I chose Tamarindo because of its proximity to the Daniel Oduber international airport, because I’d heard about the Pacific beach, and the Hotel Chocolate offered a fine small apartment with wireless access. My two previous visits to Costa Rica hadn’t taken me to the northwest. I knew nothing about Guanacaste’s difference, with dry forests and the influence of the trade winds that hold back Pacific moisture, November through April. The roble sabana, or savannah oak, with clusters of pinkish trumpets, and the spectacular Cortez amarillo, were unknown to me.
Also unknown, Tamarindo was in the midst of change. When the taxi rolled in Saturday, February 16, some sort of beach festival was under way. A surfers’ party, according to the driver. I checked into Hotel Chocolate and headed down in time for sunset and fireworks. Was this my welcome? No, the antidevelopment activists were wrapping up. Local people opposed to the proposed projects—the number two dozen keeps being repeated—are united under the slogan “No alta densidad en Tamarindo.” High-density development could choke this place.
During two and a half weeks here, I’ve acquired very few souvenirs: seashells for Susan and a Pura Vida leather bracelet for me. Pura Vida is the informal national slogan, expressing the preoccupations with environmental purity and individual liberty. Last Saturday I decided on something else and returned to Carminia Moncada’s Rasta shop to acquire one of the slash-through-circle stickers with boldly drawn highrises and the incisive slogan repeated at bottom. She said all had been distributed. But the 11-year-old neighbor girl hanging around the shop—who circles her forefinger around her temple when looking at Carminia—still possessed a couple and sold one for 1000 colones ($2).
In 1883 the Costa Rican government handed over seven percent of the country to an American businessman to get a railroad built to the Caribbean coast; the United Fruit Company’s subsequent activities resulted. As my history anthology explains, the situation “illustrates the ease with which U.S. capital was able to enter Costa Rica…the difficulties underdeveloped countries often experience in building modern infrastructure, and the continuing dependence of the government on a foreign company…” I think of Sunday’s Century 21 signs. Forty years ago the Nicoyan coastline was almost worthless; Guanacaste has always been sparsely populated. Imagine the present push for a better coastal highway.
Beyond this, the government wants to dock oil tankers near Puntarenas, on the central Pacific Coast, to supply the booming demand for (a) jet fuel at the Daniel Oduber international airport and (b) mixed transportation fuels for the growing Guanacaste population and (c) the 200-megawatt (another source says 160-MW) Garabito electrical generating station, which will be an oil-burner. “This [expansion] is due to the development of tourism and its related activities which translated into greater consumption of fuel and other types of energy,” the government oil monopoly’s project manager told the Beach Times newspaper. So good luck with carbon neutrality, Costa Rica. And God forbid a spill on these precious beaches of tortoise habitat.
The Tamarindo activists might at least have hope. Work proceeds slowly. Last week on Molasses Avenue, a tractor scraped up some mounds that now sit over yonder, enhancing the general dustiness. The chef down at Pachanga (named for the erotic Colombian dance) reckons this is supposed to be quite a throughway, wide, with sidewalks, the whole works, but admits that in Costa Rica one never knows the completion date.
Meanwhile, as the self-involved interloper, I’ve felt ridiculous in my Hilfiger Levi’s The North Face Tevas. How am I different from the beachwalking couple in their Nike and Titleist caps? And I’m stung by one reader’s chastening about this blog’s crassness:
“…I did see the hyper-observant tale-teller but also found myself cringing and wondering if the critical, leering, sarcasm really were your true voice. I kept thinking, ‘Ouch,’ (somewhat on Susan's behalf), and that if the blog were all I knew of you I wouldn't want to know you because you sound so harsh.
Either the self-parody went flat or she’s right, I’m a shit heel and shouldn’t be so hard on the pigs who blocked the crest of the hill in their fucking Land Rovers. Does it help to say the Land Rovers were old and battered? Does it help that I’ve heretofore not mentioned the Americans, two men, two women, roaring over the baywaters under the flag of an inflatable sex doll? Does it help that of the three nights I was out past 7.30 p.m., one gave me the lunar eclipse with the stoner surfers at Hostel La Botella de Leche, and the other two were visits to Pachanga with my book? All I know of the street life was relayed in Jimmy Danger's used bookshop. As for the beach fruit of last Thursday, maybe I shouldn’t have initiated the conversation with Isabel; maybe I should have packed up like a hermit crab when I saw those babes heading for my bit of shade.
I could have written about seashells and sandcastles and the sweet lady from Spokane: a Hallmark card instead of excoriation. But the folly, vanity, and avarice caught my interest.
Nothing like a wave breaking over the bald pate to remind me of life; also nothing like sighting down the wave’s crest and finding the sun puddled on the horizon, imbuing the froth and spume with orange and pink. Nothing at all like stepping out the apartment's front door as not one, not two, but three blue-crowned motmots alight 10 feet away in Sebastian’s tree.
Among themselves they gurgle, “How regal you look this day!”
“Yes, aren’t we all lovely?”
“Of course. It’s the majestic plumage!”
Birds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-crowned_Motmot, http://www.nicoyapeninsula.com/wildlife/motmot.html
Oil tankers: http://www.thebeachtimes.com
