Tuesday, December 12, 2017

A hammock couldn't kill my cell!!

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 
A hammock stole my phone on a Thursday, the day we left the province of Limón.  

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


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