27th november

The town of Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui
Morning arrived just after dawn left, slate grey and drizzling. I take a leaf out of Blair's book and decide to walk to Puerto Viejo. I start out at 6.30 in the greyness wearing jeans and a t-shirt. It might be raining but it’s already warm. I’m carrying a plastic bag that contains a plastic tub of yesterday’s spaghetti. That’s my breakfast.
I exit through the gate and bear left. Almost immediately, the road becomes heavily pitted due to neglect and the harsh weather. It’s difficult enough walking here and picking a good trail, never mind driving. After ten minutes, I pass a small bungalow that has a couple of snotty nosed infants screaming in the patio. I walk on and after another ten minutes approach a spate of five or six houses in a furlong stretch. And a school too, painted blue and green with images of children painted on the walls like a mural, and with ‘escuela’ on the front in large letters. A few minutes later I cross over a small bridge which traverses, I suppose, the creek that runs past the back of Over’s house. Similar width anyway and it’s in round about the right place.
I stop and eat my spaghetti at the spot where I can sit and look at Nicaragua on the horizon. I walk past a few farmers feeding cows in fields or roadside barns, get barked at by some dogs, get muddy and sweat a lot. The sun begins to appear in bursts through the patches in the clouds and when it shows itself, everything warms up very quickly. And then it’s gone again and another harmless looking white cloud dribbles on me. It's a difficult route of farm tracks with varying degrees of mud, stones, rocks and water making it very slippery, and its not flat or straight but undulating and winding most of the way.
There is a particularly sadistic stretch of road that rises at a mind-breakingly constant gradient for a few hundred yards, and the road is straight so you can see it stretching out in front of you. The fiends! Someone however, has taken pity on the walkers of the world. At the summit of this evil rise is a log that has been cut out and shaped and is obviously intended to be a place to sit and reoxygenate the more distant reaches of ones body. Ok, half the time it’s wet, and it has long ago ceased to be sturdy, but it is there and it is better than the muddy floor. And boy, does it get used a lot!
After about an hour and a half, the road comes to the junction and I bear right, the road surface becoming harder with the ancient tarmac. It is still pitted but not so badly, and at least it’s solid. Soon after this, at a nondescript point in the road that is unremarkable in the extreme, the road suddenly becomes tarmac proper, showing the point where the road workers had stopped and the corruption had started.
This marks the approach to town. The houses become thicker down each side and I walk past a small shop and a business set back fifty yards from the roadside that as far as I can gather, is probably an abattoir. On the right is a college which is again, painted blue and green and muralled. I can see the statutory coca cola drinks machine. I cam also see the desks and seats in the classrooms because not only do the classrooms have no glass in the windows; they actually have no windows at all probably due in no small, part that you need walls to have windows and there are no walls. Just roofs, although there are several interlinked buildings and some playing fields so it is not a small institution. This ‘colegio’, as opposed to ‘la escuela’ is for the equivalent of our secondary students and the country boasts around 96% of the population to be educated. That’s pretty good for Central America. It’s not bad for Grimsby.
There is also a tourism lodge of sorts that doesn’t appear to be particularly well patronised. I can’t see much of it but it reminds me of a caravan park in the way it is set out. I see a swimming pool but I certainly wouldn’t use it. There are way too many insects around this area and its hardly a sun drenched paradise anyway such as the coasts obviously are, being predisposed to being cloudy and prone to rain. Sunbathers need not to have their mind on the weather so that they can keep turning over and dozing.
There are small sheds and barns, people on horses and pushbikes, men standing by jeeps and cars and they all look like they are doing their own small pieces of business. The place seems to have a buzz about it. There seem to be quite a lot of properties with signs saying ‘se alquilar’ on them. It means they are for rent.
There is another creek or river of sorts as I enter the town proper. It takes me exactly two hours to cross the bridge over it into town from the house. I feel like I’ve walked for two difficult hours and I have. Looking myself up and down, I’m damp through the drizzle and my trousers are liberally splashed below the knee with wet mud, some of which is already drier than I am. I look like I’ve trekked through a field.
Unperturbed and feeling like a Tico, (slang for Costa Rican) I have a proper breakfast in the café that we had used on our last visit, taking an onion omelette that comes with rice, and coffee. I eat it ravenously, meeting the curious looks of the other diners with nonchalance as if I am used to it. It occurs to me that this must be what it is like to be famous, not being able to go anywhere without the looks. I steel myself to it all, letting them think me famous.
I almost finish the plate but I leave some of the rice. It’s a little bland and I am reduced so mixing in loads of sauce to try to give it taste. I order another coffee and lean back in my chair, drinking it slowly letting its heat seep through me, wishing I was sitting on the opposite side of the table facing the street where I could watch the passers by, rather than watching the patrons of the half-baked toilet come and go. I use it myself and as I exit and lean down to wash my hands in the trickle of cold water, another pair of hands are plunged in and compete with me for the meagre trickle. The girl says something and withdraws her hands. There is nothing to dry them on. I sit down, finish my coffee and asked for ‘la cuenta’. The bill.
The waitress becomes very excited when she tells me the cost in English.
“Mil tres cien colones,” she offers in Spanish absently.
I am not really listening and genuinely mishear her, my English involuntarily kicking in. “Pardon?”
She looks bewildered and wanders off. “No, wait,” but she’s gone. I would have got it if I had been listening.
She comes back a minute later and I can see her trying really hard. She looks at the ceiling as if seeking inspiration from the mosquitoes clinging to it, holds her breath, and goes for it. “One theesan and three theesan colones peas?” and she exhales in relief, looking at me expectantly.
I can imagine the same wide-eyed effort being given by a chicken laying an egg, and pretty much the same relieved facial expression upon the successful conclusion to the enterprise. I thought I would play with her. “One … que?”
“theesan?”
I shake my head “one … thous… “
“One thousan,” and she smiles and takes a deep breath, “and three theesan colones.”
“One thousand and three … que?”
She laughs at me and her face light up. I am in severe danger of pulling here! This is the most fun she has had all week! In fact, I am a little disquieted with the speed with which his relationship is developing. She‘ll be pregnant before I’ve paid and we’ll be married before I get out the door at this rate. This is more education than she ever got at school. “One thousan’ and three … “ she searches my face. I help her a little.
“hun … “
“Hundad!” She hops for some reason! “One thousan and three hundad colones peas.”
“Si, señorita. No-problema,” although I am convinced she didn’t really want the peas. I give her the money and I am leaving anyway so I follow her to the till for the change. She is skipping. I have bought joy into someone’s life today, but then I guess I do that on most days anyway. I do a lot of nice things.
Then I find the Internet café, pointed out to me by Dave on the way in. It is on the road out of town and after walking for two hours just to get that far, it is a little soul-destroying to walk another fifteen minutes in the same direction knowing I would have to retrace my steps at some point. They had about six old machines and a drinks fridge with fanta and coca cola in – the usual suspects. I was alone in there the while that I am in there except for the manager/assistant/proprietor who was just a young man of about twenty. It costs about a dollar per hour and I am in there about an hour and a half, catching up on e-mails, catching up on soccer, checking World Service frequencies and times and then when I have finished I think it appropriate to go visit Blair and Harmony at their house. Harmony is not there but I have a glass of water with Blair and a bit of a chat. Quite a boring one actually. And a glass of water? Whassat all about?
On the way back to the main street, I am accosted by a young woman who steps in front of me, breaking my reverie by pronouncing something or other in Spanish and accompanying it with a piercing gaze.
“Sorry, what did you say?” I ask. “Je ne parle pas l’espagnol!” I knew that would throw her!
She looks at me non-plussed. Then I have a look at her. The face and body belonged to the rogue pair of hands I shared a sink with in the café. She had dribble stains down the front of her orange t-shirt and her face was grubby. Her hair was a little greasy and her shoes were worn out. She gazed at me, through me and then took a step backwards almost in slow motion. She turned to walk away from me, looking over her shoulder at me every few steps. I could see she was several months pregnant too. She was a beggar and she had asked me for money and I had completely befuddled her by speaking in another tongue. I couldn’t work out whether she was a little simple or whether she just decided I was an alien.
I felt a little sorry for her - a pregnant girl reduced to begging. On the other hand, she had dribbled lately so at least she was eating ok!
Puerto Viejo does not look like a big town and yet it is the capital of the province of Heredia. It basically has a football pitch in the centre of the town and all four sides are built up with parades of shops, with a few others going on along further up the main street. The houses and other buildings are nearly all one story, or two at the most, and are scattered around – it looks very similar to a village. In fact, from what I’ve seen, the entire country looks like one big village. They really don’t like tall buildings here. There are a couple of hotels here and one or two half-baked signs for river rafting and canoeing on the Sarapiqui but not too much else illustrate the whole country’s focus on tourism. I saw a couple of minibuses with ‘turismo’ plastered onto the side but the economy in the area, as is most of the country, is still predominantly based on agriculture (although I have to admit that I was impressed that the pitch was floodlit).
I think they’ll make it but the impression I finished with regarding this area and their attempts to curry tourism trade was that of a small boy who has discovered a television with the back off. The TV is plugged in and working, so he can see the goodies, but he is still gingerly finding out which bits are electrified and which bits change the volume and the channel. It’s a necessary but painful - sometimes embarrassing - trial and error thing. They’ll be fine, eventually, and I hope they make it because in this day and age, there are still too many places in too many countries that are too reliant on a subsistence based economy. I could rant on about the ineffectiveness of world leaders and the greedy foreign policies of wealthy nations but I’ll do that somewhere else.
The country, relatively poor as it is by western standards, is the jewel of the Central American isthmus. It has enjoyed peace, democracy and relative economic prosperity that many of its neighbours would cherish, and is generally considered to be the most stable and least corrupt of those countries.
Costa Rica remained a neutral country in the region for many years, but skirmishes between its Civil guard (it has no army) and Nicaraguan sandinista forces in the eighties led to towns such as Puerto Viejo becoming off limits due to its proximity to the border. Eventually in 1987, after working tirelessly for peace in the region, President Sánchez succeeded and won the Nobel peace prize for his efforts. The town of Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui has since grown steadily wealthier, thanks mainly to plantations such as coffee and bananas but the country’s promotion and emphasis on environmental protection has also led to butterfly gardens and ecolodges springing up in the area and opening up other avenues of income which they are tentatively exploring. Hence the problem with electricity.
Costa Rica is a paradoxical country. It is said to have more diverse species within its borders than any other country on the planet, and at one time was so heavily forested that it boasted a staggering 5% of the world’s flora and fauna. Not bad for a small country. It was predominantly untouched by technology, even economy, until the introduction of coffee in the early nineteenth century. Growing coffee brought prosperity and eventually independence from Spain but also a reason to chop down forests until by 1983, only 17% of the forest remained and the deforestation was still continuing to make space for more coffee and banana plantations and grazing pasture (presumably for greedy and indiscriminate multinationals such as Burger King and Mitsubishi.) Nowadays, more than 10% of the country is protected national park but not much forest exists outside of these areas, other than some private reserves. There is deforestation going in some areas (rarely legally) and at the same time, reforestation programmes going on in other areas. The problem is that the deforestation is usually primary rainforest that is mature and irreplaceable, and the reforestation is secondary and not always with indigenous trees and plants. The difference in the types of forest is clear, even at a place such as the rain ranch. These new forests will take decades to mature. I guess nature will find a way.
The area around Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí and in the Heredia province in general has its share of forest and also plantations, being as it is on predominantly flat land at the foot of the Cordillera Central range on the warm Caribbean slope. Being the capital of the province would make also the town the centre of commerce.
I have a brief walk around and the place seems to be more or less the same in every direction with small houses in their allotted space within their respective grid. They seem to like grids in this country. It appears to be a thriving town, to be fair, in a Central American sort of way. The shops are open and busy and there aren’t any signs of decay or recession such as empty or boarded up premises. There isn’t any sense of doom, or indeed, gloom. The people are out shopping and seem intent on going about their business in a good-tempered, hopeful sort of way - you can tell a lot about a town in the way that people go about their business.
The houses and gardens of the town interest me. They seem to be … not quite finished. Strange feeling … I don’t know. I guess what it is, was that in the UK I think we make the most of our space. Our houses are compact and utilised fully and the gardens have things in whether they are plants in the borders, pots, cars, piles of stones, dead prams etc. The space is used. I suppose it comes from being a crowded country. Here, it almost seems as though there were bits of everywhere that they couldn’t be bothered with – waste ground that they would possibly get around to doing something with one day, corners of gardens left unattended, bits of pavement missing for no reason etc. It is as though some God creature has gone around with an eraser just to mess things up a bit. “Go on then. Fill in the gaps,” I expect the booming voice coming from out of the sky to say, “There’s nothing near that tree now. Put something there. I’ve erased that bit of pavement, wotcha gonna do about it?”
I head for Pali supermarket for some supplies and get more or less the same as last time but also some disinfectant and cleaning stuff, some candles and some orange cordial. I give the ice a miss – too bloody heavy - find a red taxi in the rank by the football pitch and return to the house. The drive takes about half an hour and if I owned a taxi, there is no way I would do it because the road is so bad. I certainly wouldn’t take a car down here. A hovercraft, yes, perhaps a jeep or a four-wheel drive – anything as long as it has a high enough clearance to clear the protruding boulders in the road where the rain has washed the soil away. Once again, I observe the road make the depressing transition from pre-corruption tarmac (two kilometres) to post-corruption cobbles (three kilometres) to slippery steep dodgy lane (three kilometres) to bone shaking bronco-ride (for the last kilometre). The driver, one Hugo Montero, doesn’t seem to mind - I’m sure its good money for him. Hugo charges me four thousand colones, which is about £4.50, which is a bargain. None of this ‘not south of the river, mate ‘lark…
On the way, we pass a '4runner' coming in the other direction and both cars have to slide off the road and breathe in to let each other pass on the narrow track. I can't see who’s in it because the windows were blacked out, but Joe has one of those. I get back to the house and unloaded my shopping. Over comes over and tells me that Joe has been so it was indeed him that we passed on the road.
Bloody typical! The only time in nearly two weeks that I leave the premises and they turn up. Over said that they will come back on Tuesday.
Using the disinfectant and cleaning products, I treat the floor to a mop and use surface cleaner on the flat work surfaces and walls. I quickly retire outside to watch the house cough and splutter at the removal of the funk of a decade. When I decide its safe to return, I stuff myself with mashed potato, maize and sardines. I am cheerful with a full stomach (although I think it has shrunk!)
I can hear the boom boom of some distant music again. I don’t know where it’s coming from but it would appear that this sleepy hamlet wakes up and boogies on a Saturday night. Sacrificing chickens no doubt, casting spells and sticking pins into things. Why don’t they ask me? I want to stick pins in things. When I moved here, why didn’t someone pop round with a basket of fruit, telling all about the WI, Neighbourhood watch, giving me the gossip about the board of governors at the local school and inviting me to a cheese and wine Thursday next?
I had a couple of weird dreams last night. In one, ‘Only Fools and Horses’ were doing detective work chasing bad guys around a Morris Marina. I wonder what happened to the three-wheeler. In the other, I threw a party at Rye Hill and Lynette was there in a purple slinky dress.