By Laura Bijnsdorp
It was 6:00am; barely awake, I lifted my large backpack out of my room and on to the mini-van outside of my hostel in San Jose. Three other young travellers were seated in the same shuttle that was heading to Puerto Viejo, a small town on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.
My co-passengers were young man named Evan and two ladies, Julia and Flo, whose easy conversation and exchanging of travel stories made the drive go by a bit more quickly.
I instantly took a liking to Puerto Viejo as we neared. On my left were long bays of black sand and white sand beaches, fringed with palm trees and jungle. On my right were small houses, inviting restaurants and lively looking bars. There was a nice mix of people walking around: Afro-Caribbean, Bribri Indian, Tico and hippy-looking backpackers. I was also happy to see a number of Jamaican patty and banana-bread stands along the side of the road. Yum!
One of my goals during my travels through Central America is to improve my Spanish. So I thought it would be a good idea to do at least one to two weeks of Spanish classes in each country I would visit. Through online-recommendations, I found a school in Puerto Viejo called Spanish by the Sea. The shuttle dropped me of in front of their gated entrance, and another adventure in Costa Rica had officially started. Ivana, a young woman from Croatia, who was working for Spanish at the Sea in return for room and board, kindly welcomed me and showed me to my room.
The first few hours or days in a new place are always a bit funny. You feel a bit out of place, as you haven’t really met anyone yet; you still need to figure out where the supermarket is and do not really know what to expect. In Spanish by the Sea that “funny” feeling quickly disappeared. Within the day, I had met some great people, including Selma from Iceland, who had a big personality and big heart; Veerle from Holland, whose spontaneity and smile were infectious; and JT from England, who was quiet and a bit odd, but, more importantly truly, genuine and kind. They reminded me that travelling often holds so many great memories because of the people you get to know.
After settling in, a few of us rented a bike and made their way along the coast to the right of Puerto Viejo. Within seven kilometres from the town, various gorgeous beaches were situated. At the prettiest, Punta Uva, where the water was just a bit clearer, reef fish swam around your feet and the cliffs and low hanging jungle plants gave the beach a mysterious vibe. In the following days Veerle and I enjoyed biking and exploring these beaches, even attempting to ride our bike along the shoreline paths. Getting stuck was inevitable, but finding hidden bays was as well! That first night I had possibly the best tuna-carpaccio ever, while having dinner with JT in one of the many seafood restaurants.
Puerto Viejo has quickly enchanted me and so did its history. The earliest people that inhabited the area were the Bribri and Cabecar Indians, who lived in the interior, mostly along water-courses. Later, Afro-Caribbean people settled along the coast, founding Old Harbor (Puerto Viejo) and other nearby villages of Old Harbor. English was the principal language in those days, and despite a campaign to convert everything to Spanish, to the point of changing town names (such as Old Harbor to Puerto Viejo), as I noticed during my stay, English is still widely used.
Before big business invaded Caribbean Costa Rica, the town consisted of a few houses, two taverns, a church and school. This changed in the early twentieth century. Banana plantations in Panama needed to ship their produce from Sixaola to Cuabre, bringing a railroad through Puerto Viejo. Oil companies built piers and the government tried to grow the sleepy fishing village by sending engineers to build roads and city structures in 1935.
Slowly, the modern world caught up to Puerto Viejo. A road from San Jose came to the area in 1979. Electricity illuminated the town in 1986. Private phone lines were installed in 1996. And high speed Internet connected the village to the rest of the world in 2006. Today, Puerto Viejo is a popular tourist destination. People like myself travel from all over the world to see its black sand beaches, the big waves and enjoy the laid-back atmosphere.
Despite outside efforts to develop the area, I guess what has kept the “charm” of Puerto Viejo alive might be the determination to keep this development small and sustainable. People here seem to focus on eco-minded projects and preserving their unique Afro-Caribbean culture. As I read in many old news reports, when mega-marinas, oil companies, and big business tried to invade Puerto Viejo, the people protest. Many residents in the area fight for sustainable tourism and the land they have called home for generations. Today, approximately 90 per cent of Talamanca is a reserve or nature preserve of some kind. Their determination to preserve the natural heritage of Puerto Viejo and the surrounding areas is something I really admire, and in my opinion we direly miss on Sint Maarten.
On Monday my Spanish classes started. A group of five of us, had class for four hours every morning or afternoon. Elmer, our teacher, was a former wildlife guide. Although his classes were a bit unorganized, he kept us entertained and practising our Spanish by sharing comical stories.
Our last lesson was easily the most memorable, as we decided together to venture to Cahuita for a “class excursion.” In Cahuita we would be visiting the National Park. Waiting for the bus, together with my other classmates, I felt a bit as if I was in primary school again. Half-an-hour drive later, we walked through Cahuita town and into the entrance of the National Park.
The earliest records for Cahuita describe how the Miskitu people, who originated in Nicaragua and Panama, would travel to present-day Cahuita Point by following the natural migration of turtles down the coast. Turtle hunting and fishing was common practice at this time, and was a major component of life in early Cahuita. The Miskitu named their fishing and hunting settlement “cawi-ta,” which means “point where the sangrillo trees grow.” This name is derived from the cawi trees, or sangrillo in Spanish, the characteristic feature of which is the red sap that appears, like blood, when exposed. Within a few minutes into the park, our teacher and guide for the day Elmer pointed to a cawi tree.
Interesting trees weren’t the only thing we saw in the park. Once again I was amazed about the wildlife in Costa Rica. The venomous eyelash viper and golden orb spider were my favourites among the species spotted during the day.
Elmer warned: “Eyelash vipers aren’t very aggressive, but you should not get too close,” as I tried to take a picture with my phone. The venom of these small and colourful snakes can cause severe pain, swelling, bruising, bleb formation and very often necrosis. If left untreated for a few hours, it can lead to loss of a limb, or even be fatal. They are easy to identify by the scales over the eyes. These “eyelashes” are believed to help the snake’s camouflage among the foliage where it hides.
But besides this gorgeous snake, helmet iguana, capuchins, howler monkeys and more that we saw, the golden orb weave spider impressed me the most. I had been admiring the red, yellow and black patterns on these spiders along our walk. They were easy to spot, as they were about the size of the palm of my hand. Looking at a rather large specimen with the aim to take a nice picture, I noticed eight, tiny, plain-coloured spiders in the same web, circling who I now thought was the “mom spider.” I pointed to one, barely larger than my fingertip and said to Elmer: “Look there are baby spiders!” upon which Elmer replied: “No, es un hombre adulto.” I had been pretty happy to notice how much Spanish I did remember in our week of classes, but when he said that, I doubted my understanding of the language. I asked him three more times and got the same answer in English: “No, those are adult males.”
So the males were about 20 times smaller than their female partners. The weirdness didn’t stop there. Apparently these “horny” males surround the female in hopes to inseminate her, but they have to be careful, because if they come too close and she notices them, she can also mistake them for breakfast, lunch, dinner or an afternoon snack. So they wait until she is distracted (maybe she is munching on one of their brothers) and quickly run up to her, inseminate her and run away. Spider gigantism, cannibalism and sexual assault all in one story!
After a few hours of walking we cooled off in the Caribbean Sea. Time flew by and we only noticed it was already late in the afternoon when our stomachs started grumbling. We headed back to town and had a delicious Costan Rican Lunch of Gallo Pinto with chicken.
The rest of my time on Puerto Viejo was filled with more beach ventures, good food and the occasional night out. The last night before I had to say my farewells, I had a perfect send off, dancing under the moonlight in good company to the sound of the ocean and a background music mix of reggae, dancehall, salsa and merengue.
Follow more of Laura’s travels on instagram: @laurasxm
