Hiking through the "Most Biologically Intense Place on Earth"

A view of the fer-de-lance that we
narrowly avoided

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" my trail guide Felix yelled in one panicked breath as he came to an abrupt halt and shoved me backwards. We had both been within one step of a fer-de-lance snake that lay coiled up in the middle of our path. As Felix later explained, the snake was the deadliest in all of Latin America; if one of us had been bitten, we'd have been dead within two hours without getting serious medical attention. The antidote he was carrying wasn't going to cut it.

That news unnerved me a bit. At that point, we were smack in the middle of our hike and the nearest hospital was a four-hour hike and a plane ride away. We would have been in serious trouble if Felix hadn't had his eyes open or if the snake had been facing our direction instead of away from us. Especially disconcerting was the fact that Felix, a guide on these trails for over ten years, seemed to be fairly shaken himself by the close encounter. When I asked him what we would have done in the case of a bite, he shook his head and very sincerely responded: "Man, I don't know. I really don't even wanna think about that."

This was just a glimpse of my introduction to Corcovado National Park, the Osa Peninsula's rainforest that National Geographic once famously called the "most biologically intense place on earth."

One of my favorite animals of the
trip: the lesser anteater

Although the trip was a brief one, it certainly did not disappoint. In just two days of hiking and camping, I saw dozens of wild macaws (one was kind enough to relieve itself on my backpack), a number of coatimundis, four different species of monkey, a handful of peccaries, two river otters, an anteater, a poison dart frog, and two more deadly snakes. I was also informed by another group that we narrowly missed seeing four sharks circling the water offshore. Darn! The views were beautiful, the trails were challenging, and virtually everything was new to me. I've done plenty of hiking in the US before, but Corcovado was definitely an entirely different experience.

Preparing to board the
infamous collectivo

On the first day of our trip, we began the morning with a two-and-a-half hour ride on the one-of-a-kind "collectivo," a small truck that serves as a crude form of public transportation in Osa. With over forty people packed into the covered truck bed and with deep potholes littering the already bumpy road, the collectivo was an adventure. It somehow eliminated personal space in a way that the even the NYC subways fail to do, and the whole time I kept likening the experience to playing a two-and-a-half hour game of Twister on the rickety Coney Island Cyclone. Butt-to-hip. Forearm-to-forehead. Elbow-to-ribcage. Armpit-to-cheek. It was like speed-dating for body parts. My favorite part of the ride was when Rochelle, one of the girls who came on the trip with us, tried to get her camera out and temporarily blinded the man next to her by accidentally taking a picture of him, double flash and all, at point blank range. That was awesome.

This was a common view
on our first day of hiking

Once we got off the collectivo, we had 20km to hike to the ranger station where we planned to camp out. It was a very pretty trek along the Pacific that brought us in and out of the coastal rainforest and onto the beach. We saw lots of wildlife, drank some coconut milk, and helped a fellow hiker repair a shoe that had lost its sole. A couple of hours before sundown, we arrived at the ranger station and pitched our tents. One of the trail guides was even kind enough to give us his extras for dinner so we didn't even have to cook. (Although I think that irked my friend Juan Luis more than anything else; he'd carried 2kg of rice all day for nothing!)

The next morning, I met Felix and he told me that he'd be hiking out through the heart of the park and coming out the other side. That was the hike I'd been hoping to do before coming down, but I had been originally told that the trail was closed because of heavy rain and high tides in the rivers. I was pretty disappointed about not being able to go, so when Felix invited me along I didn't hesitate to join. I parted ways with the friends I had come down with and planned to meet up with them in a day or two. Before I left, though, I had to switch backpacks with Rochelle, as mine had come apart at the seams the day before. I was hoping to avoid a repeat of our hike into the park, during which I'd been forced to carry my backpack overhead for the last hour-and-a-half of our hike into the park. Since Rochelle was planning to take a boat back to our meeting point, we figured the backpack swap wouldn't be too much of a burden for her. Hopefully that was the case!

One of the milder river crossings
of the day

This second hike was even better than the first. Our small group consisted of Felix, a 29-year-old British guy named Lewis, and myself. In total, we traveled 31km and managed over twenty river crossings in about 7 hours. We left the coastal rainforest and really got to explore the thick of Corcovado. It wasn't the most challenging hiking I've done, but it was undoubtedly the most dangerous. In addition to the snakes, Felix informed us that roughly 80% of the spiders in Corcovado were poisonous. Needless to say, we had to be on our guard the entire time! It was definitely an exciting way to spend some of my final days in Costa Rica and I know it's an experience I'll always remember.

Tomorrow, I'm heading to Chirripó with my boss Pablo to climb the highest mountain in Costa Rica. With any luck, we can avoid another fer-de-lance disaster!

Settling In

Rafting down the Pacuare

These last few weeks have been a lot of fun. A group from UC Berkeley arrived on June 13th, so I've had a bunch more people to hang out with. A couple weeks ago, I got to go with them on an awesome white-water rafting trip on the Pacuare River. It was the coolest thing I've done in a long time! I went rafting in Colorado last summer, but this was so much better. We spent four hours on the river, stopping for a buffet lunch on the shore in the middle of the trip. The coolest part was that we were out there for several hours but never saw a trace of civilization -- no roads, no power lines, no trash. We were just surrounded by rain forest, waterfalls, and beautiful scenery. I can't remember ever being in a place that felt so remote and untouched. Very cool!

A view of Manuel Antonio
National Park on our hike

Last weekend I opted for the beach experience, and went with a few kids from the Berkeley group down to Manuel Antonio. We found a cheap hotel that came out to $10 per person per night, and had a great time. We spent all day Saturday at the beach, which was very pretty and had awesome waves. Then, I spent some time exploring the area with a guy from the Berkeley group, Trevor, and we unknowingly found a way to swim into a national park without paying. It was probably not the safest thing in the world, as the tides were strong and there were lots of rocks surrounding us, but it was definitely a fun thing to do. The next day, we went back to the park (this time we paid!) and spent some time hiking and watching a big group of white-faced monkeys.

Up close and personal with
a white-faced monkey

Work has also been more interesting lately. I've been keeping a separate blog and a YouTube channel for the Berkeley group, which I'm hoping will help promote these types of programs better for next summer. It also gives me some more experience using social media and, most importantly, an excuse to attend the most interesting lectures and activities. During these next two weeks, they'll be all over Costa Rica working on different types of community projects. I'm hoping I can talk my way into heading down to one or two of them for a few days!

In addition to the social media projects, I spent the last week or so helping to edit a chapter of a book that the Vice Rector here, Amr Abdalla, is submitting for publication. It was a bit painstaking, but definitely a worthwhile experience. I never really considered how many different stages there are in publication and how many people are involved in the process.

For the next month that I'm here, the workload looks to be fairly light. Another college group that was supposed to come down canceled on us a few weeks ago, so we won't have as much to do in terms of support and logistics. Since I'll probably have some more free time, I worked out a deal at a local language school that's going to allow me to teach English classes in return for Spanish lessons. It will be pretty lame if I get back to NY without being able to speak a decent amount of Spanish, so I'm going to work much harder at it these last few weeks. (I'm very glad the Berkeley group came down, but the influx of English speakers definitely didn't help me leave that comfort zone!)

I'll be sure to write another post soon. There's lots to share, but I don't want to cram it all into one long entry!