In Costa Rica-at night and lost!

In Costa Rica-at Night and Lost!

Well, Well! We finally arrived in San José at 7:30 PM. Cleared immigration and customs in a flash! Off to the car rental agency we went. About 90 minutes and 3000 forms later we got our rental SUV-a real piece of junk!

So, now we have a 60 mile drive to get to our hotel in Turrialba-what was supposed to be our second stop but because of the delay now became our first stop.

Fortunately we had purchased a download of Costa Rica highways for our GPS. It only took 30 minutes to figure out that we had to change time zones before the GPS would actually work. That settled, on it went and, of course, I missed the first turn! What else is new? We got turned back in the right direction, entered the freeway and all was bliss. The bliss lasted about 3 minutes. That’s how long it took us to get to the point where the freeway was closed with nary a detour sign pointing us in the right direction. Not to worry too much. After all, we have GPS. GPS kept directing us to the next entry ramp after the next entry ramp, all of which were closed-of course. Finally, the GPS got totally frustrated with us and plotted a whole new course through San José. What should have been a 15 minute trip across San José wound up being an hour and 15 minutes of errors and white knuckle driving in the dark! I’d like to say it was fun but it wasn’t. The best thing I can say is that we survived it and that Mary Lou and I learned to work well together as driver and navigator.

Note to self: When all the books say that roads are either very poorly marked or not marked at all in Latin America, they mean it!

Outside the city we managed to drive along a long 2 lane highway winding and twisting through the mountains. We finally reached our hotel in Turrialba at 11:15 PM.  So ended a day that started at 5:30 AM. Needless to say, we were well and thoroughly exhausted. Ah, a short night’s sleep and off to a day of rubber rafting tomorrow.

                           Rubber Rafting on the Pacaure River

Turrialba is widely regarded as the white water capital of Costa Rica. This Mecca offers not one, not two but three great rivers for both rafting and kayaking. We chose the Pacaure River because it is intermediate in difficulty. It offers a number of class V rapids along with class II, III and IV rapids too numerous to mention. The rafting company called Loco’s Rafting is owned by an American ex-pat and was recommended by Lew Steiger, one of my guides on my Colorado Dory trip that I took last May. (Thanks Lew!) The guides were excellent and very entertaining throughout the whole trip. Below is a photo of us going through one of the Class V rapids. I almost got tossed out but managed to hang on. All in all, we had a very nice day on the river and saw some beautiful scenery as well as getting a big dose of white water adrenaline. We arrive back at the hotel about 5:30, had an early dinner and collapsed.

The next day we were off to Mt. Arenal and I snapped this picture of Turrialba on the way out of town.

More Drama to come,

Ken