Pura Vida -Costa Rica 2022

The impact of the pandemic on our travel has been deeper than I fathomed. A sharp increase in screen time, a damp enthusiasm even to armchair tourism, and my artefact filled travel wall had now become a zoom WFH background!!

Time to travel reboot.

The urge to connect with exotic biodiverse nature, inhale clean oxygen, watch the ocean drench in the sunset, taste local cuisine, create another tabletop album with photographs led us to the centre of the Americas..Costa Rica. A pure getaway for the soul. PURA VIDA

PS: The fact that we needed absolutely no testing was a HUGE deciding factor!

Let me set the stage for the documentary drama first. This blog has a background scene and three acts – The earth, The canopy and The sky. And of course, a grand finale!

My creation of the background scene is hanging the Green tapestry.

Imagine a jungle scene from Apocalypto- dense biodiversity of the tropics. Add a few vermillion macaws, rainbow tucans, stylish frogs. Next, a few celestial waterfalls and just not to disappoint- throw in a volcano! Then, moving onto a country build up. 2 seasons- wet and dry. Minimal fossil fuel use and very faint carbon footprints. Top-ranked Latin American country for happiness. No army, so military funding goes to sustainable ecosystems. This small piece of the planet was being proudly saved for the next generation.

I was sold- hook, line and sinker to this Costa Rican tapestry!

Scene 1- The Earth

Mother earth is at her lush best. It is embedded in the Tico DNA to nurture the earth and hand the legacy to the great-grandkids generation. Thick primary and secondary forests meant greenery at multiple levels. In fact, the levels are named- ground, shrub, understorey, emergent and ended in a canopy. The massive rainforests trees (Huro and ficus of 200m) fought to reach the top for sunlight! Photosynthesis was at its peak!! It was like these forests were the earth’s lungs and blasting out pure oxygen – PURA VIDA indeed. Heliconias grew everywhere as did bromeliads, mosses, lichen, giant ficus. To this thick rain forest, add a few blue morpho butterflies, red-eyed tree frogs, three-toed sloths, howler monkeys, green iguanas. They thrived on medium-sized understorey trees. In Manuel Antonio, the rainforest went right up to the Pacific coast dragging the wildlife and almond trees all the way down. I imagined having a roll call of exotic cuteness- capuchin monkey, howlers, hummingbird, iguana, lizard, oropendolas, rufous motmot, quetzals, poison dart frogs, tanger and sloth. Tell you what, just see the pictures!

Scene 2- The Canopy

Moving onto scene 2, I have to share my new hero -“the Queen of the canopy” Nalini Nadkarni. She connects the earth to the sky with incredible knowledge of trees. When in Monteverde, as I flipped my pano mode on my i-phone to the vertical direction and started scaling giant ficus strangler from the base upwards, I reached the sky after passing dozens of trees and shrubs and vines growing on top of each other! The low-hanging clouds hover around the upper canopy of the forest before condensing onto the leaves of trees and dripping onto the plants below. The sky essentially comes down to the forest, enabling you to actually walk through the clouds — especially when you take a canopy tour on a suspension bridge. And when it rains, you see it happening sidewards!!! Our guide’s narration moved from practical facts to esoteric. He made me leave the forset reflecting on the precious trees and so, I decided to take a look at them from a different angle- flying in with a zip line! Had to decide where to zipline- Guanacaste? Arenal? Limon? I settled for spectacular Monteverde. My senses were on an all-time high just looking at trees and the adrenaline peaked with the zip line and final bungee jumping. Scaling new heights indeed!! Let me rap up this Scene 2 with…

Wet and green moss,

I’m at a loss,

to describe the beauty,

falling on my boots

but held up by walking root strings

I’m feeling free,

blowing in the wind with little green wings

I walk on the ground but I feel a bird!

Scene 3 -The Sky

At sunrise, as I was woken up by tweeting birds (by day 2, I had become a bird watcher), the sky blushed pink and held the mighty Arenal volcano by a wispy rig of cloud. As I sipped Royal masala chai (prefer this any day to Costa Rican coffee) and gazed at the cloudless blue of the sky little did I know that by midday, the sky from the hanging bridges in Monteverde would quickly make me fall in love with the sky all over again. This time with a green lace web of slender branches. As we zig-zagged the hanging bridges in Monteverde, you feel you have entered a “garden in the sky”

In Tortuguero, the Caribbean coast meets the sky but not before sandwiching a labyrinth of canals and some famed green turtles.

And then, there was the night sky.. which was mesmerising on our night walk into the jungle. Starry starry night..with scorpions and snakes under our feet!!! The app of the phone almost told us about an Omega Centauri. Coming to think of this, we had an app for telling us tree names, David Attenborough’s earth, bird watching, Spanish words, sky watching, eating, sleeping to wake up to birds!!!

The finale..

The gastronomic quench was quenched with ice-cold tender coconuts, tropical fruits, palm-sized tortillas, pico digalo, piquant sharp chilli, tamal (wrapped in a banana leaf) and of course Gallo pinto (Tico beans and rice) and Guarro! Arroz con Leche was good enough (not quite like our kheer though). Oh- Costa Rican coffee, dark chocolate is at every tourist promotion! Talking of gastronomic, the currency is “colon”!

The myth -Living near the Botanical Gardens, recycling milk bottles, cycling to work, and minimising the use of a green car, buying local produce in a clean kilo, thinking of an allotment, planting veggie gardens and going paper free at work made me a contributor to the sustainable planet.

The truth… Need to do so much more!! I realised we humans will not be happy at home if nature is not happy at its home. THE FUTURE IS NOW!! Not sure how to champion this and need to reflect!

Until I blog again after our next destination .. Vamoos and Pura Vida