As far as I was aware, Montezuma was an ancient ruler whose empire occupied much of modern-day Mexico, and maybe parts of Guatemala. He didn’t have any influence in Costa Rica. Now why is it that I was cursing that bastard as I said farewell to Costa Rica. I thought we had had our battle back in Mexico. What in hell did I do to piss him off so much that his spirit had to trek across Central America and inflict me with an illness that made my farewell voyage out of Costa Rica a living gastrointenstinal nightmare? When you’re healthy and looking back on a bout of Montezuma’s Revenge it usually seems comical, but when you’re hanging your ass out of the back window of a bathroomless bus, with a Nazi driver who won’t stop for anything, including a red light, and you’re trying desperately not to shit in the pants you’ll be wearing for the next 65 straight hours, you fail to see the humour in the situation.
Six weeks ago I left Honduras in search of more adventure further south. Now, after six weeks of spectacular living and playing in Costa Rica, I’m back in Mexico with time to reflect on my adventures and misadventures, good times and bad, healthy and unhealthy bowel movements, and everything else that I experienced throughout Central America.
So far my impression of Central America is very good, except for the cities. Guatemala City was my first experience in a fortified city where guns, and not just hand guns but large automatic rifles, are present in all shops, banks, and restaurants, and on every street corner. The first time I saw an Uzi sub-machine gun, besides in a movie, was in Guatemala, slung over the shoulder of a convenience-store security guard. My travels further south did not improve my poor impression of Central American capitals. Tegucigalpa has neighbourhoods that look like war zones with bombed out buildings and a plethora of gun-toting thugs. Guns, bus fumes, dirty streets, and extreme poverty and crime make San Salvador a great place to miss on the Central American tour. Managua has the feel of a Latino Las Vegas where gambling and prostitution run rampant in the dirty, crime-ridden streets. And San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, despite being the most cosmopolitan of all the Central American cities, still has an abundance of guns, crime, prostitutes, and thugs to go along with its Americanized-Tico culture. Cities, especially these cities, are not for me. I tend to find fun and adventure in the smaller towns and jungles of Central America, not in the big cities. That is why I cut my stay in San Jose short and headed out on the first bus to the rafting and kayaking capital of Costa Rica, the town of Turrialba.
Everything about my time in Costa Rica was spectacular, everything except for my departure. My original plan for two weeks of paddling eventually turned into six weeks of fun and adventure. Based out of Turrialba for five of those six weeks, I lived in La Jungla House, an old rafting company that was taken over by a few raft guides and transient kayakers who now make it their winter home. I rented a room in this kayaking frat house where most of the inhabitants occupied themselves with chess, reading, smoking dope, fire breathing, videography, photography, womanizing, partying, art, science, water-gun flights, movies, cooking, playing music, singing, juggling, gardening, writing, tight-rope walking, drinking, and practicing as living statues, when not kayaking or working in the rafting industry in Turrialba. La Jungla House was a fun place to be and there were always folks around who wanted to paddle.
In fact, of the six weeks I spent in Costa Rica, five of those weeks were spent paddling, and in those five weeks there were only a handful of days that I didn’t paddle. There are many great rivers in Costa Rica and lots of them are located near Turrialba which makes being a whitewater boater very convenient. I explored the Rio Pacuare and the Rio Reventazon both at flood levels where there was so much water that the boulders on the bottom of the river were moving and shifting with such a force as to create the sound of thunder from under the water. On a river expedition northwest of Turrialba I was taken to the Rio Poza Azul where a thirty-foot waterfall is hidden in the depths of the jungle, a waterfall so friendly and easy to run that we spent an entire afternoon taking repeated dives off of it. Yet another exploration saw us venture on horseback to the headwaters of the Rio Pacuare and into one of the most remote parts of Costa Rica to start a three-day kayaking excursion down the entire whitewater section of that class 5 river. However, the ultimate river run was the Rio Torro.
The Rio Torro is a perfect river. Picture this: a roaring blueish-grey torrent cascading over sulfur-stained, orange-coloured rocks at the bottom of a thousand-foot deep canyon covered with lush-green Costa Rican jungle, intersected every few hundred metres by a frothing waterfall pouring from the lip of the canyon straight into the river. Every so often when there was a break in this continuous class 4-5 section, I would absorb the setting, enjoy it for a few seconds, then get ready for the onslaught of the next rapid. For about fifteen kilometres this continued, relentlessly, leaving me questioning whether I’d ever seen anything as spectacular, be it on a postcard, in my travels, or even in my dreams.
The one week that I didn’t paddle was spent relaxing on the beautiful beaches of the Pacific on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. Two friends from Canada, Daniel and Alexis, spend their winters on the Osa Peninsula living at their beachhouse and operating a local hotel. I was their guest for a week of sun, fun, sand, and surf. My days were filled with swimming, sunbathing, snorkeling, surfing, hiking, canoeing, playing with monkeys, and zip lining though the jungle canopy. I had an amazing time.
My entire stay and all my explorations in Costa Rica were incredibly memorable. Everything about this country, its people, the culture, its rivers, the beaches, and the jungles adds to equate Costa Rica with paradise. However, as with most paradises, there is an inherent connotation of tropicalness. And as with any tropical climate, there is a plethora of tiny microbes that are waiting in the water, in the foods, in the jungles, and in the cities, to strike you down and provide your bowels with a brief episode in hell.
Similar to Mexican cana, Costa Ricans have their own type of firewater derived from sugarcane and they call it guaro. Guaro is an agent of the devil. I’m convinced that it is responsible for my bowel predicament. My troubles started the night before I was planning to leave Costa Rica. My roommates took me out for a farewell drink, which turned into farewell drinks, and then farewell shots of guaro. I don’t remember much of that night. Thankfully it was all documented on a video camera that one of my roommates, Tenzin, wielded with the vigor of a paparazzi. Tenzin managed to catch me falling out of the cab, crawling through the front lawn of the house, being sick in a flower pot beside our Ceiba tree, and stumbling to the doorway of La Jungla House. At this point, with me faced with the extreme difficulty of opening the front door, the camera zooms in and Tenzin asks why I’m not going inside. I mumble something incomprehensible then shout out that I can’t find the doorknob. When the door finally opened I fell through into the front foyer, crawled to the couch, and passed out. It was not one of my finer moments.
You would think that drinking large amounts of guaro, which is probably equivalent to drinking Listerine or Drano, would kill everything, both good and bad, living in your GI tract. On the contrary. It kills most of your immune defenses and leaves your bowels open to a plethora of diarrhea-inducing microbes.
I headed to the bus station the next morning with my friend Eneko, another of the Jungla House transients, who was going to accompany me back to Mexico. My head was pounding, I smelled like a cheap tavern, and I had a fiery sensation brewing in my guts that probably resembled what the innards of Mount St. Helen’s felt like before she blew her top. It was going to be a challenge to make it through the first leg of the bus trip back to Mexico, an hour and a half journey from Turrialba to San Jose.
Misery started with the simple urge to urinate. There was no bathroom on the bus so I kindly asked the driver to pull over on the side of the road. Judging by the grimacing faces of the other dozen or so passengers I figured my request would be appreciated by the entire bus. The driver, probably a relative of The Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, refused. So I went back to my seat at the back of the bus, crossed my legs, and waited.
Soon the pain of all the metabolites from the guaro wanting out of my system overtook me and I resorted to an attempt to urinate out the window of the bus. I kneeled on the back seat, unzipped my pants, and hung my Johnson out the window. However, remember that fiery sensation I mentioned in my bowels, well, it was at this moment that it decided it was going to turn from an uncomfortable feeling into a pain in my ass, literally. I realized I could not relieve number 1 without number 2 accidentally slipping out. The pressure developing from both the front and the back was tremendous. I switched positions, this time sitting with my ass out the window. Then I realized number 1 will definitely make a mess inside the bus if number 2 is released. To remedy the situation I emptied my Nalgene bottle, hung my ass out the back window, and aimed little Bob into the Nalgene. Everything was lined up for gastrointenstinal and bladder relief. Unfortunately, stage fright took over. The strain of sitting the way I was and the pressure to perform with various onlookers both outside the bus and my fellow passengers from within, was too much for me to overcome. Even Eneko’s attempt to screen my awkward position from the bus passengers by holding up his jacket to shield me from their scrutinizing stares failed. I zipped up, puckered up, and crossed my legs.
Shortly thereafter we approached the city limits of San Jose and the sure sign of civilization, McDonalds’ Golden Arches. I told Eneko to take care of my luggage, whatever was to happen. I approached the driver with another request to stop but again he refused saying that he had a time table to keep. He wouldn’t even drop me off. As we approached the intersection where the McDonalds was located the bus slowed down to around 15 km/hour to make a turn. I grabbed the lever, opened the bus doors and lept from the moving vehicle onto a grassy boulevard. My legs were running ahead of my body and in order to slow down I latched onto a street sign, spun with one hand around it, then fell to the ground. The bus hadn’t stopped, it just kept on going. Eneko was hanging out the back window with his right hand patting the top of his head, the international river signal asking if everything was OK. I signalled I was alright then ran across the street to the predictable North American cleanliness of the McDonalds bathroom. I locked myself in the handicapped stall and spent the next twenty-five minutes expelling my inner contents, basking in the sudden gastrointestinal and bladder relief, and thinking, for the first time in my life, that the spread of American economic imperialism through the international expansion of the McDonalds franchise is actually a great thing. If it wasn’t for McDonalds I would have shit my pants in the middle of Costa Rica.
As I left McDonalds I thanked Eduardo, the employee who signed the bathroom cleaning checklist posted behind the door that morning, then apologized for ruining his hard work. I bought an Egg McMuffin because I felt guilty and set off to find Eneko, my luggage, and the international bus heading north.
The Tica Bus is the Central Ameican busline that traverses all the borders. We bought our tickets and started heading north. I ingested a couple Gravol and some Imodium and woke up in Mangua. The next day I did the same and woke up in San Salvador. The next day I did the same and woke up in Tapachula, Mexico. And on the final day, I did the same and woke up in Jalcomulco, via San Cristobal de las Casas and Jalapa, where I don’t remember changing buses, let alone passing through.
The best thing to do when you have to ride a bus for 65 hours with diarrhea and various other microbial-induced symptoms is to medicate. Take everything and anything. Sleep as much as you can and think happy thoughts. Getting sick, I’ve realized, is a part of traveling. Its bound to happen. Remember that whatever doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. Next time Montezuma takes a shot at you, you’ll have added defenses and specific white-blood cells that destroy specific microbes dressed like ancient Mexican rulers. And also remember that Montezuma, despite being Mexican, has a firm grip on all the countries in Central America. I’m curious to see if he has any relatives in Asia.
