Crater Lake in Volcán Irazú. You can drive to the summit.
If it isn't cloudy, you can see a very long way
A hammock stole my cell phone in Costa
Rica. It might
seem strange that an inanimate object would be guilty of theft but now that I
read Gadd’s article I see that guilt is the true word.
At THIS LINK you can read a great article by Will Gadd about hammocks and why
they are evil. Gadd is not only correct in his tongue and cheek way, he is a
good author and he is a real climber and not an amateur like me. Gadd’s gist
is that:
- Hammocks are comfortable until they are not and
then they can strangle and suffocate you.
- Hammocks are dangerous because people hang them
using cams that weren’t designed for outward pull, which lands your ass on
the ground, literally. Your ass hits first.
- Hammocks are obnoxious because people set them
in all manner of pretty places, obstructing the view for others while they
spend the day taking selfies. Follow #selfishselfiesonhammocks on twitter.
Mostly
Gadd is spot on but I disagree with the latter. Hammocks don’t take selfies, people take selfies. It’s the human race that
sucks. Will Gadd might agree.
Manzanillo Refugé, near Cahuita
My
beef with hammocks is they are thieves and it doesn’t matter where you are,
even in the beautiful little town of Cahuita, Limón, Costa Rica. Cahuita is
traditionally Caribé Cultura and there is a Rastafarian influence there. It wasn't Rastas that stole mi celúlar. We arrived in Cahuita on a night of a Rasta party that came about because it was "World Cultures Day" in Costa Rica and a long weekend. We expected to not sleep but as it turned out
the Rasta party was more like a family reunion with little kids. Children
jumped on a trampoline in the front yard and across the street Caribé teens
played fútbol on the beach. The place was quiet by 10PM and that made our day
because we were both pretty stressed by the idea that we might not have a place
to stay. Apparently there is a lot more to Rasta culture than smoking dope. I
saw a cop in Costa Rica with dreadlocks past his shoulders. I chalk that up as
one more thing I thought I would never see. He did not arrest the hammock that
stole my phone.
White Faced Monkey,
Parque Nacional Cahuita
Every morning while
there I went running while Evonne did yoga on the deck. My first day running I
ran into the Parque Nacional Cahuita.
I saw Howler Monkeys. I went swimming in the Caribbean three times, once
before the run, once mid run, and after I was done. This was to cool down as it
was already 75 degrees at 6AM and because the water felt good. I temporarily
“lost” my shoes the first morning I was there.
I took off my shoes to run on the beach and hung them on a branch. It’s
easy to run on the beach sans zapatos from the beach to the cabina went through
the town is sharp gravel, mostly broken coral. Cahuita is a small town that
takes laid-back to new definitions. While running a park ranger picked my shoes
up thinking they were lost. When I came back for my shoes and they were gone, I
was worried because getting back to the cabina would have ripped my feet to
bits. Worse things can happen than losing your celúlar. Luckily, I thought to go by the ranger office and see if
there was lost and found. After the run
we went to breakfast, which was an awesome gourmet of fresh eggs and fruits and
vegetables. Every breakfast was like that.
After breakfast, we went hiking in the Parque Nacional Cahuita and saw
white faced monkeys and howler monkeys. There were monkeys outside the parks
too. We also saw bright green frogs and
more types of trees than we could imagine. We bought a book of the trees of
Costa Rica and we couldn’t keep up. I
think there are more species of tree in Parque Nacional Cahuita than in all of
the western United States and it’s a teeny national park. Not all parks in CR are small.
Parque Nacional Cahuita
That
morning I got up and went outside try and see some sloths that had been seen in
the mango trees near our cabin. It had started to rain and the sloths had
hunkered down out of sight so I made my way to the coffee maker. The coffee
maker was outside but under a tropical gazebo. I set the coffee maker to action
with water ground up beans and as it burbled, I sat in the hammock that was
strung from the gazebo supports. Life was perfect until later that day when I
couldn’t find my phone. We searched our cabin and all around the car and
concluded that my phone must be in the car. All our bags were packed in the car
and clearly the phone must be in one of them. We made this conclusion because
we were too lazy to completed dissect all our bags because what seemed clear
was not. We should have known that hammocks and laziness are best friends. Not clearly as the story unfolds. We checked
out and drove from the Caribbean Coast to La Fortuna in the mountains, a five-hour
drive. We unpacked our stuff and soon concluded that the phone was not in our
stuff. The following day we went hiking
on Volcan Arenal instead of calling the owner of the cabin Cahuita. “When the
going gets tough, the tough go hiking.”
Arenal National Park has the best warning I have seen. Do not climb to
the crater of the volcano as you could crack through the earth’s surface and
boil in lava underground. I am paraphrasing but that was the gist of the sign
and it was written in Spanish, English, and German. I had planned to climb
Mount Arenal before seeing the sign. Using
Evonne’s phone we took cool photos of Volcan Arenal from the base and left the
summit of Arenal to the birds. Incidentally, burbled is a word.
Evonne at Breakfast,
Brigitte's Restaurant, Cahuita
As I
searched and failed to find my celúlar
I inevitably reached the status of weeping and waling and gnashing of teeth at
the loss of my old friend. Admittedly, I sometimes hate cell phones and find
them addictive, corrosive, and misnamed. They are not smart. It’s
love/hate with me and cell phones. I have been through thick and thin with this
phone and this wasn’t my first close call. I once dropped out of a kayak into a
glacial lake where it lived 18” deep in the water for 52 hours. Yet, it lives. While
trying to set up a top rope, I dropped it off a cliff out the Pirate Shore
north of Juneau. It fell forty feet and it lives because it’s a tough phone and
Juneau has more moss than you can shake a stick at. My phone sat at the bottom
of the cliff, cradled in moss. Saved by nature.
It once fell out of my pocket while kayaking a fjord in Alaska, also
near the Pirate Shore, and sat under salt water for an hour on the floor of the
kayak. Yet, my phone lives. It was
almost undone by a damn hammock.
We
realized the hammock stole my phone Friday when I called the Cabinas Tito, our
cabins on the Caribbean Coast. The owner told me she found the phone in the
hammock. Either hammocks steal phones, like kayaks steal phones, or my pockets
suck. Regardless there is a lesson for me. We had to fly home Saturday and we
found out the phone was on the other side of the country at 5PM Friday.
Ceiba Tree, Parque Nacional Arenal
Costa
Rica is a small country but it is still large enough that I couldn’t drive to Cahuita
and back to the airport in San José in time to fly home. In case you are ever
in Cahuita, Costa Rica the people that run the Cabinas Titos are awesome.
Just
so you know, hammocks steal phones, pocket change, car keys, and all manner of
things you might want later. Apparently, kayaks do as well. These things can’t
be trusted for diddly squat and this brings up the conundrum. Stating that you
don’t have diddly squat means the same thing as stating that you diddly
squat. Anythehoodle, I had diddly squat
for a phone and no way to get it before returning to Alaska.
My
wife and the owner of the Cabinas Titos are namefellows, a word for two people
with the same name. Costa Rica namefellow spells her name Ivon but it’s said the same as my wife Evonne. Ivon is very cool person and I knew this before she helped get my
phone back from that thieving hammock. After some struggle that hurt my head
and probably Ivon’s, we chose Spanish
to talk about to get the phone back. My online program (duolingo.com) says I am
58% fluent and the cabin owner is about 58% fluent in English so it was tough
arranging on the phone. Evonne’s phone, not mine.
Volcán Arenal, Lago Arenal foreground
Parque Nacional Arenal
Evonne
and I drove to the airport in San José. Ivon
knew a cab driver who would drive my cursed phone to San José for $150. It
might also be called a blessed phone San
Telefóno. $150 is quite a deal
because it’s five hours one way and the driver paid for gas. I was to meet
Oscar at the airport at a restaurant on the first floor. I didn’t know what
Oscar looked like other than he is un
hombre joven, a young man. The reason for this lack of understanding is
that www.duolingo.com is muy generous when it says I am 58% fluent.
Duolingo.com
is guilty of grade inflation as can be expected for a free program. Another
problem is that it’s not that easy to discern the numbering of the floors in
the San José airport. It’s a big airport and it isn’t clear if baggage claim is
on the first floor or if you count the parking levels beneath. By the time I
found Oscar I was sweating more from the running around the airport than any
other part of the trip and the airport was the only air conditioned building I
went inside in Costa Rica. Oscar had the same frustration. He earned his money.
I think Oscar has some friends in San José and I hope he took his tip and bought
a round of drinks for all of them.
Orchid
A
hammock stole my phone and it wasn’t punished because society cuts hammocks
more slack than they deserve. The same is true for kayaks because a kayak stole
my phone and tried to drown in twice. Twice.
Where is the justice?
Yet,
I ask myself if there is a way to set up a hammock between two kayaks. I must love thieves because I want to return
to Costa Rica and sit in a hammock and kayak in the Caribbean. Can you trust a
person that has NEVER stolen anything? Maybe by the end of my next trip I will
be 58% fluent in Spanish. Losing your phone builds language skills.
Video I took of a white faced monkey eating a noni fruit. Link to youtube
