Poison dart frogs.
Bullet ants.
This place was the real deal.
The homeowner was a real hood. Out there. Spacey.
In passing, after we spoke for 2 weeks, he noted 5 minutes before we caught a bus from Nicaragua to Costa Rica that we should probably get a pair of boosts.
In passing.
A few days later, Kelli and I were knee deep in mud, sicking into a muddy quick sand.
Where the hell were we?
In the jungles around Bribri, Costa Rica.
We knew it’d be off the beaten path. But we had no idea it would be THIS off the beaten path.
How Things Shook Out
We arrived in the sleepy town of Bribri on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica during the late afternoon hours.
The homeowner greeted us wearing thick rubber boots. He noted how it was too late to walk into the jungle. Darkness would overtake us soon, making for an impossible and quite deadly journey into pitch dark conditions with ample dangerous predators and poisonous insects.
We nod in agreement to his insistence on having one of the locals drive us into the jungle on his ATV. We would still need to walk the last 20 minutes as the down slope stretch by his home is impassable save on horseback or on foot.
10 minutes after being whisked to the local’s house in the back of a pickup truck we have our luggage fastened to the ATV, nod to and thank the fam and off we go, barreling down the dirt road on a rugged, loud monster of a machine.
We had no clue in hell what to expect.
An Indiana Jones like journey, it turns out.
5 Minutes In....
A few minutes down the dirt road we hit the jungle. The real jungle. But not the REAL jungle. Not yet.
A stream about 40 feet wide greets us. Only a few inches deep as torrential rains has not occurred in at least a few days.
We plow across the stream in a few seconds, the engine on the ATV roaring.
Then up a wide path we ride, with impressive trees reaching hundreds of feet into the air around us.
Although the jungle was pretty thick on both sides of the path, the road itself is fairly wide and we have quite a view of the surrounding greenery. Then, another stream. This one wider than the first but with the same basic trickle.
More of a wide berth.
Then 2 minutes later we hit a super wide stream with some depth. Knee level about, but no problem for the ATV.
15 minutes into the trip we get deeper into the jungle. Darkness begins to creep in, the towering trees forming a permanent canopy over the path.
Up and away we go, riding up a hill, for a few minutes.
Down the hill we go into the last stream; this one was only 15 feet wide and a few inches deep.
No sweat.
But at that point, what we figured may be a mild jungle setting had been quite unlike.....a mild jungle setting.
Kelli and I were buffeted around on the ATV, water splashing around us, hustling through the jungle, feeling a bit like Indiana Jones as we quickly descended into the heart of darkness.
Monkeys could be heard high in the canopy.
The homeowner later noted how a bullet ant sat on the back of the ATV not far from my rump; being bitten by these chaps - with the most painful insect sting on earth - feels like getting shot.
After the last stream, we hit the real deal; a mile high mountain with a 35% grade in some spots.
Big time pulling on the ATV as the engine roared, howled and bellowed to pull Kelli, me, the kid and our luggage up this beast of a mountain. We spun out a few times as the tires dug like hell into the rocks, mud and clay.
After a long climb we hit the peak.
A little opening.
Then we enter the REAL jungle.
A low canopy not 20 feet above the floor created permanent muddy conditions.
The ATV worked to plow through the mud, the water and the vegetation, along with some fallen trees, as the dirty mix splattered our legs and feet.
The jungle closed in on us at this point, feeling very much like a living presence that began to eat us alive.
After barreling down another hill we started to get dangerously close to darkness.
Finally, the driver aka kid told us in Spanish - nobody here spoke English of course - to dismount because he couldn’t go any further on the ATV.
We nodded and thanked him.
I grabbed our luggage and slowly, cautiously and carefully walked and slid down a hill with a 20% grade in some spots, avoiding poison dart frogs and bullet ants as I did a jungle jig all the way down.
After slipping and falling a few times we reached the hut.
I was only missing a fedora.
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