Curious George. He wasn’t part of the plan but he inadvertently became the bookends. I find this fitting, since we just entered the year of the monkey. More on how he fits in in a minute.

I was introduced to the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) Trail Crew “Adult Working Vacation” concept by Robin, an instigator of many of my adventures. Since we hike a lot, it seems right to volunteer to do trail maintenance–but so much more awesome when combined with a vacation to a desirable destination. My intro to this was a couple years ago in the US Virgin Islands, St John, and it was an amazing experience. Epicureans and fellow hobbits take note: late dinners are more appreciated after a long day of work and play. A simple hearty meal can be heaven, fries made from yucca root a delicacy, and who cares about presentation when you eat by the light of a headlamp and do your own dishes? The adult working vacation setup has you pay a reasonable fee, puts you up in donated space (tents or lodging) in exchange for trail work, feeds you (well!), and gives you some time to explore the surrounding area. It’s a win for everyone!

This was the inaugural Costa Rica trip, coordinated through Nat, a man with roots in both the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the misty green slopes of the Monte Verde San Luis Valley of Costa Rica. He follows in the footsteps of three generations of trail builders, so I guess it’s in his blood. His vision for a network of trails between the Cloud Forest of Monte Verde and the Gulf of Nicoya along a backbone called the Sendero Pacifico will connect local communities and promote sustainable tourism. It has gradually taken shape over the last three decades. And through odd twists and turns of the semi-random intersections that shape who we are, he also happens to be the curator for the Hans and Margret Reys “Curious George” legacy, one promoting fellowship with the community and environment through the cooperative drawing/storytelling he shares in both locales.

As a brief aside, I feel like I just pushed the button of the “Infinite Improbability Drive” and Curious George is among the infinite number of monkeys churning out the complete works of William Shakespeare. (Cue the sperm whale and bowl of petunias, ‘So Big, and Flat, and Round, new friend named Ground’.) A quick google search on Hans and Margret Reys says they were German Jews that lived in Brazil, moved to Paris, and just barely escaped the Nazis to move to New York with a few Curious George stories and the clothes on their back, and then to New Hampshire where Hans could more effectively stargaze. Nat, born in Guatemala and back to his New England roots, was among the children that hovered around Hans’s easel and influenced the ongoing adventures of Curious George. He’s entrusted to continue the tradition. I imagine one day one of the children he’s inspired through Curious George will discover the cure to cancer in the Monte Verde Cloud Forest, in one of the areas the Quakers who moved there during World War II preserved as watersheds while other areas were deforested. The world works in mysterious ways.

The AMC’s original plan was to stay in a hiking cabin on the Sendero Pacifico, Albergue Amapala. This changed a week or two before the trip when an organic coffee farm in the local community completed and offered a new lodging option closer to the worksite, AND all our meals in exchange for the food budget. Albergue Bella Tica on Finca La Bella. The coffee and food were amazing (though as a disclaimer, I do love beans and rice), the setting beautiful, the bunks and living area great (at least among people who get along well enough not to need a ton of privacy after three squares of beans and rice), and with the unexpected luxury of electricity and semi-hot showers.

One of the major obstacles was just getting there. Coming from Colorado in January, I surprisingly had clear/sunny skies if not desirable flight times (I got in at about 1 am). I booked a hotel halfway between the airport and San Jose instead of trying to sleep with my luggage at the airport. Adventure Inn – not frilly, but definitely had character. Since my mom painted a scene amalgamated from Ranger Rick magazines in the upstairs bathroom of the house I grew up in (I still find the pica staring at me on the pot a little disconcerting) I found this place kind of homey. It had wildlife murals everywhere, a koi pool with something between a Mayan and Tiki theme, and a spacious room with a wall air conditioner setting marked in sharpie “ideal” (which I couldn’t reach without a chair). My brain still going in circles unwilling to sleep, I toggled through stations and settled on a World War II Stalag drama with Bruce Willis as a POW and Spanish voiceovers for the Americans. I think I finally accrued enough sheep around 3 am.

The next morning I sat in the hotel breakfast nook watching Fox News (it’s what was on, don’t judge) on mute. The radio played mostly ‘60s music with some more modern like Billy Joel mixed in. “Aquarius” accompanied coverage of a massive winter storm hitting the east coast, in stark contrast to the beach mural painted on the wall and the sculpted palm tree occupying the center. The “Tico Breakfast” was beans & rice, eggs, and sausage, with a buffet of fruits (half of which I didn’t recognize) and cheeses, great coffee, served by a friendly wait staff. I suppose if some alcohol and a few cats were involved, Hemingway might have fallen in love.

I walked to a nearby local market to buy cigars. I had in mind Cubans but didn’t want to go on a major quest to find them. I settled on what looked like some nice Costa Ricans in the hopes of enjoying some second hand version of them courtesy of my friends who don’t turn green smoking them.

After shuttling back to the airport, I sat at the coffee stop sipping caffeine as I waited for friends old and new to trickle in. At some point buried in a magazine I realized Nat and a couple people somehow associated with the group had arrived a few tables away. Carolyn the Intern somehow kept Nat organized, and Oliver, one of the AMC trail peeps who’d changed his flight to the redeye to beat the weather. We were soon joined by Robin, who’d rerouted her flight through Atlanta but was still delayed for deicing, Gail and Kris, and Bill, whose first leg was cancelled and drove south through snow and ice to catch the connector, only slightly delayed by the duty-free store on his way out of the terminal (much to our group’s later pleasure). We waited a couple hours for Jim then took our sunset bus to Monte Verde while Nat waited for the remaining five doomed by weather to a ten pm arrival. Brendan, our AMC leader, would make his way the next day … we’d start without him.

I don’t remember a lot about the first couple hours of the bus ride, just that it was hilly and slow, the sunset was spectacular but the roads were too bumpy to get a picture even at the slow jammed pace we traveled, the moon was full and beautiful but I couldn’t get a picture of it either, and I really needed to go to the bathroom until the dinner stop “not too far outside of San Jose” an eternity of two hours later. After that, I enjoyed our transition onto even steeper windier gravel roads which looked treacherous by moonlight and headlights as the obstinate wind buffeted us around. Finally we arrived.

The coffee farm owners gave us a quick tour of our “home” for the next week and brewed a fresh batch of their home grown blend in a “sock”. For Robin, not a problem to drink coffee at bedtime, she can still turn her brain off and go to sleep. Might not have been a great idea for me but I still enjoyed it, some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. I grabbed a top bunk to make it easier for the folks coming in at 2 am, especially knowing one of them has a propensity for being a bit of a klutz (you know who you are :)).

I tried to go to sleep. The wind was like something out of the Three Little Pigs story. The bunkhouse was impressively built, didn’t move a bit and no drafts. But it sounded like the roof should blow off at any minute. Eventually it lulled me to sleep, until five tired people with headlamps (Fred, Josh, Liz, Sean, and Jenna with her predictably excessive luggage), arrived somewhere between two and three in the morning, and tried with semi-reasonable success to quietly find their bunks.

Back to sleep for a few hours before we woke to the smell of freshly brewed grind, and chaos as a fluffy white puntable dog leapt into bed with Fred, and everyone who couldn’t organize the night before tried to get ready for the first day of trail work.