The southern Caribbean town has morphed from its days of hauling bananas through town to flirting with the idea of high-rise luxury resorts. The pavement runs out on the main road somewhere between the edge of town and the next cluster of seaside homes and hotels to the south. Here, the jungle presses right up against the outer edge of homes – they are the line of domestic bastions that keep the fruit trees and white-faced monkeys looking in on the town from the forest.
The town matured in a cultural island. The first road plowed through from the Atlantic port city of Limón in 1979. Travelers previously arrived by canoe, ship, or cart along narrow-gauge train tracks. The United Fruit Company left the tracks it had built for hauling bananas when it abandoned its holdings in the area.
“The people built carts that were pulled by mules along the tracks and this served as public transportation till the 1960s,” said Paula Palmer, author of two books about the people and history of Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. “It was called the burrocarril,” she told *The Tico Times*.
After the highway pushed through, Puerto Viejo began to emerge from tourism oblivion and hunkered down for a lightning metamorphosis into a service-oriented traveler town. It has its Caribbean roots intact, but now there is a tremendous range of restaurants, hotels for most budgets, a bank on the way, and, rumor has it, a modern grocery store. A shirtless guy smoking a marijuana blunt is not an odd sight, but neither is sushi on the menu.
“People from all around the world have been buying properties in Puerto Viejo, and tourism has grown so much that the original Afro-Caribbean village is almost invisible,” Palmer said. “It is still there – the fishermen, the school children, the churches, the women who bake johnnycake and plantain tarts, but another lifestyle of international tourism is superimposed on it now.”
Those who have spent time there will probably say it totters now between rustic, mellow comfort and high-rise package tourism. The high-rises are a long way off, if they ever come, but the community already experienced a shock when officials from the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) proposed their zoning plan ideas.
Eddie Ryan, vice-president of the town’s chamber of tourism, hotel owner, and resident for more than a decade, said ICT considered the area ripe for small-scale tourism, which they defined as 50-100 hotel rooms per hectare. “That, to them, was small-scale,” he said. “To us, that was scary.”
The community responded with a plan more suited to its desires, calling for a kind of development that has low environmental impact and that nurtures the local economy, filling out the billfolds of those who live here rather than the retirement accounts of overseas (or just out-of-town) investors. They said 20 rooms per hectare would be enough and, Ryan said, ICT has listened and is willing to compromise.
The institute called Playa Negra, a coal-colored beach on the northern flank of town, an apt site for dense development. The community said that was inappropriate because it is a wetland and a nesting site for leatherback turtles. The ICT has paid attention, Ryan said.
Besides the environmental objections, grocers’ and artisans’ wages will not fund the building of luxury resorts. For those groomed lawns and high-rises to tower over the former cocoa plantations and rain forest around the beach town, they will need capital from other cities. And those other cities are where the profits would probably go, as well.
“Obviously, it will become populated,” Claudio Ambroso, an area resident, said. “It’s a pretty coast, and you cannot stop it.” Personally, Ambroso said he would like to see nothing higher than the coconut trees. If big hotels do come, “the best the locals could hope for is to park the cars,” Ryan said. “How can a community accept that kind of development when it will just marginalize them?”
Rather, Ryan, other long-timers, and many of those who grew up there defend Puerto Viejo’s wild charm. The coastline bristles with coconut palms planted by early Caribbean farmers, the inland forests are spotted with African imports like akee and cola nut, as well as citrus fruits, cacao trees (the seeds of which make chocolate bars), and others.
Tourism here is juxtaposed against the “all-inclusive” packages more prevalent on the Pacific coast and the Club-Med crowd that is nowhere near this rural beach outpost. “People come here because they want to experience nature and, very importantly, they want contact with local culture,” Ryan said.
That aspect of the town is a surprise for those who expected a homogeneous Latin culture in Costa Rica. Here, the artisans’ market is characterized as much by afros, dreadlocks, and surfboards propped against a post until high tide, as it is by the seed-and-wire jewelry seen on beaches around the country. Visitors may see a black man on a bicycle selling ceviche from a cooler, for example, or the young daughter of a Bribrí native family selling ground cocoa sweetened with sugarcane juice pressed in a leaf.
One born-and-raised resident, Eric Palmer, found his niche in the tourism boom and owns the travel agency Puerto Viejo Tours. He speaks English with an island accent as a first language – though, he said, Spanish is the language school teachers use. “A lot of tourists didn’t know that there was a Caribbean culture here,” he said.
One-room Protestant churches are more common than Catholic cathedrals, and the usual rice and beans are spruced with a splash of coconut milk. Sometimes, plates steam with spicy jerk chicken, fish, and street vendors ply spicy patti, a meat pie.
Music is an important part of this culture, and small acoustic bands often play at bars and restaurants. Ambroso visited from Italy a few years ago, returned, built a house with an ocean view, and plays in a band part-time. He stays here because “it has a vibe, a soul that other places in Costa Rica don’t have. It’s an example of a melting pot.” His band of four, no two from the same country, makes the point.
There may be between 30 or more than 40 nationalities represented here, depending on whom you talk to. Some of the native languages are still spoken, though in some families the youngest generation speaks only Spanish.
Palmer said tourism drove up prices and drug use, as well. But he and others said the town has an undeserved reputation for crime. Petty crimes, such as theft, may have surged, he said, but anything more serious has not yet migrated out of the cities.
The town has also developed a reputation for its medicinal alternatives. “Caribbeans use lots of herbs for healing,” Palmer said. “To go to a pharmacy you have to be really sick. We use herbs for colds and pains and everything.” Noni trees have become a health trend in other parts of the country lately, but in Puerto Viejo, Palmer said, people have long used the bark and leaves to reduce swelling, to clean the blood, and as a purgative once a year.
Forgetting the dream-like pace of living, there is too much to do here in just a week or two. The first waves of visitors meandered into the town toting surfboards looking for one of the world’s most formidable waves, the break off Salsa Brava beach. Though now some people come without any intention of touching a board, in tribute to the sport’s roots in the dawn of the town’s tourism industry, it is mentioned first among the activities available.
“The coral reef break is the biggest in Central America,” Palmer said. “The country’s best surfers come from there.” He said when he was growing up, once a year in December, there were 12-foot waves. After an earthquake struck in 1991 and changed the geography of the beach and ocean floor, the waves shrank to about eight feet. Those waves and the sharp reef below them compel lifetime surfers to wear helmets.
The break is mentioned in surfing magazines, guides, and at least one novel, and if you don’t try it yourself, you should order a piña colada and watch others ride from one of two beachside restaurants there.
Charlie Wanger, a resident of over six years and manager of the restaurant and hotel Cabinas El Tesoro, said the town is for people who are “looking for unspoiled beaches, relatively consistent surfing conditions, inland jungles and jungles that come right up to the beach, as well as an abundance of cultural and creative associations, ecological studies and activities, not to mention all the water sports.”
But, he said, the number one reason to come is to relax. “If you’re in a hurry, don’t come here.”
Up the paved part of the highway toward Limón, the beachside town of Cahuita is the home of calypso and the head of the national park trail. Under a leafy sunshade, a footpath skirts the beach and winds a few yards inland along the edge of a wildlife reserve. On an average day, hikers can see white-faced and howler monkeys, lizards, tropical butterflies, and occasionally, a sloth, in just a couple of hours.
The diversity of activities and the increasingly more accessible traveling style has begun to attract a different kind of tourist. Wendy Strebe, recent owner of Cashew Hill Jungle Lodge, said she sees more families these days than just a few years ago.
“We get lots of professionals, people who travel all over the world. It’s not just surfing – you can go snorkeling, bicycling, hikes, waterfalls, zip-lines, kayaks, rafting. Instead of passing through, it’s more of a destination,” she said.
