Costa Rica’s two seasons: mud and dust

You mean I gotta take another bath!?

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When I lived in the USA, I was always conscious of what month it was because each month in the northeast is for me strongly associated with a certain weather pattern.

In Costa Rica, although I am rarely sure what month it is, I do know which season it is. It’s so obvious. Costa Rica only has two seasons: mud and dust.

The mud season. For eight months of the year, I walk out the door and put on my rubber boots (after shaking them in case something crawled in there during the night). Unlike when we lived in the USA, I don’t check outside to see how many layers to wear. Temperature really doesn’t change that much year round, so what you wear is pretty much the same everyday, except for what you put on your feet.

When the rainy season starts, we generally have two weeks of sogginess. There is daily rain, sometimes very heavy and at times with lightening. We get the same thing when the rainy season ends. During the rest of the seven months, at the Monte Cristo plantation where we live, generally there is a big rain twice a day, at about 4:00 in the morning and again in the afternoon. Inside the La Garita plantation, the rain comes every other day. This would seem to make for better living conditions at La Garita, but it really doesn’t, because the sunny day heats the soil, and the previous day’s rain creates a sauna. For living, I prefer a daily rain, but the trees don’t care.

The dust season. Activities change drastically during the dry season. We have more visitors and it is easier to do changes to infrastructure, like road and bridge building, etc. Construction is much, much easier when you aren’t ankle deep, or more, in mud. You can nearly double your time in construction if you do it during the wet season compared to the dry.

One very nice thing about the dry season is it coincides with the coolest time of the year. So the increased sun is offset by the cool winds that come from the North.

When the temperature may vary no more than 10 degrees Farenheit for the entire year, even a change of 5 degrees seems like a lot. So we all act like we’re freezing any time we have to put on socks.

The dry season is great for swimming in our river, as the water is low and crystal clear. Not so good for fishing though. A rain makes the water a little more murky and so helps hide me from the fish. Most of the Ticos go fishing during the dry season because there are places that are accessible no other time of the year except by horse.

We do the heavy pruning of the trees in the dry season. Mainly because bark is slippery and when we are pruning large trees, it is important that nothing is moving around.  We can prune for form all year round.

This is good because the grass isn’t growing as much, so workers who would have been working at keeping the grass cleared around the trees can switch to pruning.

For tree owners, the best time to visit is during the dry season, which is also peak tourist time. This is because getting into the plantations is much easier. During the dry season, we can almost drive up to the individual trees. Otherwise, it can require quite a walk to get to the trees.

For riding a mountain bike, I prefer the rainy season, but after things have dried just a little. Just enough to keep the dust down, but not so much that all the rock is loose. One really nice thing about the dry season is you can ride on the pure dirt roads, which are nearly impassible even with a bike for much of the year. They come through with a grader and clean them up during the beginning of the dry season, giving a great opportunity to ride on hard-packed dry clay.

The truth is, I like both seasons. And the end of each, I am eager for the next. When the dust is everywhere, a nice rain is very welcome, and when you can’t seem to find a dry place anywhere, three months of no rain cures that feeling very well indeed.

Posted in clothes, cycling, finca, forestry, mud, nursery, roads, tree owners, trees | No Comments »

And a (real) road runs to it

There is much excitement in Cabanga and Guatuso recently over the road that runs from Guatuso to Arenal. This also means a lot to us since that road passes in front of our base of operations. What a difference four years makes! It is almost four years ago we bought the Monte Cristo property, and at the time there was a road, but the bridges were less than marginal. In fact, a little less than three years ago when we moved to Monte Cristo with our stuff, when the driver of the truck saw the bridge, he took off his seatbelt in case he had to jump. I was riding with him, and after I did a double-take, I took off my seatbelt, too!

Since that time, both bridges have been repaired thanks to the local businessmen augmenting the resources of the town, and the road has been graded various times. But now they are getting serious, and we are getting a luxury road — for Costa Rica.

There are various stages of roads here. Phase one is send a bulldozer that carves it out but leaves it dirt. This leaves a road that is servicable about 4 months out of the year for vehicles. The rest of the time, only tractors and horses will pass.

The next phase is to take rock and sand dredged out of the river and dump it on the road. This is called “lastre.” You won’t get stuck, but it is jarring, so you would almost prefer dirt. The rock runs from gravel to 6 inches in diameter and more. Kind of fun on a mountian bike, but I probably can’t think of anything that would do a better job destroying a vehicle’s suspension than a river rock road. A lot of people can’t afford repairs, so evry day we hear wham! wham! wham! as pickup trucks and cars go by with their chassis hitting bottom on every big rock. This has been the road in front of our operation these four years and one of the reasons we have a fulltime mechanic.

Now they are going to the next phase, an actual gravel road! Make the road uniform in width, fix all the drainage systems, and spread actual gravel. It is going to be wonderful.

To give you an idea why I sound so excited, our operation is only about 4 miles (6 kilometers) from Guatuso, but it can take 20 minutes to get there due to the road. We are 14 kilometers (10 miles) from Nuevo Arenal, but that is at least 45 minutes of driving on a much worse road. (Imagine driving over ski moguls.) With the new road, I can imagine being in Arenal in under 20 minutes! Not that there is anything to buy in Arenal, except at a very good German Bakery, but we do at times pass through Arenal heading for Liberia to get parts and construction supplies.

There is not only the increase in convenience to us and far fewer repairs to suspension — we seem to change the oil and the bushings on our car at the same time — but it will change the traffic flow of tourism to go right in front of our operation. This allows us to create a storefront for souvenirs and furniture. We are getting more and more walk-in traffic for our furniture business, and this could increase it considerably. Even people passing by this mixed-species plantation is a good thing, because it can raise awareness of what is being done to bring back more native trees to Costa Rica.

Posted in culture, roads | 2 Comments »