Steamy bubbly volcanic treats

By Aaron

Before we went to Monteverde, Zack, Nicole and I took our first inland trip to the Rincon de la Vieja Volcano National Park. It was a pretty easy drive, even though it was mostly dirt roads to get there.  It’s a beautiful place to visit, and we highly recommend it.  We only saw two people on the whole hike.

Beginning our hike on the rusting chain link and rebar suspension bridge with rotted boards over a raging river of death.  Of course that didn’t stop Nicole from jumping up and down on it as soon as I was half way across.

 

 
This buttress root on this tree made it look like it had its arm around the boulder.  They’re jungle buddies.

 

The flora was incredible and exotic with trees bending and twisting up every which way.  We stopped many times to try and see where all the strange bird calls were coming from.

 

 

You gotta have at least one waterfall per hike in Costa Rica.

The volcano is active (the last eruption was only 10 months ago), and there are many fumaroles to be found in the park.  Fumaroles are openings in the Earth’s crust that spew out steam and gases.  Geoflatulance if you will.  It looked like fog as we approached the first one, but it was really hot and it sure didn’t smell like fog.

The first fumarole we came to had a ghostly noise and made the whole area steamy.  It was a creepy effect under the dark canopy.

Ah, the fresh air of the jungle.  Except when you’re downwind of a fumarole.  There your lungs get filled with a rotten egg medley of sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen sulfide.  But don’t worry!  It’s all natural from the Earth, so it can’t be bad for you.

 

 

 

After a few kilometers, it was time to stop for a lunch consisting of a Spanish cheese platter, various meats and a couple baguettes.  We found a great spot next to a mudpot with the jungle around us and a lizard begging for Pringles at my feet.  Not bad.  And that’s not Coke in Nicole’s cup.  We learned a nifty trick from my mom to bring red wine on trips like this. 

 

 

 
Onward!

Some boiling ponds….

 

As a sidenote, I’ll mention the bugs here.  They’re frigin huge.  A lot of them are friendly.  But there’s a few that look like they’ll kill you just because they can.

 

Nicole doesn’t mind them crawling on her as long as they’re sans fangs, stingers, and offensive pincers.  I particularly like the stick bugs which I’ve given the Best Camouflage Award.  The cicada on the bottom right, makes an ear piercing RRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! noise that is impossibly loud for something that size.  The cicada is actually the worlds loudest insect and can produce sounds up to 120 dB – enough to cause permanent hearing loss if it were just outside your ear.   

 

 
We passed some really muddy mudpots.  We probably spent an hour here just watching them burble and bubble. 

 
The jungle eventually gave way to some grassy hilltops.

 
Gotta watch your step around here.  The gasses coming out of that hole look to have done a nice job eating away at the rock.  If you step in it you’ll just pull a skeleton foot out of the hole.

  From any vantage point with a clear view of the canopy it’s easy to spot other fumaroles.

Well that’s it for our inland trips for a week or two.  We’ve got a vanload of gear clearing customs as I type this, and it’s expected to arrive at the marina Friday.  So we’ll be pretty busy with boat projects and getting Bella Star ready to get underway again.  But we’ll post some updates on that as well.

Exploring Costa Rica’s cloud forest

By Nicole

While we sit at the dock in Marina Papagayo with nothing much to do except wait for a massive shipment of gear to arrive from the States, we decided to take advantage of the delay and do some traveling.  Here we take you to the amazing cloud forest of Monteverde; next up, our adventures with bubbling geothermal mudpots.

Perched on Costa Rica’s continental divide, the cloud forest of Monteverde is drenched in beauty and mist.  It is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, and we had a chance to experience its richness up close.

 Clouds + Forest = cloud forest

In our sweet rented Toyota Yaris, Aaron, Zack and I set off on a multi-faceted adventure tackling boulder-ridden roads, speedy zip lines, a nighttime foray into the jungle, a passel of feisty hummingbirds and an impressive waterfall.  Where to begin but at the beginning.

Meet our trusty Yaris

The road leading to Monteverde, and the nearest town of Santa Elena, is rough to say the least.  The guidebooks warn that a 4-wheel drive vehicle (AKA not a Toyota Yaris) is needed to handle the rocky, steep, rutted dirt roads leading into (and around) the area.  “Pshaw,” we exclaimed to that idea.  Well, let’s just say that we raised a toast to our little Yaris for making it the last jarringly unpaved 35 kilometers into the mountains.  Good thing it’s a rental.

After having some lunch in a cool treehouse and finding a tidy hostel for the night, we set off on our first adventure … hiking to the breathtaking San Luis waterfall.  The ol’ Yaris couldn’t make it across a large stream (no, we didn’t even try), so we parked it and walked the rest of the way to the trailhead (located in the backyard of a private residence).

 We left the Yaris behind and traversed on foot

A tree of Chestnut-headed Oropendola birds captured everyone’s attention—even the homeowner’s—with their eerie songs

The cloud forest’s clouds roll in

Three chickens all in a row

 
Banana-palm tunnel at the trailhead

 Even in a Costa Rican jungle, Aaron likes to represent our old ’hood of Ballard

Mossy rocks

 The stunningly beautiful, two-tiered San Luis waterfall

 Zack took a swim, alone.  Because Aaron and I accidentally forgot our suits in the Yaris.  Damn.

Dusk was upon us as we hiked back to the car.  We grabbed a quick dinner of empanadas from the Super Compro grocery store and waited for our ride to the Monteverde Wildlife Refuge.  Tonight we were venturing into the jungle in search of all things nocturnal.

Our guide led the three of us along the dark trails, past bright green viper snakes slithering along branches, a toucan sleeping soundly, an amusingly slow (and stoned) two-toed sloth and lots of other nighttime creepy crawlies.  It was fantastic.  Night or day, the entire Monteverde region is a nature-lover’s paradise.

A fuzzy Orange-kneed Tarantula waits patiently in her hidey-hole.  Pretty sure I’m the only one who wanted to hold her.

If seeing snakes and tarantulas didn’t get our hearts racing enough, we booked a zip lining adventure for first thing the next morning at Selvatura Park.  None of us had ever been zip lining before, and wow … it was such a rush!  Zooming through the trees and over the forest canopy was absolutely spectacular. 

Aaron and I go tandem for a wild ride

We half-expected to see a jaguar stalking us in the dense jungle surrounding the zip line platforms

Awesome day

Later that afternoon, after finding a rustic, eco-friendly cabin in the woods to rent for the night, we went in search of local coffee and hummingbirds.  Mission accomplished at the Hummingbird Gallery.  Literally hundreds of squeaky, feisty, cranky and hungry little dudes flit and whiz from feeder to feeder completely ignoring the human onlookers.  Lots of spunk in tiny bodies.  And yummy coffee to boot.

 Green Violet-ear hummingbird

Female White-necked Jacobin hummer

That evening we made dinner, played cards, drank rum & Cokes and our favorite wine, a decadent Carmenere that we’re not ashamed to admit comes in a box, and took a night walk to the sound of frogs and crickets.  We had time for one more jungle hike the next morning (where we spied the three-wattled bellbird) before we packed up the Yaris, buckled our seatbelts and bounced back to Bella Star and Panache.

What a trip.

Bahia Santa Elena, Costa Rica (pre-lightning)

By Nicole

When we were cruising British Columbia, we’d often go a week or more without seeing another boat.  We relished the solitude of these remote, beautiful anchorages knowing that it wouldn’t be long before we’d be sharing an anchorage (and trading stories over cocktails) again soon.  For one or two nights, we even got an anchorage in the Sea of Cortez all to ourselves.  But that hadn’t happened for a very long time – until we arrived in Costa Rica, that is.

Bahia Santa Elena, just over the Nicaraguan border, is an exceptional place.  It’s part of the Santa Rosa National Park, which protects some of the last remaining tropical dry rainforest in the world (and explains why we saw cacti and rattlesnakes along with palm trees and parrots).  After spending 6 weeks in El Salvador where deforestation and trash are enormous problems, the lushness and natural beauty of Bahia Santa Elena was a welcome change.

The bay is alive with sights and sounds and smells – parrots and other tropical birds chitter-chatter in the trees, howler monkeys hoot to one another, butterflies in blue, yellow, orange and black flit by, fish swim and splash all around the boat, the fragrant smell of plumeria blossoms wafts down from the hills and at night, twinkling fireflies compete with the stars. 

Just outside the entrance to the bay are some fantastic snorkeling grounds, and jungle-lined trails beg to be explored.  All in all, it’s a perfect spot to spend a week or two relaxing, hiking, bird watching, swimming and snorkeling.  And that’s just what we did.

Early morning tranquility

Cactus fields forever

Dinghy exploring (love those dinghy wheels)

 Spiky tree

Gorgeous views out the entrance to Nicaragua

I like long walks on the beach and piña coladas

Hiking the trail to the (tiny) waterfall …

… when the trail is actually a stream.

Sweet-smelling plumeria blossom

 Off on a snorkeling adventure (and to check out the cool stratigraphy)

 Snorkel time

 Aaron contemplates the decision to have a beer or a rum & Coke for happy hour

Bella Star at anchor in Bahia Santa Elena.  Aaron joked that it was so calm it was like we were in the boatyard.  Awesome.

Nice.  Very nice.

The peace was broken, however, with the arrival of another boat.  It was Panache!  Yay!  Zack decided to take a scenic detour on his way to the Marquesas with a stop in gorgeous Costa Rica.  Never mind that we’d accidentally absconded with his point-and-shoot camera and he needed to retrieve it … Oops!  Now that the three of us were back together, it was time to have some fun …

(Want the full story on the camera incident and Zack’s thwarted attempts to leave El Salvador? Check out SailPanache.com.)

Lightning Update

By Aaron

First of all, thanks for all the heartfelt thoughts and words of support.  Everyone, even people we’ve never even personally met, have all been so gracious and kind with their encouragement and offers to help.  It gives us the strength to pick ourselves up and sail on.

The night of the strike we quickly went through basic emergency damage control and assessment.

Is the fridge still keeping the beer cold?  Yes.

Is anything on fire?  No.                                                       

Is any water coming into the boat?  No.

Does the engine still start?  Yes.

After that it was trying out each individual piece of equipment that has an on/off switch and coming to the conclusion that we had a lot of work ahead of us. At least the new fridge I just installed a month ago was still working, and most of the lights, and the water pump, and the head pump, so our life support systems were in pretty good shape.

The morning after the strike we could visually see some of the damage.

Looking up we noticed that our VHF antenna was missing and presumably vaporized.  Both of the spreader lights were blackened.

We found one of the glass spreader light lenses intact on the deck, the other one shattered into little bits.

Going aloft to get a better look at everything, it was apparent that the maximum allowable voltage on our LED spreader lights may have been exceeded.

The masthead actually looked pretty good.  There was only a little blackening around the mount for the missing VHF antenna, it wasn’t even worth taking a picture of.  I removed the spreader lights, VHF mount, steaming light, anchor light, and anemometer in preparation for replacement. 

What’s left of the VHF antenna mount.  You can see some burn marks on the inside.  Maybe God was trying to hail us. 

We went ashore and with our fingers crossed made the call to our insurance company, Pantaenius.  Almost immediately we had arrangements to have a surveyor fly down from Florida to survey the boat.  And a nice thing about our policy is that the deductible for lightning strikes is zero. 

Our solar panels appeared to be working but alternator and generator charging were inoperative.  The panels alone aren’t quite enough to keep up with our electrical demands, we no longer had a working VHF or legal lights for being at anchor, so we knew we’d need to head to a marina for the time being (and it would also make it easier to meet the surveyor).  Fortunately, swanky Marina Papagayo was only about 7 miles away. 

Nicole already had a trip planned to go visit friends in Washington DC, and after considering staying with the boat we decided that she should still go.  So she flew out, and that same morning I pulled up the anchor and got underway to the marina.

And wow, nothing makes you appreciate the modern conveniences like having to use a compass heading for your course and actually hand steer the boat for over an hour!  If the marina were much further I may have had to (gasp) use a paper chart.

The surveyor showed up later that morning and did a very thorough survey of the boat and her electrical systems.  That report was submitted to the insurance company, and my job was to get quotes for repair or replacement of the broken gear which I have since provided.  And that’s pretty much where we’re at right now, but we expect to be ready to start ordering stuff shortly.  I’ll do the work myself.  Most of this stuff I installed the first time around, so I can do it again faster than a yard could, and probably to a higher level of quality.

It took me a few days to pull out some of the fried gear.  Still need to pull the battery monitor, engine hour meter, fuel gauge sender, alternator regulator, radar dome, GPS receiver, transducer, etc.  And probably all the NMEA2K cabling.  The lightning also fried one of my laptops.  You may notice the empty rum bottle as well.  While not directly affected by the lightning strike, it also gets a spot on the table as something that needs to be fixed.

So I’m curious as to where 1.21 gigawatts of electricity decided to exit the boat.  (Or maybe it’s squished up into a ball, hiding in the bilge.)  Yesterday I pulled out all the anchor chain to investigate the chain locker but everything looked good.  Today I swam the hull and looked at every metal surface, seacock and thruhull trying to see any indication of where the strike exited the boat.  I looked all over the hull underwater and at the water line for signs of pinholes, crazing, or burn marks.  What I can see of the chainplates looks good.  So I didn’t see anything unusual, but we’ll be hauling out anyway at the first opportunity to get a better look.  We’ll also need to pull the mast to rewire it. 

So yeah, this sucks.  But they say cruising is fixing your boat in exotic places.  And this place sure qualifies as exotic.  It’s absolutely, and stunningly beautiful here.  We’ve already fallen in love with Costa Rica and we’ve still got 90% of the coast to explore.  We’ll have a post up soon about our wonderful stay in Bahia Elena.  And yesterday we killed some time by renting a car and taking a trip to one of the many national parks, Rincon de la Vieja.  We took a 4km hike amongst all sorts of steaming and bubbling volcanic treats - and it was truly amazing.  So we’ll have some posts up on that soon as well, as well as updates to our ongoing repairs. 

Bella Star will sail on!

Struck by lightning

By Nicole

It was a dark and stormy night… Isn’t that how good horror stories start?  Well, that basically sets the scene for what happened a few nights ago.

While at anchor in Playas del Coco, Costa Rica, Bella Star took a direct lightning strike.

We were ashore enjoying our first taste of Costa Rican beer when a severe thunderstorm moved in bringing torrential rain, intense flashes of lightning and deafening cracks of thunder.  As cruisers, we live with the reality of a potential lightning strike, but it’s something we never really thought would happen to us.

No one was hurt—that’s the main thing—but Bella Star sustained major damage and is out of commission for the time being.  Virtually all the electronics were fried, including the VHF, SSB, Pactor modem, autopilot, chartplotter, alternator/regulator, inverter, battery charger/monitor … and the list goes on.

The last few days have been stressful and trying—I’ve cried more than once—but we’re working with the insurance company to come up with a plan.  We want nothing more than to get Bella Star out cruising again, and that’s what we’re going to do.

We’ll keep you posted…