Manzanillo, the Carribean, Arrived.

Mar 03 2009
To Manzanillo At Last- Not My Pictures-- YET
$9, and a 5-hour bumpy bus ride is over.
Spanish improving all the time. Been TOo Long!
Caribbean, and Manzanillo, Here We Go..!

The bus first climbed the mountain range surrounding San Jose,
out of the built up anonymity capital cities can have
into dense mist and drizzle shrouding dense greenery
followed, as we descended into the Caribbean
climatic zone, by torrential rain, ever increasing humidity,
potholes and jackknifed trucks skidded off the
narrow slick roadway.
The bus driver chattered constantly on his cell phone.
it appears later, getting directions on a road that has nowhere else to go.

2/3rds of the way, the banana port of Limon, despite its name,
then south eastward by Caribbean surf on an increasingly
pocked and muddied road til we reached what for me in 1984 had been the
'end of the road' where it had left the Coast bound inland for strangely named
Sixaola and BriBri, shortly after the Cahuita National Marine Reserve Park.
Cahuita's new bus station was actually some species of gravel swimming pool.

The last known place I had seen in 1984 was the derilict fishing village of
Puerto Viejo, now a teeming travel center with backpacking Europeans a-plenty
roughing it or on Environmental Tours, and several miles of cabanas to rent and
open air eats places.
Motorcycles slalom the giant puddles.
bicycles weave in and out, and the occasional truck blunders by.

Onward on this so called New Coast Road,
As a Grand Finale, at MAnzanillo, now the End of the Road,
the bus becomes totally
mired in oily muck in yet more torrential rain, and my Good Host Mister Chamba,
by some kind of telepathy, is there to greet the situation with Good Cheer
and show me to his home.

another several hours of jungle slogging- on foot-
and one could be in Panama, the next country south. But not todaY!

It has all been worth it. Rampant life and greenery is literally everywhere-
Howler monkeys hoot in the morning and at night, as now, it's alive with screeches, chirps,
the odd Ding song of frogs and less discernable whirrings and buzzes of unknown beasts.
Out back is dense, dripping giant-leaved mystery plants with riotous crazy looking
blooms and lianas to swing from like in a Tarzan movies

Costa rica has twice the number of species of animals and plants in a fraction the size
of the USA.
Almost all climatic zones except arctic exist here,
being sandwiched between its 150 mile wide
volcanic highlands, up to 10,000 feet high,
separating Pacific from the Carribean part of the Atlantic


Gradually getting to know who all live here and
being steadily drawn into that warm embrace that places at the End of the Road have-
No locked doors- homes open to the night breezes, the definate feeling
of being where one needs to be and not on the way elsewhere.
There's the inevitable and sometimes hilarious gossip.

A wicked blend of ex patriot and native peoples call this home, between the muddy side streets and the
mish mash of phone and power cables strung haywire through the jungle.
Soccer is played at all hours in all weather near what passes for a town center
by all ages in ever varying team sizes.

the local English speaking Black Carribs, descendants of escaped slaves from long ago,
and Hispanic Costa Ricans are kind, gentle and easy-going as evidenced
by their obvious love of cats and dogs, something
none to apparent in other Latin American countries such as Mexico.

Health is no effort for me; One meal a day, swimming and body surfing
all morning and hiking the miles of surf pounded beaches that back straight onto the jungle
all afternoon, yet the sun has hardly been out through the warm overcast.

It's been far too long since I have seen such jungle and its squishy, verdant
teeming drippiness and life, slender knotted trees mixed with giant leaved
lower growing sun seekers- and perched n the highest twigs- slender
howler monkeys with their skinny little arms and pointy muzzles
so called as they bark and roar
their territorial claims on fruiting trees.

It's Just so good to be back, Costa Rica! I have indeed, arrived at last,
both body and mind, and a rare enough calmness and commoner joy
is close at hand- I Sleep like a baby and live like Tarzan.

Time and Distance

California is now much more than 2000 miles away- More like a million.
even Time itself at last has lost its tiresome meaning and the days begin to
dissolve and wither in the intermittent outbursts of thundering rain,
the occasional hissing of palm trees in
the breezes, the roaring of surf at night and the smell of mosquito coils

Goodnight, my dears, and Sleep Well.

Paul.