Los Chiles

So yesterday ended up being quite a bit more eventful then I had planned. As soon as I posted my blog update Luke came into the computer cafe and told me that we were invited to Victors birthday party, one of the police officers who works in La Fortuna but lives in Los Chiles. We either had the option of leavinge immediatly and traveling for 3 or 4 hours on the bus, or renting a car and getting there in around an hours time. We went with the car, which I think I will be doing from now on instead of taking the bus. It cost us around $50 for 24 hrs with the car, plus it allowed us the freedom to go where we wanted, when we wanted.

We sat down before we left and wrote the final exam for lukes time here, which only took about 2 hours. Then we hit the road up to Los Chiles. Los Chiles is the last town in Costa Rica before the border with Nicaragua, atleast in this part of the country, we ended up taking a short boat ride into Nicaragua while we were there because the town is only around 5 km from the border. Fresnel (I had him spell it for me, before ive spelled it Fresno) Luke and I hit the road around 4:30 and the ride was uneventful until the sun went down. The roads here are used heavily by all kinds of traffic, horses, people walking, people on bikes, tractors, buses, cars, semis, you name it ive seen someone driving it down the road (mopeds, motorcycles, four wheelers, riding lawn mowers). So when the sun goes down the road becomes a dark obstacle course of fast moving cars, not moving cars (people just park half way off the road so that they can keep traction and not need to get pulled out of the mud), pedestrians, animals (from cows to dogs), oh and all of the bridges are only wide enough for one car at a time. There are also no lights on the side of the road and the road is so curvy that people dont bother turning off their brights when they pass eachother, so ontop of being a 75 mph obstacle course you get temporarily blinded every minute or so. We were shitting our pants to say the least, but Luke had it the worst as he had elected to drive. Needless to say we were ready for some beer when we got to Los Chiles.

When we pulled up to Victors house there was quite a party going on, we werent sure we were at the right house at first because all Victor said for directions was ¨when you get to Los Chiles turn left, then go for awhile and turn right, its the house with the balloons¨(vague even by Tico standards). It turned out we found the right house with balloons and were soon treated to lots of great food and some much needed beer. After about an hour of sitting and talking a bunch of people in costumes showed up (I guess Victors younger realitives (around 20 of them) decided to have a costume contest on top of the party) , followed closely by a band of three trumpets, some drums and two cymbal players. The band got set up and we proceeded to shut down the street and turn it into a massive dance party. ok thats not exactly true, the costume people started the dancing part, but as the only gringos at the party Luke and I were quickly swept up and forced to embarass ourselves in front of Victors extended family. Luke has some suspect pictures of me dancing and participating in a limbo contest, but I think I can get him to keep those out of the public eye and my camera was strangely absent during the dancing portion of the festivities.

The party carried on well into the night and sometime in the morning hours Victor set us up with some matresses in his house. I forgot to mention that Los Chiles is hotter then hell, its in the middle of a giant plain that runs between northern Costa Rica and Southern Nicaragua. The dirt around Los Chiles is a really dark red color and it is where all of the Pineapples in Costa Rica are grown, did you know pineapples grow like lettuce? in the ground one at time, I always thought they grew on trees, anyway. Los Chiles is an inferno, and as an agricultural center its extremely humid, oh and it is also a swamp in the places that havent been cleared for pineapple farming. I think it was more humid there then anywhere ive been in my life, did I mention its hot too? Sleeping wasnt easy, so when morning rolled around Fresnel and I were ready to hit the road, but before we could Victor took us down to the Rio Frio.

We ended up renting a boat and going on a wildlife viewing excursion, there is such much life in and around that river it was amazing. Among the various birds we saw were also spider monkeys, iguanas, howler monkeys, caimans, and this little (well like 2 feet long, but a hell of a lot smaller than a wild iguana) green lizard that runs so fast that it can walk on water, which we saw demonstrated more then once. We spent about an hour on the river and it was amazing, I didnt bring my camera though which is really disapointing, but I think Luke has pictures of most of the animals we saw. After the river trip we got in the car and headed over to Caño Negro, which is a wild life preserve in the middle of a swamp. There wasnt too much to see and since we had already done the boat tour thing we just stopped and had lunch. The food was great, we tried a local fish that is only found in Caño Negro, and is famous for tasting like chicken, which it actually does, not a hint of fishiness, and a strange meat like texture. After we had lunch Fresnel took the wheel and we drove the scenic route back to La Fortuna, with Fresnel giving us the play by play on what each community is known for or just showing us cool stuff along the way (we stopped at this place called the iguana tree, which is more then one tree but the whole area is covered in iguanas, huge iguanas, like 30 per tree, and there is also a friendly monkey there too).

To sum it all up this weekend has been some of the most fun Ive had since being here, and driving around with Fresnel really opened my Costa Rica up beyond the little world of La Fortuna that ive known thus far. Hopefully we will be taking some more roadtrips while im down here, I hope your weekends were equally wonderful. Pura Vida