Within hours of arriving at the Montana Linda hostel your official Orosi tour guide, Guapo the Wonder Hostel Dog , will introduce himself with some friendly tail wagging followed by a nightlong vigil which he will hold right outside your bedroom door lest should you need an escort to the bathroom or the kitchen in the middle of the night. As you are new to town and you have not made a trip the the grocery store yet you will probably need to eat breakfast in a restaurant but never-fear your personal guide will escort you there and wait patiently under your table for you to finish your gallo pinto. After breakfast you will be shown back to the hostel so you can get ready to go for a hike. It's a long one though, 6 hours or more on some pretty steep terrain so wear you good shoes and bring a map but don't worry because your guide will be with you the whole time in case you get lost. Do be aware that there are ATVs on some of the trails and the dense foliage makes it nearly impossible to see or hear them before they whip around the corners.
Therefore, it is highly recommended that you monitor the behavior of your guide (who after all can hear much better than you can) and when he jumps to the side of the road it is a good idea to follow suit as it is his way of informing you that if you don't move you are about to be flattened by a slightly crazed motorist. When you return to town you will no doubt be hungry but don't worry because your guide can recommend a good pizza place and of course he will wait under your table until you are ready to be shown back to your room. You're tired so don't bother opening that gate to the hostel you guide is more than capable of opening it for you with some quick paw work.
The preceding was a description of a typical days work for Guapo the Wonder Hostel Dog (see pictures). Most of us growing up watched those movies where against all odds pets travel hundreds of miles to be reunited with their owners. Personally I must confess that even during Tracy's most intense animal movie phase during which The Incredible Journey could be seen bi-hourly on our television, I would always get sucked in. (Com-on Shadow! you can get out of that muddy hole I don't care if your leg is broken do it for Peter!) Usually right about the time those dedicated pets on the screen were escaping from grizzly bears or traversing mountain ranges our own beloved pooch, Lyra, would run into a wall or fall down a stairwell in hot pursuit of a house fly, or the cat, forcing us to shake our heads and try to ignore that little glimmer of doubt that had a way of forcing its way into our blossoming cynical little minds. Of course Incredible Journey was true! It says based on a true story right on the box. That Boxer Terrier sounds like Michael J. Fox anything is possible!
Ten years later enter Guapo the Wonder Hostel Dog reaffirmer of childhood fantasies.
We spent several weeks in the Montana Linda hostel under his attentive care. While some dogs in Orosi are kept behind gates and are walked on leashes like in the US, the vast majority of them are allowed to roam the streets at will. Some of them are strays and many more of them are adopted strays. As a result the dogs here can do amazing things like avoid oncoming traffic, and find their own way home. Though it isn't really that unusual to be "adopted" by a dog while walking around in Costa Rica we never met another dog who waited for us to finish meals (with out begging!) or could open gates or had ATV esp. Here is another Guapo story that one of the Spanish teachers in Orosi told me.
In Cartago (which is the closest major city to Orosi) there is a cathedral that is built around a boulder. The story goes that a long time ago an Indian child found a little black statue of the Virgin Mary one day on a rock in the woods . The girl brought it home and put it in a box near her bed. The next day when she went to go play with her new toy it was gone. She went back into the woods and found the statue (La Negrita as it is known now) on the rock where she had found it the day before. She took the statue again and put it in her box by her bed and again the next day it had magically returned to its place on the rock in the woods. Well, after bringing this matter to the attention of the local clergyman it was decided to build a church around la negrita and her rock in the woods. Every year in August people come from all over Costa Rica and as far away as Nicaragua and Panama, some on their knees, but most of them walking to this cathedral in Cartago to visit La Negrita. I have gotten a little off track here but back to Guapo the Wonder Hostel Dog. One year when a group of people from Orosi (including my Spanish teacher) were starting their annual la negrita pilgrimage they ran into Guapo and another dog as they were leaving town. Guapo immediately recognizing the people's need for an escort, filed in with the pilgrims along with his buddy. For four days they followed along until the whole group reached Cartago.(don't ask me why it took four days because the bus only takes 40 mins with traffic but whatever) Anyway when it came time to leave Guapo and his friend were nowhere to be found and eventually after some searching they gave up and took the bus back to Orosi. Four days later who should roll back into Orosi but Guapo the Wonder Dog, sadly without his friend (I like to think that his buddy was more of a city dog and decided to stay in Cartago and get fat begging food from pilgrims and tourists alike).So there are my Guapos stories. I think we can all agree Shadow would be proud.
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