Above the Clouds, It’s Almost
Heaven, Costa Rica
By DAVE SHERWOOD, NYTimes.com
CERRO DE LA MUERTE, Costa Rica -
It had been raining for two
weeks in San José, Costa Rica,
when I heard from Peter Gorinsky.
We had planned to go fishing
along the country’s Caribbean
coast, but the forecast was
hopeless.
The tarpon and snook rivers had
been churned into a muddy,
unfishable froth.
“Let’s go trout fishing
instead,” Gorinsky said. “I know
a spot that will be above the
clouds this time of year.”
Above the clouds? I liked the
sound of that. Besides, I needed
a break from the daily grind in
San José, a smog-ridden,
traffic-infested city — a
blemish in the country’s
otherwise tidy green image.
Since I had moved from Maine’s
spruce- and fir-laden coast to a
job in Costa Rica’s capital city
six months ago, I had barely
thought of trout, much less
caught one. I had heard some
rumors, even seen yellowing
pictures, of fat-bellied
rainbows in one of San José’s
tackle shops, pinned to a wall
between hand lines and spools of
monofilament.
I assumed they were farm fish,
but Gorinsky, a friend and local
fishing guide who has cast a
line for everything from 6-inch
mojarra to 300-pound marlin,
assured me otherwise.
“They’re wild,” he said. “You’ll
understand when you catch one.”
Like so much in Latin America,
though, promises often fizzle to
tropical dreaming. So I did not
hold out hope — especially not
with the interminable rain
dancing on our tin roof.
“Bring a warm jacket and your
dry flies,” Gorinsky said.
It was before dawn when we left
San José.
The roads, usually crammed with
buses spewing powdery black
exhaust, were vacant. The
traffic lights were locked on
green. Even the golden arches at
McDonald’s were dimmed. As we
climbed skyward on the
Pan-American Highway out of the
country’s stifling Central
Valley, the air cooled. Gorinsky
shut off the air-conditioning
and we rolled down the windows.
By first light we had risen far
enough out of the valley to
catch a glimpse of the cobalt
Pacific sparkling on the western
horizon, waves lapping on
palm-fringed shores.
We turned off the main road at
Cerro de la Muerte, the height
of land along Costa Rica’s
harrowing continental divide — a
spot that, on the rare clear
day, offers views of two oceans.
From there, we threaded our way
down a road of loose gravel to
the small town of San Gerardo de
Dota, elevation 7,200 feet.
Through fence-like rows of pine
trees, we saw tendrils of wood
smoke rising from the
Swiss-style gingerbread houses
that cling to the green
mountainsides. Frost, a rarity 9
degrees from the equator,
lingered in shady roadside
patches.
We parked beside a house
festooned with flowers and lush
vegetation and started to rig
our rods.
Efraín Chacón, a longtime friend
of Gorinsky’s, stood on the
porch, refilling a hummingbird
feeder with sugar and water. He
walked out to greet us.
Chacón is a fixture here — and
the region’s best source of
fishing advice. He discovered
the Rio Savegre Valley, and its
refreshing climate, on a hunting
trip in 1954. A few years later,
he came back with his wife and a
pig, built a home from hardwood
poles and thatched the roof with
palm fronds.
With help from a San José
fishing club, he later stocked
the river with a strain of
rainbow trout flown to Costa
Rica from the McCloud River in
California, hoping to attract
fishermen — and provide his
family with a self-sustaining
source of protein.
It worked. The trout took in the
river’s icy, high-elevation
waters, alongside monkeys and
the occasional palm tree.
My size 16 Royal Wulff zigzagged
in the currents, drifting
quickly through a deep run that
was as clear as the air above
it. Around me, towering trees,
slung heavy with vines, blotted
out the sky in a mosaic of
spinach-green leaves of every
shape and size.
Gorinsky watched me fish from a
single-log bridge above the
pool.
“Here comes one,” he said. A
trout vaulted from the bottom
and my fly disappeared in a
splash.
I played him to the bank on my
five-weight rod, then reached
down to release him. The water
was the coldest I had felt since
I had left Maine — and the fish,
about as long as my hand, was
taut and muscular.
I slipped the fly from his mouth
and he evaporated into the river
— his mossy, speckled green back
and colorful sides a perfect
match for the pebbly stream
bottom.
After that, they came one after
another.
Gorinsky and I leapfrogged from
pool to pool, drifting flies
below small cascades of
whitewater and watching like
schoolchildren as trout
materialized from below.
From atop a streamside boulder,
we watched as two tropical
rainbow trout fed on a small
hatch of what looked like caddis
flies, then drifted our own
flies past them, plucking one
trout after another from the
pool.
By noon, we had had enough.
We packed our rods and stopped
at a small, open-air lunch spot
beside the river. There was no
menu — the restaurant served us
each a large, baked trout from a
nearby farm pond and a side of
fried plantains.
The trout was plump, its meat as
pink and moist as its flanks.
Before we had finished, a
blanket of clouds drifted into
the valley below us.
A cold, pelting rain started to
fall. The breeze picked up. I
put on my jacket.
For a minute, it felt like home. |
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