February 13 – Critters and Creeps
I spent this week volunteering in Barra Honda, a national park north of Nicoya. The reserve exists mainly to protect the 42 caves that were discovered in the mountain. Half of them are explored, but only two are considered safe enough for non-professionals to enter. One of my duties was to help the guides carry equipment to the caves.
The climb up the mountain is a difficult one hour trek. While there, they lower you with a harness and rope 20 meters down into the cave. Down there it’s pitch dark and very humid. There are some very interesting formations of stalagmites and fossils of coral that comes from the time the caves were under water.
There are many different animals in the reserve, among them monkeys, armadillos and many types of birds. Not to mention all the critters and spiders that lived with me in my dorm. On the door was this sign with the words ‘Shake your shoes for scorpions’, which didn’t make me sleep any better than I’d done in Nicoya. An almost tame, one meter long lizard lived under the house and came out now and then.
They seemed to have some problems with their workers at the station. Some of them were quite lazy and didn’t want to help out very much. They were trying to investigate some embezzlement of money that had taken place recently. The work ethic in this country is very different from what we’re used to in Europe.
February 20 – Back to Civilization
It’s nice to be back in San Jos� again. Here they have McDonald’s, shopping malls, internet cafes, cinemas and other necessities of life. Apart from studying the well developed bar culture you can find here, I’m also doing day trips to interesting places around the capital. Today I went to Po�s, a volcano situated one hour by car from here. The crater is supposed to be the second largest in the world, 1.5 km across. It is amazingly beautiful with its clear blue lagoon in its center. It’s still active, but there was no need to worry too much as the last eruption was 1954. Now it’s mostly smoking with sulphur gases from within the volcano.
The climate in San Jos� and its surroundings is actually nicer than the oppressing heat in Nicoya. The weather here is comparable to a good Swedish summer. I have changed my mind concerning the capital, my first impression was not very positive. Mainly because my hotel was situated in some of the worst parts of San Jos�e. Not knowingly, I had ended up in the middle of the red light district.
Now I have seen much more, and there are many nice parks, buildings and other places to visit. I went to Mercado Central, a bustling market with narrow aisles crammed with shops selling everything from vegetables to herbs treating prostate problems. It is easy, especially for someone without any sense of direction like me, to get lost in the maze of passages that never seem to end.
