New Road to Guayabo

Turrialba is home to a volcano, some of the best coffee in the world, famous cheese (called Queso Turrialba), and a world-famous rafting river, Rio Pacuare. It also has a nearby archaeological site called Guayabo. We went there in 2006 with the Sheridans (friends from Arizona who moved to Costa Rica) and we thought we’d go again now that the kids were older.

Cristina pointed out how nice the road is now to Guayabo. In 2006, the final few kilometers were a bumpy rocky unpaved road, like so many others we’ve traveled on this trip. But now it’s all paved, all the way to the park entrance. Honestly, I didn’t remember the road from 2006.

The kids and I weren’t totally feeling the ruins, but we enjoyed ourselves, even if it included making jokes about the ruins. For example, part of the ruins is a big, flat rectangular area, which they believe was the central market area. We joked that it was the soccer field, and the reason the chief’s hut was built so close to it was so he had the best views of the games. And he played goalie. For both sides. Cristina was much more serious about it. We joked that she was getting her Bachelor of Cultural Anthropology on.

We did the whole trail around the ruins. It was a nice day, maybe a bit hot. In 2006, we had hired a guide, and there were still guides with some groups, but we did it on our own this time.

I heard an animal that had a distinctive call or cry. The same critter had woken me up that morning at the house. Bella and I recorded the sound so we could ask someone what it was. I hoped it was a monkey. When we got back to the entrance, we asked the ranger and played the sound for him. He said it was a bird (darn, no monkey) called a Montezuma Oropendola. One of the guides corroborated and even showed us a write-up about the bird in a book. 

Montezuma Oropendola

We stopped at a restaurant just down the hill from Guayabo. Cristina and I shared a big platter with a variety of meats and veggies. The menu had listed tortillas and platanos, but we hadn’t gotten those, so she asked for them. The bowl of platanos they brought were like nothing we’d ever seen before. Not platanos maduros, not patacones. This was a bowl of bite-sized, boiled chunks of platano. Alex tasted one and spit it out. It was flavorless, chalky. We didn’t eat them.

Ramon headed to Alajuela from there, because he was spending the night at his cousin’s house, much closer to the airport. Early in the morning, Elena was arriving, then Ramon’s friend Kat, then his daughter Lizzie. Three separate flights. We decided to make a big dinner for when they arrived.

We stopped at MaxiPali again on the way back to the house and got charcoal for tomorrow’s barbecue (the veranda has a big built-in grill).