Four Months and Counting

Manzanillo, Costa Rica: a sleepy little Caribbean town.

Four months, or there abouts, that’s how much time remains until I’ll be strolling the beaches of Puerto Viejo for six months, riding my bike to Manzanillo, or up over the hilly and rural dirt road known as “Margarita” to the road on the other side of the mountain that leads to Panama.

I can’t wait. Although I’ve been warned by a friend who bought her land on Margarita Road seventeen years ago to brace myself for the many changes that have occurred during my fifteen month hiatus.

“You won’t recognize Margarita Road anymore”, she said. “So much has been clear cut to make way for new construction that it’s starting to look more Californian than Costa Rican.”

Her words made my heart sink, but I also know that, on some level, with the massive promotion of Costa Rica in the international real estate media, it was inevitable.

In the ten years since I first washed ashore in Puerto Viejo, the changes I’ve witnessed have been enormous.

The “sleepy little town at the end of the long dirt road”, sadly, has been discovered.

What that will mean in the next few years is anyone’s guess, but my hunch is it will not be good for the many Ticos who’ve long lived there, eked out a living, and held their heads high thanks to a deep abiding faith and an extended family network that puts modern day America to shame.

Already in Puerto Viejo, very few of the businesses on the main drag are Costa Rican owned anymore.

When I first landed, there were not too many Americans in PV. Some adventurous Europeans had set down roots but Americans, by and large, had cast their sights on the Pacific coast.

Actually, Puerto Viejo became known in Europe thanks to a best selling work of fiction written by a Spanish friend of mine who’s been visiting PV for more than twenty years.

But, again, Americans, by and large, seemed to feel more at ease on the Pacific.

Oh, if only that were still the case.

As the Pacific became increasingly developed, some say “over-developed”, and increasingly pricey, many Americans priced out of “Nueva California” – I am not making that term up, it is how many of my Costa Rican friends refer to much of the Pacific coast – they turned their sights toward the Caribbean.

What I’ve never understood is why when people come and lay claim to a country that is not their own, they very quickly begin to demand that country adhere to their ways and customs.

Europeans do it, but Americans have raised the entitlement and arrogance act to an art form.

Here’s an example.

For several years I employed a woman to clean the house I’d rented on a once weekly basis.

Now, I was only required by law to pay her as a domestic worker about 900 colones an hour.

Given that 517 colones was the equivalent of one US dollar at the time, you can see the bargain basement deal I could have exploited to have my house cleaned for a pittance.

But because I knew Amparo, had employed her for several seasons, and knew that I could leave and go to the beach, run errands, or whatever I needed or wanted to do while she cleaned, and not have to worry her husband, nephew, son, whomever, would come and clean me out while I was gone, I paid her 3500 colones an hour.

She showed up at the appointed time once a week, did her work in the agreed to time period, and left the house sparkling from floor to ceiling.

Our relationship evolved from employer/employee to one of friendship.

A couple of years ago, a young American couple, well, actually the husband’s parents, bought a beach front cabina and motel operation at the end of the road my rental house was on.

One day the thirty something, bourgeois bohemian husband asked me if I knew anyone reliable he might employ as a housekeeper. I highly recommended Amparo. I told her to pass by and talk with the”BoBo” couple and see if there might not be an opportunity for her for more work.

She did. She got hired.

One day, a month or so later, as Amparo and I sipped coffee after she was done cleaning, I asked, “Mi amor, cuanto te pagan?” [How much do they pay you?].

“Aye, Miguel”, she said, “Solamente mil colones.” [Just 1,000 colones].

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

This gringo had not been in town six months when he was touting himself as an “expert” on Costa Rica Real Estate and the history of the Caribbean coast. In reality, he didn’t know Jack-you-know-what.

I, along with some prominent local Tico friends, sized this yahoo up real quick and, the last thing a newcomer wants to do in PV is piss off the “Old Local Guard”. It just ain’t smart.

But the icing on the cake for me was one day when I a was riding my bike past the thirty-something BoBo’s cabina/motel biz and he called me over to speak with me.

I had just recovered from my second bout with Dengue in a couple of years.

A few days earlier, while I was still sick, Amparo had come to clean. She and her family had recently moved and their new phone line had not been installed yet, it’s Costa Rica remember, so I couldn’t reach her to tell her not come.

As she’d done every Thursday for three years, she was at my gate at 9am calling “Upe, upe”.

I crawled to the door and said, “Amparo, no hoy. Estoy muy enfermo.” [Not today, Amparo, I'm very sick]

She aked me what I needed and set off to the pulperia in town to stock me up with ginger ale, Gatorade, and water because, with Dengue, the most important thing is to not become dehydrated.

When she got back, I paid her for the four hours she’s been scheduled to clean. She didn’t want to accept it but I explained that, had I been able to reach her, I would not have felt obligated to pay her but she’d schlepped all the way on the bus from Cahuita and it was not her fault I was sick.

Anyway, later that day when she was cleaning at the gringo “BoBo” establishment, she mentioned that I’d paid her even though she didn’t actually clean my house that day. It was because of that the “BoBo” cabina proprietor wanted to speak to me.

He informed me that I should not have done that because I was setting a bad precedent and that “they” would come to expect it. I looked at him incredulously and said, “You’re an even bigger horse’s ass than I, and half the town, thought you were”, and rode off.

Yes sir, I can’t wait to go “home” after too long away. I just hope and pray I’m not going to find that the “sleepy little town at the end of the long dirt road”, with all its warts as well as wonders, isn’t so changed that it no longer feels like “home”

I would be a fool to think that in the fifteen months I’ve been away those changes would have stopped, or even slowed down.

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