This trip was not about roughing it. On a previous trip to Costa Rica … Dixie and I had slogged through rain-soaked jungle and bounced over rutted, kidney-damaging roads, eschewing tours and overdeveloped beaches as a matter of principle. By the time the twin-engine Travel Air plane deposited us at an airstrip a few miles from Golfito, a ragged banana port on the lip of the Golfo Dulce, and we pressed our way onto a boat that was headed for Puerto Jimenez on the other side of the Gulf, we were exhausted and over-stimulated. At that point, Dixie, my travel companion and fellow material girl, finally balked.
“You know, adventure travel is one thing,” she said testily over the head of a mother with a sleeping child in her arms, “but I’m getting kind of tired of feeling grungy.”
This time I was not on assignment, I was teaching travel writing on a fabulous finca (multi-acre ranch), drinking rum cocktails and wine and checking out every cool spot in La Guacimas …