Day 8
The Cali wanted to snorkel in Bocas del Toro, an archipelago in Panama. One beach in particular had ignited a small obsession, Playa de las Estrellas, starfish beach. We decided to make our way there for the weekend. How
difficult could it be to follow through on a sweet little starfish quest… after all, we have a car.
After minimal research, we discovered it won’t be a straight shot to the starfish lovelies. Oh, no. First of all, can’t take the car over that border. Even a Tico car requires a fair bit of paperwork to cross. This called for Plan B, shuttle, walk across border, shuttle, boat, shuttle, boat. Repeat in reverse order to get home. Break!
This little five-pointed adventure started with us leaving Jaco. We drove south on the Pacific coast. We ducked into Playa Hermosa to see the big waves that our surfer/realtor Gabriel favors. This is one of his favorite beaches.
It’s never a boring drive in Costa Rica, but always a green one. Today we saw huge rain forests, Palm farms, endless overgrown lushness, trees like walls of green going up the mountains. But the drive was about to get even more interesting.
Streets signs are non existent, as are addresses. This seems to work for those who know where they are going, which rarely includes us.
We booked our first night at the Jupiter House, an ecolodge in the rain forest. Everything is prefixed or suffixed with eco here. We’ve started calling the kid Cal-Eco, just so she feels more at home. She sure looks more at home.
Here, directions are often given in minutes, not miles. That’s right, Silly. Take a left after the bridge and drive for six minutes, then turn right and drive for 3 minutes. Confused minutes are slower than regular minutes so the directions are usually off for us, before we’re even out of the gate. But if other tourists on confused time found the place, so could we. We turned inland from Dominical to find this Eco-paradise. How hard could it be?
Can I just preface this next part by saying we aren’t new to scary roads. Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala had many of them with a great variety of reasons to be scary (pitch, mudslides, boulders, no bridge, partial roads clinging to mountains). But getting to the lodge in the rainforest was perhaps one of the scariest drives we’ve ever made, no, it was THE scariest.
We drove what we thought were the right number of minutes (x 2) and saw an arrow pointing right. But we could not see the road that should go with the arrow. It’s over the crest, no, ledge, going straight down on an angle that we’re unsure what gravity will do with the vehicle. If only I knew more car physics, like at what degree will a cheaply
made rental car actually start to flip down an incline like a fumbled football. Yes physics wizards in my family, pls answer that question.
I kept thinking of the airbnb reviews of this place which must have been left by people who were still alive, right? If they were in full body casts wouldn’t they mention that? I didn’t read any reviews like, “Biggest downside of this place was rolling our car through the lovely cloudforest, down lush rainforest slopes, through many forms of wildlife, and into the Pacific.”
Part of the issue was that we never knew if we ere on the correct road (no signs, only confused minutes) and if our bumpy garden path dead-ended we couldn’t turn around, too narrow. Then what? Back up? Sleep in car? Could or would snakes and other critters get in? Is there a rainforest snake/spider/critter hotline? Would we get to hospital in time? Would they have the right antivenom in stock? Good God how does the mind get to that place in a mili-
second as I’m straining to see an actual road over the hood. What’s the responsible thing to do as a parent? Was the kid safer in or out of the car at this point? Do we make her get out and stand by the side of the road? But then would she get hit by a different car flipping down the hill? My mind was a gnarly mess of worse cases.
We stopped at the house named Oasis to ask a woman if we were on the right track. That had to help. She was from my Show-Me homestate of Missiouri. I was tempted to scrawl one of those I love you messages for the other kids in
case we didn’t make it out of eco-hell. It didn’t feel like an overreaction at the time, but I managed not to spaz out in front of the kid and urge her to leave a message, too.
On the last push up the steep driveway, we gunned it up the slope, fist-sized rocks flung from our wake. We plopped on to the flat parking area, turned off the car, and just sat there, all wide-eyed and white knuckled. Our nerves were shot. We sat there silently, just grateful we’d made it. The owner came down and wondered why we hadn’t gotten out of the car. We were regrouping, prying our bloodless hands from the car’s handles, letting our heart-rates return to something reasonable. To add insult to injury he mentioned some French family making it effortlessly in a car with half the clearance of ours, making our Yaris sound like some kind of rainforest bush-whacking Hummer-tank in comparison to theirs.
Perhaps the thrill of being alive heightened our appreciation of this surreal place. Kinda like, we’re in a cloudforest in Costa Rica (and we’re alive). Look there’s a tree lousy with wild toucans (and we’re alive). A wild sloth in a tree right outside our bedroom window (and we’re alive). If only I could continue that level of intense gratefulness without it being preceded by moments of voluntarily self-inflicted terror.
Eco-wow. It was a rainforest oasis. The owner Jeff, originally from Chicago, was friendly and when not talking about French families, helpful. He had sprayed snake repellent around the house before we came. Thanks for that.
There were humming birds, loud jungle sounds from birds, frogs, who knows what else. We spent all of our time on the back deck watching the wildlife. Spectacular view of the jungle, the mountains, the ocean.
We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and needed to find some food. Our hunger over-rode our sensibilities, so we headed back to civilization. I clung to the mantra, “the car doesn’t flip at this angle, the car doesn’t flip at this angle.” The second time was less scary, probably because we knew our way, and we also did the whole trip in first gear. Made a huge difference.
We drove to Uvita beach, but it was raining and we were hungry, so didn’t stay long. The best food recommendation was at a restaurant by an old plane. It was true. Could have been our heightened sense of gratefulness to be alive, but it seemed like the best steak and fish we’d ever had. We asked the waiter how the plane ended up there. He replied that the owner of the land had a friend who asked if he wanted a plane. He said yes because how many times in your life does someone offer you a plane. Life could get very interesting if one agreed to every rare offer or you’d just end up with a plane in your yard.
We drove back to our rainforest digs in the dark like a boss (interesting how quickly one gets desensitized). Maybe Jeff will tell the next terrified group that the last Canadian/American family made it here in a Yaris in confused minutes.
The dark forest had come alive. We sat on the back deck trying to identify animal sounds while we watched the coconut-sized Bufo toads plop across the patio. We fell asleep in our butterfly bed to the nocturnal jungle orchestra. It was a good day to stay alive.
