Today I finished listening to a book called The Adventurer's Son by Roman Dial. A friend of mine recommended it to me when she found out I had just returned from Costa Rica. The connection is that the adventurer's son went on a wilderness adventure in Costa Rica. That truly is the extent of the connection. I certainly didn't do anything like the young man, or his father, did in the book. And I returned from Costa Rica safe and sound and happy for the experience. The adventurer's son did not return, and his father was far from happy when he went back home.
In the book, young Roman, an adventurer in his own right, goes on a trip through Mexico, down into Central America through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua before getting to Costa Rica. Roman did not stay at fancy resort hotels, swim in the pool, and eat delicious chef-prepared food. He was literally bush-whacking through the rainforests, climbing volcanoes and having scary (in my mind) adventure travels. Once he got to Costa Rica, he went to the southern border near Panama with a plan to go through Corcovado National Park. The hitch is that a guide is required, and Roman was uninterested in having a guide and planned to do his hiking on the sly, on his own.
The thing about that part of Costa Rica, though, is that since it is so untamed in many ways. There are some bad folks who go there to hide: drug dealers, illegal miners, and folks who don't want to be found. There are also many natural dangers, including poisonous snakes, big cats, heavy rains, and unpredictable terrain.
The first half of the book details the elder Dial's adventures in nature, becoming a father, and the adventures that he then took with his family and with his son in particular. The second half of the book is about the son's adventures, told from emails to his parents and friends. When young Roman fails to email, call, or text is parents on his "out" date - the date he planned to be out from the hike he was doing - the father gets concerned and goes to Costa Rica to rescue his son. It turns into a two year search.
As I was thinking about the book and about my own experiences in Costa Rica, there were a couple of memories that came to mind. Let me be clear: I never felt that I was in any danger while I was in Costa Rica. I stayed at beautiful, luxurious hotels. The excursions I went on were top-notch; the tour companies certainly did not want any harm to come to us while we were on their tour. Still, Costa Rica is a country known for it's bio-diversity, and there are wild animals there that can harm you. Lizzie and I both saw poisonous snakes, for example. We were in tourist areas and didn't have fear of people, but you always have to keep your wits about you, no matter where you travel, or even in your home city.
All that being said, here are a couple of things that made me think WTF at the time.
On our last full day in the country, Lizzie and I decided we would walk to the nearby town of Brasilito. It was just a 15 minutes stroll down the beach from our hotel on a well-travelled horse trail. We spoke with one of the women who was a hostess at the restaurant where we always had breakfast. We mentioned to her that we planned to go to Brasilito for lunch and that we were going to walk on the horse trail. We asked her if it was safe. She told us that she lives in Brasilito and that it was a nice little fishing village. She said the trail was safe as long as we went during the day. She said, "It is safe during the day, but everything changes at night." (That quote is a micro-memory that I wrote down.) I remember that both Lizzie and I talked about that sentence later, wondering what exactly changed at night. It kind of freaked me out, to be honest. The trail was fine and we were back well before dark. No problems.
The other thing that happened was when we went to the sloth "sanctuary" in Guanacaste. There is always a degree of faith and trust when you go on an excursion in a foreign country. Typically, the tour company will have a marked vehicle. In Costa Rica, the tour companies may have their name on the door of the vehicle and there will usually be a big yellow TURISMO sign somewhere on the vehicle as well.
When we got picked up at the hotel for the sloth tour, the man who came to get us was driving what was probably his personal vehicle. There was no identifying stickers or anything. Also, the guy, Leo, wasn't wearing any item of clothing that said "sloth sanctuary" or anything like that. I remember that Lizzie and I looked at each other, silently asking each other if this was going to be okay. The weird feeling continued as we drove along. Leo didn't have much to say. I asked how long it would take to get to the place, to which he replied that it would be about 15 minutes. We were on the main road, then he turned right into what looked like a little neighborhood, then left onto a dirt road going up a mountain. As the mountain got steeper, there were no more houses, just forest. Leo finally stopped at an unmarked gate and honked the horn a few times. The gate was made of some type of fabric that you couldn't see through. A person peered out from between the gates and opened it. Leo drove on through, and up the road a little way to a small clearing where he parked the car. There were no buildings, no signs, and no other people. Leo told us there would be four other people on the sloth tour and that his co-worker had gone to get them and they would be there soon. In the meantime, he lead us to an area with a tarp over it where he said a man would be giving us a pottery demonstration.
Within about ten minutes or so, the other people did arrive. The pottery demonstration was cool, we learned about the sanctuary and we saw a couple of sloths. Everything was fine, and we developed an appreciation for what Leo was working to accomplish there. On the ride back, we engaged in a very good conversation with him, and pointed out that he could have told us about what he was doing on the drive there. I know that both Lizzie and I would have felt a lot better about the whole situation if we knew what we were getting into to begin with.
Between the hostess's comment about everything being different at night and the mystery and silence of Leo on the way to the sloth place, it was the stuff of a scary novel.
The adventurer's son didn't do anything wrong. It seems like the very nature of the adventuring he was doing, and that his dad does, comes with inherent risks and dangers.
Just be careful out there.
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