Llanos de Cortes: a stunning waterfall in natural surroundings about a mile’s pretty walk from the main highway. Dave and I had been before, 16 years ago. It wasn’t well known nor in the travel guides then. We had found out about it from a local Costa Rican newspaper, and were the only foreigners amongst the few locals there. It had the prettiest, most swimmable, sandy-bottomed waterfall pool reached by a small, gently shelving beach. You could go right up to, under and behind the curtain of falling water into an other-worldly twilight zone. Now, December 2018, we looked forward to taking our children to this magical place.
It wasn’t the most auspicious start to the day. Whilst sat, writing, behind a partition in the kitchen at our hostel in Liberia, the manager-cum-cleaner, not realising I was there, suddenly sluiced under the partition and over my feet with a bucket of icy lemon-water. A few minutes later, I was stung very painfully on the back of my thumb by a skinny, pale-coloured bee that left its sting and entrails in me. The intense pain reduced after a while but, for several days, my thumb remained sore and swollen to one and a half times its normal size.
Unfortunately, Llanos de Cortes was now in the Lonely Planet – and, worse, in a highlighted box in the Lonely Planet. It wouldn’t be the secret it once was, but hopefully would still retain its charm. According to the guidebook, it remained free-of-charge other than US$4 to park a car, which we didn’t need to do.
We fixed up a packed lunch to take with us and left in the late morning to walk out and catch a local bus south towards Bagaces. This previously rustic and characterful road had now been upgraded to 15 miles of unchanging, anonymous dual carriageway regularly spanned by identical bridges. Whilst perhaps more fitting of its role as part of the Pan-American Highway, we still needed to work out where along its monotonous length we should get off the bus. Our hostel manager had given us very clear instructions on how many bridges we needed to pass under and a little hand-drawn map, so that helped a lot.
As we approached the spot, Dave began gently tugging on the ‘request stop’ pull cord that ran the length of the bus on both sides, but the driver didn’t seem to respond or even notice. Dave tugged a little harder: still no response. With a look of sheer panic on his face, Dave began tugging furiously on the pull cord. At this point, I looked across at him quizzically. I wasn’t sure why he was frantically yanking the curtain cord, but I calmly pressed the button that said ‘Pare’ (‘stop’) and the bus stopped.
We ambled off the dual carriageway and walked a third of a mile down a deserted, dusty side road to the little path that heads off for the waterfall. But now there was a car park at the entrance to the path and they were charging foreign visitors US$7 per person, adult or child, to park up and enter ... even if they didn’t have a car. I was disgusted.
We’d seen a sign as we walked saying that you could continue on the road and enter at a second car park that ‘only’ cost US$4 per person. We weren’t happy to pay anything at all, being without a car. Besides which, we didn’t have any US$ with us, just a few thousand Costa Rican colones to cover the bus fares – we knew the waterfall was free. We thought we’d walk on and see if we could find another way in. Eventually, after a long, sweaty walk in the unrelenting midday sun, we came across a group of locals swimming in the river just upstream of a shallow ford and left the main track to ask them the way. They pointed across the ford, so it was shoes off for Dave and me to carry the girls (as well as the bags and our shoes) across. On reaching the other side, we walked on a further 50 m and immediately rejoined the main track we had just left. It had simply gone across a bridge slightly downstream of the ford.
The unnecessary ford crossing did have a plus side, however, as one of the locals, a chap called Michael, followed us and tried to explain the way to the falls. We didn’t understand (we have limited Spanish and he spoke no English), so he offered to lead the way and didn’t seem to be asking anything for it. It turned out that the road route was still another circuitous 1½ miles on top of the 2 miles we’d already done, but there was a shortcut we could take on foot, ½ mile rather than 1½ miles. It was a tough route with lots of boulders and fallen trees to climb over, tree trunks to duck under, a river crossing that required leaping from stone to stone (I lost my balance but regained it just in time), a bean-hung bush to pass under that Michael told us not to touch as it was ‘muy malo’ (‘very bad’), and the route traversed just inside an area of private farmland, so we had to be quiet. But we made it and, also thanks to Michael, saw various wildlife along the way, including a 40 cm long, bright green iguana climbing a tree and a couple of blue morpho butterflies, one so close that it nearly alighted on me. A hundred metres or so before reaching the waterfall, we began to hear chatter, which got louder, then louder, and we found the place heaving when we arrived. Costa Ricans and visitors were in a ratio of about 80:20, and many of the Costa Ricans were lugging giant, hard-plastic coolboxes and playing music too loud. We thanked Michael sincerely for his efforts, he found some friends and went off for a swim himself, and we looked for somewhere to sit down.
Having got settled, we suddenly heard the incongruous sound of a whistle, just like a swimming pool lifeguard. Sure enough, there, at the side of the waterfall pool, was a red-jacketed lifeguard complete with torpedo buoy. There was even a lane divider (like you get in a swimming pool) blocking the end of the waterfall pool, so that you couldn’t swim right up to the falls.
We were dismayed, but made the best of things. Despite the changes, it was still a beautiful location, with refreshingly cool, but not cold, water, and we couldn’t help but enjoy ourselves. The coolbox-bearing, Costa Rican family next to us kindly offered us watermelon slices, and we swam, and climbed to the top of the falls for a view down, crossing them tentatively by wriggling on our bottoms across a fallen tree trunk a little back from the edge, and I had a peep at another small, hidden waterfall pool and bat cave entrance that was less than a hundred metres away yet completely unpopulated. Back at the main waterfall pool, our unfailingly rule-abiding youngest was disheartened to be told off (by lifeguard whistle) for touching the wrong overhanging tree trunk (even though everyone else was posing on it for photos). The lifeguard couldn’t seem to stop blowing his whistle for even the smallest perceived misdemeanour. Suddenly, at about 4:40 p.m., the lifeguard issued a particularly long, piercing blast on his whistle and signalled that the waterfall was closing in 10 minutes.
“What does he mean?” enquired our eldest, “It’s a waterfall. How do you close a waterfall?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they close the entrance gates. We need to leave soon anyway or we won’t get to the highway for a bus before dark, so we might as well leave now.”
Against the odds, we’d got in for free and not had to subsidise the carpark. Leaving should be easy. We’d decided to go out via the first carpark, as all we’d done was loop in a big circle on the way in, and no-one ever checks or charges when you go out. Just as we were about to set off, the lifeguard approached us and told us in Spanish that, if we went that way, we’d be charged US$7 each. Eh? He told us we could go with the boy next to him instead: he was a “good boy, will help you”. It didn’t sound very genuine, and we said no. He held us back, rang his mate at the first carpark and negotiated a special departure price of just US$22 between us, instead of the usual US$28. What a bargain. I suppose he was thinking his cut would still be large enough. We again said no (and didn’t have the money on us anyway).
We decided to leave the same way we had come. Whilst appearing smiling, confident and unwavering to the lifeguard and ready to march off quickly to avoid his further attempts to make money out of us, we were, in reality, nervously hoping we could find the path and river crossing by ourselves, in reverse, in the gradually failing light. The lifeguard nodded resignedly and told us to beware of snakes. Thankfully, we encountered none (it turns out that the large, venomous Fer De Lance snake inhabits the area, and this, unusually, is a snake that attacks when disturbed rather than slithering quickly away from humans), and saw only lizards of all shapes and sizes plopping into the water at our approach, including a Jesus Christ Lizard walking on water as it raced away from us, a tortoise, a close-up owl, a Montezuma Oropendola (the bird that makes distinctive, long, hanging nests below tree branches) and a white ibis in flight.
We inwardly rejoiced as we reached the dusty side road and, within an hour of route-marching in temperatures much more pleasant for walking than when we had arrived, had negotiated the 2½ miles back out to the main Pan-American dual-carriageway, ready to catch a bus back to Liberia in the gathering dusk.
There was already a bus in the pull-in as we approached and we ran towards it. But it had broken down. We waited with the other passengers for the next bus to come along, and Dave and I flagged it down.
Finding ourselves near the front of the queue, we tried to board the bus we had flagged to stop, but the driver of that bus and the driver of the broken-down bus sent us to the back of the queue. It would be standing room only by the time we got on, so we decided to flag down the next bus that came along instead.
It stopped beside us, but the driver of the broken-down bus hurried over and sent it on its way again. We trudged back to the now-full relief bus. The driver wanted to charge us nearly two and a half times as much for the 15-minute return journey as we had paid on the way out. We argued for a while, assisted by traveller from the USA who spoke fluent Spanish and had himself only paid slightly more for his journey, scheduled to take 2 hours, than we were being asked per person for a 15-minute journey. Really, though, translation was unnecessary – our faces and tone said it all.
Despite our girls’ worries about getting home, we refused to board at the inflated cost. Dave told the driver in perfect, angry English not even to think of applying for a job with the Costa Rican tourist board, and we headed back out to the roadside to flag down a fourth bus. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of an overtaking manoeuvre, so couldn’t get over to the inside lane to stop for us.
The headlights of a fifth bus appeared over the brow of the hill. It was very dark by now, and we weren’t sure how many more buses there would be tonight. I wasn’t letting this one get away. I stepped quite some way into the dual carriageway and systematically waved a white plastic bag up and down in a manner that would make an airside plane marshall proud. The bus stopped. The driver didn’t overcharge. I wanted to hug him (just for doing his job and charging the right price).
What a day. Some things change. Some things definitely do not.
Comments