Lovely Guanacaste… ah yes… lovely
March 1, 2009
Hello! Unexpectedy I have managed to find a computer here in Tenorio (another change of plan but I’ll tell you next time), so here is what went on in lovely lovely Palo Verde, the park of general loveliness and numerous birds.
So I think I left you in Miramar… right after I posted that last message there was a power cut and the 3 blokes who had been playing Warcraft or whatever it was lost their game and were GUTTED. I ran and got the bus and then somehow managed to extract myself from it when we reached the main road. There I waited for a bus heading to Cañas which duly came, it was also packed but it was a pretty short trip so it was ok. Cañas is in Guanacaste, that’s the province 
that takes up all north-west Costa Rica and the Nicoya peninsula, and it’s COWBOY LAND!! Guanacaste (also the name of the national tree, in case you’re interested) is where they breed all the rodeo bulls and where they have the maddest fiestas, kind of like in Spain, with bulls generally running about all over the place and spearing people in the thigh/bum/eye. While I was in Palo Verde the Fiestas de Liberia (the biggest town in Guanacaste) started and everyone got very excited (they showed pretty much the whole thing on the telly). So anyway, in Cañas you get a lot of giant belt buckles, a few cowboy boots, and the occasional stetson. Very jolly. It’s the second biggest town after Liberia, but it’s tiny so who knows what Liberia’s like. Anyway I found myself a pleasingly scabby hotel that had single rooms/boxes, and then walked all round town, which took about half an hour, and then sat in the square wondering what to do next. There was a truly uplifting moment when I realised I’d had way too much for lunch and couldn’t possibly eat any dinner. In fact the only thing I could manage was a ridiculously huge ice cream, which melted about 3 seconds after I left the ice cream parlour. I ate it in the park and stayed there until the amazingly annoying blackbird-type things that were sitting in all the trees got too deafening, at which point I went and lay down in my box listening to the football game on the telly that was right outside the door.
The next morning I got the 7 o’clock bus to Bagaces, which is between Cañas and Liberia. The sheet ASVO had given me said “on arrival in Bagaces, report to MINAE office”. It was closed, but as it was only half seven I thought I’d give them an hour or so. So I walked around town (15 minutes, but only cause there was a hill) and then sat down to wait. Little did I know I was going to end up sitting there for 7 hours (fun!) At around 10 there was still no sign of, well, anything, so I decided to phone the numbers on the information sheet. On the first one nobody answered but THANKFULLY on the second one a lady did eventually pick up. She told me the guy who dealt with the volunteers wasn’t there, and said to phone back in 10 minutes. As soon as I hung up a guy pounced on the phone and stayed there for about an hour, so I went on another walk around town to find another phone box. “Phone back at half 11” she said this time. So I did, and this time, SUCCESS… “they’re coming to get you ahorita,” she told me, “stay beside the MINAE office”. “Ahorita” is a bit of a tricky one, as it’s sort of a cross between “now” and “later”, but generally is 
closer to “later”. So I figured they’d be about an hour. I was only 2 hours off target as it happened (close enough). The unfortunate thing was that after 2 and a half hours all the shade had disappeared from the shady patch where I’d spent the entire morning, so I’d moved across the road to a spot from where I had a good view of the MINAE building, and had a Polo mint for lunch (best before 01/07/04). Unfortunately, when the car finally turned up at 3pm, it sailed past me and went up to the MINAE, stopped briefly and drove on into town. NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I said (I actually said it out loud) and a taxi driver came over and asked what the matter was. We devised a cunning plan whereby I would go back to the boiling patch of pavement next to the offices, and he would sit by the road leading to the park (where he was parked anyway), and stop them in case they didn’t see me. As it happened they did spot me this time (“well we came by half an hour ago and you weren’t here”… to which I responded “GRMMGMERGMEHH”).
Anyway all was well and the car was full of food (yay). The two Rigos (they were both called Rodrigo), took me on a huge tour of the park before dropping me off at Palo Verde station (the other station is called Catalina). On the way they told me about the park, and we were chatting a bit, and after a while one of them said “so you’re from Spain then?” I was like Aaah I might actually have to marry you. To be fair I hadn’t actually said very much though, and the car was making a lot of noise. Nice all the same though!
At the station I met the lady I’d spoken to on the phone (Marielos), who was actually the cook. And a student from Puntarenas called María, who’d been there for a month and who was leaving in a few days. That evening she took me 
out to see the swamp… I say swamp, it doesn’t sound very cool but it is really, there’s a kind of lake in the middle of all these marshes, you can’t go walking there or anything, you can just walk along the side. Further out you can see Río Tempisque, which comes out in the Gulf of Nicoya, and then all around the edges there’s all these hills covered in DRY (nice for a change) forest. At the moment half the trees have lost their leaves, which makes it really easy to spot loads of birds and other animals. Obviously the marshes are full of birds, on one side there’s also loads of rice fields, and the herons just sit there as you go past, dozens of them, and they don’t even fly off. Near there station are loads of mango trees and there are always loads of monkeys there eating them. There’s this other animal, called a coati, that sometimes fights them for the mangoes. You can get really close to all the animals, they’re really chilled out, it’s very freaky!
The idea in Palo Verde was that I help at mealtimes, and then if there was other stuff to do I also helped with that in 
the morning, and then in the afternoon I went and walk all the trails. For the first few days there was a course on wetlands going on for park rangers from other parks in the area, so I got to sit in on that, which was cool. Also, the guys from another park, called Volcán Tenorio, which is just to the north of Arenal, asked if I’d like to spend a week or so up there so I phoned ASVO and changed the plan yet again. They were coming back to Palo Verde the following week, and said they’d pick me up at that point.
By the end of the first week I’d walked all the trails, it really is a very cool park, the trails generally take you all through the woods and come out at some amazing viewpoint, from where you can see over the entire lake/swamp. By the edge of the marshes there was also a rickety bird-watching tower, so some evenings I would sit up there and sway violently in the wind for a bit, hoping for a glimpse of the elusive Jabiru (this crazy giant red, white and black stork), which is like the coolest bird here.
On María’s last day, we went out walking at 4.30am hoping to see some crocodiles, but didn’t have any luck. However the following day I did see a humongous snake eating an iguana (the iguanas are all over the place), and one time I came out of the shower to find the world’s biggest tarantula trying to get in my bedroom window. The next morning it had been almost entirely devoured by the ants, so someone must have killed it that night while I was locked in my room with a full bladder but with no way of emptying it that didn’t involve walking past the tarantula in the dark (not happening).
A few days later another group arrived, who were into astronomy. They would sleep 
for most of the day, then lie on the ground all night looking upwards. One night they asked me to join them, so after dinner along I went, with Marielos and some other girls who were staying at the station. Good start on the way we saw a tarantula attacking a grasshopper, and a big fat scorpion (yum). The stargazing thing was very very cool. Basically everyone just lies down and the professor guy points out the constellations with this mental green laser that literally points out the star he’s talking about. Also got a look at Saturn with the rings and everything, through their crazy telescope. After about an hour the people I’d come with went back, and I stayed for a bit, until they all went to sleep while they waited for the Southern Cross to appear. I walked back via the lake and did some crocodile-spotting, and then on the way back saw two cheesy raccoons. A jolly night!
The next day Daniel took me to Catalina on the motorbike, and I went for a walk and got lost in the woods and then found the way back down which I thought was clever of me. Did anyone know you could eat mango skin by the way?? In Catalina they had yet more mango trees, and I found out they eat them green, and with the skin on. They’re actually alright like that. And yes they ARE actual mangoes, before anyone says something clever.
A couple of days before I left, I went to bed at 9pm (nothing strange there, and everyone else was already in bed anyway), in order to be wide awake for my solo expedition the next morning at 4am. The idea was to make it to this mirador before sunrise, in order to fill up my memory card (never have I taken so many photos, not even that time when we saw that marmot in the Pyrenees and it came right up to us while we were having lunch and trying to
get rid of this annoying donkey by throwing apple cores over its shoulder). It took a lot less long than I’d imagined, at I spent about half an hour up there in the pitch black, practicing my newly-acquired astronomy skills. When the sun finally started to come up it was sooo good though, all the herons went mental, about a hundred storks flew right across the sun, and THEN… orgasmic moment coming up… I was just wafting about with my binoculars, and there was the Jabiru, in fact TWO Jabirus, flying towards the rice fields. Just as I was focusing on them and going “OOOOHH!!” a giant wasp thing attacked my FACE, would you believe it, and I almost lost them, but anyway the main thing is I SAW them, and can now boast about it, cause they’re really rare and the few that do come don’t usually turn up til March. So HA, in your face, tourists. Mind you some Americans arrived that day from Tortuguero (another cool park on the Caribbean side), with photos of a JAGUAR they’d seen there, how annoying can you get??
I was pretty sad to leave Palo Verde, cause although, as I mentioned before, most of the population of Costa Rica is on Nice Pills, it seems that this lot regularly overdose on them. Lovely people… Marielos, Viviana (the other cook who shouts “EAT MORE” as soon as you’ve cleared your plate), Daniel (the ranger from Catalina who reckons he was a professional bull rider back in the day and says it’s the first time he’s missed the Fiestas de Liberia in 12 years… “I USED TO LIVE THERE!”), Alexis (who wears a red bandana and carves wooden handles for everyone’s machetes)… And, well, you can never have too many herons can you.
Anyway, so here I am, on the side of this volcano in the rain, I leave you with some cheesy storks, do check out the More Photos bit (although I think I’ve put most of the photos in this message!!), cause Palo Verde was a seriously photogenic place. Hope all is jolly back there, try riding some bulls if you get a sec, it looks pretty fun really. Next message in a week or so from Cañas or Fortuna (haven’t decided yet but I’m quite up for another ice cream). Adiooos xxxxx
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