Not exactly an expert equestrian, I knew Palomo and I were in trouble when a trio of large dogs rushed our posse. The dogs barked and snarled and nipped at the heels of the horses. The otherwise slow-pokey Palomo suddenly burst into warp speed. I jammed my feet into the stirrups and my right cinch broke. My saddle began to slide. I was falling off a runaway horse. I called to Billy, who is half-deaf, and to Melby, who spoke no English. They both smiled at my speed and gave me a supportive thumbs up.
God bless Palomo. That old horse seemed to know exactly what was happening, and as soon as we outran those damnable dogs, he slowed down and stopped. I dismounted to explain my predicament to our guide. As I began, I saw out of the corner of my eye a large woman in a small bikini running up the beach waving my stirrup in the air. Behind her, the three snarling dogs.
For a different side of Costa Rica, La Costa de Papito offers bungalows near the laid-back village of Puerto Viejo, where there is no bank but lots of beach time.
(La Costa De Papito)
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This time Melby took Palomo's reins and held the horse calmly while thanking the woman, taking the stirrup and tying the leather strap so that we could ride back to the stable without incident.
We did.
Path to Punta Mona
Ecotourists are migrating to Costa Rica in massive numbers. According to the Washington-based Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development, more than 1.1 million tourists are visiting Costa Rica every year. The center points out that the tourist industry is scrambling to provide hotels and restaurants and enough sexy attractions to appeal to the thundering herd. And it raises the critical question: How should Costa Rica "take advantage of demand for protected habitat to build healthy tourism industries . . . while still maintaining the integrity of the resources tourists want to visit?"
Nearly everywhere we turned, we saw ads for newly built rain forest excursions, some offering vast platforms connected by swinging bridges or slides, others using long slides or aerial trams. We decided to see the viney sights on our own.
On a Friday morning we followed Billy and Jacqueline in our car to Manzanillo, beyond which there is just jungle for miles. And then Panama.
We parked in sand near the beach behind Restaurant Maxi, a beachside Afro-Caribbean eatery and bar. And we started walking. We waded across a rivulet that led into the sea and we picked up an ancient coastal path. The sand became dirt; the dirt, mud. As we hiked deeper and deeper into the jungle, we passed through stands of gargantuan trees and ferns the size of Humvees. Overhead, we began to hear strange sounds, like long, low grunting sounds. "There are the howler monkeys," Jacqueline said. "We will see them."
We walked for another couple of hours. We spotted exotic birds, including a long, red macaw, several scarlet-red tree frogs (said to be poisonous) and spiders the size of my hand. We did not see the monkeys.
When the going got steeper, we used roots as footholds and grapevines as tow ropes. We came upon a clearing that turned out to be a small banana finca in the middle of nowhere. The owners must travel by horse because there were no discernible roads to be found.
Eventually the path got too muddy to continue. We were just shy of Punta Mona, a little fishing village named for the howler monkeys we had heard but not seen.
Jacqueline found a side path. As we made our way toward a beach, she pointed into the trees and there were a dozen or more howler monkeys, silent now and watchful. They moved like shadows in the trees.
Lost City of Guayabo
On our last day in Costa Rica, we drove back toward San Jose, but before reaching the capital city, we took a detour into the central region to visit the lost city of Guayabo.
