March 16, 2000 - Monday

An interesting day indeed. Our original plan was to head out to Cartago, the original capital of Costa Rica, and go to Parque de Tapanti, a wet clouded forest southeast of Cartago. I got my package of fresh sugar cane sticks and we headed off toward our destination on the Pan American Highway. About 5 miles from Cartago, we were stopped in traffic. People were pulled over and most of them resting. It looked like a long delay whatever it was. We found out that there's a strike and a blockade and the road won't be opened again until 3:00PM. After asking some people in the local town for an alternative way, we headed toward the mountain for another path to Cartago. After climbing for a while, the road stopped again with a long line of stopped cars and we were again forced to turn back.

It was a bit disappointing to say the least. The strike turned out to be the workers of ICE, a government run agency that provides phone and electricity to the nation. The workers were striking because the government is planning on privatizing the utilities and that will mean job cuts for the inefficiently run company.

After Gilberto checked with his office (he works for the newspaper), we found out that all roads from San Jose to Cartago were all blocked. We decided to go to Parque Braulin Carrillo instead. On the way, we stopped by a large opened aired restaurant and I had a chicken soup with a really good broth. We were at a fairly high altitude so a bowl of hot soup hit the spot.

The area was shrouded in fog and cloud so I wasn't sure how much we would see, but as soon as we started driving again, it cleared up a little bit. After driving through the forest, we got to the ranger station and parked the car. There were three short trails nearby and we headed off on the first one. Just a few feet into the first trail, I stopped in the stream and was able to capture some live bearers similar to the ones I got the last time near Arenal Volcano, and my first Killie fish in Costa Rica. I released them after taking some photos, but I didn't have any photo tank so I had to settle with pictures of them in the bag.

It's too bad they didn't develop longer trails because the short trail wound through a very lush and sprit-lifting rain forest. We had to run through the last trail because it started raining and we were not prepared for that. It stopped by the time we got back to our car. At that time, it was getting dark. We headed back to San Jose after that but the driving was treacherous. The road was dark, fog filled, and twisty. There were some sections were I couldn't see the road but we managed to make it back in once piece.