Into the Drink

Just so you all know, when the episode(s) finally go to broadcast next year, a lot of what I’m about to write will probably be in the narration. So you can either read on and experience a little déjà vu in about 6 months or you can go ahead and click the Back button on your browser and return to where you were. Either way, I don’t really care. I’m gonna type until I run out of ways to stroke Costa Rica.

It’s like something out of a fantasy novel. Volcanoes spilling lava down the mountain, their blinding-orange seed the scalding contrast to the hardened, monochrome ash it slowly rolls down over. Low-hanging clouds are literally just out of reach and create a swirling, Tolkien-esque mist throughout the green hills of coffee. Down in the jungle, reptiles great and small with no concern for their human visitors sun themselves on the slabs of granite or wait patiently by a light fixture for their next many-legged meal. The bats are squealing and buzzing just above hairlines, the flap of their wings so loud you can feel them in the warm, moist night air. Down the swollen river, monkeys howl their territorial claims but don’t refuse a handful of berries from strangers a little higher up on the evolutionary chain. The ocean is both violently and beautifully erotic; it surges, pushing and swerving, smacking against a dozen different solid-rock pinnacles just offshore. The explosion of foam against stone is jarring; it’s as if the sea is intent on showcasing its dominance over dry land. But in the shelter of Playas Hermosa or Coco, the water is Kashmir smooth and Zen calm. Here, it is the gentle lover that soothes, a delicate protector. It’s not until you leave the tranquility of the bay that the Pacific even hints at the bounty hidden underneath her waves.

Costa Rica is both deeply primal and irresistibly enchanting. This place is, in full-force, the kind of far-off, mystical land that paints the dreams of guys who wear capes, play Dungeons & Dragons and attend ComicCon. Me? I moved out of my parents’ house 20 years ago and don’t have to give my credit card number before chatting to a woman who wants to talk about taking my pants off. These places of legend? I wasn’t sure they existed, but I knew I was going to look. And that meant getting out. Taking a risk. So I came to Costa Rica. I made this mythic land my daily reality.

Okay … If you’re about to call bullshit on me, let me save you the energy. I’m calling it on myself. In 2009, Costa Rica’s hardly a difficult trip and certainly not a secret. More than any other place outside the United States, this little slice of Central American heaven is the destination all of my American friends in-the-know have been urging me to get to.

Everyone who knows me or knows someone who knows me or runs into someone at the liquor store who has heard of me finds a way to pitch their particular favorite destination to me at some point. It comes with the territory, I know, but at times it gets a little ridiculous. I’ve been pitched episode ideas that range from golf course ponds to drowning victim recovery to water parks. I’m not kidding. If there’s a body of water, people want to know if I’ll come and dive it. (Stay with me here, because this is important. I’m not just being an arrogant prick.)

But while most of them come at me from the oh-so predictable scuba diving angle, Costa Rica has consistently been the one destination that non-divers beg me or, more accurately, insist that I visit. I’ve got several very close friends that are making routine trips there to look for property, ready to leave the States for something totally different. And it never, ever has anything to do with the diving. Oh, as I recently discovered, the irony to this…

After having my expectations seriously exceeded in Honduras, I went into Costa Rica with none. All my friends couldn’t possibly be wrong, right? Costa Rica was always a place I knew I’d end up at some point. What I learned was that I had wasted a lot of time not getting there a whole lot sooner.

My immediate impression when I landed in Costa Rica was that you simply cannot fake environmental stewardship. Either you look after your land or you don’t. In a country where more than a quarter of the acreage is federally protected, this really shows. Costa Rica walks the walk. They have no army. One of the side effects of the Revolution of 1948 was the abolition of the military, choosing instead to plow that money into education for its citizens. It’s this kind of forward thinking that got Costa Rica a literacy rate that is even higher than the U.S. and makes it much easier to communicate the needs and benefits of conservation. Tomorrow’s leaders are much easier to foster today when they take great pride in their country’s past, present and future.

It is a beautiful country. One of the most beautiful I have ever seen. I haven’t been to a place like it before and I don’t know that I’ll be in one again. It literally has everything you need. Mountains. Lowlands. Forest. Ocean. Denny’s.

Here’s a dozen or so reasons why Costa Rica rules. And I’m not even including the diving:

Ziplining – beyond awesome. Costa Rica’s jungles are amazing and a great way to cover a lot of ground is through a canopy tour. So we went up, down and inside a canyon where we not only got strapped in and flew across the trees, we had to rock climb and do a mini-bungee jump to get out. I’m sorry, Belize, but CR’s ziplining makes yours look like a public park jungle gym in comparison.

Mud Bath – oh yeah. It soooo happened. Warmed by the volcanoes a few miles away, we got down to our bathing suits and as one big group painted each other with soil and leaves with almost Bacchanalian glee. Then we laid around, let it dry, washed it off and kicked it in a natural thermal spa pool. Um, in the jungle.

River Tour – I’ll be honest, I sat this one out because I was having a bit of a “lead-singer moment” at the time. But I’ve seen the footage and it was clearly worth the trip. Howler and spider monkeys crawling onto the boat, crocs by the dozens lining the shore’s edge, macaws, toucans, you name it. Evidently iguanas grow really big in Costa Rica.

Mural Painting – I was lucky enough to be in town while the very handsome and talented Carlos Hiller was painting a mural on the side of a supermarket in Liberia. Groups of children were being brought down to add a fish to his life-size rendering of a humpback whale and her calf. Never one to pass up an opportunity for vandalism, I not only got the honor of adding my own fish to the wall but getting some one-on-one instruction from one of my favorite artists: Kimberly, the 9-year old beauty next to me. Apparently fish don’t have names, as I learned. Carlos was using the painting and the inclusion of the kids to talk to them about taking care of the ocean. What surprised me more than anything else was how much they already knew. Key was getting them to take ownership and pride in their waters. You’ll have to see the episode to understand how he pulled it off…

There are times when I’m doing this when I feel like the spoiled teen pop star who goes from obscurity to singing with Paul McCartney at the Grammies overnight. There is a sense that I’ve jumped the queue, cut in line and made it past more deserving people when it comes to an audience with the greats. All week I felt like that with our host, Bill Beard. Rather than feel guilty (which is simply not in my nature) I decided to embrace it, and soak up every bit of wisdom I could.

It goes without saying that Bill is a rare breed – a legend in the world of diving. He is a pioneer in the truest sense of the word, going where no one had gone before, in the face of an entire industry telling him it wouldn’t work and just generally player-hating him. Bill did it anyway, and he showed the world how amazing this country is. And he did it his way. Bill’s too much of a southern gentleman to climb the mountain and flash two big middle fingers at his detractors, but I guarantee that when his hands were in his pockets there was only one finger on each sticking straight out.

There are very, very few people in the sport of scuba diving that I respect as much as Bill Beard. He is a trailblazer, a cowboy, a brilliant businessman and 40 years after setting up the first dive shop and becoming the first instructor in Costa Rica, he still loves getting wet. This is because Bill understands two very important things – 1), the diving in Costa Rica is spellbinding, and it is never the same from one day to the next, even on the same site. 2) It’s about the people. Bill genuinely likes divers. He is the chief of our tribe. He wants nothing more than to turn you on, watch you get off on this incredible country, both above and below the water. Would you buy a car from a salesman who wouldn’t drive it 100mph himself? Exactly.

I feel a tremendous debt of gratitude to Bill and Nadine, his wonderful wife. When we were late to location shoots – as we always seem to be – Nadine is there kicking our asses. When we needed a reference guide to positively ID all the brand-new stuff we were seeing, she was there with four volumes. When we needed the best guide for our journey into the mountains, Nadine picked up the phone and hand-selected José, without whom the shoot simply wouldn’t have gone as smooth. If there was a dynamic duo like Bill & Nadine in every dive destination around the world, there wouldn’t be an un-certified person on the planet. Everyone would want to dive simply for the pleasure of being around them.

Bill had just come off some major surgeries and a couple of epidurals. Literally, a week before we arrived. But as the most gracious host I’ve ever known, it didn’t keep him from getting in the water with me. If one of the Costa Rica episodes comes off like an homage to this guy, I really don’t care. It should. Because from now on, when I think of Costa Rica, I will think of Bill Beard. The two in my mind are forever synonymous. So will be the case for you. My only regret is that I have a ton of shooting to do before we can get back there….

Bill & Nadine are also acutely aware that to come to Costa Rica and just see the coast isn’t really seeing Costa Rica. It would be like someone from Costa Rica going to New England and claiming to have “seen” the United States. I mean, I suppose if you’re going to go to only one part of Costa Rica you’d go to the coast, and I’m sure we can all agree that if you’re only going to one part of America you’d go to Boston. That’s a given.

However….

Costa Rica’s as different from province to province as the U.S. is from state to state. There’s cattle country, rain forest, beautiful coastline, volcanoes, and mountains that you have to see to believe. And it’s all a day’s trip away. Yes, go to Costa Rica and do the diving. Have your mind melted. Of course. But make sure you let Bill & Nadine book you on a couple of inland excursions. I mean, if just for the coffee….and the liquor….and the altitude sickness.

We did what we set out to do. We went to Costa Rica and got what we needed to bring you some great television. What we didn’t expect to do was fall so deeply in love with the country and its people. So be warned. You will too.