Gaga's Tales from Costa Rica
Saturday, March 16, 2002
The Pavones Satori
1
Pavones is 400km from San Jose. By bus it's an 8 hour journey through the mountains and bad dirt roads, already described in the Hernando Satori in this Blogsite.
But what is so special about Pavones?
It's the site of the acclaimed longest left point break in the world--which won't make much sense or be of much interest to anyone but a surfer--a "goofy-footed" surfer at that--one that stands on the surfboard with the right foot in front of the left one so that they face the wave while they ride.
So this small, sleepy fishing village, 9 degrees above the equator on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, is a Mecca for die-hard surf fanatics.
To think there are people that just up and leave whatever it is their doing to go catch a wave might seem mindless, but to a surfer, riding a wave is the reason for living. It's a very tight-knit (snobbish?) culture that share the thrill of finding a place where the ocean crests in undulating patterns of waves crashing in on the shoreline at various times of the day, or the week, or month, season, or year.
Once the waves are just "right", they'll paddle out on a surfboard and sit their all day and catch a ride on a wave after wave for as long as the waves keep breaking.
2
Absurd you say... but what about those guys that hit a small white ball around a grassy green area and try putting it into a small hole 400 yards away? What about people that sit all day long staring at a computer terminal watching stock numbers flash by (I know guys that do this as their hobby!), or people that sit all day long at a cash register in a minimart? Hmmm,.. yes we are absurd creatures to start with, and we express this absurdity in a plethora of ways. But what is it about a wave, and why do these guys want to ride it?
Asking a surfer, the pat answer is this: you get in sync with a power that is natural, it rises from some magnificent almighty force, and dissipates as quickly as it appears. You become one with the vibration of the universe! A natural high (Satori!). And if that isn't the answer you want to hear, all you have to do is look at a surfer to see some sort of determined, casual, cosmic knowing. They're cool. They're hip. They are dishevelled, bronzed, unkempt, almost naked, lean, long, and...free. Or so goes the mythology.
3
Pavones has a parade of such heroic, legendary surfers. For one thing, it attracts the dinosaur collection of surfers--relics from the 50s & 60s, people who ARE in their 50s and 60s-- folks that defined "cool" for generations, people that actually were in the Gidget and Beach Blanket Bingo movies. They're still alive and well in Pavones (or Waikiki, Pismo, Escondido, J-Bay, or a handful of other choice surf spots). Now they are a bit more jaded--at least the ones I met. Older, crotchety, disdainful of the younger surf set, you can get a sense of the tension by the politics of the surf turf.
For one thing, there are only so many choice spots on the planet to surf, and only so many waves to catch. Seasoned surfers and newbies flock to the best surf places, and since Pavones is one of the best, it gets crowded. People stack up in the water waiting for the wave. And then there is "surf etiquette"-- if the wave breaks left, the one farthest to the right has the right of way. So you'll see the older guys and gals paddle way out right and far off the coast with their long boards. They want to be the first ones on the wave so they'll have the right of way. The surf code is once up on the board, anyone in their line must give the right of way. But there can be 50 surfers waiting for that wave! If they don't jump in they may never catch a wave all day because there will always be someone further right and farther out than they are.
4
It's bad enough to wipe out when the wave suddenly crests on top of you, or you lose your footing, but to be hit by a surfboard intentionally is enough to drive a surfer mad. The excuse is always the right of way, but getting hit in the teeth with a long board by some grandpa Wally is enough to make the testosterone flow in some of the younger fellas. Guys come out of the water with all sorts of black and blue marks on their bodies, some of which are the result of a well-placed short right hand to the head!
So forget about the idyllic, lollygagging, James Darren stereotypes in "For those Who Think Young" (my personal surf movie favorite)-- what we're dealing with is an intense political arena of who's on top of the wave-- and it gets as nasty as any road or air rage event we read about everyday in the newspaper.
5
Still, at the end of the day, sitting around the Cantina overlooking the left break as it rounds the point and goes along forever to the shoreline, swilling an Imperial or Pilsner, these guys still talk to each other. It's a terse, taciturn conversation but at least they keep the lines of communication open-- one of the other features of small town living is that you can't go very far without running into the same people at least a dozen times in a day, so you'd better keep it cordial. It is, after all, surfing that brings everyone to Pavones. And if you don't surf... pity on you.
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Tuesday, March 05, 2002
The Satori of Hernando
Getting from Golfito to Punta Banco, where my land is, is a trip. Actually, getting to Golfito is a trip too. It all starts in San Jose.
1.
San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica. It's a low slung sprawling urban spread on a plateau that is part of the mountain range that runs all the way from Alaska, through British Columbia and California, right through Peru to the tip of South America. Being on a plateau it's a bit more airy and cool than the lower sea levels, where the climate is humid and tropical. In fact, the country has about seven different climatic zones which give it a very diverse range of flora and fauna, which is part of its appeal.
I didn't spend much time in San Jose. I thought I'd spend a few days, but when I got up and walked around the downtown core, I realized it was a pretty run down Spanish-style colonial town with facades of McDonald's, KFC, Pepsi, Coke, and local varieties of crappy food and other consumer shops, so I lost interest in exploring it. It gets pretty noisy too; the roads are very narrow and with the stone buildings and two stroke motorcycles, it makes for an unpleasant environment of wheezing engines and white smoke exhaust fumes. I thought about checking out the museums and other cultural aspects, but it didn't seem very interesting.
Actually Costa Rica hasn't got that rich pre-Columbian heritage you'd find in most of the other regions of North, Central, and South America. It seems it was more of a place of transit for the indigenous peoples en route to larger and more prosperous cities in the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca civilizations. When Columbus discovered the region, he called it Costa Rica ("Rich Coast") because he happened upon the locals traveling on well worn coastal paths with gold and silver. He didn't stick around long enough to notice none of the riches came from Costa Rica itself. When the Spanish came to the New World looking for gold to fund their war machine and spread the Good Word, they didn't do much at all in Costa Rica because there were no riches (i.e. gold and silver) to exploit, nor people there to conquest and proselytize. So it has remained pretty much a cultural backwater, compared to, say, Panama, with it's vibrant stories of Sir Francis Drake and Captain Morgan besieging Panama City, the promise of a shorter route to California across the isthmus, and all the other great pirate tales.
So, I skipped the museums in San Jose. The population of Costa Rica is 75% white (meaning Spanish), maybe 15% black (on the Caribbean side centred in Limon), and the rest indigenous (oh... of course maybe 2% are Chinese). If you are white, you fit in perfectly, but it helps if when you open your mouth your words come out in Spanish. If they don't, well, you're going to have a hell of a time. It's way better to speak Spanish. At one point in my life I did OK with Spanish (recall I spent time in Mexico--even played on the Playa Del Carmen basketball team where we won the all-Yucatan championship in 1989) but this trip I was a bit confused--I'd open my mouth and it was a hodge-podge of French, English, Thai, and Japanese-- "Ano, quiero ir a l'estacion d'autobus, chai mai". When I did get the right Spanish words, they came out sounding Italian--sort of a lilting thing. Suffering from lathophobic aphasia (i.e., the fear of speaking because being afraid of making a mistake), I headed directly to the bus station and sorted out with the gal at the counter that I wanted to get to Golfito on the 3 pm bus.
2.
The trip to Golfito was uneventful, other than it was 365 km and took 9 hours. The reason why it took so long was the winding mountain roads up and out of San Jose. Costa Rica has some of the worst highways of any country in the Americas. Odd, isn't it? It is one of the more liberal and free countries--wages are better than Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, it has no standing army or military at all, it has democratically held elections, and yet the roads and the telecommunication systems are really backward.
Golfito, situated in the Golfe Dulce ("Sweet Gulf") on the southern Pacific coast of the country was once a major shipping port for bananas. That all ended maybe 20 years ago when the banana workers unionized, made a fuss on wages and working conditions, and so all the major American banana companies pulled out and went to Africa. It's a fascinating history, mainly because it's all so recent.
The banana thing really took off in the 1920's. At one time there were 4 million pounds of bananas being sent out by ship and train from Golfito daily. Why we know about bananas, and love to eat them (except my brother Timmy who hates them--it's the texture) is because a banana tree can grow so rapidly and produce a pod of about 200 bananas in about 6 months. Put that together with avarice, greed, technical know-how, cheap and uneducated labor, and a tasty end product-- you've got an industry.
Actually banana trees are really not trees at all. They are gigantic, leafy flowers. They have hardly any root-- they are simply a swirling set of leaves that form a tightly wadded stem/trunk that is quite flimsy and then produce these fruit. When they do produce fruit, they get heavy and just fall over. Crash.
The banana workers had a really hard job. First of all, there was a lot of bananas to harvest, and so the hours were long. There was the ever-present danger a whole tree would come crashing down on you. On top of that, you had a razor-sharp machete to cut the pods off the tree, and there were all sorts of accidents with machetes. People were losing fingers, legs, arms--you name it. The workers then complained about the safety hazards of banana harvesting, and they struck a deal with the company and were compensated--so much money for a lost finger, a hand, a foot, an eye, a leg, and so on. Given that most folks in hot, humid, tropical areas really don't like working in the hot sun all day long (would you?), they got wise to the accident payoffs and would actually mutilate themselves-- like cut off their arm or leg-- just to stop working and get a decent payout. To this day in Golfito you see guys walking around with no arm, or no leg, or no hand.
When the banana companies pulled out in the 70s and 80s (too much money for accident compensation, amongst other reasons) the port was left with no industry, and thousands suddenly had no job. In order to spruce up the town and keep people from really going gaga, the government declared Golfito a duty-free zone. So, they built this little walled-in enclave of shops where you can buy all sorts of things from stoves to Pokemon cards for a bit cheaper. Of course there is a catch-- you have to apply to shop there, and you are assigned a day you can go there to shop. Once you get in you are limited to $600 worth of goods and you cannot shop again for a specified period of time. If you don't use up all your $600 on your specified day, tough luck--you still have to wait a specified period of time before being allowed to shop there again. It seems Draconian, but it keeps the town afloat with people coming as far away as San Jose to shop. At $600 a pop, they sort of make up for the loss of the banana industry-- but not really. Golfito is a sleepy, run down little town. It has a gas station, a place across the street where the gringos (backpackers and surfers) catch the bus to Pavones some 58 km away, and a sleazy little strip of cheap bars and whores (prostitution is legal in Costa Rica).
I spent one night in Golfito across from the Coconut Cafe, the place where the gringos hang out to catch the bus to Pavones. The next morning I had a nice breakfast and used the Internet at the Coconut, and waited for the 10 am bus to Pavones.
3.
Hernando is the Pavones bus driver. He has a pink and white Bluebird school bus. He is the sole driver of this bus. He has been driving this bus for God knows how long. He does it 7 days a week, and only takes a vacation on Christmas day and Easter.
The day for him starts at 4:30 am. He sleeps at Rancho Burica in Punta Banco, at Dutch-run set of cabins on the beach, right at the foot of the hill that leads up to my land. He gets up, and still in pyjamas goes to the bus and turns it on. It is still dark out, and the Pacific Ocean is right there in its full splendor, the roar of the waves crashing on the black sandy beach. Looking up you can catch the Southern Cross just before the sun starts to rise.
At 5:00 am, Hernando is ready to go. He's dressed in a pair of baggy jeans, a button down short sleeved shirt (a peachy tint with epaulettes), rugged mountain hiking boots. He is in his late 40s, sandy grey hair and a full grey beard and sparkling green eyes. He has a raspy lollygagging voice, sort of a jokster's smirk on his face, and wears Spanish cologne like Puig or something. A bit too much of it I may add.
Hernando is married, has a family, but he doesn't sleep or live with them. He prefers to sleep in a room at the Dutch place for some reason. He is also well to do, being the only bus driver for the entire community. As he revs up the diesel engine, he lays out a tray with all his change on the hump beside the gear shift. He sets out for the day, the diesel engine whining, the dust and bumps of the bad beach road create a sort of chugging, smokey, whiney rhythm. Once he gets the engine into top gear, he winds it all down just about a half a kilometer down the road. There just before the town of Punta Banco's center, which is an unkempt soccer pitch, is a house where he stops to have breakfast. He shuts off the headlights and goes in, the engine still chugging. I've never seen what he eats, but whatever it is, he has it in his gullet in less than 5 minutes. After it's really on with the ride to Golfito.
Along the way he picks up anyone who is standing by the roadside. The local ticos and ticas (Costa Rican men and women) get on the bus, but it's never a quick affair. All sorts of sizes and shapes, ages and types depend on Hernando. He always has some quip for each person coming on the bus. They seem to enjoy it as they always smile at him. Hernando's eyes are sort of frozen in a perpetual state of la la land-- they are somewhere between a dazzled bewilderment and true excitement--all the time.
So the bus wheezes up and down and side to side along the unpaved gravel, and about an hour later we arrive at Conte, which is the turnoff to the Panama border. There many people get off and many people get on. Hernando has a cup of local coffee in Conte, which is a bitter tasting, unrefined blend to which they add a lot of sugar (it doesn't come near the beautiful taste of fine Columbian). After a few minutes, we turn left and hit the first paved road an hour and a half into our journey.
About a half hour later, we come to the Rio Claro-- a river with no bridge. There is a small metal pontoon rig that acts as a bridge/ferry. There are guy wires that are attached to the pontoon bridge/ferry upstream and downstream, to prevent the currents from taking it away from this specific spot. At high tide the water runs upstream, at low tide occasionally the pontoon gets stuck to the bottom of the riverbed.
The routine is that everyone must exit the bus, get on the pontoon bridge/ferry, and then Hernando drives the pink and white Bluebird bus on. But it's a very scientific process. Hernando must make sure he slams on the brakes just after the rear of the bus clears the back of the pontoon. The inertia acts as a propeller and gets the pontoon bridge/ferry moving. To one side of the pontoon is a 15 horsepower engine, which put-puts across the river at a very slow pace. The river is only about 150 m wide, and it takes about 10 minutes to cross.
Once on the other side, everyone crowds back onto the bus, and we are on our way once again, making a left turn and going onto a nicer grade of paved road, but still dilapidated.
About an hour later we make it to the town of Golfito's outer limits. We come winding down the mountains and get a view of the Golfe Dulce and all the old banana plantation houses and buildings--all terribly run down.
Halfway along the coast road we come to "La Bomba" or the gas station. Across the street is the Coconut cafe, and this is where I started my journey.
Hernando continues further to the north end of Golfito, right past the bank, the supermercados (supermarkets), the hospital, the airport (which is a landing strip with 3 concrete benches--you can fly from San Jose to Golfito on a wee little plane in 45 minutes with Sansa airlines--it costs $66 one way), and ends the journey at the duty free walled in enclave. It is now 9 am. It has taken 4 hours to travel 58 km.
4.
At 9:45 am, with a 30-45 minute break under his belt, Hernando fires up the pink and white Bluebird bus and heads back to Pavones. He retraces the same route back, up the paved mountain road, across the Rio Claro on the pontoon bridge/ferry, turns right onto the unpaved road at Conte--but on this route, he doesn't go all the way to Punta Banco, but stops off in Pavones, some 8 km short of Punta Banco. The folks all pile out there, and then some get on, and then he is off again to Golfito. At 3 pm, Hernando turns around from Golfito and makes the last run of the day, back to Punta Banco and the Dutch-run cabins where he stays. It is about 6:00 pm by the time he arrives "home". He has spent the entire day driving a bus. He has never done anything except drive a bus for the entire time the sun is up-- seven days a week, 363 days a year, God only knows for how long, either in the past or future.
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Comments? Email Gaga.
