by Roman Dial
From Puerto Lempira on the Mosquito Coast of the Caribbean, they caught a pickup truck to Nicaragua. The dirt road passed “through really beautiful country. I’m not sure why I liked it so much.” The landscape reminded Roman of a surreal Dr. Seuss version of Alaska’s arctic tundra: “Too even, too green, too smooth, too pretty,” he said, “to be quite right.” Safely past multiple military checkpoints, they arrived in Nicaragua without passport stamps. With indigenous La Moskitia behind them, they had returned to Latin America.
THROUGH LATE JUNE into July, Roman headed south. I sensed from his emails that he was homesick after eight months away from Alaska. He surfed in Nicaragua for two weeks, joking that packrafting and surfing have almost no crossover skills, except maybe swimming. Worried about rabies, he asked us what he should do about a street dog bite to his leg that drew blood; gave a Honduran recipe to Peggy; recommended we watch BBC’s Sherlock; and, If you dont have it already, he suggested, you should get New Order’s 1987 Substance Album.
His music suggestion recalled that sweet spot in his adolescence, between boyhood and manhood, when he saw me as both fun and cool. During that golden age, we shared music and books, swapped interests and insights. And as he grew to know more than I did in economics, genetics, and politics, he shared his knowledge, enriching my life. It was during those years that we stared at thousands of bugs and reminisced about Borneo, packrafted whitewater when no one else did, and discovered he could beat me at chess.
“Where in Costa Rica did we go with the APU class?” he asked in mid-June.
During the month of January 1999, I led a dozen students from Alaska Pacific University on a tropical ecology course to Costa Rica. Roman joined the APU class as a precocious eleven-soon-to-be-twelve-year-old. We crossed the small nation from coast to coast in a little chartered bus and studied Central American ecology en route. We saw poison dart frogs on the Caribbean side, ctenosaurs and crocodiles on the Pacific, and rafted whitewater in between. We walked for a week across Corcovado, through its lowland rainforest and along its beaches on the park’s most iconic backcountry route. Independent travel was possible in Costa Rican national parks then and we walked on and off-trail at will. At one point we forded a lagoon on an incoming tide said to carry sharks in and crocodiles out. Young Roman waded nearly to his neck.
Fifteen years later, Roman was collecting volcanoes, high points, and major jungles throughout Mexico and Central America. He’d visited the Lacandon Jungle in Mexico, El Petén in Guatemala, Belize’s Maya Mountains rainforests, and La Moskitia in Honduras: Corcovado National Park on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula and Panama’s Darién Gap were all he had left.
He told some of his friends that Corcovado would be training for the Darién Gap, a literal gap in the transcontinental road system between Panama and Colombia. Because it is occupied by militarized Panamanian and Colombian border police, paramilitary revolutionaries, and drug traffickers (not to mention fer-de-lances, bushmasters, other poisonous snakes, bullet ants, dengue, malaria, and more), the Gap is one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
Roman emailed me June 6: I’ve spent the last week or so trying to figure out how to do the Darien gap and it’s starting to give me bad dreams. He wrote his college friend Brad:
Seriously planning a trip through the Darien Gap. It’s fucking stupid and there’s a really good chance I die or get kidnapped. Senafront, the Panamanian border police, doesn’t let foreigners cross the Colombian border over land. My plan is to get permission to go to Darien National Park, dip out on the rangers, follow a river south up into the low, extremely steep limestone border range, cross it into Colombia, then follow a river down to an Indian village and hire a boat out.
I shared Roman’s sentiments about the Darién. It sounded too dangerous to try. But while part of me hoped that he wouldn’t, another part hoped that he would. In my younger days, like many adventurers, I had imagined its wilderness as a worthy challenge to travel. But its social hazards of lawlessness and paramilitary groups had made it too dangerous for me. If we as parents live vicariously through our kids, then after Roman crossed the Darién, my empty ambition to try wouldn’t matter. On the other hand, I knew well its reputation.
On the Fourth of July 2014, and still in Nicaragua, Roman asked me in an email, Do you have any super-secret access to topo maps of central american countries?
I wish, I wrote back. Try googling ESRI world topo. Better than nothing. I checked the world topo’s version of Corcovado to compare it to somewhere we’d been. It identified the Osa Peninsula as part of the canton of Golfito.
On July 6, Roman arrived in San José, the capital of Costa Rica, and bought a backpack that he planned to use in Corcovado and farther south. Roman’s bulky Mexican pack held his insulated pullover, a thin summer-weight sleeping bag, two stoves, and our old Kelty tent. He also carried Forrest McCarthy’s small yellow duffel as a daypack. On Tuesday, July 8 at eight in the morning, Roman left San José on an eight-hour bus ride headed for the Osa Peninsula.
His destination: Corcovado National Park.
Chapter 19
“The Best Map Yet”
The Osa Peninsula and Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica.
Courtesy of the author
The Osa Peninsula, situated just north of Panama’s west coast, separates the muscular Pacific from the calm Golfo Dulce, Spanish for “Sweet Gulf.” The Osa’s main road is a two-lane highway that parallels Golfo Dulce as far as Puerto Jiménez. There the pavement ends. In the nineties, the Osa’s remoteness, abundant wildlife, and sparse population drew a cohort of North Americans and Europeans who settled and started businesses that thrived until the recession of 2008.
Today, a collage of billboards greets travelers at the end of the highway promising “waterfalls, tours, and massage” and “Affordable Beachfront Luxury!” Also available: “sport fishing,” “sea kayaking,” even “zip-lining.” These tourist establishments are small, family-run operations that contribute to the economy and English fluency of the locals, but hardly qualify the Osa as a tourist mecca like those farther north.
A sleepy town with colonial roots dating back to the mid-1800s, Puerto Jiménez’s economy evolved from banana farms to gold mines. Its commercial district spans six blocks where dogs lie in the street and free-range chickens scratch in the dirt. Scarlet macaws—red, yellow, and blue–colored parrots the size of ravens—squawk overhead. There’s a hospital, a police station, an office for Cruz Roja (Costa Rican Red Cross). A Catholic church fills a city block–sized campus. Young men play soccer at a fenced-in field on the edge of town.
There is one gas station, two banks, a farmacia, maybe five bars, two supermarkets, and a hardware store. For tourists, there’s a surf shop, a handful of restaurants with English menus, shops with colorful toucans carved from wood, tour centers with grease boards announcing the day’s activities, and hostels that eagerly invite backpackers.
A block away, the gentle Golfo Dulce laps at a sandy beach that opens into a channel lined with mangroves where an occasional heron patiently fishes. Around the point, beginner surfers try their hand at a left-hand break. Beyond town, the dirt road bumps along for forty-five minutes to Matapalo, a diffuse beach community centered on the best surfing on the Osa. Another forty-five minutes past Matapalo, the road ends alongside a long paved airstrip at the village of Carate, on the opposite side of the Osa from Puerto Jiménez. Beyond is the most remote beach in Costa Rica, twelve short minutes from Panama by small plane.
On any given day, Ticos and Ticas—local Costa Ricans—saunter down Puerto Jiménez’s sidewalks, where they stop and gossip in greeting. Old cars and dusty SUVs pass each other with inches to spare. The ancestors of Puerto Jiménez included pirates and Indians, convicts and civil war rebels, squatters, gold miners, crocodile hunters, banana farmers, cattle ranchers, and those who fled San José’s crime and Nicaragua’s revolution.
Tourists—especially clean-cut, evenly tanned, lithe young men and women wearing flip-flops,
tank tops, and sun hats—sit at open-air restaurants and page through their Lonely Planet guidebooks. Most come to the Osa to stay at an eco-lodge or to visit Corcovado National Park, considered the country’s crown jewel of conservation. Large by Central American standards, the park sprawls across 100,000 acres with big Amazonian animals to match: jaguars, tapirs, harpy eagles, crocodiles, bushmasters.
The Osa’s forests also hide poachers, illegal miners, drug smugglers, and murderers. At the north end of the peninsula in Sierpe, a small cowboy town in a mangrove estuary, two tons of cocaine were found in an underground cellar in 2016. In 2011, two North American women in their fifties were found murdered near Puerto Jiménez in separate incidents. In 2009, two Austrians in their sixties went missing from their blood-spattered house in Dos Brazos, a twenty-minute drive from Puerto Jiménez. Even Olaf Wessberg—the ex-pat Swede considered the father of Corcovado National Park—was murdered in the jungle near Puerto Jiménez in 1975.
WHEN ROMAN STEPPED off the long-distance bus into Puerto Jiménez’s sweltering heat on the afternoon of July 8, he knew none of this history of violence lurking just beyond the tourist billboards and hostels. But the Osa’s confluence of wild nature and dangerous people is not rare in Central America; nor was it new to Roman.
Sometime after four that afternoon, he checked into a place that his Lonely Planet guidebook called Cabinas the Corner Hostel. He wrote his name and passport number in the register.
On July 9, from an Internet café a block from his hostel, Roman emailed a friend: Currently on the Osa Peninsula on the Pacific, right next to Panama. There’s a national park I am going to sneak into and bushwhack around in. Practice for the Darien. He went on to say that he might cut his trip short. He needed to buy his ticket home, where he’d need an apartment, a car, a job, and pay for another semester of school. Costa Rica is burning through my cash. Otherwise, I wanted to see Colombia and climb some mountains and go trekking. I think South America is going to wait for another trip.
The same day, he sent detailed plans to Peggy and me in two emails. The first at 9: 02 AM said he was in Puerto Jiménez shopping for food to head into Corcovado. Five months before Roman arrived on the Osa, in February 2014, Corcovado National Park had enacted new regulations that required that all visitors who enter the park have a licensed guide. Roman had spent less than twelve hundred dollars a month since January. Even if he could fit a guide into his tight budget, he neither needed nor wanted one: Anyway, Im heading in offtrail tomorrow, just west of the Los Patos to Sirena trail. Its about 20km, then Ill hit the coast and follow the Madrigal trail out at night. I am going to try to follow the Rio David south, then hop over to the Rio Claro. . . . I anticipate the highlands to be slow and wet.
The highlands—where a maze of poacher and peccary trails crisscross a summit plateau cut by shallow canyons called Las Quebraditas—are indeed slow and wet. The plateau, officially off-limits to all but park guards, is notorious among miners and rangers alike as a disorienting landscape of rainy bamboo forests tangled in vines.
I am not sure how long it will take me, but Im planning on doing 4 days in the jungle and a day to walk out. 5km a day is an abysmal pace, but it’s hard to keep a straightline without a horizon. Ill be bounded by a trail to the west and the coast everywhere else, so it should be difficult to get lost forever.
Those final two words would haunt me for years.
Twenty minutes later, at 9:26 AM, he sent a link to the map that he would carry with him. Ok, I found what seems to be the best map yet. Ive been looking at a variety of other maps with rivers and trails in different places, with different names. He described a new plan: Im going to try and follow the Rio Conte up, then head south to Rio Claro, which he would follow to the coast and out to Carate. Its supposed to be the rainy season, so I dont know how passable these hills are. You know how steep and slippery this kind of terrain can be.
Then, of the $3,436 in his bank account, he withdrew 50,000 colónes—about $95—from an ATM a few blocks from his hostel. Across the street at the supermarket, he bought five days of food for just over $25. He cooked his dinner in the hostel’s kitchen, then spread his gear on his dormitory bed and divided it among his small yellow duffel bag, his big Mexican backpack, and his new pack.
Into the yellow bag he put his Lonely Planet guidebook, a spiral notebook, beach supplies, and clothes. Into his big Mexican backpack, he stored his Kelty tent, sleeping bag, Jetboil stove, puffy jacket, and other warm clothes he had used for climbing volcanos; his flip-flops, blue jeans, and belt; plus other clothes and another notebook. For his five-day trip into Corcovado, Roman filled his new pack with cooking and camping gear, food, a machete, topo map, compass, sleep clothes, Visqueen tarp, and mosquito-net tent.
On the morning of July 10 at the Cabinas Corners, he paid $20 to the little old lady who ran the hostel for his two nights spent in the dormitory and another $10 to reserve a bed for his return. He left the big Mexican pack and yellow bag in storage. At around noon, he crossed the street and caught a colectivo for $5 to Dos Brazos, a small village twenty minutes from Puerto Jiménez and located on the mountainous edge of Corcovado National Park.
Roman wasn’t headed for the Rio Conte after all—but told no one his new plans.
Dos Brazos means “two arms” in Spanish, referring to the two arms, or forks, of the Rio Tigre that come together there. The village’s three hundred miners, subsistence farmers, and their families live in simple homes along two short gravel roads, one along each river arm. At the junction is a pulperia, one of many small wooden shacks with sheet metal roofs that are sprinkled across the Osa. They sell snacks, drinks, and newspapers. This one sometimes buys gold from local miners.
Early in the afternoon of July 10, Roman climbed out of a colectivo across from the pulperia, shouldered his pack, and headed alone up the right arm of the Rio Tigre—El Tigre—into the jungle of Corcovado.
Part III
The southern half of the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. The distance between grid lines is six miles. The black star is the site of discovery. N.B. “Los Palmos” on north edge should read “Los Patos.”
Courtesy of the author
Chapter 20
“email, please!”
Paro Takstang Monestary, Bhutan, 2012.
Courtesy of the author
While Roman was exploring the cultures, mountains, and jungles of Central America, I was finishing up home projects and making short day trips and planning a long packrafting trip in the nearby Talkeetna Mountains. I enjoyed hearing about Roman’s trips via email, but looked forward to having him home. When he’d written that he’d been bitten by a dog in Nicaragua and worried it had rabies, I’d even thought to ask him if maybe it was time to come back. But I didn’t.
It had been gratifying to me as his father to see him out on his own. He would return world-wise and confident with a broader view of life. His Spanish would be excellent. His view on economics and the role of the United States in Latin America would be better informed. It was also clear that his adventures had grown naturally from his upbringing: our family trips to Australia, Borneo, Alaska’s wilderness, and elsewhere. I wanted to hear his stories, perspectives, and insights firsthand.
On July 14, home from a Talkeetna Mountains packrafting trip with my friend Gordy Vernon, I scanned Roman’s last email: OK, I found what seems to be the best map yet. Unpacking and catching up, I read no further. But buried in the thread—unseen for another week—was his email that said he was planning on doing 4 days in the jungle and a day to walk out. We’d been emailing about super-secret topo maps of Central America. The two threaded emails seemed part of that conversation. I didn’t read past the best map yet. If I had, then I would have known he planned to be out from his Corcovado trip the very next day.
July 15 was his out-date.
The summer of 2014 was sunny in Anchorage and Peggy and I kept busy. We worked on house projects until peak salmon season, then drove to the Kenai Peninsula to dip
-net fish for our freezer. We camped on the beach where the milky-blue Kenai River slides into the glacier-gray Cook Inlet and the sea breeze keeps July’s mosquitoes at bay. Beneath a clear sky and sunshine, we enjoyed the views of mountains rising above fishing boats plowing back to port, their holds full of freshly caught sockeye salmon. The reds were running strong and people lined up shoulder to shoulder, standing in the river, their long-handled nets straining against the current as they excitedly pulled in fish when they felt a gentle bump in their net. We saw friends and filled our coolers with shiny sockeyes.
Still, it nagged at us that we hadn’t yet heard from Roman. I checked my phone for new emails as often as the spotty coverage on the Kenai allowed. Nothing. It had been six months since I’d seen him. He hadn’t told me exactly when he would be back from Latin America, but I hoped to have him home soon. I missed him.
Peggy and I returned from fishing on July 18, cleaned the twenty salmon we’d caught, and set to work finishing a siding project on our house. Days crept by. Still no word. We weren’t alarmed, just a bit surprised. Hardly a fortnight would pass since Veracruz when we wouldn’t hear something from Roman. On July 21—twelve days after he had last written—I sent a gentle reminder: “Let me know when you get out.” His email linked to the one starting with the best map yet sat unread in my inbox.
On July 23, Peggy and I wandered between fasteners and paint at Lowes, wondering aloud to each other why we had heard nothing from Roman. Two weeks had passed. The longest stretch he’d gone without contacting us after Veracruz had been ten days, during his trips across El Petén and La Moskitia. We were worried now.
“I need to look at his last email again,” I told Peggy. “I didn’t really read it carefully and I’m not sure what he wrote. It seems like it was just about maps.”