Writings By Location| None More Wet: Four Days at Corcovado | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
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| Our Tent and the Main Palapa |
Corcovado Adventures Tent Camp is pretty much true to its name. The tents were eight-person jobs, elevated on wooden platforms to prevent flooding, and covered with a giant tarpaulin to keep it just damp enough so that it was never dry, but never soaking wet. Inside the tent were a twin and a double bed, making it a lot more pleasant than sleeping bags on a hard wooden floor. A short walk up the hill led us to the community palapa, a straw-covered open area filled with tables, chairs, and a cobweb-covered bar that hadn't been used for anything but stacking books since 1993.
Aside from the "luxury" our tents provided, the only other thing that differentiated this from everyday camping was the kitchen. Beside the dining area was a larger building that housed a reasonably full kitchen, complete with gas stoves, freezers, and the all-important coffee maker. A two-story wooden building, where the staff lived, a long row of toilets and showers, and a pig corral (the garbage disposal) made up the remaining structures.
But despite this elegant-sounding layout, Corcovado had no electricity, save for a small generator that only churned out 9 volts for minimal fluorescent lighting in the dining room and bathroom areas. There were also no phones, just a short-wave radio that allowed for contact with the main office in San Jose, and a station in Sierpe. And, worst of all, there was no hot water, which almost made it fruitless to shower, when the rain did about the same job.
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| Fernando, Keith, and Carlos at Tent Camp |
The camp is managed by two men, Carlos and Fernando. The two of them have been renting the place for the past eight years. Before that, they were both working at separate resorts in the area, but wanted to take this one on for themselves, and turn around its really bad reputation. Apparently, the last owner just used it for big parties, and only had one guy working the whole place, so when the owner showed up, the guests were routinely ignored. So Carlos and Fernando hired a small staff of people to work on cleaning and cooking, leaving themselves free to guide people on day trips and perform card tricks at night for entertainment.
Once we managed to deal with our civilization withdrawal, we looked around for the excitement. Here we were, ready for boating adventures, snorkeling, wildlife observation, and more; what we got instead was rain. Lots of it.
So what can you do in the rain at Corcovado? Sometimes we read. Sometimes we napped in the hammock. Occasionally, we'd try to play with darts that had fallen to the ground so many times, the feathers wouldn't stay on and the ends were curled up, making them about as effective as fishing lures.
