360 Degrees Longitude (39 page)

“MIS-TER-BLACK-BURN!”

Every time I hear one, I marvel that roosters all over the world know my grandpa's name. Then I struggle to try to remember what country I am in and why, and then there is just no going back to sleep
.

Tortuguero is infested with roosters. With no glass in the windows of our guest house, there is simply no sleeping in after the roosters call out “Mister Blackburn” to tell him to go milk the cows
.

Still, you can't help but like a place where the main street through town is a footpath made of sand, paved in the muddy places with coconut shells
.

Tortuguero is as hot as an oven and humid as a steam room. Locally, the area is known as the Amazon of Costa Rica. Besides the giant sea turtles, which only visit long enough to lay eggs and then leave, Tortuguero is chock-full of crocodiles, sloths, snakes, and these nasty stinging ants that attack you if you accidentally touch their tree. Naturally, people flock there by the hundreds. There is something green and leafy clinging to anything and everything—from telephone poles, to the tops of picnic tables, to the ropes holding up the occasional suspension bridge.

While other Central American countries have seen much of their rain forest disappear due to slash-and-burn agriculture and other unfortunate uses of the land, the Costa Rican government, starting in the 1950s, established large national parks and reserves. Today, 27 percent of the land in Costa Rica is protected, preserving the landscape and forest habitats and setting the stage for a very successful tourist industry focusing on ecotourism. The effort shows.

It is also the kind of place where you can go through as much insect repellent as water. We stayed at a hostel with Mr. Bitey. He is the parrot who sits on his owner's shoulder looking cute and innocent. But try to stroke his feathers and he will demonstrate a parrot's ability to crack a Brazil nut, using your finger as an example.

The people of Tortuguero are fiercely proud of “their” turtles. Fifty years ago the population harvested the turtles in huge numbers for meat, but now the village is wholeheartedly engaged in turtle conservation, often deploying large groups of schoolchildren to guard nesting sites. We adopted a sea turtle for $25 at the conservation center. We are now the proud parents of Turtle 24601 and when “our” turtle is spotted in the wild we receive an e-mail update.

There are two ways to explore Tortuguero National Park. You can walk along a nature trail that is six inches underwater when it's raining, and only two inches underwater when it isn't. Or, you can canoe along a never-ending series of canals and rivers. We opted for both methods. On our canoe trip every time we saw two eyes
poking up out of the water September would go rigid.

 

Jordan's Journal, February 5

Today we went on a canoe tour through the jungle in the canals. We had a lot of fun. I liked the smaller canals best, because we were surrounded by green, green, green. I mean, the branches had vines hanging down from them blocking the canals, and the tree trunks had ivy and other plants growing on them. It was really the jungle. And I enjoyed the animals, also. We saw a three-toed sloth, sleeping in a tree, where it looked like a lump of fur. We also saw a two-toed sloth climbing slowly around the tree. We also saw a few caiman, which are like small crocodiles, but all you see are two beady eyes and sometimes part of a snout poking out of the water. Our guide says they are waiting for birds to snatch. Mom freaked out when she saw the eyes so close to the canoe. But we didn't see any blue or red tree frogs, or poison arrow ones. Oh, well. There's always next time
.

Two days, two buses, and one boat later we arrived at Sixaola, Costa Rica. Pedestrian border crossings can be intimidating, unlike their sterile cousins that greet you at an international airport. At an airport, you are behind pretty good security, and there aren't any questionable characters floating around. At Sixaola there is a wide river that defines the border between Panama and Costa Rica, and an old, abandoned train bridge suspended high across the river. On one side of the bridge is Costa Rica's immigration control building, and on the other is Panama's. In theory, you just walk across the bridge and then find transport on the other side and go on to your destination.

But we expected a huge crush of people hoping to make a buck. So, before we even stepped off our bus, we hired the services of one Mr. Wile E. Coyote. Okay, that is our made-up name for him. But he spoke good English, and we reasoned it could be handy to have a willing translator for finding ground transport on the other side.

We soon found ourselves on the old, wooden railroad bridge that defines the border. A sign hung above the beginning of the bridge, welcoming us to Panama. In front of us were about two hundred feet of weathered, cracked, wooden planks to cross before we would get to Panamanian immigration. The huge railroad ties under our feet were spaced far enough apart that if you slipped off the wooden planks nailed to the ties you just might fall through to the river below. It would be a tight squeeze for an adult, but I didn't want to test how much room there was between the ties with one of the kids.

We worked our way across the bridge, choosing our footing with care. Behind us was a huge semi truck loaded with bananas, bumping its way along, parting the pedestrian traffic to the sides. We rushed to beat the truck across the bridge and were never so happy to have our feet on terra firma.

So, like, welcome to Panama.

February 9–February 27
Panama

O
kay, everyone, hum along—you all know the tune:

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale

A tale of a fateful trip

That started from this tropic port
,

Aboard this tiny ship …

I used to love watching
Gilligan's Island
as a kid. I'd sit in front of our black-and-white TV and fantasize about the lifestyle of the marooned. No schoolwork. What a life! As an adult, when the pressure of the rat race would build up, I would frequently quip “We are going to sell everything and move to Gilligan's Island.”

Our first stop on our way to South America was straight for what we hoped was going to be our island paradise. Bocas del Toro (literally “Mouths of the Bull” en Español) is the name of both the Panamanian province and the main town in a group of small islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama. Some of the islands support only a few families while in Bocas (as it is known locally) the town's most modern amenity is its grass airfield. It has an easygoing, laid-back atmosphere that quickly infected us to the point that we stayed much, much longer than planned.

Upon our arrival in Bocas we happened to meet Lori, who had recently moved to Panama from Arizona. After a short visit we headed straight for her B&B, Hacienda del Toro, on a tiny island nestled in Dolphin Bay. Yes, there are dolphins in the bay; watching them, one would think that they were participating in Sea World tryouts.

 

John's Journal, February 11

We arrived in Bocas del Toro, Panama. To get here we took a boat through canals that were made to take bananas to market, but which have long been abandoned. Now the canals are lined with shanties that look like they came from the set of
Deliverance,
but the people on the porches wave rather than leer. The person who sat behind us in our boat was getting married the next day. She was holding her large wedding cake, trying to shelter it from the spray as we crossed the channel to the island of Bocas. We are now at a B&B run by Americans Neil and Lori. Wasabi, their pet parrot, whistles the theme song to
The Bridge Over the River Kwai
at the crack of dawn. He is worse than a rooster, but how can you get mad at him?

Neil the Pirate lives on his own island with his wife and son. They have no car, as there are no roads whatsoever on their island. Every morning they watch the children of their indigenous neighbors walk out of their houses in crisp school uniforms, climb into a dugout canoe, and paddle to school.

Neil was once a cowboy who lived on his ranch in Arizona, but when Arizona became too civilized, he traded his Stetson for two gold earrings. With Wasabi perched on his shoulder, he personifies the part of a pirate in the Caribbean. “There is only one thing more dangerous to a rain forest than an Indian with a chainsaw,” he told me as he leaned across the bar, “and that's real-estate developers with an agenda.”

His indigenous neighbors raised cattle and every few months they would clear-cut a few more acres of their island home. Neil added, “My neighbors are coming around though. We pay them for access to their land when our guests hike or go on horseback rides through their property. They're beginning to understand that right of access is more profitable than milking Betsy the cow. Now if I could just save Red Frog Beach from developers.”

Neil went on to describe how well-financed developers persuaded the president of Panama to look the other way and turn the once-pristine home for the endangered red tree frog on its head. Now with a former Miss Universe for its spokesperson, North Americans were flocking to purchase the beautiful villas at Red Frog Beach, sadly missing its namesake.

Neil went on to tell me everything he loved about his island home. “The only thing really missing here is a good boat mechanic in Bocas,” Neil said. “A good one would be able to name his price and would be turning business away.”

September gave me the briefest of glances. In just a few milliseconds, her subtle eyebrow raise communicated a lifetime of shared experiences. We sometimes dreamed of escaping the rat race, and this idyllic island paradise had a need. Neither of us had worked on a boat before, but she was well aware that I have turned a few wrenches in my lifetime, and we both know how to take a class.

Neil's American neighbor, Frankie, lived across the bay on his own private island. Frankie had delivered yachts for a living until he retired. Now Frankie keeps himself amused by raising cows and growing organic cocoa beans. Roasting the beans himself, using his own secret recipe of thirty-one herbs and spices, he makes his own chocolate bars to sell to tourists.

How cool is that?

With Dylan, Neil and Lori's thirteen-year-old son as our guide we went on a horseback riding trip, looking for “poison arrow” tree frogs. “I'll get one for you,” Dylan said, jumping off his horse and catching one in his bare hands. He must have seen the expression on my face. “They aren't that poisonous. Unless you have an open wound and smear the frog's skin into it, you'll be fine.”

Just like that, forty-odd years of playground folklore evaporated.

 

Jordan's Journal, February 19

Today we finally went on that snorkeling trip. First we rode in a boat and saw dolphins. Then we went to this cool place where we could snorkel off the dock. We saw a barracuda as big as me!!! The way I spotted it was scary. I was swimming right by the dock when a gigantic Godzilla fish appeared. It started swimming over to me with its mouth open showing me its half-inch razor-sharp teeth like it was going to eat me. I swam for the ladder on the other side of the dock as fast as I could. The problem was someone was getting out very slowly and I had to be too polite to save my own life
.

After a few days on Neil and Lori's island, we were back on the main island of Bocas, heading to a place described to us as “as far away as you can get from anywhere.” Our taxi driver parted his shoulder-length dreadlocks, smiled at us with his three remaining teeth, and said with his thick Caribbean accent, “De car. Eet iz 'ongree. Eet will need a snack b'fore eet will go oll de way to Drago.”

Ongree? What does that mean? Why doesn't anyone sell a dictionary of Caribbean English? Our driver continued, “You juss geev me some o' dat mohney now an' I kin feed de car, ah-right?”

Our taxi driver drove through a neighborhood and came to a stop next to a run-down house. He got out and chatted with some people for a bit, then went inside.

“Any idea where our driver's going?” I asked September.

She laughed. “Okay, new math story problem, Jordan. James works at a store. The store is usually open before lunch and often closes before dinner. Where will you find James taking his siesta?”

A few moments later our driver came out with two Coke bottles full of the car's snack. He tipped the contents of the Coke bottles into the gas tank and off we went.

But we didn't go to Drago, at least not right away. Our driver had friends that needed chatting up. Since Drago was on the far end of the island, he didn't want to miss an opportunity for socializing along the way. We drove along slowly with the windows down so that the driver could simultaneously drive and converse with his buddies, and ask if anyone had any errands they might need to run in Drago.

We had come to Drago for one reason. September and I had been searching the world for our version of utopia—just in case we decided to never return from our trip. Lauterbrunnen was one possibility, but the Swiss immigration requirements are pretty high: The Swiss are trying to keep their country void of riffraff like rocket scientists by requiring large sums of cash and friends that will vouch for your integrity. I'd always suspected the two always went hand in hand.