First impressions of Costa Rica

DAY 88: Saturday, 12^th of May

approach into Costa Rica

Chasing aircrafts, a drive into the mountains and a cosy evening at Tuckers
                                  

Had a terrible night with dogs and traffic and feel totally trashed all day. At 10.00 we finally pick up our hired car (a smart looking four wheel drive) and set out to find the regional airport near San Jose, Tobias Balanos. Signposting doesn’t seem to apply to Costa Rican roads. So we struggle around in a dodgy looking suburb trying to find it.

At last success but then main hangers are fenced off and safe guarded. Phil sighs and gets grumpy about all these new airport regulations. What to do? How to get in there?

But here is an idea: we take out our pilot licenses and drive past the guard looking as we are just about to board our own private aircraft. It works.

The guard waves us in and we spend an hours of wandering around the 50 or more hangers full of interesting stuff that makes Phil’s heart bounce.

I am happy for him since most of the other attempts chasing photographs of rare aircraft didn’t work out. 

The ring road around San Jose is a big traffic jam and it takes at least 45min to get out of the city even though we never got in. So far Costa Rica doesn’t look to me like it’s one of the safest countries in Latin America: barbed wire around houses and properties, rubbish on the streets and shabby huts is all I can see so far. Once we leave the city it gets a little better. The road climbs up towards the two volcanoes Irazu (3432m) and Turrialba (3328m), the air becomes fresher and the landscapes more varied and pretty.

driving into the Costa Rican countryside

Various fruit and vegetables plantations show that Costa Rica is certainly not short of food. You can get about everything here from mangos, papaya, bananas, pineapple, maracuja, organs, apples etc. The weather though becomes increasingly dull and cloudy and we don’t see a single town that looks interesting enough to walk around a bit. We have to kill time. Phil’s ballooning friend Tucker doesn’t expect us until 4pm and now it’s only 1.30. We finally find a quirky looking restaurant and have a queso tortillas and a coffee, all tasting very nice.

After another 30min we arrive near Santa Cruz at Tuckers splendid house. Tucker is originally from the States but has been living here for 15 years. She runs an adventure company called ‘Serendipity’ which offers balloon flights, white water rafting, canoeing, cycling and God knows what else. She lives on her own with more or less 12 dogs in a fantastic house with a huge veranda and glass windows all around overlooking the valley beyond. It feels like a meteorological station up here: you can watch clouds passing underneath, thunder and lightning having a play with the volcanoes and mist rising up from the valley.

Tucker's amazing house

After chatting about ballooning, horse riding (she owns another ranch 5 hrs from here), living in Costa Rica (friendly place and crime obviously only in San Jose), politics (she wouldn’t want to live back in the US anymore and says she feels close to the Germans or Brits then to her own people), the weather (it’s the start of the rainy season here, thus the heavy rain), we have a delicious meal of potato and bean soup and mozzarella salad.

Then Tucker has a wonderful idea: her masseuse will do us a massage tonight! It was indeed superb and I felt so much better after that hour of pampering and a hot bath.

Day 88/12 May

Having collected a rather too smart-looking 4WD from the Avis facility deep in one of San Jose’s many dubious suburbs we travel east, round the by-pass on roads which must be the worst signposted anywhere I’ve been. Such indications as there are are carefully positioned after the intersection to which they refer. The countryside is disappointingly scruffy with ribbon development for many miles as the road climbs towards Irazu volcano.

The country pub

On the way we stop at Pavas general aviation airport where an engineer on agricultural aircraft is just putting his vintage aeroplane away and chats in Spanglish about my own interest and contacts in aviation. Aeronautical links make for instant friends worldwide. The airfield is scattered with the remains of aircraft that seem to have come to grief either whilst crop-spraying or drug-running – it’s difficult to tell which.

In the village of Santa Cruz, running well ahead of schedule for afternoon arrival with my long-standing friend Tucker Comstock, we decide to mark time by stopping for lunch of cheese tortillas and ‘Imperial’ beer. Two radios blast out entirely different types of Latin music to an otherwise empty room under a corrugated iron roof. A curious collection of weapons and agricultural instruments is suspended at intervals rather like some pagan ritual site.

proudly baking tortillas

We get the massage we’ve longed for with Tucker’s favourite local lady who turns out to be an expert at oil massage and sends us both off to bed ready for sleep at last.