Today my Central American backpacking adventure truly began.
I woke early, got my rather nice included breakfast of pancakes and fruit and quickly hailed a taxi outside the hostel taking me to the TransCaribe bus terminal.
In Costa Rica, just like Peru, the cities have no central bus terminals, rather the bus companies are scattered around the place. The TransCaribe, as the name suggests, serves the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica.
The journey to Tortuguero has been one of the most novel and interesting I've taken in Latin America.
The drive out of San Jose was slowed by resurfacing works and traffic jams, as we passed slum after slum after slum packed full of desperate Nicaraguan refugees fleeing their crumbling socialist dictatorship.
The intense humidity was occasionally interspersed by colossal downpours as we climbed out of the Central Valley where most of the Costa Rican population resides and down onto the jungle swept northeastern plains.
Or rather, were jungle-swept.
After a change of buses in the bustling outpost of Cariari, the true extent of deforestation in this region of Costa Rica was laid bare. Mile after mile of banana plantations have swept across this region, both destroying the rainforest and contaminating the rivers with the toxic chemicals used to harvest them. Whats more, the bananas are a symbol of Costa Rica's history of racist division. First, the banana plantations were where former slaves from Jamaica were put to work in the early 1900s. These days its Nicaraguan refugees working for a pittance and fuelling a rather familiar local-immigrant employment-related resentment, here in Costa Rica.
But still, it was cool seeing a banana crossing (literally a zip wire with bananas hanging from it to get them from 1 side of the highway to the other).
At La Pavona, the next step of journey is boarding a boat to the village of Tortuguero. The journey took about an hour, albeit it may have usually been shorter given how large the skipper was...
And then I arrived in Tortuguero!
Tortuguero is an isolated, once turtle hunting (hence the name... turtle hunter in Spanish) now turtle sightseeing tourism capital of Costa Rica, in turtle watching high season... yeah I'm here to see turtles...
The town is utterly sweltering! But in a way, I like it, because everything about Costa Rica appears to take place at an appropriately slow pace. Plus, there are the regular sprinklings or drownings (you never know which you're gonna get) to cool you down.
The town is super touristic, most of the buildings here are either tour operators or restaurants serving tourist food. Luckily I managed to find a delicious Salvadoran Pupusa - a tortilla with fried pork and beans inside, and set off to book some tours for tomorrow.
Most interesting was booking my turtle tour. I was told it was best to book at the guide's office but the one guy there was taking years so I decided to check out the operators. One operator I stumbled on, doubled up as a barbers. There, I booked a tour to see turtles (for tomorrow night) with Emilio, a local from Tortuguero who I had an interesting chat with about how much the town has changed because of tourism, how difficult it is to make enough to live in expensive Costa Rica and the problem with Nicaraguans flooding the town, escaping violence in their country just up the beach.
Tortuguero then is a strange place. It's got a lot of backpackers, but also I've seen more kids than anywhere else I've been - a lot of families especially from Europe. I'm going to take it chill and have an early night as I'm still in part recovering from the Laguna 69 hike and I've got an early start tomorrow.
Pura Vida!