No Thai Like the Present

Hey folks. Welcome to my new and improved travel blog. After carefully calculating the potential wrath (and existence) of a fire and brimstone first-testament Yaweh, I have decided to retire the Tales of the Wandering Jew. In its place has arisen The Throne of Immortality, a play on a favorite quote from the immortal Don Quixote. I have transferred all of my original posts over so as not to deprive any new or future readers of the pleasure of my history of madness.

Yes, I have once again flown the proverbial coop--a strange saying if there ever was one, given the poor aerodynamic properties of even the most advanced modern-day chicken coops. After about a fortnight of non-stop flying I have found myself in the not so unpleasant berg of Bangkok, of which I have absolutely nothing to say about at this point. For those keeping score at home, I have bested the initial odds, with both my rucksack and vital appendages intact.

I have been waiting a decade for the opportunity to use rucksack in a sentence and not have it be a veiled reference to a vicious blow to the genitalia. It's really the only reason for this post. Well, that and the photos I have just added. Cheers.

Insect-Inside

Despite the fact that they are the dominant life form on this planet, most of us are not particularly fond of insects. They have too many eyes, too many legs and are generally unpleasant to look at. Buzzing bugs zipping past our ears tend to elicit a duck-and-cover response. An unhealthy fear of insects, known as entomophobia, is an extremely common trait. "Entomophobia" is derived from the Greek entomos, meaning "insect", and phobos, meaning, "Get it the hell off of me!" Many of us have experienced this sort of instinctive response at least once in our lives. For others, it is a lifelong obsession. My sister, for example, has an arachnophobia so intense that she is completely unable to enter a room with a spider in it until someone has smashed it into a bloody pulp with a full 32 volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica. This happens to be somewhat endearing, though difficult to clean up. If the thought of creepy crawlies underfoot, overhead or in your bed is of general concern, I don't know that I can recommend Costa Rica as a travel destination. Of the estimated 505,000 species of insect that call this country home, I think I found about 493,000 of them in my bedroom.

I spent the remainder of my time in-county hiking solo around the rainforest that surrounded Luna Lodge. The howler monkeys would wake me around 5:00AM, whereupon I would lay reading in a hammock until breakfast, then lace up my boots and trudge off into the wild. I encountered many fascinating sights. At one point I stood dumbfounded and watched a group of leaves, wobbling and waving, walk vertically down the side of a tree. This seemed impossible, but then again, I have seen the Magical Goat Trees of Morocco, so all bets were off. I rubbed my eyes until I saw twice as many leaves doing the Fantasia Dance down the side of the tree, but they weren't imaginary. I have seen many leaves in my time, but never one with the safety-conscious motivation to carefully see itself down to the forest floor. On closer inspection the mystery was solved. Columns of barbarous leaf-cutter ants were victoriously hauling their plunder back to their nest.

Ants have always fascinated me. As a child I would lovingly torch the little buggers to death with a lighter and a can of hairspray. After dropping the pyromania in my early teens, I began to appreciate their more subtle qualities. The organizational skills they instinctively possess are admirable, and their colony structure reveals an impressive social hierarchy. More advanced species are often found performing incredible feats, such as building bridges and ladders from their own bodies, or eliciting real emotion from the audience during a midsummer production of Mac Beth. I was lucky enough to encounter several battalions of army ants during my visit. Army ants are vicious. In addition to raiding other ant colonies for slaves, they are carnivorous. Up to four hundred thousand at a time raid en masse, an inky river of death that devours everything in its path. I managed to avoid the carnage by pulling my socks up over the cuff of my pants, though I still got bit a few times. In retrospect maybe I shouldn't have tried swimming in that particular river.

On my final night at Luna Lodge, I was enjoying dinner with a few of the other guests when one of the women let out a little shriek and jumped back from the table. Our attention was quickly diverted to a most unexpected guest. At the far end of the table slithered a young boa constrictor. Since boas are not particularly dangerous snakes to begin with, and this one was rather small, we left him there while we finished our meal. He eventually constricted, then ate, a delicious baked potato before slithering off into the night. Fare thee well Costa Rica, I shall return.

Here (and there, and there!) There Be Monsters

National Geographic once called Corcovado National Park "the most biologically intense place on Earth". When assessing the competition, its marvelous array of flora and fauna managed to edge out the Galapagos, the Amazon basin and a particularly seedy Detroit health clinic. Corcovado is home to over 500 different species of trees, 140 species of mammals, 400 species of birds, 116 reptile and amphibian species, 40 species of fish, and, for a little while, at least one Wandering Jew. This high level of biological diversity can easily be attributed to the thirteen major ecosystems that exist within the park, including montane forest, cloud forest, jolillo forest, prairie forest, alluvial plains forest, swamp forest and Forest Whitaker. Not surprisingly, Corcovado is widely considered the crown jewel in Costa Rica's extensive national park system.

Though tourism has ramped up over the last few years, the remoteness of the park still keeps day-trekkers at bay. I had already survived a puddle-jumper flight and braved remote roads, but I still had not made it to the park entrance. The most dangerous challenge was yet to come. Walking down a hot and humid beach. Scary, I know. It gives me sunburn just thinking about it. No roads lead into this particular park and no buses crammed with sunburnt tourists ply its shores. In fact, Corcovado is only accessible by hiking a few kilometers down the shore at low tide. Misjudge the timing and you will end up swimming there. Since I was unfamiliar with the tide schedule, I thought it best to allow a guide to show me the way. This was bit of an ego deflator since I prefer to do these things by myself, but the lodge had someone available. Thankfully it ended up being a very small group, just me and two other people. Unfortunately they were honeymooners, so I landed the plum role of the third wheel.

Hiking through the park was beyond spectacular. I saw more wildlife in a single hike then I have seen in the previous five years of hiking combined. It was like hiking through a zoo, only the animals were not in cages and you had a much higher chance of getting mauled by a hungry cougar. There was still cotton candy though. It turned out that hiking with a guide was incredibly informative. For example, I learned that there is not one, not two, but three different species of monkey that will throw poo at you. The variety and abundance of wildlife was shocking. Every time I took a step, the ground literally jumped to life. Lizards dashed, frogs hopped, insects took flight. We spotted anteaters, coatis, hermit crabs, land crabs, tiny frogs, giant spiders, hawks, macaws, pelicans, toucans, howler monkeys, spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, bats, iguanas, salamanders, skinks, and lots and lots of coconuts. My favorite was the Jesus Lizard, which can literally walk on water and presumably tastes better than a communion wafer.

There are several trails that wind their way through the park, mostly through dense jungle. We took a coastal track where several rivers needed to be forded. We eventually stopped at the Rio Sirena, the largest and most dangerous of the river crossings. At high tide it is not only full of crocodiles, but sharks and stingrays swim upstream through the estuary. The full hike, which I am sorry to say I did not do, takes four full days and covers about 60 kilometers. I would love to head back and give it a go, so if anyone would like to join me for that particular adventure, please let me know. Despite all the threats--sharks, crocks, poisonous snakes, jaguars, peccaries, ocelots, and poo-flinging monkeys--the most dangerous of all is an unexpectedly stealthy killer, the dastardly coconut. As it turns out, falling coconuts kill more people in the park every year than wildlife does. They drop silently from the trees, splitting heads and spilling innocent blood. Damn you coconuts, damn you.