Rincon de la Vieja

We awoke early Monday March 12 to the sounds of rain drops pounding on the plastic awning overhanging the front of our room. It had been another stormy night though we had slept much better as our room was much more sheltered from the wind and traffic noise from the road next to the hotel.

After our complementary breakfast we checked out and waited for our transportation to Rincon de la Vieja. We had decided to splurge on a Greyline bus for the trip down from the highlands. We had not been able to find any information about the public transport leaving Monteverde so Greyline was an easy (and perhaps only) option. Greyline operates a fleet of small buses which provide door-to-door service between major tourist destinations in Costa Rica. At between $29 and $38 one-way each, they are ten times the price of a public bus, but it is a no-hassle way to travel, avoiding the stop-and-go mode of travel and cramped quarters of the non-direct buses.

Our driver picked us up and made one other stop where we were joined by a young Swedish couple and their little boy. Upon leaving St Elena, we began a gradual descent along the rough stone and dirt roads which provide the sole means of access to the highlands for motorized vehicles. For a while, we retraced the route we had used to get to Monteverde from the shore of Lake Arenal a couple of days before, and then we turned south towards the town of Las Juntas where we would join the main trans-country highway. We crept along the twists and turns of the mountain road, passing by stunning vistas of steep hills covered in trees and thick highland grasses, bending and weaving in the gusting wind driving down the slopes into the valleys hundreds of feet below.

After an hour and about 30 kms, the rocky road surface abruptly, and for no apparent reason, turned to tarmac and our ride became much smoother, although the road continued its serpentine path. Twenty minutes later we were back in civilization, passing through Las Juntas.

Shortly after turning west on the main highway, we pulled into a rest area which proved to be a staging area for Greyline. Several vans and buses congregated there, passengers switching to different buses depending on their destinations. Kind of like an airline hub airport.

It was here that we had the first of a number of encounters we were to have this day with Costa Rican wildlife. High in a large mango tree I spotted a flash of red and, on closer inspection, saw a beautiful red macaw chomping on some of the plentiful fruit in the upper branches. And beside him was an “azul” macaw, its colorful blue back and bright yellow breast presenting a gorgeous sight in the dappled light among the leaves. It was the first time we had ever seen a macaw in the wild. That was two very rare tropical birds we had seen in the space of 24 hours.

We continued on to Liberia, a small city in NW Costa Rica which has the country’s only other international airport, mainly to service the heavy tourist traffic destined for the beaches, resorts and fabulous property developments along the Guanacaste coast. Here we once again changed vehicles to a small van and after some explanation to the driver in our “getting rusty” Spanish, we headed off in the direction of Rincon de la Vieja and our lodging at Rancho Curabande.

Rancho Curabande is actually a working ranch which has a few small rooms and cabins for rent by tourists wishing to explore the area or visit the national park and volcano 17 kms to the north east. We were greeted by a woman who spoke no English and were shown to our plain but comfortable little room. Our hostess asked us if we wanted to do any tours – horseback riding, river tubing, kayaking, etc. – but we declined in favor of a walk around the environs. She directed us along a path through some adjacent fields of grass or young corn plants, to a nearby river where she said we could have a swim. As the temperature had changed dramatically from the cool mountain air and was once again hot and humid, we grabbed our bathing suits and set off.

After half an hour through some very windy and extremely dusty terrain, we reached the small Rio Colorado, which, as its name implied, although clear and sparkling, was colored a deep brown, probably from the minerals and silt in the area. The river gushed out of a small canyon and across some rocks, spilling into a small pool. One of the rancho hands had been out cycling with his dog (a large German Sheppard who knew exactly where the river was and wasted no time jumping into the cooling pool) and he told us the pool was only chest deep and, with a wry smile, that there were no piranhas in the pool. After the young fellow and dog went on their way, we changed into our suits and stepped into the refreshing pool.

After a few minutes, Sue got out to get the camera to take a picture of me sitting on a boulder in mid stream. And, as she reached into our pack for the camera, she suddenly let out a scream and jumped back. I immediately thought she must have been spooked by one of the little lizards we had seen sunning on the rocks, but in answer to my query “What is it?”, she replied, “A big snake”. This was our (or to be precise, Sue’s) second interesting wildlife encounter of the day. I scrambled ashore in hopes of getting a picture but to no avail as the snake had disappeared into the rocks. Sue said it had been about 2 feet long and was colored grey, green and brown. When we later told our hostess at the rancho that we had seen a “serpentia”, she looked concerned and said “Peligro!”…dangerous. (The same thing we’d been told about our visiting scorpion weeks ago in Puerto Barrios). As a large percentage of snakes in Costa Rica are poisonous, I’m sure she was right!

On our walk back we heard a relatively large animal we had probably disturbed, run away, loudly crashing through the foliage at the edge of the path. A minute later we heard a high-pitched call from a tree nearby and soon spotted a Broad-winged Hawk sitting in the branches. We got a close up look at its curved yellow beak steely black and yellow eyes, through our binoculars which we try to always take with us on our walks. (By the way, I’m able to give the names of the birds in this narrative because of a card showing all the lowland and coastal birds of Guanacaste province which was kept at reception.)

Back at the lodge (where we were the only guests) we were offered afternoon coffee which we took in the lodge’s little open air eating area where four square wooden tables had been set up under a roofed area open on all sides. As we sat there, and later on the veranda in front of our room, we were delighted to see several colorful birds flitting about in the trees surrounding the lodge. Chattering Orange-fronted Parakeets darted in and out of tree tops. Several Rufous-naped Wrens flitted around a small tree in search of insects, the black stripe along their eyes making them look like masked bandits. And several gorgeous White-throated Magpie-Jays, with their lovely blue and white feathers and tufted head plume, sat among the branches of a tree just in front of us. And several other varieties flew past as we sat there.

Our hostess has also told us there were monkeys (“hay monos”) in the trees on the property and sure enough, as soon as we walked out behind the lodge, we spotted two large dark shapes in the branches. A look through the binoculars immediately confirmed that these were much larger monkeys that we’d previously encountered. As we approached the tree in which they were feeding and jumping around, the larger one started hooting a quieter version of the strange grunting howl that had reverberated across the jungle in Tikal. Our hostess had said they were “Congo monos”, but as a guide book at reception confirmed, they are also known as Howler Monkeys. They had large heads and looked more like miniature gorillas than the small monkeys we’d seen in Manuel Antonio Park a few days earlier. The large male seemed quite agitated by our presence under his tree, so after a few minutes and a couple of photos, we went on our way, leaving the monkey to continue their feeding in quiet. But this was another interesting and rare encounter as Howlers are infrequently heard and more rarely seen, especially from only a few feet away.

And so our day came to a close with a meal (delicious home cooking!) at the lodge and an early bed. We hadn’t expected much of this travel day, but as often happens, we didn’t get what we’d expected. We’d had several wonderful encounters with some of Costa Rica’s unique and colorful creatures. It was yet another day we won’t soon forget.

The next morning we were up before 5:30 as we planned to catch the once-a-day public bus up to Rincon de la Vieja park which passed the ranch at 6:30. After a delicious “desayuno tipico” breakfast of fresh fruit, scrambled eggs, beans and rice, toast and fresh Costa Rican coffee, we walked down the ranch’s entrance road to await the bus. As expected it was not on time, and it was nearly 7:00 before the old school bus clanked along the dusty road in the already hot morning sun and pulled to a stop at our beckoning wave. To our question of “Va usted al parque?” we managed to discern from the driver’s heavily accented Spanish, that the bus in fact only got to within five kms of the park and that we’d either have to find another ride at that point or walk the remaining distance to the gates. We decided not to board the bus after all, and with a grinding of gears and a belch of exhaust, it trundled off down the dusty road.

So, now what would we do? Back at the ranch, we asked this morning’s attendant lady (different from the lady the previous night), if we could get a taxi up to the park, though we feared it would be very expensive for a 17km trip. She phoned the taxi company for us and told them where we wanted to go and it turned out to be only 4000 colones. (At this point I’ll make a slight detour, as I don’t think I’ve mentioned Costa Rica’s currency before. The colone is the local “dinero” and there are just over 500 to the USD, making one colone worth about 0.2 cents. So everything for sale here has a large number of colones attached to it. It’s not hard to be a multimillionaire in this country!! I love going to the ATM and entering 100,000 when asked how much money I want….makes one feel rich, although they do disappear quickly in equally large amounts). Any way, an $8 cab ride to the park seemed good value so we ordered the taxi which came from Liberia, about 6 kms away. But once again we found communication is not an exact science. When we jumped into the cab and the driver said “Parque de Liberia?” we replied, “No, no…Parque Rincon de la Vieja”. He became quite agitated at this and insisted he was to take us into Liberia to the central park there. He eventually jumped out to speak in Spanish with our rancho lady and after a heated exchange between them where we gathered she told him the dispatcher knew we were going to the volcano and it was there mistake, she shook her head and held up first ten then five fingers, saying “quince mil” or 15,000 colones. Thirty bucks one way was way to much seeing as we’d been planning on the one dollar bus ride, but faced with being stuck at the ranch with nothing to do, we decided to take the proffered ride into town and have a look at Liberia.

One thing we’ve learned on this trip is that fortuitous things happen as often as unfortunate things and the good and bad usually balance out. And this was to happen on this bright morning. After ten minutes sitting in Liberia’s not-very-exciting central park and wondering what we’d do for the day in this drab little place, we walked along one of the nearby streets and were approached by a tall young fellow, from the looks of his deeply tanned skin, longish hair, sandals, shorts and t-shirt, obviously a traveler. He asked if we had driven to town and when we said no that we’d been hoping for a bus to Rincon, he said he was also wanting go to the park and perhaps we could share a cab. I was still reluctant as 2/3 of the now $35 dollar fare and another one back, was still pretty steep. He said if we didn’t go, he’d probably give the park a miss and jump the next bus to Nicaragua, his next destination and some 2 ½ hours by bus. But, he suggested we first check with a local hostel that he knew of to see if we could arrange cheaper transportation, and to make a slightly longer story shorter, we were soon crouched in the rear compartment of a very small van with four other people on our way to the volcano park for only $10 each return.

One of the great things about travel is the people one meets along the way. This fellow was no exception. His name was Eran and he was from Israel. He had been a pilot in the air force for seven years and was taking a year traveling in South and Central America before starting university. I guessed he was in his late 20’s and he was a most interesting fellow with whom we had a fascinating conversation en route to the park, about his travels in South America and the situation in the Middle East.

Our day at the Park turned out to be just “ok”. We once again hiked along a not-so-well-used jungle path to some boiling mud pools and steam fissures. These were one of the park’s main attractions (unless you wanted to tackle the 8 km hike straight up the side of the volcano to the crater…an all day adventure…which we weren’t interested in doing), but the steaming ponds, boiling mud holes and sulfur-covered rocks were a disappointment compared to the amazing volcanic areas we’d seen years before in New Zealand. We did have a nice walk after our boxed lunch (provided by the ladies at the ranch) to a small cascading stream and usual dipping pool, which was a nice relief from the intense heat of midday. But as Sue and I agreed, we were pretty much jungle-walked out by this stage and what would have been an exciting day for a tourist newly arrived in Central America, was, for us, a little boring. Our upcoming R&R with our friends Sue and Michael Kallis at their new villa was obviously very timely.

The next morning we were up early again and it wasn’t long after breakfast that a large red Toyota drove into the grounds. Sue and Michael jumped out and we had a happy reunion with them, and were soon on our way to our next port of call….Casa Kallis.