Tortuguero Gone Wrong

Tortuguero, Costa Rica

Wet Season 2007

Traveling with a backpack, a Lonely Planet guide, and the hopes of city transportation with no concern of timeframe or itinerary was my idea of an adventure.  I was traveling with one companion, and our trip had begun.  While in Costa Rica we decided to venture to the Caribbean coast to the home of many rare species of sea turtles and birds.  Tortuguero was in the northeastern portion of the country and received the greatest amount of rainfall annually.  We traveled in the wet season to avoid overcrowding and high seasonal rates. 

 

Our adventure began with a four-hour bus ride to Cairo, where we got off one bus and onto another older bus better described as an antique.  Another 3 hours on this bumpy hot ride through flooding that challenged our buses ability to stay grounded and we were to the safety of our docks.  This is where it got interesting. 

 

Ticos (the local term for a Costa Rican) use the term “dock” very loosely.  First off, there was no wood or cement structure to which to tie a vessel.  Instead there were trees along a shoreline and small six to seven foot boats were tied up to a tree keeping them “secured”.  The locals explained that the location of these “docks” could be hundreds of feet away depending on the amount of rainfall they had recently had.   The international travelers and locals alike disembarked from our antique bus and climbed onboard to our trusty dingy with our confident captain that proclaimed that we could indeed all fit into his boat without sinking.  I couldn’t help but notice that there were only a few life vests on the boat, but after all, we were in Costa Rica, “Relax”, I told myself.  It took about 30 seconds after we pushed off from our tree to encounter our first major problem.  It seemed that steering wheel was not working.  Somehow the connection between the one outboard motor that drove us and the steering column had disconnected.  Meanwhile, the front of the boat was drifting into a section of barbed wire (why there was barbed wire in the middle of nowhere in swamp lands I have yet to figure out).  Our captain’s trusty deck hand was out on the bow of the boat and noticed the wire just in time to jump over the section and grab hold of a sand bar.  Once temporarily secured to the bar I looked over my left shoulder where we had almost drifted.  Only to see a raging chocolate river charging the opposite direction of travel, churning with vehemence.  “Ok,” I said to myself, “Now it’s time to worry.”  I have white water experience and know that if we would have drifted into this raging river at the angle we were going we would have been flipped like a burger at McDonalds.  The captain apparently noticed this too, because he went through the small boat and rolled open the plastic windows (which were previously blocking the rain, and would have also blocked our emergency exit in the event it rolled).  The captain also proceeded to place the few life jackets he had onto the children on the vessel.  So I recapped to myself, even the captain thinks that we are going to flip.  He proceeding to talk to the passengers in Spanish, “I was really wishing I had studied more Spanish right about now.”  Just when I thought that I could not be more terrified I remembered that there were caiman and alligators in these waters…  Then our leader devised a plan.  He commanded his deck hand to hold the throttles, freeing him to climb to the back of the small boat and direct the outboard manually pushing it right or left as needed.  When he needed more or less speed he simply shouted to his compadre.  The moment of truth was when we shoved off of the sand bar and held our breath as we entered the furious water.  The captain skillfully commanded the appropriate entry speeds and angles to keep the vessel upright.  Thirty minutes of white water and knuckles later we entered a large throughway, allowing the rest of our two and a half hour journey a more cope static ride.   One last hurdle was a tree branch that assaulted and broke the blade of our outboard motor.  Fortunately, our captain had one spare blade (this, it seemed, was a common occurrence).  He tinkered with the motor until the repair had been completed and we arrived safely in Tortuguero.

 

Tortuguero was more of a village than a town sitting barely above water between the Caribbean Ocean and the river-ways of the Amazon-esc portion of Costa Rica.  The small hostels were inviting with a small town neighborly feel. Tortuguero had no banks or ATMs so some planning ahead was necessary.  After one night in our cozy new village a stubborn storm set in that seemed as if it had no plans of ending.  We spent much of the second night out in the elements with the hopes of seeing the leatherback turtle make it’s journey to shore and lay her eggs as they often did in this region.  Unfortunately, the turtles had more sense than we did staying away from the storm that would have met it at shore.  The village flooded, thankfully our room was on cement blocks, however walking anywhere required rolling up your pant legs and tromping through shin to knee high murky waters of god knows what.  We overheard the locals say that this was worse than it was a few years back when they evacuated the gringos; that was our cue, it was time to go.  We found a resident who had a boat and offered to pay him for a ride down to Limón (a four hour trek down a canal that paralleled the Caribbean) he accepted stating that he needed to leave in 10 minutes.  We made a mad dash to our room; meanwhile six other European travelers took cue and joined us for the ride to our next adventure…  

Shannon Enete

Writer/Photographer

shannonenete@gmail.com

 

Leaving the "docks" headed for Tortuguero Village, Costa Rica 2007

 

 

 

Find Yourself in Your Suitcase

It took a passport, a few thousand miles, and a language barrier to feel safe enough to explore the thoughts that my sexuality may be labeled something other than heterosexual.  A trip to Cancun provided me the safety of solitude and an environment for self-discovery so rich that I was able to hurdle twenty-five years of an ultra-conservative upbringing to understand my sexuality as homosexual and be ok with the truth that made me. Therapists often use medication to help delve into hard to reach places such as this one, but travel provided me the same supplement. I was already outside of the confinements of my comfort zones; therefore I was able to take myself out of the box that I had associated with what makes me.  Just as I see the world in a whole different light, so do I see myself from a different vantage. 

 

Lounging against a palm pressing my feet through the sand with only the Caribbean bearing witness, I felt clarity of thought that I had not known, accompanied by peace with newfound truth.  It was an “Ah-ha” moment.  Pieces of my life that could not connect fell in place as if I had placed the last card of solitaire in play.  I replayed all of the relationships and friendships I’d had over in my mind and understood my loneliness and dissatisfaction with them.  I had many best friends growing up and felt a bouquet of feelings for them.  I wanted to be loving, giving, chivalrous, and someone they needed.  I also had a growing frustration.  Not understanding why I yearned for touch from my girlfriends.  Even if they were the “touchy feely” type I wanted more than what they provided.  I usually attempted to resolve these frustrations with the thought that I was raised in a touchy feely environment and they were not.  Thus describing away the gap between them and myself.  This resolve was anything but effective.  I remember many sad nights in high school where I was inside of my car at the beach feeling more isolated than a survivor on a stranded island.  I was convinced that there was not a single soul on the earth that could understand my feelings let alone appease them.  I had so much love to give and no understanding of how to give it.  If I ever let my thoughts venture near the idea of homosexuality I rebuked myself stating that it was impossible because I was a good girl and a good child of god, and if I were gay I was taught that I would be an abomination and I would die in hell.   

 

After living apart from the grasps of my parents for seven years and developing my own ideals of life and how the world works through my travels and experiences I have become proud of who I am and understand that god would not hate what he created.  Ironically the solution from that loneliness was isolation in a different country. Cancun provided a maternal safety surrounding me with water and the soothing sounds it made as the tide ebbed and flowed.  It showed me that there was more than one correct way to live life.  Added to that, I was separated from the idiosyncrasies of normality, which provided the energy and freedom to assign my mind new tasks.  For example, instead of worrying when I would have time to cook dinner, pick up the dry cleaning, vacuum, pay the bills, and get out of debt; I reassigned those brain seconds to work on issues in my life that were unreachable when added to daily stressors.  Granted, this is not the only way to self-discover, however, I would say that it is arguably the most fun, and for me it’s been proven to be the most effective! 

 

Shannon Enete

Writer / Photographer

shannonenete@aol.com

www.shannonenete.wordpress.com

 

Paradise

Word Count 500

My family never traveled.  When I was in sixth grade, I began fundraising with my soccer team for a trip to Hawaii to play in a soccer tournament.  Two years and thousands of candy bars, lolly-pops, and car washes later I found myself on a plane with my team and a chaperone to the tropics of Oahu, Hawaii!  I couldn’t believe that a place as beautiful as Hawaii

Did you know that a place like this existed?

existed.  Its vast turquoise water, tropical landscaping, and hiking trails amongst active volcanoes were a shock to my senses.  Surfing in Hawaii was the first time that my eyes competed between brilliant coral and fish while I simultaneously surfed a wave. Arriving home after a red-eye return flight, I remember the first thing that I said to my parents was, “Why didn’t you want to go to a place as wonderful as that?”  Knowing that they had the financial means, this puzzled me.  Their steadfast reply to any inquiry regarding travel was, “Why travel when you live in paradise?”  My instant retort was, “How do you know what paradise is until you’ve have seen and sampled all that the world has to offer?  How do you make an informed decision about where to spend your life if you don’t know what your options are?”   These lingering questions spawned my passion for world exploration. 

 

 

I did not have another opportunity to enjoy my newfound passion until I became of age and made two friends, Visa & Mastercard… I graduated high school and was working full time so that I could afford to continue what I’d been aspiring for since losing my travel virginity.  I partook/ embarked on my first international expedition; and made it an easy one, to the tranquility of the Bahamas.  It was here that I learned that there was indeed a place with more pristine water than that of Hawaii.  In the Bahamas a minute is also 60 seconds, however, time passes much slower, and hurry is not in their vocabulary.  I made traveling my favorite expense.  While some of my friends bought name-brand jeans, and Gucci purses I went to Cancun… The serene Caribbean provided me the safety of solitude, and an environment so rich for self-discovery that I grew in a way that I’d never experienced before.   It took a passport, a few thousand miles, and a language barrier to feel safe enough to explore in such a deep place inside myself.  Not only did I learn what the world has to offer, but also what I had to offer the world.

 

Our planet has between 168-254 nations (depending on who is counting), five major climates, 6,912 languages (according to “Ethnologue” 15^th edition), 1500 different cultures (“The Encyclopedia of World Cultures”), and immeasurable quantities of shoreline.  Which place is your paradise?  I have no idea where I want to spend the rest of my life.  But I do know that I could happily spend the rest of my life figuring it out. 

 

Shannon Enete

Writer / Photographer

Kansas City

shannonenete@aol.com

www.shannonenete.wordpress.com

 

 

My Writing Mission Statement

To record the things that elicit a heart response while utilizing articulate soul felt language.  To demonstrate my passions thereby setting me free geographically through creativity.