Anacondas are bad news, but what were we to make of a 60cm long, green, gold and black reptile? I didn’t want to be bitten on the bum, well, not by a snake anyway, so what is a girl to do? Scream? Faint clean away? Back off slowly? Did it have reinforcements? Was it poisonous? How many per square kilometer? So many unanswered questions. I chose option three.
We accidentally stumbled across Recoleta Cemetery, a major tourist destination. Now, cemeteries are not on our hot list of things to see whether we are on holiday or not. Argentinians have a different attitude to death than us Europeans. They do not so much bury their dead, they bank them. In Recoleta cemetery you find the dead of the great and the good and the rich, all tucked away for long term investment in family mausoleums, including the mortal remains of Eva Peron. Some of these houses of the dead rich were bigger than the houses of the living poor.
The older guide books tell you to keep away from the docks, but recently the whole dock area has been tarted up and is now fashionable apartments, offices and restaurants. We meant to carry on to La Boca, another tourist area, but the heat and humidity got the better of us. God bless airconditioning.
Uruguay looks like north-eastern Argentina, as you would expect. It is one long stretch of wonderful sandy beaches and a gently rolling hinterland perfect for cattle ranches. We drove from Montevideo to Punta de Este, a sprawling resort of high rise apartments and holiday homes. We had already decided that it would be easier to get the front suspension mounting brackets remade in Punta del Este – it is small enough to physically find a solderdor, and Uruguay is full of older vehicles so they still have the skills to do such repair work.
Brazil beckoned; we were on our way to Rio de Janiero via the coast road for as much as possible. Leaving Uruguay, sandy beaches gave way to fresh water wetlands teaming with fish, waders and other birds of fantastic colours. Capybara were everywhere in and out of the water; they are like substantial chocolate-coloured guinea pigs the size of a bull terrier and every bit as chunky.
BR 116 is in fact the main arterial route servicing the full length of this productive part of Brazil. From Curitiba to Sao Paulo it becomes dual carriageway with a 3 – 4m wide hard shoulder and a 1-2m wide shoulder aside the fast lane. It is in a dreadful state of repair, worse than anything we have seen so far. So bad that lorries duck and weave about the carriageway to avoid potholes deep enough for someone to live in; lumps, bumps and ridges bad enough to throw you off the road. Lane discipline went out the window, cars dodged lorries dodging other lorries in a free for all. This was Sunday; we thought we were clever avoiding the bad traffic!
We explained that we were checking in and would remove the offending vehicle and put it in their secure parking, as arranged via email. No, we couldn’t park in their garaging. But we have just checked in. Well, you’ll just have to check right our again. Roberto took her aside and charmed her with the full force of his wroth. Maybe she was annoyed because she couldn’t park her broomstick in the hotel car park. Welcome to Rio de Janiero. We parked in the hotel car park just fine.
Next on our agenda was the Iguazu Falls on the Brazil/Argentina/Paraguay border, but first we had to backtrack to Curitiba. Following the Costa Verde back to where we left BR 116 seemed the easiest way to go so we had a double dose of its beauty. We were dreading Bump Stop Alley, but something had happened – it was Friday but where were all the lorries? And how come this side of the carriageway heading west was in a decent state of repair? Maybe lorries head for Sao Paulo fully loaded and return empty? Who knows.
We still had time to walk to the many viewpoints until we found the major falls on this side of the river along with many more hot and sticky tourists. The days and days of driving had been well worth the effort. In the early evening we crossed the border into Argentina and found our hotel. Air conditioning is a wonderful thing.
Argentina got the better bargain. Nothing prepares you for the spectacle; it is astonishing. You cannot comprehend the volume of water that flows over the falls, or their power. Thirty rivers that drain the inland plateau around Curitiba converge to provide the water that spews out over the falls.
It rained all night in Loja. The drive to Cuenca took ages over shocking roads. We were held up for over an hour as earthmoving machines tackled a mudslide over 200m long and metres deep. The TC slithered all over the place through liquid mud 150mm deep. It was still raining on and off and low cloud occasionally cleared to reveal stunning scenery of precipitous slopes, green slashed by red earth landslips. When unstable loose soil on near vertical slopes meets vast quantities of rainwater the end result is something with the characteristics and substance of self-levelling compound.
Our eventual explanation was the alpha male syndrome. In the early days of the human race, alpha males ruled small groups rather like pack animals do today. Alpha males no longer go around bashing lesser males over the head to assert and reinforce their superiority, except in juvenile gangs maybe. Instead, the lesser educated do the same assertion and reinforcement routine behind the wheel of a car. If another male gets out of their way, they themselves must be the alpha male. It is all about ego self-massage.
On the descent from these roadworks, we were overtaken by a bus. Less than five minutes later we came across a big rockslide. There was no bus in sight so it had to have happened in the past few minutes. I got out of the TC to find a way through it, taking my camera with me. There was enough space between two huge boulders so I beckoned to Bob to drive on. At that moment loose soil started to cascade down the vertical slope. Bob took the chicane quickly, I managed a quick snap, jumped in the moving car and we didn’t look back.
Quito is just short of La Paz in altitude. It’s a long thread of a city following a narrow valley so navigating through it to find a hotel is difficult. The taxi routine solved all our problems. Quito was the first place where we had been able to plan to meet MG people. Alfonso and his wife took us on a night time tour of the UNESCO World Heritage historic city centre and helped us with sorting out which roads were open or closed. They had a TF. We also met “Just Call Me Al” (used to have an MGA) for an afternoon; he proved to be an absolute hoot. Other members of the Old Car Club based in Quito turned up to look at the TC in the hotel car park.
The monument is surrounded by touristy shops and restaurants plus service buildings. We did the usual tourist stuff, up inside the monument, pictures of each of us with feet in different hemispheres like everyone else, etc etc. It wasn’t too important really. We already knew that the monument doesn’t actually sit astride the equator; modern GPS technology shows that the true equator is actually 150m north of the monument. Looking for postcards, we started talking to a shop owner to ask him where the true equator line was. He was clearly of Indian extraction.
The security people guided us not just close to the monument but right up against the monument. We took photos as fast as we could, as did other tourists, security people and a professional photographer who just happened to be there. What a coup. Monument staff wanted their photos taken against the TC, tourists, children, anyone and everyone. It was a very special moment for the TC with its rear wheels in the southern hemisphere and front wheels in the northern. Just to finish the job properly, we found the Temple of the Sun, a stone replica temple 150 meters away, positioned the TC as accurately as possible and photographed it again. This was a great day in the TC’s history.
The road between Quito and San Domingo is spectacular – a series of hairpins through unbelievable landscape and near vertical slopes, densely vegetated and dripping in waterfalls. Looking backwards uphill and onwards downhill, all we could see were lorries, buses, cars, all nose to tail. Progress was slow. The alpha male does not do slow. It does not do patient. The alpha male does dangerously bad driving. The alpha male rubs the noses of other males in the dirt to assert his superiority. We found out that the next worse thing you can call one of these alpha males is “stupido”. The very worst thing is to call them a “burro” - an ass. They really, really don’t like that.
For the MG enthusiast, Ecuador has something else really special, besides the group in Quito. Jose, you are about to blush scarlet. Ecuador has an MGA 1600 nut called Jose Guerra in Guayaquil, a top flight member of the MG brotherhood/family who worked tirelessly on our behalf to get our TC onto the dock and into a container. Customs the world over are an absolute pain in the butt, staffed by alpha males who wield a pen to terrorise everyone who crosses their path. Guayaquil Customs prove the theory. Jose is what you might call “inventive” when it comes to getting customs officers to actually do their job. Apart from being a lovely, lovely man, he is true to the spirit of MG. We hope very much to see him again.
It isn’t a long, narrow canal at all. Well, it is 80 kilometres from one sea to another, so it is long. Most of it is a wide natural waterway, more a string of lakes at different levels than a channel, with a series of locks to raise and lower ships between the various levels. It is these locks that are narrow. The first ships that passed through these locks in 1914 had plenty of room. Today’s huge container and bulk carriers only just fit, most have one meter to spare either side. It is fascinating to watch as these monsters are guided through an impossibly tight gap. This is the only place on earth where a captain gives up control of his ship.
Many things in life are not as you would expect. We thought Panama City would be all about the canal and port, seedy and scruffy like most ports with the usual fair share of lowlife, backed by an unattractive, charmless city. The canal is not just a marvel of engineering, but also scenic. Panama is a long narrow country with Costa Rica at its westerly border and Columbia at its easterly border. The canal cuts the country in half at its narrowest point.
We didn’t have too long a wait for the TC to arrive by container ship. What we did have to wait for was the paperwork – reams of the stuff. If we thought that getting the TC into a container in Guayaquil was difficult, getting it off the dockside in Bilboa was like plaiting sawdust. I won’t bore you with details, but it’s a good job I don’t carry a firearm, otherwise there would be a pile of bodies to clear up. Maybe it’s time to invest in a cattle prod.
We headed further west towards David before heading inland and uphill towards Boquete. Approaching David, we both suddenly felt even hotter than normal, like sticking your head into a fan oven. The temperature must have gone up by at least 5C in the space of 30 seconds. We were wet through. I personally was really pleased that my nose isn’t any nearer to my feet. How do people live in this? Praise the Lord for air conditioning.
What, you may ask, is a quetzal? It’s a bird, but no ordinary bird. Its full title is Resplendent Quetzal, and for good reasons. I still don’t know how big it is, but it has tail feathers twice the length of it’s body. It has a body of garnet red, with back and wings and tail feathers of brilliant emerald green. It has a crown of chestnut brown tufts, sort of punkish, and a small beak that gives it a “Tweetie Pie” expression, like the canary in Tom and Jerry cartoons. It is, above all else, a devil to spot.
It isn’t just the birds, flowers and butterflies that are a riot of colour – the national costume of Panamanian women comes in gawdy, bright colours too. Floor length baggy dresses straight out of the Stepford Wives are worn by many women in rural areas, and even by young girls. Maybe they are cool. I would have thought that the national costume of anyone living in this climate would be precisely nothing.
If you want to box clever, buy only beans and put them in the freezer and invest in a grinder. Buy single estate, 100% Arabica guaranteed organically grown, shade grown, high altitude coffee beans. That means buy Panamanian coffee beans. Never heard of Panamanian coffee? Us neither until our coffee plantation tour. So where does it go? High end restaurants and high class retail outlets in the USA.
We had five police stops in Panama; every time we worked the “no understand” act and it worked. The only way to find out if they were genuine or private enterprise was to give them the documents they wanted and see what happened, but by then it would be too late so not engaging in any form of dialogue was the better option.
As I write this diatribe, we are sitting on a balcony looking out over the Pacific ocean, pelicans and frigate birds cruising past, brightly coloured parrots squacking away in swaying palms, sipping Pina Coladas. I fibbed about the last bit. Parrots don’t drink Pina Colada. It is so hot we are melting so the only way to cool down is to take frequent dips in the tepid sea. Bright white motor launches bob up and down in the bay; optimistic Americans ply their reels in the hope of catching something for dinner. Costa Rican children play in rock pools. We are a stones throw from the beach. On the hills behind our apartment there is the clatter and banging of construction teams putting up yet another block of condos. The road east of our apartment in Playa Ocital is being ripped apart to lay a new sewer to cope with the development going on through to Playa Coco and beyond.
We are on the Nicoya peninsular in Costa Rica, a long promontory that stretches for 35 kilometres south from the northern end of the Pacific coast. It is famous for the turtles that come ashore to lay their eggs and later for the mass hatchings. It was famous for its string of glorious isolated beaches but they won’t be isolated for much longer. Most of them are still only accessible by rough road, which is why we are not going to attempt to get to some of the best. The rainy season is imminent and we don’t want to spend the next four months stuck on a coconut-palm fringed beach. Did I just write that? What’s wrong with spending four months in a place like this?
We have read and been told that the roads in Costa Rica are terrible and full of potholes and that the drivers are the worst in Central America. Since the latest president took office a couple of years ago, huge amounts of money have been spent filling in holes and resurfacing roads. Whoever made the statement about the drivers obviously hasn’t been to Ecuador. There is nothing wrong with the roads or the drivers, so we are happy bunnies. The police checks are few, even more reason to be contented.
None are signposted. There are no road signs in towns or at major junctions. Are they expecting an invasion, and like Kent during the war, all road signs have been removed so that spies and foreign armies won’t know which way to go? If that is the motivation, it’s a huge success. So, like spies and subversives, we spent ridiculous amounts of time asking the way. Ticos (as Costa Ricans are known), speak slowly when giving you the first direction and then slip seamlessly into machinegun Spanish. We can, by now, pick out right (derecho) and left (alzuedo), first, second, and third junction and beyond that we are confused.
It’s also amazing how many invading foreigners managed to find their perfect spot in Costa Rica. The mountain lodge we found up a 1:3 drive was run by a Canadian and a German. They had a Japanese Akita dog and a Mexican Chihuahua. They all got here without road signs. Amazing. We were at altitude in cloud forest, this lodge was popular with birdwatchers (139 species of bird have been sighted here); our cabana had panoramic views of mountains and coffee plantations. The bird feeders attracted at least three species of hummingbird, along with several bright blue birds the size of a swallow but so much faster in flight. They liked to dive bomb us, trying to put a parting in our eyelashes.
Costa Rica is one of the best places to stick your head over the edge of an active volcano crater. Our route from Orosi to Volcan Poas took us around the capital, San Jose. I had bought a second Costa Rica map on the strength of its street plan of San Jose. Without it we would still be there now. Volcan Poas puts out a constant head of steam, the crater lake boils. You have to get up early to see it clearly; we got there about 8am just as the national park gates opened. One hour later and we couldn’t see the hand in front of our faces. Sadly, the tour buses arrive just as the cloud descends.
Butterflies are things that lay eggs that turn into caterpillars that leave my cabbages looking like net curtains. We don’t get on. We entered a butterfly house where the air was full of huge, multicoloured beauties that took our breath away. The insect house had the same effect but for different reasons – we will never camp in rainforest after seeing these specimens, fortunately deceased and stuck to display boards with pins. Six inch nails would have been more appropriate.
Its all a bit Disney but in the best possible taste, set in beautiful gardens with trails kilometres long through genuine rainforest with waterfalls running out of the La Paz river. All in all it was a great day, and all done without road signs and a totally inaccurate map.
La Fortuna owes its prosperity to a natural disaster that happened in 1978. A river suddenly started to run at 42C, which should have been a warning sign, followed by a major eruption of Volcan Arenal. It had been a sleeping giant up to that point. Since then, Volcan Arenal has never been quiet. A cloud of poisonous gases pours out constantly. Molten lava spills over the crater rim in quantities ranging from just visible to major firework displays. During daytime hours the lava is barely discernible. At night you can clearly see red molten rock tumbling and bouncing down the volcano slopes. Too many people have set off for an afternoon stroll up the volcano and never returned.
There were howler monkeys, white faced and spider monkeys, strange bright green lizard things with a mohecan spinal ridge, turtles, long-nosed bats that hung from a tree trunk in a pattern designed to resemble a boa constrictor, and prolific birdlife. And then there were stupid cows that had slipped into the river accidentally while trying to have a drink. One had been stuck in the water for three days, another had recently fallen in. A ranch-hand had been trying to drag them out of the river with a rope tied to his saddle. In sympathy, someone decided that if we all jumped ashore and got a hold of the rope and pulled, we might be able to help, so we did. We got both cows out of the water while a third busied itself trying to fall into the water. Poor caiman, denied a good feast.
After all this cloud forest and rain forest and wildlife, we hit on the idea of a bit of R&R. We’d read about the Nicoya peninsular and its magnificent beaches, which is where we ended up, watching pelicans and frigate birds flying by and sipping Pina Coladas. Still kidding. Pelicans and frigate birds don’t drink Pina Colada either.
We left the Nicoya coast and headed back inland and picked up the Pan America northwards towards Nicaragua. This northerly area turned quickly into dry, open savannah with fewer trees, perfect for the huge cattle ranches. It is also home to poorer Ticos and it got poorer as we approach the border area. How can we tell – because of the amount of garbage strewn along the roadsides, the best indicator of poverty there is.