Tica Rica
By William Roderick Richardson
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We had walked into Costa Rica only a couple of hour or so after passing through Rivas where we spotted a large hog body-surfing a wind-whipped wave out of Lake Nicaragua with a large fish clamped tight in his snout, so by this time I was ready for anything. Besides—it’s best never to get too excited in the Tropics. You are going to see and do many weird things, so you might as well accept.
Indeed.
I’m not suggesting, by leading with the pig anecdote, that traveling to Latin America is like entering a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, but it’s not that far of a stretch.
I’d already gotten a snoot full of rum and bilious tales of Costa Rican infamy from my Nicaraguan colleagues. A strange pair of twins they are too, fraternal rather than identical, with just a pinch of the fratricidal, at least on the Nicaraguan side. Costa Ricans (Ticas) are too busy looking down their noses at their northern neighbor to
Sentiments run strong with some: “Costa Ricans are scum,” Freddie, a former Colonel in the Somoza army and two-year veteran of the Sandinista prison system said to me. “We could take them out just like that.” He snapped his fingers. His eyes gleamed with good natured malice as he patted his .38 where it lay, holstered, on the table. Nice.
I believed him. Costa Rica, after all, has no army. This is a crucial part of its sales pitch to tourists, the subtext of which is come to Costa Rica, the guerilla-free friendly place, sandwiched between those two Scary and memorably unstable countries, Nicaragua and Panama. Another stereotype of Costa Rica goes something like this: the gentle little country of honest tillers of the soil overrun by coarse American culture. Too bad: that’s what mass tourism does and the downside of Costa Rica is that it is inundated with tourists. The upside is that here you really do get to walk on the wild and sexy side of nature, this rather being where the eco-tourism invented. Costa Rica has everything you expect to find in a tropical paradise. In spades.
We took a taxi into Liberia where we picked up a huge Four Wheel Drive vehicle at the rental car place and took to the road. Do not expect to drive fast in Costa Rica, apart from on stretches of the Pan American highway. The Roman concept of transportation never caught on here. Driving is mostly a case of serpentine maneuvers on pocked-marked tarmacs of in many various states of disrepair. That’s not a complaint really. We weren’t in a hurry. This was simply Fun for the boys in their SUV and Fun is always the top priority of any serious traveler.
The long drive from Liberia was worth it. Montezuma was a hoot. We spent a week there, at the tip of the Guanacaste peninsula walking in the jungle, including padding through parts of Costa Rica’s oldest national park where we heard a jaguar roaring, riding ATVs, some light fishing, plenty of swimming and body-surfing on the sensational beach and a respectable amount of rum-drinking. Montezuma is filled with foreigners, many of them surfers from somewhere in the States. There’s a latent hippie atmosphere coupled with the easy-going commerce provided by all the visitors. You can walk a mile out of town up the hilly coast and be alone in thick jungle which crowds the empty strips of white sand. The hotel was excellent in both food and accommodation, the former being many kinds of fish along with the ubiquitous rice and beans. The latter consisted of self-contained tiny bungalows connected by a raised wooden walkway and a pool made to look as if carved out of rock with a miniature cascading waterfall.
In answer to Dionne Warwick’s plaintive query, yes, we did know the way to San Jose. To go to San Jose we had to catch the ferry to Puntarenas. We drove up and up and up in a fierce rainstorm, unusual for February. The capital is situated in a ring of mountains at 1100 meters. Though founded in 1736 and imminently convenient for travel to nearby volcanoes and the high rain forest, San Jose is disappointingly dull as a colonial capital, a far cry from Granada or Antigua for example. Too bad. There were some sort of elections going on as well and we drove into a parade which had clogged the city center with many varieties of streamer-festooned jalopies and dented Japanese vehicles. For sensible people there are plenty of hostels and hotels downtown including a Holiday Inn, but we elected to stay in the Del Ray Hotel, a legendary spot and microcosm of the relationship between gringos and the Latin American tropical world. For some reason it reminded me of a location for a Tarantino movie. Not sure why. There was 24/7 gambling, a sports bar with TVs many televisions, a Friday’s style restaurant and an over-abundance of extremely amenable single ladies possessed of winning smiles and ways. It was a pleasant full stop to an eye-opening escapade. Costa Rica is the schnitzel.
Tica Tips:
The Cloud-forests of Monteverde are the best in the hemisphere.
Volcan Arenal is the most active volcano in Central America.
Cerro Chirripo (3, 819 m) offers a view of both oceans.
Parc National Corcovado features virgin rain forest Playa
Tarmarina for surfing, nightlife and beaches
