Winter In The Sun

Costa Rica by River, Road and Trail ...

By Joan Chatfield-Taylor
The New York Times

November 1, 1992

BY midnight, we were lost, creeping along a rock-studded dirt road that buckled and twisted through the mountains that plunge down to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. We had no choice but to go on, and in the next two hours we fixed a flat tire, forded countless streams and a 75-foot-wide river, made confused forays onto muddy side roads and saw only one other human being, a surly guard at a surprisingly lavish country house.

There were compensations, however. Even in the dead of night, magnificent birds fluttered up into the glare of the headlights, their bicolor wings forming bull's-eyes against the darkness. The vehicle spotlighted a coatimundi sloping along the road in leisurely fashion. A few miles later the lights picked up a striped cat slinking along a fence; we tentatively identified it as a margay.

Read more about Costa Rica.

Joan Chatfield-Taylor is the author of "Visiting Eden," a book about public gardens in Northern California to be published by Chronicle Books in the spring.

Copyright 1992 The New York Times Company