Show Me The Monkeys!

by

Turk Pipkin

(This story ran in Travel & Leisure Golf.)

"PuraVida!" It's practically the national saying of Costa Rica. Used as a toast, a greeting, and even a travel slogan, its literal translation, "pure life," makes it a daily celebration of the country's astounding biological diversity. But Pura Vida also refers to "the good life," of basking in these natural wonders with friends and family, and in sports to those indelible moments when the superfluous falls away, and life and game meld as one.

I am having one of those moments on the seventh tee of Garra de Leon, a new resort course designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr. on Costa Rica's Pacific coast. Ahead of me is a long par five with thirteen bunkers and a green hiding behind a large lake. On my right, the resident pro is challenging me to go for it in two. That kind of pressure should have me squeezing the life out of my driver, but my nervousness has been erased by a large band of howler monkeys scampering across the fairway toward us, the last a young howler baby, not much larger than a kitten.

"We love our monkeys," golf pro James McAfee tells me, "but wait till you see the crocodiles on sixteen!"

With all my confusing swing thoughts erased by visions of monkeys and crocodiles, I step up to the ball and rip a long drive straight down the middle. "Pura Vida, Baby! Show me the Monkeys!"

To adventurous travelers, Costa Rica has long been considered one of the world’s finest unspoiled destinations. Nature's Theme Park, it's sometimes called, a country smaller than West Virginia but with an astonishing 5% of the world's total number of species. Even before the international boom in eco-tourism, the country had its true believers, frequent visitors who made a point of not telling anyone back home about their secret paradise.

Word eventually got out, of course, resulting in a boom in tourism during the last decade, but only in the past year has Costa Rica joined the international golf boom. Just a half-hour plane ride (or a three hour drive) from the capital of San José, on a stretch of the Pacific coast known primarily for big-game fishing and near-perfect surfing breaks, golfers are flocking to two new playing fields of green — Garra de Leon at Playa Conchal and its neighbor, the links-style Rancho Las Colinas.

Unlike the lush cloud forests of the country's mountainous interior, both courses are in an area of dry tropical forests, rolling ranch land with huge trees, perfect terrain for dramatic golf holes. Most golfers either begin or end their visits at Garra de Leon (which translates as "Lion's paw," both the name of a sea shell found on local beaches and a reference to the ferocity of the 7,000 yard layout from the tips).

The course is part of the impressive hotel complex Meliâ Playa Conchal. Designed like a self-contained village, the Melía's lavish all-suite accommodations are in small buildings laid out in a cluster between the two nines of the course. Shuttles circulate continuously to ferry guests to the pro shop, restaurants, the sprawling free-form swimming pool, or Playa Conchal itself, a long palm-shaded stretch of beach with a unique composition of tiny crushed sea shells.

But Costa Rica is lined with beautiful beaches, and the reason for coming here is resort golf in the classic style that Robert Trent Jones Jr. has perfected around the world — wide fairways, short rough and large greens for your average hacker, but plenty of risk and reward for the brave or foolish.

"It was great fun to work in an ecological wonderland," says designer Bobby Jones. "The feeling is that you come into that valley and you’re in a sanctuary. One night after working on the course, we went to (nearby) Playa Grande and watched the sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs."

Beside my encounter with the monkeys, my favorite holes were on the back nine where the textures of late afternoon shadows on the deep bunkers and undulating fairways were like a comforter to the soul. As to the crocodiles on number sixteen, James McAfee was just telling me how big they are when we drove up to discover something protruding from the water. But instead of crocs, we saw two Costa Rican boys feeling for balls in the muddy water with their bare feet.

“Are there crocodiles in there?” I asked the teens in Spanish.

“No,” one answered.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“No,” he repeated, this time in a worried tone. Then the boys exchanged one nervous glance and began scrambling for shore.

A more important warning here would be to avoid the too-easy route that many guests take of never leaving the hotel property. For just beyond the Melia's impressive entrance lies the real Costa Rica, with the hotel's formal tours ranging from rain forest aerial trams to horseback riding on the beach.

If you want to have a go at all those natural wonders on your own, Costa Ricans are perhaps the friendliest people in Latin America. I ventured late one evening to the neighboring town of Santa Cruz where the local fiesta of the bulls was underway. What I found was a raucous party and bullfighting Costa Rican style, in which brave and inebriated young men spring into the small ring and demonstrate their foolhardy machismo by touching the bull's horns or grabbing his tail. Although the bulls are never killed, the young men sometimes are, making this strictly a spectator event for tourists.

The next morning I was up at dawn and off to the Flamingo Marina Hotel, headquarters to Team Permit, one of the best sport fishing companies in the country. My skipper for the day was Art James, who came here five years ago after raising his kids in Washington State. Like every other American expatriate I met on my trip, Art says he's in Costa Rica to stay, and I would soon see why.

As we motored into the deep blue waters of the Pacific, the ocean began to put on an impressive display. All around us, schools of small skipjack were feeding on the surface, manta rays were jumping completely out of the water, while flying fish zipped fifty feet across the surface with amazing bursts of speed. Soon we were racing along with a vast school of spotted dolphin. Stretching from our boat nearly to the horizon, we estimated their number to be more than a thousand. Leaning over the bow with my arms stretched downward, I could almost touch a half dozen dolphin who surfed our bow wake, surfacing just long enough for their blowholes to open for an instant breath of air.

In the spring months, the main sport fishing goal here is pacific sailfish and the occasional big marlin. With conservation at the forefront, and absolutely no reason to kill these magnificent billfish, it's strictly catch and release. I'd carefully scheduled my trip to occur after the annual arrival of the sailfish from warmer waters to the south, but the fish were apparently using a different calendar. On the same day that I saw everything in the ocean BUT a sailfish, the guests on another Team Permit boat down the coast in Quepos, Costa Rica, landed and released an incredible 21 sails!

But that's fishing and I wouldn't trade such a fine day on the water for two groups of monkeys on a golf course. Besides, on the way back to the docks, we trolled for a few final minutes near the beach where I “took the stink off the boat,” as Art put it, by catching a couple of fat Jack Crevalle. Both were strong fighters whose destiny was to provide a nice fish stew for the locals in Art’s neighborhood.

Back on shore, I met another fishing guide name Craig Ledbetter who was eager to show me his home golf course, the new Rancho Las Colinas, located just fifteen minutes south of the Melia course. Along the way we stopped for lunch at a funky open-air bar and restaurant named Las Cruces where I paid six bucks for a fantastic whole fried red snapper with plantains, and gallo pinto, the ever-present Costa Rican blend of black beans and rice.

With an old school design (and some clever innovations) by Ron Garl, Las Colinas isn’t as lush as Garra de Leon, but it’s every bit as much fun to play. The best holes are 10 through 16, which form a full circle around a small mountain. The signature hole is thirteen, a par four spanning a creek and leading straight up a steep hill to a green built on a plateau carved out of solid rock. The vertical stone face in front of the green makes this one of the most difficult approach shots in all of golf.

Costa Rica's natural beauty are also on constant display. On the par five twelfth, I was mesmerized by the thousands of brilliant golf dragonflies zipping to and fro in the afternoon sun. “Elicoptros," our caddie called the dragonflies in Spanish. Helicopters. I never did figure out the word he used for the two big iguanas we saw by the next tee.

Since we were playing with Mike Osborne, the course’s owner who'd given up on his home of Las Vegas to take a gamble on Costa Rica, we made a Vegas-sized wager — a hundred a hole! Of course if the bet had been for a hundred dollars instead of a hundred Colones — the Costa Rican currency valued at 150 per U.S. dollar — I'd have won more than a cold after-round drink at a neighborhood dance hall.

The third course of my trip was the nation's oldest eighteen-holer, the splendid Cariari Country Club opened in 1974 on the outskirts of the capital, San José. It's members only here unless you're staying at the nearby Herradura Hotel or the adjacent Melia Cariari Hotel, where I checked in and teed it up within a half an hour.

By any country's standards, this is an excellent track. Designed by George Fazio (and built by nephew Tom), the long narrow fairways are lined by towering pine trees. I was reminded of Torrey Pines or Edgewood in Lake Tahoe, another alpine course designed by the elder Fazio. At 4,000 feet above sea level, the air here is cool and refreshing, far from what you'd expect in muggy Central America. Playing in the late afternoon, two of my foursome were shivering with cold by the time we made 18.

My real discovery, though, was not the course, but the man who runs the golf shop. Landy Blank is the head honcho of Costa Rican Golf Adventures, a tour company dedicated to making your Central American journey nothing but fairways and greens. From airfare and hotel to tee times and caddie tips, Landy is one of those rare travel agents who'll get you to the course happier and probably cheaper than you'll manage on your own. And if you want to go white water rafting on the class four rapids of the Pacuare River, sail on a catamaran for snorkeling on Tortuga Island, or maybe check out one of the country's nine hole courses, Landy is your guy.

I took two non-golf side trips while I was in the country, both of them memorable. The first was a pot-holed but spectacular three hour drive from the international airport at San Jose to the town of La Fortuna, which is located at the base of the Arenal Volcano. Constantly active since a major eruption in 1968 which killed eighty people and covered an area of twelve square kilometers in rock, lava and ash. Arenal is rightfully one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. The premier hotel is the remote Mount Arenal Observatory Lodge, built by the Smithsonian Institute on a ridge considered the perfect place to study and monitor the volcano’s activity.

Depending upon the weather, the views of the volcano from the hotel's bar and rooms can be spectacular, though I was equally amazed by the tropical birds whose exotic names like yellow-throated euphonia, red-legged honeycreeper, and scarlet-rumped tanager didn't do justice to their actual appearances.

There's a lot to do and see here and I tried it all — hiking into Arenal National Park to scramble across a massive cooled lava flows, and riding horseback to the towering Rio Fortuna Waterfall where I climbed five hundred steps down a nearly vertical cliff for an awestruck view and a cooling swim below the powerful falls.

I also took the lodge's nighttime "Hot Lava Tour," in which we were close enough to hear the whooshing roars of gas escaping the lava dome, and seconds later, see bright red, car-sized boulders of thousand degree lava falling out of the clouds and tumbling down the mountain toward us. Exhausted but exalted, on the way back to the lodge I stopped at Tabecon Hot Springs Spa for dinner, cocktails and a long soak in the Spa's volcano-heated mineral waters which cascaded over the six-foot-high waterfall onto my aching back and legs.

Despite the natural beauty of Arenal, the highlight of my trip was Punta Islita, an isolated hotel overlooking a small Pacific Ocean bay and surrounded by lush valleys and dramatic mountain ridges. The only Central American member of the prestigious “Small Luxury Hotels of the World,” this is one of those rare places that you never want to leave.

Most guests choose to fly here from the capital, but I made the three hour drive from the Melia Playa Conchal, stopping primarily to scout a couple of rivers I had to drive through that were running at least fifty feet wide. Arriving to an architectural gem of thatched conical roofs and 360 degree views, I was so impressed that my very first item of business was to add an extra night to my reservation. Checking into my plush casita, I peeled off my dusty clothes, and slipped into the private plunge pool, staring out at the ocean and ducking a bit as three green parrots came squawking just over-head.

There are miles of hiking trails here, fine riding horses, their own fishing fleet, and a beautiful beach club on a protected cove. The food at the restaurant is just as heavenly as the nighttime views. Seated beneath the stars after dinner, I enjoyed a Cuban cigar and begin to dream of my next visit to Costa Rica. Without doubt, my first stop would be Los Sueños, a Ted Robinson-designed golf course and beachside Marriott Resort opening in November, 99 — and just an hour drive from San José.

"A Good Walk Spoiled" — so say the non-believers who have yet to be captivated by the primeval magic of the game of sticks and balls (and sometimes by those whose swings have inexplicably abandoned them). But to me, golf in Costa Rica is just the opposite — a good walk unspoiled.

For golf is just a part of my world, and my passion for the game is the strongest when I am playing someplace new and wonderful, where the smells on the afternoon breeze are exotic and unidentifiable, where the crashing curl of the ocean waves in the distance matches the curl of a putt as it falls into Mother Earth, where the golf course becomes a part of its natural surroundings, not the other way around.

Though Punta Islita is not likely to ever have golf beyond their makeshift driving range, the most memorable moment of my golf trip occurred near the linksland between ocean and hotel. Crossing the curving stretch of sand and an area of cliffside tide pools filled with all sorts of mysterious creatures, I came to land's end where I discovered a sea cave running into the tall cliff protecting the bay. Looking closer, I saw the rays of the afternoon sun coming through the opening and realized it was not a cave, but a natural tunnel, four feet high, maybe fifty feet long.

Even at low tide, the surge of the waves and the slick, wet rocks made the journey potentially dangerous , but I knew already that I had to go through that tunnel, had to see what was on the other side. Timing my jump with the ebb of the waves, I scrambled down the slick rocks and made my way into the chamber. All around me, inches from my arms and face, thousands of fat crabs crawled up the side of the tunnel to escape my progress. A vision flashed through my mind — fifty or a hundred crabs dropping onto me, but I pressed on, climbing the incline and emerging on the other side to miles of deserted beach and the last rays of a glorious sunset. I only had a few minutes of this splendor before the rising tide would block my return. But a few moments was enough, and I headed back into the tunnel where the crabs again surrounded me by the thousands.

Pura Vida, they call it. And now I know why.

Garra de Leon at Melâ Playa Conchal Resort

Par 72, 7080 yards, Course rating ?

Designer: Geroge Fazio

Greenfees: $90, twilite rates

Rancho Las Colinas

Par 71, 6800 yards, Course rating 71.8

Designer: Geroge Fazio

Gren Fees: $35, Caddies $15, Club rental $15

Playa Grande, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

tel. 506-654-4089, fax 506-383-2759

Cariari Country Club

Par 71, 6500 yards

Greenfees: $35 for guests of Cariari Country Club

Caddies, $12, mandatory

Golf Cart $25

Club Rental $20

Costa Rica Golf Adventures

Landy Blank P.R. Box 02-5635, Interlink, Miami, FL 33102

888-261-6645 (voice mail and fax)

In Costa Rica tel & fax 011-506-446-6489

e-mail: golf@centralamerica.com

Sportfishing

Team Permit Sportfishing

888-2fishCR

Riok@fishing.co.cr

Craig Ledbetter

1-425-347-6704

email: PLBETTERMSN.com

Accomodations

Melia Playa Conchal Beach & Golf Resort

800-33-MELIA

Hotel Punta Islita

800-525-4800

E-mail: ptaisl@sol.racsa.co.cr

www.puntaislita.co.cr

Hotel Melia Cariari

800-33-MELIA

Arenal Observatory & Lodge

506-257-9489

506-257-4220

e-mail: arenalobsol.racsa.co.cr (or arenallodge.com)