Who is Bill Adams and why should I take his advice about real estate in Costa Rica?

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Bruce’s father was the sports editor of a famous west coast newspaper and had in the past arranged fishing and hunting expeditions for “The American Sportsman Show”, a very popular outdoor adventure TV series starring famous actors and sports stars. Bruce thought that through his Dad’s contacts with the show, we could be contracted to put together a series about fishing in Costa Rica. There had already been plenty televised about the fantastic Marlin and sail fishing that Costa Rica offers but no one had ever shown anything about the Trout fishing in the mountains.

We decided that we would become the first to explore the potential of bringing the “American Sportsman Show” to Costa Rica by actually finding the world class trout fishing rumored to exist in the lost river valleys of the high mountain ranges in the center of the country. To make an extremely long story short, Bruce and I spent the next four and a half months on horseback, crossing the Talamaca Mountains twice and ending up near the Panama border. The fantastic trout fishing never materialized, too much coffee had been planted in the mountains since the streams had originally been stocked in the 1930’s and the best rivers for trout had become clogged with coffee bean shells, but it did result in an idea for a new business.

The concept of offering 10 day horseback expeditions through the jungles of Central America to American tourists was somewhat premature in the early 1970’s but it looked like the local tourism industry was about to explode, Costa Rica had been discovered and was being talked about as the next Hawaii. I decided to use what I had learned “on the trail” and become a tour operator.

A friend of mine’s father owned a large cattle ranch almost on the Nicaraguan boarder. I was able to convince him that the future was in tourism and not cattle ranching and that he should diversify his operation. He agreed and “Be a Vaquero Tours” was born.

Unfortunately my timing couldn’t have been worse. The Sandinista revolution was just getting started in Nicaragua and my tour included crossing the border by horseback from Costa Rica for an overnight in Cardenas on the shore of Lake Nicaragua. I had already made the stopover on a couple of occasions without any problems, things being pretty informal on the border in those days but I had no idea of what was happening in Nicaragua behind the scenes. Oh, how blissful ignorance can be…

To make another very long story short “Be a Vaquero Tours” came to an abrupt end when my partner and I were captured by the Nicaraguan National Guard leaving Cardenas after taking pictures of what were considered by them to be “Strategic Locations”. We just thought they’d make good brochure shots but what did we know.

The charge was Espionage and they were quite serious. Our horses and gear were confiscated and we spent the next week being moved from one small jail to another until we were transferred to the infamous “EL Modelo Penitentiary” in Managua.