Franklin Wiener--A Visit To Costa Rica

In the black night, the American Airlines wide-body jet dipped low over the hills of Guatemala City, glittering with thousands of tiny lights. The cabin lights were suddenly switched on, and my travel-weary eyes struggled to adapt to the invasive glare. Once we landed, the cabin lights were suddenly switched on as my travel-weary eyes struggled to adapt to the invasive glare. As soon as we parked at the gate, armed soldiers immediately boarded and walked cautiously through the aisles, studying the bewildered passengers. I hadn’t noticed any passengers deplaning in Guatemala, but once the soldiers completed their examination, a few passengers boarded, and we were soon aloft again, flying over the sparkling slopes that surrounded the impoverished Central American country’s capital. +

After another hour, we began to descend into San Jose, Costa Rica. Again, clusters of shimmering lights blanketed the hills and valleys that surrounded the city and its airport. Although we reached our destination, our journey was not at its end.

Only two immigration officers manned their stations that evening, and the two lines of passengers from our flight, one hundred each, shuffled listlessly as we were processed. Finally, my wife’s and my passports were examined, electronically cleared, and stamped. The next stop was the car rental agency outside where a feverish, loud argument was in progress between an American couple and an agent behind the desk. Their baggage tags clearly indicated an address somewhere in Minnesota. Without a reservation, they were being charged twice the weekly amount that I had been quoted in advance, so I became concerned that I would be similarly gouged. The agent would not bend, so the Americans had to accept the price, grabbed their bags, and stormed out of the office, declaring that they would never use that company again.

When I showed the agent a record of my reservation, he assured me that my cost would be exactly as originally quoted for the very smallest vehicle available, a Subaru Justy. After 10 PM, the agent explained that there were no more sub-compacts available at the airport location and that he and his colleague would drive us to the company’s central office in downtown San Jose where we would be required to obtain our car.

I looked at my wife with skepticism, and the expression on her face indicated concern. After a number of years of marriage, a spouse eventually learns how to read the facial expressions of the other without needing to exchange a single word. I realized that, under the circumstances, we had no choice but to ride with them, so we placed our bags in the trunk and jumped into the rear seat.

As we rode into the very dark night through a totally unfamiliar area in a country completely unknown to us, many thoughts entered my mind. I considered that in any other Central American country, we might be stripped of all of our possessions before my wife was raped in front of me and we were both shot dead in some remote jungle. But this was Costa Rica, so it was different here, or so I was told. As we sped into the unknown darkness, my mind raced through the worst possibilitries. Why should we trust these two total strangers even in our own country?

On the way to downtown San Jose, we passed the prominent sign of the large hotel where we had made a reservation for the first night, El Palacio of San Jose, and I wondered whether we would ever live to see it again. Between the airport and the center of the city, there were many isolated places where no one would hear gunshots and where two bodies could easily be dumped and robbed. As soon as I detected the illuminated sign of the rental company, I knew that all of my fears were unfounded, and I felt obliged to apologize to the two innocent men in the front seat and to all of the nation of Costa Rica for my very dark expectations and paranoid imagination. In only a few minutes, we were aboard our little, red Justy, backtracking our way to El Palacio. Although one of the agents was very determined to demonstrate the use of the choke, the little car didn’t feel quite right to me, but it was too late to return it that night. We were exhausted from our trip from New Jersey, which had taken the entire day, and, once the two agency employees drove off into the dark night, there was no one at the city rental office to help us exchange the car. Driving the little car for a few minutes convinced me that it would never carry us through the mountainous terrain of the country, including its mostly unpaved roads, many of them featuring potholes big enough to bury a Greyhound bus. We would return it first thing in the morning. At the moment, all I could think about was a steaming, hot shower and a nice, comfortable hotel bed.

El Palacio Hotel of San Jose was jumping with live music and activity on that Saturday night, but we were too exhausted to partake in any of its frenetic nightlife. Searching in vain for a vending machine within the hotel’s proximity, I returned empty handed, so we had to settle for the hotel’s tap water, which, unlike many parts of Mexico and Central America, was without risk in Costa Rica. I was just too tired to deal with any of the hotel bars or discos and was uncertain of room service as the night had grown quite late by then.

On the next morning, we wasted no time exchanging our little red Justy for an equally tiny, grey Justy that seemed to be in better mechanical condition and took the road less traveled from San Jose to the Caribbean port city of Puerto Limon. Along the way, we passed the heavily populated central area of the country where most of the people lived in and around the major city of San Jose. We soon learned that many Costa Ricans relied on their feet and the use of bicycles for basic mobility. From San Jose to Limon, as cars whizzed at high speed along the main road, which was quite narrow, women with babes in arms, children on bicycles, and teenagers walking boldly three abreast seemed oblivious to any danger from the numerous, large trucks and busses that traveled along the same road. The busses of Costa Rica appeared everywhere as they snaked through the mountainous terrain with the names of both their points of origin and destination prominently displayed front and back. In this country, there was no way that anyone sober or sane could find themselves on the wrong bus.

As we descended from the thickly forested, more temperate hills of central Costa Rica, we entered the hot, lowland jungle of the country’s Caribbean coast that led to Puerto Limon. Eventually, the paved road was reduced to a narrow, gravel road as an outcome of the recent earthquake of March 1991 which destroyed it as it approached Limon. Paving roads in general throughout the country seemed to be a challenge as we would encounter many dirt roads with the largest potholes that I had ever witnessed in my sheltered life. With all of the tourist revenue that the country was beginning to receive at the time, I didn’t understand why the road infrastructure was so very poor, including roads between major towns and cities. In the end, most of the rough roads of Costa Rica proved to be far too challenging for the likes of a tiny Subaru Justy, but we made the best of it as we had no choice in the matter.

As we approached the port of Limon, located on the Caribbean coast, the skin tone of the people became quite black. The Caribbean region in the eastern part of the country seemed less developed and poorer than the central part of the country, which was inhabited by people mostly of European ancestry. Not only was the eastern coast the object of official neglect by the central government, but it had been the frequent victim of natural disasters such as the earthquake earlier that year and a succession of Caribbean hurricanes. The city, a place of much despair, poverty, and overall idleness, was not a happy one by any stretch of the imagination and was located outside of the normal tourist circuit, which winded through the country’s rain forests, spectacular volcanic peaks, and pristine Pacific beaches, far from Puerto Limon. We were, however, determined to experience all that the country had to offer and were feeling adventurous after months of the humdrum routine of our jobs in the States.

Puerto Limon, already in a state of economic distress, suffered miserably from the earthquake that had struck the eastern Caribbean region of the country earlier in that same year. In every direction, buildings were reduced to rubble and those left standing looked on the verge of perilous collapse. Although it was precariously perched on a cliffside overlooking the sea, our hotel, a cluster of round, concrete bungalows covered by thatched roofs, had survived the earthquake intact. It was much more fortunate than many of Limon’s other buildings. As we viewed the spectacular sight of the waves crashing against the black rocks below, I couldn’t help from wondering when and if the next earthquake would strike. One place we would not want to be during an earthquake is at the very spot where we stood, gazing upon the tumultuous waters of the blue Caribbean as they exploded on the rocks.

We drove south along the Caribbean coast through dense jungles and large banana plantations until we reached Cahuita National Park, not far from the Panamanian border. Exotic, colorful birds flew everywhere. In the nearby town of Cahuita, a Sunday street festival was in full swing dread-locked teenagers danced energetically to the loud reggae music that blasted through the ramshackle streets. Unlike most of the rest of Hispanic-European Costa Rica, we were immersed in a very different, black Afro-Caribbean world.

As the sun began setting, we headed back to our beach bungalow in Limon through coastal villages that separated the dense, inland jungle from the endless, blue sea. Once we returned to our resort, the waiter, who may have been the owner, sold me the most expensive dish on the menu, a delicious, elaborate array of assorted, freshly caught seafood. This guy knew how to survive under difficult circumstances. If someone walks in the door, try to get the most out of him. It’s a lesson in survival, so who could blame him?

On the next morning, we departed for the far more popular beaches of the Pacific Coast, first in Puntarenas Province, including a very crowded, over-trodden Manuel Antonio Park, and then in Guanacaste Province, where in 1991 some of the most magnificent, pristine beaches in the western hemisphere were yet to be discovered by the inevitable invasion of tourist mobs to come.

*****

Frank Wiener was born and raised in New Jersey and graduated from Rutgers University with a B.A. in English. He also lived in five other regions of the United States and has traveled to all 50 states, all Canadian provinces except one, and 35 additional foreign countries. He swims. He bicycles. He reads. He writes. He watches classical movies. He listens to the music that he loves. He is deeply concerned about the world in which he lives.