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Writer's picturePaul Fast

Chapter 7: Travellers not Tourists / Costa Rica

By Paul Fast


The compass is pointed south again. For some reason, I find myself mildly agitated every time the compass heading shows another direction other than south. Some magnetic force is gently pulling us towards the bottom of the earth, and I, probably more than the others, am more comfortable when the path of the Duramax aligns with its gravitational orbit.


We now have a confirmed shipping date, which is proceeded by DIJ (police) inspections in Panama City, and the actual port delivery. This has provided the structure and a goal for the balance of our Central American itinerary. In Costa Rica, we hit a significant milestone when the odometer rolls over 10 000km. The place it happens is not important in and of itself, but the number is. Four years ago, on our shakedown trip with the Duramax to Alaska, we clocked 10 000km from Vancouver to Prudhoe Bay and back. As we rolled into Vancouver, Daniella and I figured out that the distance we had just driven (in three weeks!) would have gotten us down to Panama. It provided a sense of scale to the journey, and a bit of courage that the distances we would need to overcome were in fact possible. And here we are, close to the bottom of Costa Rica, 10 000 km from Vancouver, and almost to the end of the continent. We just might pull this off.



The place where we hit 10k is on a road that winds its way up Costa Rica’s highest mountain, Cerro Muerte (Mountain of Death). We had some distance to cover, and given that Costa Rica has a safe reputation, we break our rule and drive late into the night. We arrive at the top of the mountain near midnight and watch the lightning dance in a far-off storm. The next morning, I wake up early. My heart is hammering away like a freight train, and my head feels ready to explode. I have a hunch and check the altimeter…13 500 feet! In the quiet of the dark and the fog, this modest little road had spirited us to the top of a very high mountain, and I am getting hit with altitude sickness. We decide to head back down to the coast and follow the hairpins down. The road drops us 13 500 feet in an hour and half, and when we hit sea level, we take a break and I open the back door of the camper. Everything is soaking wet, including all the contents in our cupboards. Rookie mistake. We had taken a load of freezing cold air from the top of a mountain down to 35 degrees C plus 80% humidity inside of an hour. The cold air had condensed, and we spend two hours pulling everything and drying it out.



Daniella and I had decided that our time in Costa Rica would be an homage to our honeymoon almost twenty years ago. After a quick visit to the Nicoya peninsula to connect with some family friends, we head to Monteverde, located high in the cloud forest. 20 years ago we hadn’t been able to fit zip trekking into our itinerary, and so we were here to rectify that. The Costa Ricans have doubled down on tourism, and the entire country has been organized around catering to foreign visitors. The service is good, expensive and the traveling relatively easy. The zip lines are a hit. The tour company had warned us that the boys were too young to do the Tarzan, a large swing with a 50m drop that catapults you out over the edge of a rather large cliff. When we get to the platform, however, it seems that the guides hadn’t gotten the message and they ask if all of the boys are doing the swing. Nathaniel leads the way, followed by Jonah. I watch Elias gather up his courage and follow his older brothers out onto the platform. This was big boy territory, and I smile, watching the courage literally grow inside his small heart. With two older brothers, Elias is used to an oversized learning curve, but he leaves that swing walking a little taller and with a swagger in his step.



The cloud forest provides us with immediate relief from the heat of the coast. The interior of Costa Rica lies in a vector of ideal growing conditions, and heavy, thick layers of vegetation cover the mountains, tented up by enormous Avatar trees. Elias and I take a hike in the dying light of a late, rainy evening. In the squelching jungle mud, we probe the shadows, catching brief glimpses of emerald tails floating in the distance. It as an entirely new place to explore, and it seems almost dimensionless. Sounds that reach our ears cannot be pinpointed, and light that makes its way to the forest floor is refracted by the prisms of a thousand raindrops. We are swimming in an ocean of green, having a difficult time telling what is up and what is down.




After the ziplines we head over to the Caribbean side where we embark on a two-day rafting trip on the same river Daniella and I had traveled down all those years ago. The trip features a lodgestay in some of the most stunning primary jungle we had experienced yet. There, late into the night after a special sloth sighting and a gourmet meal, we eat rice pudding with the kitchen staff and practice our Spanish. The boys enjoy having their own room and disappear quickly, leaving Daniella and I with some hard-won alone time. The river is yet another way to travel, and as we plunge through canyons (the “basement of time”) I appreciate the perspective they give me. The river sets the pace, and it is nice having someone else control the speed of our journey for a couple of days.







We have begun to find a rhythm to our travel. One-night camps are enroute from place to place, when we need to kill some distance. This sometimes means a parking lot, or a gas station stay. Two-nighters mean we pull out the doormat and let down the camper jacks (stabilizers). Three-night camps are lawn chair camps, where we set up the full kit. Everything has begun to find its place in the camper, and the boys are finding their own place in the daily set up and take down of our rig.



Despite our growing comfort with a lawn chair camp pace, we still struggle with the things we need to leave unseen. As we move through each place, we uncover a tantalizing trail of new hidden places, always leading deeper into each country. Sometimes we follow the breadcrumbs for a few days, but inevitably the itinerary of our larger journey pulls us back into alignment with the path south. We meet many overlanders along the way who have succumbed to the breadcrumb trail. The Panamerican is littered with the camps of those who simply decided they couldn’t pass up seeing this or that, and wake up one morning realizing it’s 8 months later and they are still in Mexico. They have made peace with their decision, and we must make peace with ours.


I do ask myself how much of the country we are understanding, as opposed to seeing. A friend once remarked that in his experience, the depth to which you understand a place is directly correlated to the amount of money you spend. The less money/resources you spend, the more you are dependant on others around you. Dependency is understanding, and our dependency is significant. We rely on local advice for where to go and not to go. We need it to understand what it’s going to take to get through the next border, where potable water sources might be, who might be able to help us find a spot to camp for the night. Our budget for nightly accommodation is twenty bucks or less. Between destinations our path follows a series of practical waypoints that uncover a finer grained, often hidden layer to the life of each place. We meet many tourists at major destinations, but then almost none in between. We are travelers not tourists, and I think there is a difference. We have a goal, a point on this earth that we are aiming for, and it is how we get there that matters.


In my work I have learned to trust the design process, particularly when outcomes aren’t entirely clear. You work through a set of steps that will reveal layers of understanding about the design challenge that build on each other and slowly point you in the right direction. We must learn to trust the road, to allow the structure of the journey to reveal to us what it is we are to know, see and taste. It’s working pretty good so far.



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2 Comments


stephanieruthkauffman
May 11, 2023

You sound so utterly happy and content ❤️

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Paul Fast
Paul Fast
May 12, 2023
Replying to

Now that you mention it….yup.

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