Day 6: Reventazon

It didn't take too long to figure out how Josh was feeling in the morning. We could hear it from down the hallway. But he was determined to go with us, even if not riverboarding.

We found the road to the Florida section put-in. There was a raft exiting and a couple vans there. It would be a short, fast & furious three miles. The water was murky and brown and about 3 grand higher than when we'd run a longer section in January.



We geared up and launched into the muddy current. The river was pretty wide, and as I was trying to cut across to the main current, I ended up in a little unplanned surf that sent the others ahead of me. I was planning on leading Alicia and Peter since I'd done it before, however it didn't matter much because I didn't remember any of it. The water was higher by about 3000 cfs, and last January, by the time we got to this section, I was pretty spent.

I gave Alicia my GoPro so I could be in some footage rather than filming all the time. The first wave train might have been the biggest, but she wasn't anticipating it, so it went undocumented. We were told it was read and run, to stay off the walls. The walls weren't much of an issue; not sure if it was because of the high water but it was easy to stay away from them.

A couple rapids later the waves were big and there were rocks to either side, so the middle line looked good. After one particularly large wave I felt myself falling, and next thing I knew I was upside-down underwater hanging onto my board. I got recirculated and spit out, wrists sore from holding onto the hydrospeed. Ahead of me Peter was off his board, and I looked back to check on Alicia; she was hanging on by one arm. Breathless I headed to the side and took a breather.

This did get documented.

After a couple more turns in the river it was hard to see which way to go - looked like an island but it was hard to tell if the river went around both sides. We scouted and decided definitely left. The right appeared to go into a dead end, although the current was leading somewhat into it with a strong eddy in front of it. Peter cut it the closest to stay in the current; Alicia and I paddled like mad to stay river left.

Pretty soon we saw power lines and I knew we were near the end. A plastic container of Guaro awaited our intestines at the car. I saw Josh on the bank and a group of young people under the bridge with their bicycles. I had spied the take out and it looked impossibly shallow, so we stayed right of the bridge post. The kids were yelling something but I couldn't tell what. They may have been drunk. Or worse. We got out and walked across the rocks and shallow water, meanwhile the rowdies started throwing rocks at us.

I got in the car, fins, helmet, wetsuit and all, thinking maybe we'd go for another lap. We high tailed it as much as we could up the steep gravel road to the busier highway. Alicia didn't want to and Peter thought one good run was good for the day, so I cracked the Guaro. I wish I could have taken a picture of Alicia's face when she tasted it. It's a bit like vodka, just a tad sweeter. Peter and I finished off the bottle in the car for the windy drive back to the hostel.

We had dinner again at the fancy hotel. I mean, they had linen tablecloths! I had some kind of meat dish with onions, and flan for dessert. It was one of the best flans I've ever had. But the meat tasted a little old or something so I didn't finish it.



Peter and Josh were wearing their nonsensical tshirts. Something got messed up in translation and it read "Flaying Jet Departure" then a bunch of unintelligible words, like someone just hit the keyboard randomly.

We ended up at a bar that had 80s videos going with a DJ and smoke machine with laser lights. Kinda trippy. No one was dancing, but a few were smoking and once again I had to bail because of the second hand toxic waste.

The guys who were creating such a ruckus were again outside the hotel. Josh asked if they could not make so much noise tonight. It must have worked because it was a lot quieter, surprisingly, on a Friday night.

Day 5: Upper Upper

Today we ran the upper upper Pacuare. Luis was our shuttle driver, and asked where Kevin and Alex were. Indeed. Work and school. Why do these have to interfere?

We were thinking of running the Reventazon, but I showed the video from the last trip to Peter C and he got a little on edge about the dirtiness of the water. So we went to where we knew the water would be clean.

The bridge to the higher put-in was being worked on, but there was just II-III stuff up there. The bridge would open in a little over an hour. Our group is a bit on the indecisive side. "What do you want to do?" "Oh, I don't really care, either way is fine with me." "Okay, well what do YOU want to do?" "I'm okay with any option..." This scenario has played itself out a few times on our trip, but this time Josh decided to flip a coin. Heads, we 'headed up the river' after the bridge reopened, and tails, we high-tailed it down the river. It was tails. I was kind of glad. It was pretty hot out, and aside from one little snack stand that was part of a house, there was nothing much to do there.



Unfortunately Alicia had mal de estómago and was too ill to riverboard. I hadn't even noticed that she had hopped down from the top bunk bed several times during the night.


Most of the river was read n' run class III. Clear water, visible rocks. There were a couple holes near the top Peter wanted to stop and surf. I wasn't able to get in them. One was just off the side of a pool with a little 2' waterfall pouring into it, and good eddy service. The other had beautiful banana trees and cliffs as a backdrop. White birds flew by. It really was a slice of paradise.

We came to the first class IV section and scouted to make sure it was clear of wood. It was a pretty decent boulder garden, reminding me just a little bit of Monster on the Cascade, without the mandatory boof drop up top. The right was runnable but very narrow; we all took the line down the middle, which did include a pretty much mandatory rock but not much of a drop. Josh ran it first while we watched, then I followed Peter. It was a fun rapid.

At the next rapid Josh and I stopped on some rocks in the middle to look, but Peter kept going. I made a mental imprint of his moves and bumped along the shallow entry. Reminded me of home! I ended up hitting the biggest hole in the meat of it. The helmet cam footage looks like it held me for a couple of seconds but I don't remember struggling. Probably because I was under water and just thought I was punching through slowly. The helmet camera is above eye level so it's a little deceptive.

I needed to stop and defog my GoPro so we pulled over to a rocky beach. Blue heron and white birds circled, an orange butterfly darted about our knees while brilliant blue ones fluttered across the river. On the next rapid I got hung up on a rock. The current was pushing to the right but there were tight rocks over there. I was standing, and managed to slowly scoot over using my hand and my hips, to get off the left side of it. Fet like it took forever.

We were told to take out at a bridge. No one told us what kind of bridge. It didn't feel like six miles yet. We came to what looked like a footbridge and some elementary school-aged kids were on it. Josh asked them where the town was, or if there were cars on the next bridge. They looked at us curiously but didn't say much. We decided to keep going.

We came to a blind corner with a lot of rocks, and couldn't see around it and weren't sure if we'd passed the takeout. There were piles of black dirt and rock that almost looked man made, like from a gravel pit, not very pretty, and that's where the vultures chose to perch. Like attracts like, sometimes it's true. Josh and Peter climbed to the top of the highest rockpile and tried to scout the rapid, but couldn't see around the bend.

There seemed to be a way up out of the river to the left, and we saw a power line, and decided to climb out. The next section was a class V gorge and we weren't sure if the previous bridge had been our takeout. Exiting the river was easy, but the climbing was difficult because the slope was muddy and steep. Josh threw me a line and I sent my riverboard up. First time I've ever needed a rope. I needed his hand towards the top when I was unable to gain a foothold anywhere for the last few feet. I tried jumping up, pushing up with my arms, but the life vest wasn't helping me get over the hump. Even that was a false summit and we continued to climb on a narrow, muddy, manure-laden trail where the farmer helped us over the barbed wire. It was a fairly short walk and Luis drove up just as we approached the real take out. Which had another footbridge. It was sturdy enough for a couple horses and their riders to go across, but I'm not sure I'd take a Percheron on it.

We walked down to the river and there was a nice waist-deep pool and an easy trail up the short cliff. No banditos or drunkards; it was pure country on the upper upper.

Didn't get lunch and was hungry at 4:30 after a shower. First we stopped at a produce stand that sold mostly grapes and apples. Josh got a half kilo of red grapes and ate all but maybe five of them. We went to a nice hotel and had appetizers. Huge trucks rumbled by using their j brakes. The restaurant yesterday played Christmas music loudly. There is no quiet in this town.


We'd been frequenting the local bakeries as well. It's kind of like Christmas; sometimes you don't know what you're going to get when you buy a pastry. I went for the smallish cookies; no surprises there. We also went to an ice cream store. Josh got a huge rum raisin cone. I put 100 colones in the toy motorcycle and went for a ride. Woot.


Afterwards we played pool in a smokey hall. I scratched on the 8 w/ Alicia while Peter played a local kid. The local could shoot, but Peter had better strategy. I left when the smoke got to be too much.

There are really loud people outside our room. Hookers, pimps, druggies all yelling at each other. I tried to sleep but even the Ambien didn't let me tune out the escalated shouting match around 1:30 am. This continued well after the police arrived until about 3 am. I have a method of using my mp3 player for white noise to help me sleep, but I'd used it a lot and forgot to bring the charging cable on this part of the trip. It was dead. At 3am the trucks began to arrive to unload their produce for the weekend farmer's market. We all began stirring between three and four hours later, but what I missed was that Josh had been up half the night losing his dinner.

I'm blaming it on the grapes.

Day 6

Day 4: Pacuare

We couldn't get ahold of our usual shuttle driver Luis, but the hostel found us someone, and it turns out he is the president of the Costa Rica Whitewater Association. This was the guy Patricia -- who runs the hostel -- said thought we would surely die if we ran the Reventazon back in January. We never actually got confirmation on the veracity of that statement, but he was a really nice and knowledgeable man.

We pulled the gear out of the car at the put-in and I opened my bag to discover that my wetsuit was not in it. I had that horrible, sinking, guilty feeling, but only for a few moments, because Josh said he had brought extra wetsuit gear. I was very relieved. However, knowing how cold Josh gets it wasn't really going to be enough neoprene, but we'd make do. As long as I didn't get as cold as I was in the back seat of the Rover over the pass, I'd be fine.

There was a little extra pressure being the only one with functioning water and land cameras. I have been almost hesitant to bring my land camera because it has to be left in the vehicle with could be a target for thieves. I took the risk and brought it along. I'm now wishing I'd gone ahead and bought the water housing even though it costs about 2/3 the price of a new camera. But that way, I could take the camera with me instead of leaving it in the car. I could even shoot some higher end video from shore. Maybe next time.

The Pacuare was running in between the two levels we had previously ran it: level 0. First time was 20; second was -10. I'd forgotten some of the heavier rapids, such as the Upper and Lower Haucus.

The upper didn't give me any trouble, but the lower, I didn't fight hard enough to stay in the middle and got swept left, nearly making contact with the undercut wall on the left. The slide feature that had given us so much trouble at high water was almost a non-feature at this level; it was just a bit of a hole and we all punched through.

The take out on this river, 16 miles later, was a little dangerous because of brazen thieves. The rafts had gone on ahead of us so we had to stay close and walk quickly. I took my knife out of my bag (the vest mount is way too loose) though wasn't sure what good it would do since it's blunt tipped. We had to walk a little way down a dirt road and around a fence to the restaurant where the Rover and driver were waiting for us, and there were lots of people in the restaurant. We were safe. The bathroom even had showers; that cold water was refreshing after walking in a wetsuit.

Back in Turrialba we napped for a couple hours in the relative quiet of the afternoon, then spent the evening walking around and finding food. We ate at an empty restaurant (do people ever eat out in this town?). I had ceviche - a huge bowl full for about $4. Score! I also ordered chicken but wouldn't have, had I known how much fish I was getting. I gave half of it to Josh. Alicia ordered chicken but couldn't eat most of it. Something wasn't right with her ever since our fried egg breakfast from the soda across the street. She was getting seconds on flavor all day long. Peter C shared some awesome stories of hurling aboard and directional sprays. Having raced sailboats the world over, he's probably seen it all. For some reason, he kept mentioning green eggs and ham.

Day 5

Day 3 - Dec. 1

Since El Chorro was presumably still too high to run with any degree of sanity, we opted for a beach day down at Dominical. It's a long rivermouth sandy beach backed by jungle and a few businesses, nothing too touristy.

I've been running up and down energy-wise every other day. Today was a down day, and when we parked I noticed that the surf was less than stellar, so I plunked down my towel under a palm tree and tried to nap. The tide was low, the wind was sideshore and the waves were inconsistent, not holding much shape. Most of the crew went for a swim but I decided to wait.

When the tide started to turn I got ready to bodyboard and realized I forgot my lycra pants. I just had a two-piece and long sleeve rashguard top. I slathered on the sunscreen and hoped the rest would stay covered.

Another hour later the surf actually started to improve, and Josh came out with the GoPro video camera. My face was feeling really hot. I'd tried to buy a surf hat in LA but everyone was sold out. My two piece was not doing a very good job of staying up and on, even under the rash guard. I got some new tan lines from this session. My face was beet red; so was everyone's. The best waves were only in the 3-4 foot range and offered about a 6 second ride. But it was still fun to be out in warm water.

We grabbed some lunch at Chapy's, a place that has delicious, fresh and natural wraps and smoothies. Only, their blender was broken, so we had pepe, or young coconuts instead. After lunch, instead of simply discarding the coconut shells, we played trash can hoops. They're heavy and hard to aim. Josh's mom got one in; I tried once and decided it was futile. We obstructed traffic and amused ourselves for about 20 minutes with this silly game, destroying most of the coconuts in the process.


A dip in the ionized pool (read: no chlorine or bromide) was refreshing afterwards. Even the dogs joined in the fun. We were all so sunburnt in spite of really high SPF.



We ate some casserole thanks to Josh's mom, and about 6:00 we started our commute over the mountains to Turrialba to go and run the rivers in the area. Ariel and Peter decided to stay behind, so it was just Alicia, Peter C, Josh and I. Josh had recently acquired an older Range Rover. As large as it is, we still had to strap one of the boards to the roof.

Radio had to suffice as I'd forgotten the cable to my mp3 player that will make it work with a cassette deck. It turns out that was not the only thing I forgot. They are really into their 70s and 80s music here. Up at about 11,000 feet all the windows were down and the sunroof was open. Peter's board was dripping on me and the air was in the 40s. I had one small sweatshirt and a knit hat; luckily the floorboards were hot so my feet stayed warm, at least on the bottoms. As much as I whined about being cold, no one believed how cold I was til they saw me with my knit hat and hoodie pulled up over it. I found out later that the engine blows hot air into the front seats; it's no wonder they couldn't figure out why I was so frozen since I was in the back.

We ended up in the same room we had last year. They had nicer bedding; batik-style covers instead of those quilted polyester things. They also had internet and breakfast. And three dogs that would mess up the floor just as fast as the help cleaned it.

Day 4

Day 2: Coto Brus

We drove south and over the mountains to a more arid climate. Very hilly, those hills covered in jungle. Reminded me a bit of the hills in Australia. Much less humidity than the coast. Luckily the river was going pretty good.

This time we took one of Josh's neighbors, 15-year old Jodi. He was a trooper. There was hesitation from both Peters about running a river that had caiman in it, but we never saw any. We thumped on the Prijons just the same to let them know we were coming. We did see some spider monkeys. They seemed to not quite know what to make of us.

The water was even warmer than yesterday; probably 70 degrees. I've been leaving the top part of my wetsuit off, leaving my sleeves dangling. It's just the right temp that way, with a rash guard up top. This river stepped it up a notch as there was on class IV-ish section. Still nothing heavier than the Nooksak, so far. Although I did manage to get stuck in a couple holes and turned upside down once.


We stopped at a tree overhanging the river. Jodi dived from it, Josh did a flip, Alicia a cannon ball, Peter C. jumped in with his board and hit is foot on a rock. I was happy to take pictures.

We were on the river for three hours. After a stop at a restaurant for snacks and another stop at the car rental to inquire about the two new windshield dings acquired during the shuttle, it was too late to stop and watch the sunset but we got some nice glimpses from the car. By the time we got home I felt like crashing but dragged myself out to dinner. Felt better after a watermelon smoothie, and had some chicken soup, which is supposed to cure a lot of things.

Day 3