JJ's Travelogue

I’ve spent the last five days at a lovely spot up in the cloud forest called Lost & Found Eco Hostel. I couldn’t even tell you exactly where it is.. somewhere on the road connecting the coasts, between David and Bocas. The bus lets you off by the side of the road with nothing around but trees and a trail heading up into the forest. After 1000′ of huffing and puffing you come to a little oasis built right into the side of the mountain with stunning views. It’s clear from the moment you arrive that you’re going to be living in the midst of nature, with all that entails. Maybe that’s why the critters didn’t bug me, because I was clearly in their home, whereas when I find them in my home, I feel they’re invading my space. Here, I was invading their space.

The place was built about a year or so ago by a Canadian guy (Andrew) about my age. The design is really smart – most of the hangout space is completely open to the elements, albeit with a roof. The sleeping quarters, bathrooms, and movie/game lounge are all enclosed. It’s amazing to think how all of the supplies for the place were carried by hand up the mountain. Hundreds of bags of concrete, steel beams, refridgerators, beds, metal sheeting, toilets. I stopped being such a princess and stayed in the dorm instead of a private room. It was fine. Their bunks are three high, but built wide and high. I do like my privacy, but since the bathrooms were far and away anyway, it didn’t make much difference. Plus it was much cheaper. Instead of throwing used toilet paper into a trash bin as you do in Guatemala, you throw it into a metal bucket followed by a lit match. It works perfectly – everything, including the smell, goes up in smoke.  Everything is recycled, naturally. It’s in the midst of an organic coffee farm, and is the only private land within a large natural park, so there are tons of wild plants and animals about.

My first afternoon I took a hike up to a lookout and saw a white-faced Capuchin monkey about 30′ away! Another day I saw some crazy looking large birds, but wasn’t able to identify them. My favorite birds of the area are the Harpy Eagles. These birds are so large and powerful that they come swooping out of the sky and carry off monkeys, sloths, anteaters.. pretty much anything that moves. Cool! One of the staff I befriended showed me a banana spider in it’s web and a hummingbird nest, replete with baby hummingbirds. He also caught a jungle crab which I had never heard of (and neither has Wikipedia, so I’m not sure of it’s real name.) Big cats including jaguars, pumas, and ocelots are also known to be in the area, but they’re near impossible to spot. They see you long before you see them.

Biologists from the Smithsonian come around often to study in the area. I came across some of their rain and field gauges in the woods and sent the photos to Eddie, who provided more info. Check this out – a mere two weeks ago they were on a hike right behind the hostel and discovered an entirely new species of snake. How cool is that?! The best part is that they get to name it. I would love to name a new species of snake – I would call it.. Jasminidae. They also discovered a new type of tarantula a few months ago. Amazing that in this day and age there are still so many undiscovered plant and animal species. In Panama alone there are 125 species found nowhere else in the world. Statistics like that really drive home why we need to save the rainforest.

Living on the premises in a large cage is a rescued kinkajou named Rocky. He is sooooo cute! I want one. They’re nocturnal, so you can only play with him at night. Which is good, since he can see much better at night than in the day. He loves people to play with him. The cage is about 10′x10′x7′, so you can get a lot of people in there along with all his branches and toys. He’s only 2 years old (they live into their late twenties), so he’s still very frisky, like a puppy. He nibbles at your nose and ears, and if he’s biting too hard you just pull on the scruff of his neck like mom would. He has a prehensile tail that is amazingly strong, it can swing him around like another arm. His paws are more like hands – five-fingered, they look like a wolfman baby’s hands – human like, but with more hair and sharp nails.

One night I was playing with Rocky and he escaped. I hadn’t secured the door of the cage properly and he managed to open it lickedy-split. Oh crap, did I feel terrible! We spent the next hour combing the trees with flashlights trying to catch sight of him. The trouble is that since he didn’t grow up socialized with the wild kinks, they fight with him and he doesn’t know how to fight back; the last time he escaped he came back bloody and injured and had to be rushed to the vet. We heard some scrapping and screeching in the trees and he came back shortly thereafter, all in one piece thank goodness. Andrew (the proprieter) was gracious and forgiving to me.
Every evening at dusk the staff chops up a bunch of bananas and sets them out on the deck. Then throughout the evening, the local kinkajous, olingos, and cacomistles come and snack. It’s fun to watch.

My first few days there was some crazy wind and ocassional rain. Cold. But fresh, the air smells so fresh. Gale-force winds, the kind you have to lean into to keep standing up. Even with the crazy weather, this is such a peaceful, tranquil place to be. No traffic whatsoever, no crazy vendors yelling, no radios blaring. Having time and space to get absorbed in a good book or just sit in a field and watch the clouds drift by. Something about the soft rain and the angle of the sun results in rainbows nearly every day.
There is a small kitchen where meals are cooked. Occassionally a local girl comes round and offers to cook you a meal, but usually you’re on your own. They have basic ingredients for sale (schlepped up each day by the staff.. ugh) if you didn’t bring your own. A fair amount of variety, actually, and it’s all on the honor system. It was nice to cook again after so long. Unfortunately we never got to have a bon fire, due to the weather. That would have been nice. It’s a lot like camping, actually. I don’t think I looked in the mirror for four days. But amazingly they do have truly hot showers, which is more than can be said for most hotels in Central America.

Every day I would pick a different direction to take a hike. Right around the hostel is not old-growth forest, unfortunately. Supposedly there is virgin forest on the other side of the river, but I never found a way across. I’d love to see some old-growth rainforest at some point – they say it’s actually easy to walk through – because the canopy is so dense, very little sunlight makes it down to the ground, so there is little underbrush.

After I had exhausted all the trails behind the hostel, I ventured across to the other side of the road. I picked a point a few ridges away and decided to hike to that. My hostel buddy said it would take six hours and that I was crazy. I said nonsense, two hours. Needless to say, I never did make it to my destination. The hike was pleasant enough at first, walking through farmer’s fields and such. But the trails petered out into the woods, and my mistake was in not turning back at that point. Oh I was never lost, I always knew where the road was, but it became a problem of getting there. You know how stubborn I can be and resistant to turning around. Well, bushwacking through rainforest sans machete ain’t that easy. Plus these hills were quite steep, so I’m using my hands and arms to pull myself up as much as my legs to push. Of course being rainforest everything is rotting, so you’re never sure if that stump you’re grabbing onto is actually going to take your weight or crumble and send you tumbling. The vines tripped me up quite a lot as well. It was frustrating. Finally I made it to the top of the ridge where I thought the road was, only to find that it was on the next ridge over. And you know those valleys are much deeper than they appear to be. Back down, cross the stream, back up the other side. Good grief. I had a couple of moments of real concern that it would get dark before I was out of the woods, but fortunately I made it to the road before twilight really hit.
I enjoy setting up challenges like these for myself and then being forced to meet them. Like one of my idols says, “I got myself into this mess, I will damn well get myself out of it.”

For some reason I became an unofficial host of the place since Andrew was often out and the volunteers that were supposed to be in charge weren’t really stepping up to the plate. So one night a bunch of guys (7 college buddies all traveling together, yikes!) wanted to take a night hike to see the stars. I said no problem, follow me! The stars (when they’re out) are fantastic. But their position throws me – I’m used to seeing Orion’s Belt on the horizon, but here it’s directly overhead.. soon I will be seeing stars I’ve never seen before. Growing up in theatre, I can almost see in the dark, so I gave my flashlight to one of the scaredy-cats. But there was a tricky section of the trail, and as I was pulling out my iPhone to use as a light, I tripped and wacked yet more parts of my body that were previously unbruised. The iPhone’s screen took a direct hit to a rock, yet sustained only the slightest scratch on the casing. Yes! [Unfortunately the beer that was in my other hand didn't fare as well. The next morning when I was relating this story to Andrew, he asked if there was alcohol involved. I sheepishly replied yes, which caused him to point out all the scars he's aquired through drunken night hikes.]

My last night at the hostel a group of bicyclists showed up. Two of them had biked from Vancouver and the other one all the way from Alaska. And, they’re heading all the way down to Argentina, same as me. Wow! Um, that’s like 10,000 miles or something, right? Damn impressive. It took them only four months to get this far which they thought was a while, but sounds pretty fast to me. They’ve been mainly tenting it, oh and one of them got dengue fever in El Salvador which laid her up for a couple of weeks. Troopers!
You may recall that when planning this trip, I considered (for half a second) doing it by bike. Actually they invited me along which was very sweet, but I declined. Biking across a continent (or two) is indubitably in my future, but not now.

UPDATE: these wonderful crazy bikers sent me the link to their blog. Inspiring stuff!