Houseboating Adventures - Issue 19 - (Page 64) Lake Arenal, Costa Rica www.bluwing.com Residing at the foot of an active volcano, Blue Wing Tours offer a spectacularly different and varied vacation experience with its jungle canoe trips, world class windsurfing and kiteboarding and plentiful, fabulous fishing, and unusual wildlife viewing. There is a lot to do! Dr. Alfredo Lopez S. is the founder, Captain and former deckhand of the Rain Goddess. He tells us the story of the history of Rain Goddess. “In 1993, I got the idea of traveling Costa Rica’s and Nicaragua’s jungle rivers in comfort and safety. Not just stay in one place, but explore and fish remote rivers, lagoons and creeks. I flew to Monticello, Kentucky and bought a Lakeview 62 foot houseboat. We only bought the shell. Time and timing was important, our dry season or summer months are January to May; it is hard to build under the rain. We shipped the boat to Lake Charles, Louisiana on a Thanksgiving weekend after slipping the driver $5000 so we could get on the next cargo barge to Limon, Costa Rica. After a week of paper work and repairs, a few pieces went missing, we brought it by ocean to the mouth of the Parismina River and into the channels constructed by U.S. Corp of Engineers in 1940’s to move rubber along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica during World War II. We traveled with our Costa Rican crew, local captain Ruben Lao and our two U.S. construction friends that )6B@" A05("%C&5AB9&@ knew about house boats up the channels into the Colorado River, up the San Juan River in Nicaragua and Northwest on the Sarapiqui River to the town of Puerto Viejo. For three months we labored to cut windows, mechanical and electrical works put on the second floor and fiber glass the exterior. Thanks to local craftsmen we were able to inlay all the hard woods. On Easter week of 1994 the mahogany furniture arrived and we headed down river for our first cruise. In the passing years we fished jungle rivers for tarpon and snook, transferred victims of tropical storms back to their homes, did jungle Red Cross and humanitarian runs deep into the Nicaraguan rain forest, worked and learned from the local Shaman (medicine man). There are many adventures and many stories to tell but the best part was going home to the houseboat and the safety and secure feeling it provided. Except for a very large anaconda curled up on the front deck one night and a group of tourists who thought that skinny dipping at night was fun; until I shined a flashlight on the crocodiles on shore, it was uneventful. http://www.bluwing.com
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