Costa Rica Adventure: a few bumps in the road.

The road from Puerto Jiminez to Carate was indeed gnarly. It was dirt and gravel with lots of pot holes and several rivers and streams to cross. Because it had rained hard for six hours the day/night before, there was more water around than usual. In some streams, we could see the bottom and could drive right through (like the one above). But there were more that were too murky to tell...

 ...so Scott or I would wade in and find the shallowest path for the car to go through. As Scott waded through this river, some motorbikers came along and helped find the right path.

When we drove through, the car got stuck on the steep embankment on the other side; I jumped out of the car and pushed from the back while Scott hit the gas. The motorbikers came running and helped me push the car out of the river. We gave them a few bucks for saving us, and they said they would buy cigars in Carate (they were about 15 years old!).

 

The next big river looked like it might do us in, and it almost did. It was a few feet deep (it's up to the horse's belly above) and fairly steep on both sides.

The motorbikers banded together to carry their bikes across the river; if we could have carried our Jimny, we would have. Scott drove in and a tidal wave came up over the hood and splashed into the window. We are not going any deeper than this, we thought. A few miles later, though, there was another river that was deeper than all we had previously crossed. A Toyota Forerunner, significantly bigger and higher than our car, crossed and the water went to its windows. We drew the line there.

We were about seven miles from Finca Exotica, our eco-lodge, and we weren't going to give up altogether after we had come so far. We drove back to the nearest lodge and asked if we could park our car for a few days with a few hand gestures and the few Spanish words I learned from Dora the Explorer. The man we asked showed us where to park, took the machete off his waist and chopped two coconuts down so we could drink them before our hike, and we were on our way.

We repacked our luggage into our backpacks and left our suitcase in the car. We hiked down the road for about 1.5 miles back to the big river where someone from Finca Exotica was waiting in a car. One of the motorbikers who made it through the river had informed them we were on our way - yea! We waded across the river with our backpacks on our heads, and hitched a ride to Paradise.

More on that later.