On the boat and on Cano island, April '74

I took the photo below on the way back from Cano Island, but I'm using it as a going-to-the-island photo because it's the only one I've found showing all three guides/cooks who went out to the island with us.  The guy on the left, I don't recall his name.  Jésus is piloting the boat, and the guy laughing is the cook, Pito.  There was also a man said to be a recovering alcoholic living in the one cabin on the island.  He had a fairly big puppy staying with him. The seven of us men were the only people on the island.  It's about 12 miles out in the Pacific from Costa Rica, and is now a national park, nature preserve, and popular scuba diving destination, but overnight stays on the island are not allowed. (Limited camping is now allowed.)

 
Above photo was taken as we approached the island. Below photo was taken after we arrived, at high tide. We towed a dinghy behind the main boat (shown here) and used it to come ashore.

This (above) photo provides a good view of the cabin we stayed in.  The sleeping room is just to the left of Mr. José Hardin.  To your left, not his left.

Joe Hardin with his red snapper and me with my mahi-mahi (also called dolphinfish and dorado).

 Jésus fileting a freshly caught fish on the concrete porch of the cabin.  The wooden porch of the sleeping room (in the background) is where I slept, on a hammock.  High tide came right up cabin.

I borrowed Pat Calkins' 35mm SLR camera for the Costa Rica trip.  I'd never used a good camera before and I took about 10 sunset photos changing f-stop and aperture, hoping at least one of my sunset photo would turn out good.  The above one is the best I took, if you don't include the one with puppy (see below).  The second day we were on the island I went for a walk around the perimeter of the island, thinking I'd go all the way around (math question: what's the perimeter--circumference--of a square-mile island if you assume the island is circular?). After getting about halfway around, I found rock cliffs jutting into the ocean prevented me from going any farther.  But in trying to go back, I found the tide had started to come in, and there was one rock tunnel that I'd come through that I couldn't get back through!  I was trapped with no place to go but up into the jungle, which wasn't so easy because unlike the side where the  cabin was, the other side of the island had cliffs overlooking the beach. Plus, although I'd heard that an island like Cano would not have snakes, I really wasn't sure about that, and I'd heard of several highly poisonous Central American snakes, such as the bushmaster. 

It was mid-afternoon when I found myself in this dilemma.  I'm pretty sure I took a photo of the "tunnel" of rock, with waves crashing on it, that I'd come through and I decided was too dangerous  to go back through after the tide started coming in.  It may be that I was only thinking that the camera would get ruined by seawater if I went back through.  Whatever the reason was, I decided I had to climb up the vine covered cliff overlooking the little beach where I was stranded.  It was steep enough that I had to use the vines like ropes to help pull myself up, crouching and kneeling as I went. Then once I was up and able to walk, I was in thick underbrush.  If I remember correctly, I found a stick that I could use to kind of beat the bushes in front of me to scare away any snakes or other, unknown, dangerous critters.

After I took the photo below with Pat's camera, the detachable "roof prism" or whatever it's called somehow got knocked off.  It's still there on the island unless someone found it and took it (unlikely).  The camera still worked without it, but I had to look down into it from above to see an image.

I encountered an old, rusted bulldozer in an open area--which had been bulldozed, I guess--on my little lost journey back to the cabin.  There had been plans to build a resort on the island, but for some reason that never happened.  I found and followed a stream in the jungle, remembering that there was a stream that flowed out of the jungle near the cabin.  It was almost sunset when I got back.  Daddy was worried about what had happened to me, and everybody else was surprised when I came out of the jungle behind the cabin instead of coming up from the beach.

The last two photos are ones my dad took.  When we were coming back into the mouth of the Sierpe river that emptied in to the Pacific, we had to wait for an hour or more for the tide to turn and the ocean waves to become calmer. But the waves didn't become much calmer and we nearly capsized coming into the river from the ocean. The rope holding the dinghy to the back of our boat broke during this moment of near-capsizing and the dinghy floated back out to sea--no way we could go retrieve it.