After being saved on last Sunday’s motorcycle trip by Rodolfo, I wondered how to express my thanks, one man to another. I kept thinking of him in his barn on the slope above the village of Paraíso. Paradise, my ass. When I’d ordered a plate of shrimp and rice for that day’s lunch, the owner of the combo market and restaurant that’s the only game in town sat there and watched me eat just to have something to do. As for Rodolfo, stranded four kilometers out of town at the very edge of the wilderness, all he had for companionship were venomous snakes and the legend of Donny Lalonde.
Yesterday I was on the road by 10.00 a.m. on another rented Honda 250 dirt bike. (This one actually had rearview mirrors, but the speedometer cable was disconnected and the rear tire was just as bald as last week’s.) I headed due east through cattle country for Santa Cruz. There were a couple of villages along the gravel highway, and smoke from the Sunday morning cooking fires, or leaves, or garbage, made my eyes run and I had to stop along the side of the road to blot them dry. After a while a nice paved surface commenced, like one of the county highways around home. Arriving at Santa Cruz, I used the bypass and stayed on the road over the mountains to Nicoya. The Spaniards had begun to enslave Indians here by 1523, although the New Laws of 1542 forbade this practice, which prompted the ever resourceful hacienda owners to make sharecroppers of the Indians and use that income to purchase black African slaves as farmhands.
By 11.10 a.m. I had arrived in Nicoya, a pleasant city of around 15,000 people, and found my way to the historic parish church. With its blinding white walls and prominent campanile and blocky vaulted sacristy, it dramatically stood out from the downtown’s commercial cubes: in particular, the Moorish accents were startling. The sanctuary was cool and dark inside, with a patterned brick floor. The dark wooden ceiling supported several big chandeliers. Mass is said on certain weekdays but not on Sunday. A simple info sheet attached to a post explained that the original cathedral, built in 1644, was destroyed by earthquake in 1822 and rebuilt nine years later. There really wasn’t much to see, but I didn’t leave without receiving grace.
On the highway out of Nicoya a transit policeman stopped me for not wearing my casco. The rental agency provides a helmet suitable for inline skaters, and as soon as the motorcycle hits 30 kilometers per hour the helmet lifts in the wind, causing strangulation; I’d clipped it to my knapsack and was wearing a baseball cap to keep my bald head from burning under the sun. Boy, this would test my Spanish. I told the policeman I wasn’t even sure if there was a helmet law because half the riders on the highway aren’t wearing them, but he was a not-in-my-town kind of cop and said there was going to be una multa of 20,000 colones, or $40, and suggested I might experience problems with immigration when I got to the airport on Wednesday. He took my license and passport. I unavailingly explained my difficulty with the wind and strangulation. Maybe to exploit any inconsistencies in my story, should any appear, or maybe because he couldn’t believe anyone would really do what I was doing, he twice asked my destination and where the motorcycle had come from. OK, gringo, you’re staying in Tamarindo but you’ve come all the way down here, and next, making the second leg of a big triangle, you’re going southwest to the coast at Samara, and, seriously, you’re returning to Tamarindo by way of the shitty coast highway? But on the second run through all these details, I mentioned visiting the cathedral, which caused him to comment favorably. Nevertheless, our negotiation continued, and while it did I unclipped the helmet from my knapsack and put it over my baseball cap. This would by my new system, with the bills of the two hats splitting the wind’s drag. Sissy-looking, but it works on race cars. When he ultimately reiterated that I would have to pay right here, right now, I unfurled one of the Spanish language’s mightiest and most corrosive verb tenses, the pluperfect indicative, letting him know that the truth was, I’d been instructed never to give money to a cop on the highway. So there, take that. To my amazement, he said there would be no multa. He handed back my license and passport, assured me a gasolinera was open at Samara, and drove away—not without complimenting my Spanish.
The next 40 kilometers through the Nicoya Peninsula’s coastal highlands presented as beautiful and inspiring a ride as I’ve ever experienced. The undulant road’s paved surface reminded me of southeastern Michigan’s townline roads, narrow and often patched, but sufficient for brisk travel. Generous clusters of brilliant scarlet and fuchsia flowers cascaded over fences, the small tidy houses offered their own ochres and blues, and the landscape interspersed odd clusters of palms, groves of spreading broadleaves, and vivid verdant pastures. I stopped to wet my whistle, buying a grape pop in the little store where four Ticos sat watching a Premier League match. One had ridden over on his horse and left it tied to a tree in the side yard. I told these gents they live in a gorgeous place. No response besides a couple of weak smiles. What did the farms hereabouts produce? The horseman, older than the others, about 45 or 50, answered that they produced melons, sugar, rice, and of course groves of teca—and yes, irrigation was used. Hearing me assert that it looks relatively prosperous, he rolled his eyes.
I soon reached Samara, where the pump jockey at the gas station had major road rash on his right elbow. The kid said it was from a motorcycle crash. I replayed the whole business about the casco and the policeman, and he said, “I don’t wear one.” Samara itself was like a quarter-scale Tamarindo: a smaller but still lovely azure bay, some obvious but not all that obtrusive development, and quite a few Ticos picnicking in the shade of palms along a rather empty beach. One amenity Samara can boast over Tamarindo is a paved main street.
The coast road led north toward Nosara. Even in Michigan, this byway would be classified as an abomination, not a road. Almost as soon as the gravel surface carried me out of town, the way turned past a grass landing field and met a small turbid river. The crossing point wasn’t clear to me. The shortest crossing looked too deep. Upstream, a family was picnicking on a sandbar while pop washed his cattle truck in the middle of the channel. He mentioned un caracol, the shallower point slightly downstream where the ford required turning at midpoint, hooking around onto the landing. I rode the Honda in there, and of course the bald back tire just spun in the mud, so I got off and pushed.
The Nicoyan coast is an absolute wonder, with palm-dotted pastures and gloriously crowned trees embracing the blue sky in the heat. Most of this coastline has been for centuries, and still is reserved for, the exclusive enjoyment of cows and monkeys. As the first rocky headland yielded to level pasture, howlers greeted my photo stop, “Oh-arrr, oh-arrr, oh-ar-ar-ar, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” Translated: “We are the victors valiant, champions of the west.”
In the first seaside village I came to, the main street had received a fresh application of molasses for dust suppression. Two teams of men were contesting a soccer match on a nice field. I stopped to drink water and snap a picture of another gorgeous bay with a deserted beach. The midafternoon passed like this: dazzling views, difficult and dusty going, and fording several streams. Cresting one hill just before a deep crossing, I found the road blocked by Brits talking to each other from inside their Land Rovers; I had to squeeze the bike between them. I arrived at the water below at the same time as two Ticas coming the other direction in a brand-new (rented) Corolla and waved them through at the obvious place; meanwhile, the one Land Rover came downhill behind me and was going to blast through the ford till I motioned the thoughtless pig to stop. Finally I waved him onward to his exclusive vacation house, and then the girls did their crossing. At another place farther along the road, a car sat before the sign advertising a condo development, and while passing I paused long enough to look at the driver and say, “You should buy one.” To which his American voice replied, “We’re thinking about it.” Ticos know something the monkeys and cows don’t: the whole coastline is up for sale. Century 21 advertises at every bus stop. (Yes, buses do run this wretched route.) Real estate! Building lots! New Balinese-inspired community! An FSBO sign offers 60 hectares with ocean view. (Excellent for carbon credits!) Another sign mentions the completion date of a luxury hotel. Nosara even has a yoga institute. The Nicoyan littoral is done for.
I made the 70 kilometers up the coast to Paraíso before 4.30 p.m., stopping there long enough to buy two cold cans of Imperial beer, figuring Rodolfo might receive this tribute more readily than anything as personal as new flip-flops. I also stopped at the little house at the head of his road where last week I had bought gas, and a kid of about 12 poured a couple of liters into the Honda’s tank. I didn’t want to chance running out in the 30 kilometers of wild country between here and Tamarindo. I paid them 2500 colones ($5) and hurried along, with monkeys howling just overhead on the first sharp curve. The dirt road was even narrower than I remembered, one lane and no joking around, but smooth. Rodolfo’s barn was just as far out of town as I thought. Any worry that he might not be around, out to a Sunday matinee at the ballet, was eased when I turned into his barnyard and found him sitting at his crudely fashioned picnic table, just watching and waiting: no paperback novel, no banjo, no whittling. No shirt or shoes, either. I climbed off the bike and we shook hands. Unremembered from a week ago, a singularly hideous dog with a brindled coat put its freakishly huge head in my lap when I sat down. Rodolfo repeated his name, and I forget whether it was Cabezudo (“big-headed”) or Calabaza (“Pumpkin”). Unzipping my knapsack, I pulled out the white plastic bag with the two cans of beer and put it on the table.
“Rodolfo waved his hand over the table top and said, “No tomo.”
“Ah,” I said. Off the sauce, are you?
“It’s bad for the health,” he said.
I put away the beer, having ascertained so very much from so few words. After a couple of minutes I took off for Tamarindo.
