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have lots of space and the service is good. At the airport in San José
we had a car reserved, but it was too small and so we changed it for something
bigger. The car agency was Avanti and their rates were excellent; they
met you at the airport and took you to your car; their offices were near
the Hampton Inn next to the airport.
We stayed in
San Jose the first night and visited part of my family that lives in Desamparados,
a small suburb outside of San Jose. We drove around a neighborhood of San
Jose that first night that I had never been to but liked; it was called
Barrio Otoya and there was a Café called Café Mundo that
was nice; there was also a place called Atomic Café.
We woke
up early on the 24th and headed for Volcano Arenal and the hot springs
that flow right underneath the volcano. On the drive to Arenal we drove
past the international airport where we had arrived the day before and
headed in the direction of Puntarenas; we then turned right and headed
up into the mountains.
On the drive
up and over the central valley you overlook coffee fields and agricultural
fields; mountains flowers of every color grow on the green spaces between
parcels. As you climb further and further up you come to the hill towns
of Costa Rica. Be sure to buy the mountain cheese that you see in balls
wrapped in plastic along side the road: it’s like string cheese, but with
a smoked smell and flavor. There is a very interesting mountain town in
the hills called Zacero, where the bushes in the town park are cut into
different shapes. As you climb even further into the mountains, fog will
slowly surround you and your field of vision will lessen. Once over the
mountains you come down on to a large flat plain known as the Llanuras
de San Carlos which runs to the border of Nicaragua: this is the north
of Costa Rica.
In Arenal we
stayed at a place above the hot springs that offered very comfortable cabins:
it had the best views of the volcano. The clouds hid the volcano and we
didn’t see any lava, but it was still nice to be under the volcano. What
is interesting to me as a person who never grew up around volcanoes is
how tense they can make you feel – I like the feeling, but wanted to get
to the beach. I wanted to drink some Imperials (National Beer of Costa
Rica) in the hot Costa Rican sun.
So after one
night we headed to the beach: the road took us round Arenal Lake and down
to the lowlands of Guanacaste. We stayed in Papagayo: my first time and
had a great time. I liked the way they built the hotels back up on the
hills far from the water, with views of the Gulf of Papagayo in front.
We went to Playa Panama in Papagayo: local people having a good time and
picnicking: very relaxed. There was another beach called San Blas that
I wanted to go to but we never had the time. At night we drove over to
Tamarindo; it took two hours from Papagayo to Playa Tamarindo and the road
out to Tamarindo is very bad: the road to Papagayo was better. I didn’t
really want to go to Tamarindo, though I like it, no, I wanted to go to
Playa Grande which lies right next to Tamarindo. Playa Grande is part of
a national park called Parque Nacional Las Baulas. Playa Grande is protected
so there is no development on the beach: it feels pristine. The sunset
on the beach is why I wanted to come: the colors of the sky and large clouds
reflect on the wet beach. The road out to Playa Grande slowed me down so
I didn’t get to see the sunset the way I hoped, but still was able to snap
some decent photos. I always enjoy coming back to Playa Grande; of all
the beautiful places in Costa Rica it’s my favorite.
On the 25th
we drove south from Papagayo and headed for a beach with the beautiful
name of Sámara. In Sámara we stayed at a German place
called Brisas del Pacifico; its just outside of town in the direction of
Playa Carrillo. Very nice hotel: not inexpensive. Good view of the sea
and the hotel was near the beach. We tried some of the restaurants in the
center of Sámara; they served seafood and Spanish food, meats mostly
and rice and seafood – all very good. We went to bed early and woke up
early the next day, walked the beach at Sámara and then drove past
Playa Carrillo and headed back into the countryside. You drive through
a small river after the town of Estrada and then we drove to Altos del
Mora, and later, through a town called Jobo and other very small rural
towns with names like Maravilla and Caimital. The roads were dirt and there
were a few houses that dotted the countryside, beyond that there was very
little in this very rural area of Guanacaste.
On the second
day in Sámara we decided to head out to Nosara; I didn’t know the
place and Gabi told me she had gone years before and had liked it. Nosara
was a neither nor kind of place. They have an airport. There seems to be
lots of real estate being sold or not sold, it was hard to say. On Playa
Pelada near Nosara there was a bar called Bar Olgas and the beach had a
strange atmosphere: It was as though a confluence of forces – real estate
speculation, beach life, hotel building – had met in Nosara and had not
washed across one another in a very constructive way: the place just didn’t
add up to me. At another place and time in my life I might have liked it,
but I wanted to get away. There was a strange hotel on the hill to left
of Playa Pelada. We drove up to it and it was abandoned: a Spaniard had
started something here and then had left. There was a Swiss place in town
that we thought we might stay in. I drove up behind the Swiss hotel on
the side close to the beach to turn around and as I made my turn I noticed
another hotel that looked all right. As I turned the steering wheel, I
saw someone moving in the bushes near the stone and wooden gate of the
hotel; behind the gate and just off to the side was a small guard house
that was painted blue and there was dog in front of a man who emerged from
behind the gate. He waited as I pulled forward, stopped, and slowly began
to lower my windows: he patiently waited for me. I asked him if he had
a room and he looked at me with eyes blazing and barked no, which was what
I was hoping for. We headed back to Sámara where everything was
booked, so we stayed above Playa Carrillo in a place called the Sunset
Motel, which has a great view of not only Playa Carrillo, but also Sámara.
On the 29th
we left Sámara and drove towards Jaco. Jaco is further south on
the Pacific coast and to get to Jaco we had to cross the new Rio Tempisque
Bridge which was built with help from the Taiwanese government. The
bridge replaced the old ferry that once ran people, cars and material across
the Rio Tempisque. We were headed for a hotel that I didn’t know called
Villa Caletas. This was to be my birthday present which was the following
day. So we lived a little of the high life: the hotel is placed on top
of a hill that overlooks the Gulf of Nicoya. You can see ships steaming
out of the Gulf and head into the Pacific Ocean. The ships slowly pass
by in the distance as you relax by the pool or terrace. Villa Caletas is
done in a Victorian Tropical theme and though I had seen pictures of Victorian
Tropical – mostly in books on the Panama Canal – I had never actually been
inside of it: I know it’s a hotel in the 21st century, but it was fun,
just this one time. Each room has two doors: the first takes you back into
you own private courtyard; the second, into your room. Very private. They
have a nice pool and spa. We stayed one night and liked it: coffee in the
morning over the Gulf of Nicoya with tropical birds in the trees. The hotel
lies between the towns of Caldera and Jaco: you can see Jaco beach from
the hotel.
We sat by the
pool in the morning and then headed south in the direction of Manuel Antonio.
If you go to Manuel Antonio you need to go to the national Park; I’ve never
been – will – but know from photographs that the Park is a wonderful place
to visit. You cross a small stream before you go into the Park and you
must buy a ticket to go in. We didn’t have the time and needed to make
the drive back to San Jose. You pass palm trees on either side of the road
to and from Manuel Antonio. Palm plantations for palm oil – they have them
in the south of Costa Rica near the town of Golfitos as well. Costa Rica
also produces some of the best palm hearts in the world. The palm heart,
which people use in salads, is extracted from the very center of the palm
tree and has a unique taste and texture: very good in salads. During Easter
celebrations people in Costa Rica go to the market and buy the trunk of
a palm tree and then cut it open and take out the heart of the palm and
cook it with eggs.
The road from
Manuel Antonio to San Jose snakes its way up over the Central Cordillera
and brings you down very slowly into the Central Valley where the capital
San Jose lies. The air on the drive goes from humid and hot to cool and
dry; the heat of the beaches gives way to the cool nights of the highlands.
The ride took four hours from Manuel Antonio. We stayed near the international
airport. We lounged around the hotel and had something to eat. We cracked
jokes with one another about the trip and tried to get on the Internet
to see what was going on back in our lives. The next day we were driven
to the airport and boarded the plane to Panama and arrived in the early
evening; it was New Year’s Eve and our friend Jim picked us up and took
us back home: we had a little party amongst ourselves and welcomed the
New Year.
Minor Cooper
Keith
Before we left
for Costa Rica one of my readers wrote me and relayed to me more information
about a man who should be very interesting to both Americans and Costa
Ricans: his name is Minor Cooper Keith, a U.S. citizen who lived in Costa
Rica in the 1880s. I had read about Keith but did not know the details
of his adventures in Latin America. I will try to outline his story here.
The book to read on the subject of Keith is Watt Stewart’s Keith
in Costa Rica, published in 1964: New Mexico Press.
Keith was originally
from Brooklyn, New York though I had originally thought that he was from
Tennessee. His uncle, Henry Meiggis, built many of the railroads in Peru
in the late 19th century as well as in Costa Rica. The Uncle (Henry)
and the Nephew (Minor) were both railroad builders, though Minor
started out in cattle and hogs. Minor Cooper Keith left New York for Padre
Island, Texas in 1869. Padre Island is the long thin island off the southern
coast of Texas, almost near the border with Mexico. It was on Padre Island
that Keith started himself in the cattle and hog business. He did very
well; at one time Keith owned as many as 4,000 head of cattle. From Padre
Island Keith was enticed by his brother to Costa Rica where the brother
was in charge of building the railroad for his uncle Henry who had gone
to Peru. This was in September of 1871; Minor was 25 years old. In a very
roundabout way Minor took over the rail project on the Limon side of Panama.
His uncle did not intend for this happen, maybe would have been against
it, but these kinds of twists always happen when something great is about
to begin.
Now Limon is
a city on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica and the idea of the railroad
was to connect the Caribbean coast to the Central valley which was 3,500
feet above sea level. The railroad would transport coffee to the Atlantic
coast of Costa Rica and then the coffee would be shipped on to Europe.
Up until this point in time, coffee had been taken to the Pacific coast
of Costa Rica and then shipped around Cape Horn, with the coffee first
stopping in Chile. The difficulty, and one of the reasons why the railroad
had not been built earlier to the Caribbean, was the difficulty of the
terrain: first rugged mountains, followed by a very dangerous jungle: people
in Costa Rica at that time just did not go to the Caribbean coast; there
was too much disease and danger in the jungle. There were few people on
that side of Costa Rica; the British had some influence in the area but
even they were a very weak force in the region. The original inhabitants
of the jungle and mountains on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica had migrated
to Colombia in the 10th century – they resettled in the Colombian Sierra
Nevada de Santa Marta where they were known as the Tairona. Therefore there
was little local labor on the eastern side of Costa Rica; this meant that
Keith would have to bring in labor from outside
Keith assuaged
peoples fear of whether or not he would be successful in his railroad project
by telling them this: “Where a river goes, so can a railroad”, this
was his motto. He eventually found labor in three places: New Orleans,
Italy and Jamaica as well as the other Caribbean islands. Keith went to
New Orleans in 1887 and shipped to Limon the most desperate elements he
could find in the city, or so said the police chief of New Orleans at the
time. They left New Orleans and sailed for Cuba where upon landing twenty-five
men disappeared; they then sailed for Belize where the ship they were on
got caught on the second largest coral reef in the world which runs along
the coast of Belize. The captain drank too much and passed out. Keith had
to take over and steer the boat and lead the crew to safety in Limon.
Once in Limon
most of the men from New Orleans quickly left for Panama where they found
better pay working for Ferdinand de Lesseps on the French effort to build
the Panama Canal. With the exodus of labor from New Orleans, Keith talked
of bringing in Asians, but there was strong resistance from the Costa Rican
public to that idea and so Keith contracted Italians from the Piemonte
region of Italy. They came and were the first people to lead a large scale
strike in Costa Rica. This was in the fall of 1888. The strikers were not
too interested in solving the strike which was based on the fact that they
had not received from Keith what had been promised by Keith’s middle-man
in Europe. They hung around for a while in Costa Rica and then went back
to Italy and to their families. What saved Keith in the end was Ferdinand
de Lesseps failure in Panama: the workers from the Canal project went to
Costa Rica, and Keith was able to finish his project: these same workers
would return latter to Panama when the Americans picked up from where the
French had stopped. To this day there is a very close relationship between
the city of Colon in Panama and the city of Limon in Costa Rica: both towns
have close ties to the Caribbean - all contributed the labor for the building
of the railroad and the Panama Canal. Jamaicans, Barbadians, Grenadian,
Trinidadians and Toboggans and others came to the Central American Caribbean
coast and worked with things like dynamite - they did the most dangerous
jobs on the Panama Canal.
The capital
for Keith’s railroad project was raised in the City of London; in fact,
Keith and his Costa Rican wife, Doña Cristina, whose mother had
designed the Costa Rican Code of Arms and national flag, lived in London
for two years in order to secure the needed loans. During their time in
London a very unfortunate event happened: Doña Cristina accidentally
fell down an elevator shaft, a fall which affected her memory for the rest
of her life.
In the end,
however, Keith was triumphant: the first car to ride on the tracks of
the railway did so on December 7th, 1890. Engine No. 15 pulled into
San Jose on that day. The Costa Ricans threw a party that was a national
event in a country that knows a good party. On December 31st, 1890 at the
National Palace all of Costa Rica partied in honor of the completion of
the railroad.
The women of
Costa Rica dressed in the long flowing gowns made by the most popular fashion
houses of the country, names like Batalla, Cardona, Uribe and Alfaros –
these are names you know if you live in this part of the world - dressed
the men and women of Costa Rica. At the time, the style among women in
Costa Rica was to wear their hair in a bun with a large tortoise shell
comb in their hair. Some put natural or artificial flowers in their hair.
The men wore black, not white like in Panama, and beards and mustaches
or at least mustaches. The National Palace was covered in flowers. Keith
fought with the government later over money he thought he was owed by the
government of Costa Rica: he did get some of his investment back. He went
into bananas in a big way in Coast Rica after the success of his railroad
and not only in Costa Rica, but in Panama and Colombia as well. In Panama
his company was Snyder Banana Company; in Colombia his company was called
Colombia Land Company, Limited which operated around Santa Marta.
Later Keith
would go into business with the United Fruit Company which he never liked.
He wanted to build a railroad from Panama to New Orleans, but shipping
was a much more economical way to transport goods, though Guatemala and
El Salvador did build a railway connecting each other which was part of
Keith’s planned railway through Central America.
Keith returned
to New York after 1900 and settled in Babylon, Long Island where he went
into poultry farming, always keeping one foot in Costa Rica. He died on
June 4th 1929; at the time of his death, Keith was estimated to be worth
20 to 30 million dollars; however, his money disappeared in the collapse
of 1929.
The executors
of his will never released the accounts to Keith’s wife. She along with
her maid spent two years in Long Island after Keith’s death and then returned
together to Costa Rica where she died in 1942. Today the railroad Keith
built is not running. I wanted to hike the path of Keith's railway;
it must be wonderful, but have not had the time to do so. There is talk
of bringing the train back which would be interesting.
Information
If you are
interested in staying at high end resorts in Costa Rica, then the following
link should be of interest to you Click
Here.
In Sámara
we stayed at the following link:Click
Here
Other articles
by the author:
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