My Costa Rica Trip in Numbers

Eight nights in Costa Rica didn't sound like a lot. Neither did the five different hotels and many locations I'd be visiting. The distances between these places didn't sound like much either: only one hundred kilometers from Arenal Volcano to the Monteverde Cloud Forest, two consecutive highlights. Sixty miles wouldn't take long, right? Well that's when the math started defying my North American logic.

The ride took over three hours, not counting a stop for lunch. First I had to drive around Lake Arenal, the body of water whose hydroelectric dam provides Costa Rica with twelve percent of its electricity. (Passing below towering wind turbines reminded me that ninety-nine percent of the country's total electrical energy is generated by renewable sources.) But then the pavement started disappearing from the roads along the last thirty-five kilometers or so.

Initially it looked like there was a resurfacing project underway, but then it became clear that sections of the asphalt had just disintegrated. Potholes became more numerous before the route simply turned into rutted gravel roads. As a rule, everywhere, bridges were single lanes: "CEDA EL PASO," postings reminded me. When I saw a sign for Santa Elena, the main town near Monteverde, indicating it lay twenty kilometers ahead, I sighed to my companion, "This will be the longest twenty kilometers of your life."

Nevertheless I wasn't too weary to pull over shortly before I reached that night's hotel and to snap a picture of a rainbow stretching between me and the cloud forest beyond. After all, I was joyfully in the midst of compiling a list of over one hundred new bird species. By the end of the trip I would have encountered fifteen brand-new hummingbirds alone. A slow, bumpy road was not going to deter me.

Of course I was humbled by the fact that over eight hundred bird species call Costa Rica home for at least part of the year. I had much better luck with the monkeys, seeing all four of them: howler, spider, squirrel, and capuchin. One of the two sloth species and three of the six motmots wasn't a bad tally either. Add twelve tanagers, ten warblers, five woodpeckers, and a quetzal, and I started to feel like a real naturalist.

On my long drives, like from San José to Arenal, the one to Monteverde, and the longest, to Quepos on the Pacific Coast, I saw mostly farms and pastures dotted with small towns and villages. Everywhere, farmers drove tractors, cattle grazed lazily, and Mack trucks hauled produce. The landscape teamed with crops and groves, not protected at all except for forests surrounding distant volcanic mountain peaks or hugging estuaries. A vast palm plantation stretched for many miles along the coast as I got close to Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica's smallest National Park. (Costa Rica is the sixteenth largest palm oil producer in the world.)

So I wasn't surprised that only a quarter of Costa Rica's land is protected as a national park or a wildlife preserve. But fortunately at the same time, it is the only Latin American country to have stopped and reversed deforestation. I imagined how other countries that didn't have Costa Rica's reputation for excellent stewardship of its natural resources fared. How safe were the flora and fauna in much poorer Nicaragua neighboring to the north, or in Panama to the south?

The first Costa Rican I met was Francisco, at the car rental agency near San José's international airport. The last was my wildlife guide Antonio at Carara National Park near Jaco. The men were kind and amiable, both patient and extremely helpful in their contrasting jobs. All along the seven hundred kilometers I drove, and the dozens of miles of trails I hiked, every Tico and Tica I encountered was similar in their disposition. Imagine my surprise when I asked the Monteverde gas station attendant to clean my windshield, and then he washed most of the car.

I couldn't help but be hopeful when each and every person smiled and wished me, "Pura vida." It was sometimes just a simple greeting, or a thank you. But it was very often also a way of telling me everything was going to be alright.