Life Below The Galapagos, Part 2

The following is part two of

Costa Rica

After arriving at the gleaming new airport in San Jose, Costa Rica, we drove around town for awhile as we awaited a fellow explorer whose plane was delayed. After many sleepless nights anticipating our upcoming dive more than 8,500 feet to the bottom of the Galapagos Rift, where chemosynthetic life was discovered, each moment waiting is agonizing. Still, with two hours to kill near the airport, we asked to see a typical Costa Rican place. Alberto, our well-meaning taxi driver/tour guide, takes us on a long expedition to a gleaming new food court with multiple choices of McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Taco Bells. Comidas tipicas, naturalmente! Construction is under way everywhere in San Jose: houses and hotels are going up; Intel's new factory, with 4,000 employees, bangs out computer chips; the new mall rivals the finest found, say, in Paramus, N.J. It seems that for every new building here a new Kentucky Fried Chicken joint goes up next door. Billboards announce that the new Star Wars flick opens Friday.

Costa Ricans on the streets seem prosperous and optimistic. "That's the new office for Dole and Chiquita Banana," says Alberto happily. Then, incongruously, we pass a favela, a slum where thousands of shack-huts (scrap and plywood) contain some of the 2 million Nicaraguan refugees tenuously living in this country. Alberto wrinkles his nose in disgust.

San Jose is smack in the midst of a volcanic range, in a valley shrouded by clouds and fog. Alberto says there are some five active volcanoes nearby. Gathering our long-belated comrade back at the airport, we head on a three-hour roller coaster drive to the Pacific. Our destination is the port town of Puntarenas, where we will be ferried to our ship, the Woods Hole Research Vessel Atlantis. The drive takes us lurching up and down (mostly down) hills of coffee plants and valleys of exotic teak woods. Mist turns to rain then to sun and back to clouds. Alberto tells us Costa Rica has more than 40 distinct microclimates and by now we've driven through about half of them. Roads are ragged or muddy but somehow we arrive on the long slip of land ending in the fairly dismal harbor town Puntarenas.

The R/V Atlantis preens like a diva in the midst of the harbor: white, blue, and 274 feet long. Every hour, a noisy trawler ferries scientists and crew between the charmless harbor town and the world's most advanced academic research vessel. For the crew and scientists living on the Atlantis for the long haul, Puntarenas is one last chance to drink a beer or stand on terra firma for a great while.