Burt Bacharach and Hal David weren’t referring to the Costa Rican capital when they wrote the hit ‘Do You Know the Way to San Jose’, but any visit to Costa Rica will no doubt include some time in its heaving capital. It’s charms aren’t obvious, but dig deep and you’ll find galleries and boutiques in neighbourhoods layered with history like Barrio Amón, amazing museums (guests enter the National Museum of Costa Rica through a butterfly house), and great nightlife.
The reason you’ve come to this Central American country, however, has nothing to do with discovering the urban charms of Chepe, as it’s known. Open the dictionary at ‘tropical paradise’ and you’ll spy a photograph of Costa Rica. It is the epitome of what travellers began looking for once Alex Garland stuffed up the tiny pockets of Thailand that had yet to be overrun by keen beachgoers. Here, you’ll find soft eco-adventure – from horse riding along palm-fringed beaches to rafting down fast-flowing rivers – in plentiful supply. Marvel at the volcanic peaks of Poas and Arenal before heading to the white-sand, palm-fringed coastline of Manuel Antonio National Park. (For lovers of lazy wildlife, this is one of the best places in Costa Rica to see sloths.)
Those eager to explore the rainforest and its creatures – squawking scarlet macaws, giant anteaters, sleek jaguars – should head to Puerto Jimenez. Located on the Osa Peninsula, it’s not only handy for Corcovado National Park, but, should you head south, you’ll also discover the tiny village of Cape Matapalo, with its pristine beaches and great waves.
Inland is the spectacular Monteverde Cloud Forest, a 10,500-hectare reserve consisting of 90 per cent virgin forest. The site has the largest number of orchids anywhere in the world (about 500 species in all), as well as huge numbers of birds – the rare and scared quetzal is still regularly seen here – frogs and even bigger animals like the agouti (a large rodent). The continental divide runs right through the reserve, so you can put one foot on the Caribbean side and other on the Pacific.
When cruising the Black River in Jamaica’s southern parish of St Elizabeth, there’s a chance your guide will tell you that the river’s famous crocodiles are tame. They lie stretched out on the river banks, sunning themselves, or hovering just beneath the water’s surface under the cover of mangroves, steely eyes just visible. They look fearsome, but most have names, which many of them actually seem to recognise.
Tame or not, the crocodiles here are certainly abundant. As you make your way along the murky river, you’re guaranteed to get your money’s worth. And you won’t just see crocodiles – you’ll come across egrets, herons and other creatures flitting through the lush vegetation.
Whether they consider the crocs to be tame is another matter that you can ponder as you cruise. The river is the longest in Jamaica, named for the mossy layer on its bed which turns the water black, although you may actually find it more of a sludgy shade of brown.
Towards the end of October, the cobbled streets of Oaxaca are not only filled with the usual stream of tourists who come to enjoy the rich culture and cuisine. Around ever corner and every alleyway lurk papier-mâché skeletons bedecked in their finery, and otherworldly beings setting out to spook. Shop windows are filled with skulls and bony beings carefully crafted in sugar or chocolate, and decorative altars to the dead are erected in hotel lobbies.
But don’t be afraid. This annual festival of the dead, Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is an uplifting celebration. While the evenings buzz with frantic street parties, the traditional activities centre mainly around homes and cemeteries as families welcome back those who have passed on for this briefest of visits. The spirits of the town’s children are the first to return on 31 October, with 1 November the time of the adult spirits and 2 November marking the night of farewell. As important a feature on the calendar as Christmas, this annual event coincides with Halloween, but is quite different from the witches and ghouls you may be familiar with – instead merging the traditions of All Hallows’ Eve, brought to Mexico by Spanish colonisers, with the pre-Colombian traditions of Mexico’s indigenous peoples.
The dead are depicted as smiling and dancing, and are greeted with music and a selection of their favourite foods piled high on the decorative altars. Graves in the cemeteries are decorated with flowers and candles by the friends and families, with many spending the night there to reflect and reminisce.
I’d never thought of street furniture as being particularly erotic but then I’d never seen a woman make love to a sign post either. Was I surprised? What do you think? Her flailing left leg booted me on the ankle. When I looked down she was seated on the footpath wearing the tiniest hot pants, legs akimbo, back arched, groin grinding against this now phallic object. Not something you see every day back home.
There’s no doubt that Carnival in Trinidad is sexy. It’s a time when people want to display themselves and be noticed in all their loud and sensual glory. But there are so many other facets playing on the senses that to focus on one would be to do an injustice to the overall brilliance of the occasion. Take ‘steel pan’ drumming, easily identifiable as the sound of the Caribbean and the focus of the renowned Panorama competition. This annual extravaganza between steel pan drummers is fought out under the floodlights on the massive stage in the Queens Park Savannah and is regarded as a festival highlight. Bands are heralded onto the massive Savannah Park stage by stilt walkers and skimpily clad flag-wavers dressed in band colours. Each performance lasts about 10 minutes, urged on by the crowd’s good-natured baying and dancing as wave after wave of shimmering metallic crescendos are sent out across the park.
If you can’t get a ticket into the main event, grab a few cool beers and head off to alternative pan yards like Phase II or Desperados in the week before the final. Ask any local or just follow your ears. Along with hundreds of spectators, you’ll feel like you’re at an impromptu open-air jamming session. Steel drums, be it a two pan tenor or six bass drums, belt out a full musical scale, complete with sharps and flats.
As with any event held during Trinidad’s carnival, the boundary between performer and audience is blurred. Trinidadians are not known for their shyness. It’s just not in their nature. So, while a hundred musicians send wave after shimmering wave of melodic beats deep into the night air, I’m swept along in a giant conga line, snaking through the dancing crowd. The rum flows, the music blurs and my ripped shirt says I’m having a great time.
Dexterity is a carnival trait, whether bodily, musically or verbally. The best demonstration of the latter is Extempo, or the art of singing extemporaneously around a given subject. Like most carnival events it’s held at Queens Park Savannah on the Friday before Carnival. Here you’ll eavesdrop on verbal jousting of the most deliciously barbed kind. The nature of Extempo is to demolish your opponent with wit. If you’ve seen Eminem’s film 8 Mile, then you get an idea of the style. Only here the music is calypso, soft and bouncy and understated. In the past, digs would be made at the expense of British rulers. Today it still has the power to annoy governmental figures.
The competition is brutal. These are people who could take Eminem apart word for word, leaving him just a pile of quivering consonants. Contestants are only told what the theme is once on stage. The mental alacrity, humour and ability to weave a narrative can make you blush with embarrassment for those on the receiving end. Each phrase, honed in just seconds, contains innuendo – sexual, political and otherwise.
But then Carnival is based on mockery. Initially introduced to Trinidad by the French, it was a way slaves could parody their owners, jibing at their extravagant balls and masks. Carnival does have its critics. Many eminent voices, including prominent Trinidadian journalist and writer Earl Lovelace, feel that knowledge of the origins of carnival are being eroded by a lack of education at schools and by the globalisation of the celebration; it’s now just another international event to sponsor and brand.
Take my lady of the lamp post. The night of her performance was J’ouvert, from the French, ‘day break’. Traditionally, this is a night when whip-carrying devils, oil-covered Jab Jabs, stilt-walking Moko Jumbies and many other figures from African folklore would come out. Sadly I came across none. Instead from the wee hours of Monday morning until sun-up, countless thousands bounced along in the vibrating wake of massive trucks packed with amps ambling their way all over Port of Spain. There seems little acknowledgement for the roots of carnival in Trinidad.
In my group, an old ambulance had been converted into a bar. Rum was the order of the morning. All anyone is expected to do is to follow the music. For the uninitiated, soca is a fusion of calypso with insistent Indian beats, dominated by a whacking bass and rapid-fire lyrics. When our truck encountered another posse the sound collision was astonishing. I feel sure those caught in the narrow space between the two passing trucks would have had their brain pulped and stomach eviscerated by the sheer monstrous volume.
You can still experience old-style traditions at the Kiddies Carnival on the weekend before Carnival. Don’t be put off by the name. You will definitely meet plenty of whip-cracking devils, jab molassies, bats and imps. As it happens, on Carnival Tuesday I was ‘lucky’ to run into some blood (well, red paint) carrying demons who well and truly left their mark on me.
This is the day of carnival when a whole year’s worth of costume planning, preparation and pent-up anticipation is finally released. The highpoint is the crossing of the Savannah Stage with your ‘band’ to perform for judges. Thereafter you are let loose on the city to head for other marking points. But what are judges actually judging? Drunkenness? An inability to shake one’s booty like a local? Who knows. You get no badge apart from the one sewn into your memory. However, I did return home with something fleetingly tangible – a bath full of pink water as the last of the red paint seeped from my hair.
Three decades ago Nicaragua – gripped by civil war and rendered a tourism basket case – was a no-go zone. Today, much has changed, and the Central American nation is a picturesque land of peace – the rest of the world, however, hasn’t quite caught on.
While nearby Colombia is emerging from a tumultuous past as a travel hot spot, and neighbouring Costa Rica has long been popular with American tourists, Nicaragua remains blissfully off the radar. Yet the country has so much to offer: rumbling volcanoes ripe for sandboarding, quaint colonial cities, pristine beaches, enviable surf breaks, smiling locals, enchanting cloud forests, and a rich biodiversity that includes animals like toucans, macaws, leopards and even freshwater bull sharks. Home to one of the world’s largest lakes and abundant eco-tourism opportunities (more than 20 per cent of the country is protected), Nicaragua is the kind of place where you can genuinely get off the beaten track. But the winds of change are blowing and it won’t be long before the developers move in, bringing with them the tourist masses. Get there now.
This bare speck of a nation might well have been the fictional place the Beach Boys imagined in their 1988 song ‘Kokomo’. Turquoise water. Check. A variety of beaches. Check. Stunning marine life and nature. Check. Lots of cocktails. Check. Hammocks. Check. Amiable people that live up to the island cliché. Check. It all adds up to make that fantastic island holiday complete.
It is also a great place to park your yacht and stay awhile. Given its close proximity to Florida, the Bahamas does have resorts filled with the requisite podgy and pasty tourists from developed nations although you can definitely escape that scene if you head to some of the smaller islands.
You’ll certainly enjoy the island life. Oh, and definitely, definitely don’t forget to pack your sunnies – all that white sand can be blinding!
If Chucky had an evil playground, it’d be Isla de las Munecas (Island of the Dolls) in Mexico City. Haunted by the body of a girl he found floating in the canals, the island’s only inhabitant – Don Julian Santana – spent 50 years collecting and hanging dolls from trees to ward off evil spirits.
Unfortunately, it didn’t all go to plan and the dolls became possessed with the spirits of deceased girls instead. Rumour has it if you spend enough time on the island you’ll catch a doll’s arm twitching or sets of eyes following you as you walk.
In 2001, Santana mysteriously suffered a similar fate and was found drowned in a canal. Whether or not you believe the decayed dolls or the island itself are haunted, peering into the vacant eyes of a soulless dolly, riddled with mould and insects, will leave you feeling terrified.
At Amansala’s Bikini Boot Camp, a hardcore team of trainers will sweat away your insecurities and have you looking the business in no time. And the surrounds couldn’t be more idyllic. Imagine having Mexico’s Riviera Maya as your military camp HQ while you put your body through its paces on glinting white sand with the Caribbean Sea lapping at your toes.
Trade weights for coconuts and the treadmill for twilight jogs on the beach. The camp also serves up a sweat-fest of salsa and tribal dancing, kayaking, volleyball and yoga – whatever your physical fancy. Oh, and bikinis are optional if you would rather work out more modestly attired.
Energy-balancing therapy is all about good vibrations. Amatierra’s sound therapy tune-up sessions use singing crystal-quartz bowls to relax the mind, while the meditative treatments will rebalance your chakras (energy centres).
Raise your vibratory levels to the rhythm of the Costa Rican rainforest and be at one with the environment and your own inner tempo.
The treatment draws on the ancient Tibetan practice of playing singing bowls, which are a type of bell said to restore any frequencies in your body that are out of whack and potentially diseased. Therapies can also combine Biomat treatments, which use the power of amethyst crystals to soothe the body. For something more hands on book in for a horse therapy session.
Open your imagination and leave sound of mind and body.
As I climbed into my hammock I ran through the checklist of safety measures that, after a week trekking through the Darien jungle, was becoming almost a routine.
My hammock was tied high enough to allow jaguars, pumas and caiman to pass underneath. All our packs were likewise suspended from the branches to make them less attractive homes for the dreaded fer de lance snakes. Suspended as we were from the trees, it would even be possible for one of the hundred-strong herds of killer wild pigs that inhabit this jungle to pass unhindered through the camp. My mossie-net was well sealed to keep out the mosquitoes, the real terror of one of the world’s worst malarial regions. With luck, the thick fabric of my jungle hammock would even provide some protection in case of attack by unpredictable Africanised bees. I had sprayed the hammock strings with industrial strength DEET to deter scorpions, spiders, red ants and (I hoped) snakes. Lanterns had been hung up around the camp to keep vampire bats at bay. I was uncomfortably aware, however, that these lights could also reveal our position to guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug traffickers and sundry ne’er-do-wells who inhabited this area. There are many reasons why Panama’s Darien Gap is often described as the most dangerous place on earth.
Over the centuries, many adventurers have attempted to explore this mysterious wilderness. The vast majority fell foul of what became known as the ‘curse of the Darien.’ It took just over a year for the Darien fevers to wipe out one colony of over 2,000 Scottish settlers. In 1854, an American military expedition set out to cross the 80-odd kilometres that lie between the Caribbean and the Pacific coasts of Panama. In the 74 days that they were lost in the jungle, several died and many were driven to the brink of cannibalism.
We had come here to try to retrace as closely as possible the route of conquistador Nuñez de Balboa when he marched across the isthmus in 1513 to become the first Westerner ever to set eyes on the Pacific coast of the Americas. In researching this expedition, it soon became obvious that the few successful expeditions that had achieved their aims with at least a minimum of suffering had one thing in common: they relied on experienced local guides and hunters.
As I lay in my hammock I could hear the reassuring chatter of three Kuna Indian expedition members from where they sat around the glowing campfire. A shaman with the unlikely name of Teddy Cooper was their leader. Many of the Kuna from Teddy’s island in the San Blas archipelago found work in the American Canal Zone, and a trend developed of adopting whatever names caught their imagination. Our porters were the brothers Mellington and Rommelin Merry. On one memorable evening back in San Blas when we were preparing the expedition, I drank beer with Bill Clinton and a young lady called John F Kennedy.
The stalwart amongst our porters was Berto, a Panamanian from farther up the Caribbean coast. He was already snoring in his hammock next to Jose Angel Murrillo, a well-known Panamanian photographer and one of the most experienced Darien explorers alive. Angel was the local mastermind behind an expedition that I had been planning with American explorers Jud Traphagen and Dave Demers for almost a year. Jud and ‘D-bar’ were now similarly locked away in their carefully sealed hammocks.
Apart from the advantage of being close to water for cooking and washing, riverbanks are less than ideal campsites. They attract insects and are the preferred habitat of snakes, including the fer de lance, which can kill with a single bite in a matter of minutes. Yet the Kuna infinitely prefer to take their chances here rather than sleep on the hilltops, which are believed to be the domain of a far more terrifying creature. “The boachu is like a flying dragon with the head of a jaguar,” Teddy Cooper explained as we made the long climb over the Sierra de Darien. “It takes its prey up onto hills to eat it. This is why we Kuna always pass as quickly as possible over the mountains. A man from my village was killed by a boachu a couple of years ago… someone saw what happened to him in a dream.”
For some reason it seems that the indigenous people of Darien have seen fit to populate what is already the most dangerous jungle in the world with all sorts of supernatural beasts and jai (spirits). They talk of the Madre de Agua who lives under whirlpools where she can drown passers-by, and of the Arripada, a monster with one hand shaped like a hook for tearing the heart out of its victims. The most bizarre tale is the old witch known as Tuluvieja whose sieve-like face is so ugly that she wears her long hair over her face in shame. She also has a single sagging, distended breast that hangs down in front of her. The local people say that she steals children, and when their fathers come to rescue them the witch sprays the way with slippery milk from this unsightly appendage to make it impassable.
Before entering the most remote and most feared section of the Darien, Teddy Cooper – as spiritual leader of our expedition – insisted on painting all our faces with bright red achote juice. “Now the spirits will know that we come in peace and that we are here to treat the jungle with respect,” he explained. Teddy made a point always to ask permission of the jai before hunting or even before picking plants.
The jungle tribes of the Darien also paint their babies blue when they are about three weeks old. The blue stain of the jagua plant lasts a few weeks and is said to protect the baby from spirits and curses. It probably also provides some protection against insect bites. Throughout their lives the people of the Embera and Wounaan tribes also use this jagua body-paint on ceremonial occasions, and girls are entirely painted at puberty and before marriage. These rainforest tribes are culturally far removed from the Kuna of San Blas. While Wounaan women traditionally wear just a short sarong and traditionally go topless, the Kuna women dress in fantastically bright costumes. Their fine hand-embroidered mola blouses contrast brilliantly with their headscarfs and bead-covered legs. The Kuna people are relatively wealthy and even today the women are frequently decked out in the gold jewellery (and with the typical gold nose ring) that inspired the legend of El Dorado.
Towards the end of the trip we were able to buy provisions from jungle hamlets (armadillo meat, plantains and rum for example), but in the rainforest we had to carry most of our food supplies. This was a long trek, so we were also counting on our guns to supply some meat. As the Kuna regard almost any animal fair game and must be one of the few tribes in the world that eat big cats, we had to warn our guides about what they could and could not shoot. Teddy argued that jaguar meat was “very tasty” but we were all convinced that it would be a matter of life and death before we were forced to kill one of Latin America’s endangered super-predators. The closest we came to a big cat was the spoor of a puma that had circled our camp one night, perhaps attracted by the scent of paca meat. It was Nuñez de Balboa’s conquistadors who gave the paca its Spanish name, which means ‘painted rabbit’, but the paca is more often described as a giant jungle rat. The meat is tasty but armadillo is better.
During his first expedition Balboa befriended Indian guides who offered support and meat. It was only later that he began to massacre them with swords and vicious war-dogs, and within four years he had been beheaded. The Scottish colonists alienated their Indian neighbours within a short time of settling here and, according to John Prebble’s book The Darien Disaster, their crossing of the mountains was immeasurably harder than either Balboa’s or ours. “They sank to their knees in a millennium of vegetable decay,” Prebble wrote. “They were blinded by leaf-splintered sunlight, and deafened by the raucous protest of hidden birds.” Our trek had been relatively tough but we were neither blinded nor deafened. And only rarely did we sink to our knees.
Fantastic facilities and research sources now make the planning of an expedition easier than ever. Google Earth is the greatest boon for a traveller who is planning a trip into uncharted territory. Far from detracting from the thrill of exploration, increased access to this sort of information can make it easier to get off the beaten track. Many of those empty spaces on the world’s maps – what Joseph Conrad once called “a blank space of delightful mystery” – are now revealed in all their glory, beckoning to the adventurous with their unexplored rivers and unclimbed peaks.
As is so often the case, even the best maps available proved woefully inaccurate, but we also carried a simple handheld Garmin GPS (a Venture HC) and were amazed to find that even under the dense jungle canopy we almost always managed to get a signal. Another backup security measure came in the form of the new state-of-the-art Spot satellite messenger device. I could send a pre-set ‘all ok’ email to a list of recipients back home each evening and, in the event of a real disaster, there was even a ‘panic button’ that would alert rescue services. This cunning gadget also operates as a satellite-tracking system, so that our position was relayed as a blip on a Google Earth page every ten minutes. Family and friends were able to follow our progress through the jungle in something close to real-time, and even before we were able to phone from the coastal town of La Palma they knew that we had made it from coast to coast.
The reassurance that this offered was wonderful, but I knew that once we were on the ground we would soon find that the jungle was still the same jungle that it always had been. With the mud, the insects, the thorns and the sweat, it is one of the most challenging environments in the world. You trudge onward, frequently with mud up to your knees. Several times a day you struggle across rivers with the current swirling around your thighs and your backpack shucked up to keep it high and dry on your shoulders. You can feel your energy drain with the sweat that never stops running and in the tropical heat, scratches and bites soon begin to fester.
It can be tough, and you often wonder why you are doing it. But then, just at the right moment, something beautiful invariably happens to boost sagging morale: a pair of scarlet macaws flap squawking overheard or a giant blue morpho butterfly flitters past – looking like the patch of fallen heaven that the ancient Mayans believed it to be.
While these images are part of the lure of the jungle, the harsh reality is often very different. Spend a little quality time in that Garden of Eden and you soon begin to imagine that every living thing has decided to dedicate its life’s mission to your torment. If it can’t bite you, it will sting you. If it can’t sting you, it will scratch you. If it can’t scratch you, it will, at the very least, do its best to give you a nasty suck.
I had already been warned about the Darien’s giant fulofo poison ants. They resemble bullet ants but deliver a dose of venom that is said to be worse than that of a scorpion. One experienced Central American traveller I know (a big Panamanian weighing in at around about 90 kilograms) spent almost three days vomiting and fainting after being bitten by just two of these vicious insects. I was told that, next to the fer de lance, these were the creatures to be wary of.
One fateful afternoon as we were nearing the end of our trip, I scratched something that was tickling my ear and felt the jab of pain as a fulofo sank its pincers into my finger. I cursed and rubbed the inflamed digit, which began to swell instantly to almost twice its size. Less than fifteen minutes later I was bitten by a second fulofo under my arm. This time – after I had finally convinced my attacker to let go – I just shook my head in stunned disbelief. My best bet now was to get to the next river, make camp and climb into my hammock to try and sleep off the poison before the delirium kicked in.
Half an hour later, as I climbed down to the river to remove the mud of another day’s trekking, I brushed a poisonous plant with my arm. A large patch of blisters instantly broke out over my skin and as I hauled myself from the river after my wash I was stung on the back by a horsefly. In an instant, I finally grasped what the ‘curse of the Darien’ was all about. “Okay, okay!” I shouted at the jungle in general. “I get the message! I’m leaving, okay? Give me a chance, I’m leaving!”
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