We left San José on Wednesday morning, headed for Puntarenas on the Pacific coast. This area of Costa Rica was originally developed during the colonial period and for most of the 19th century, Puntarenas was the only means of exporting the country’s products. Coffee was brought down out of the Central Valley by ox cart and sent by ships around Cape Horn to towns all over Europe.
In the mid 19th century things changed for Puntarenas. The government decided to construct a railroad from the capital to the Caribbean coast and contracted the services of the North American entrepreneur, Minor Keith, in exchange for some 300,000 hectares of land in the Caribbean lowlands.
After building the railway, Keith brought banana plantations to Costa Rica and established what was to be the precursor of Standard Fruit Company. Because it was much closer to Europe and ships did not have to pass around the treacherous Cape Horn, Puerto Limón became the premier shipping port and Puntarenas’ heyday was over.
It is still a bustling port town, but now it is largely a fishing town although recently there have been efforts to raise the economic standing with (oh, the dreaded word) tourism. Several large cruise ships now dock regularly and the once quiet promenade becomes infested with cruise ship denizens with their pasty white skin, plaid Bermuda shorts, and running shoes all shopping for gewgaws and plastic mementoes.
We arrived in town about noon. It was raining heavily, which is not normal for the Pacific. We drove around the deserted town looking for a likely restaurant to have a few shrimp. The boulevard was dark as rain whipped against the shuttered bars and cafes. Most of the places we knew from other visits were closed, all the chairs upturned on the tables. We finally found a small restaurant down toward the center of town and made a dash for cover.
The menu was extensive. There was even something called Fletucini Especial de la Casa. I adore the misspellings and the skewed syntax of foreign menus translating into English. As much as I might have liked the “fletucini,” we weren’t in the mood for pasta; we had shrimp in mind. I asked the waiter if they were fresh.
“Si, si,” came the upbeat reply.
We weren’t at all sure and so ordered the shrimp ceviche, figuring the lemon juice would at least kill any bacteria from a less than fresh catch. It was a wise move. The shrimp had been cooked in the lemon juice for so long they were like little rubber bullets.
We also ordered the maricos, or seafood, soup, which turned out to be the right thing to do. It was delicious and we ate it gratefully as the rain poured down outside.
We left there and drove north toward Liberia and the cowboy part of Costa Rica. The rain continued to hammer the windshield as we moseyed along. We took the new bridge that crosses over to the Nicoya Peninsula, replacing an ancient ferry, and arrived in the town of Nicoya in the late afternoon.
Nicoya, according to the Lonely Planet, has the dubious distinction of being the hottest place in Costa Rica (and they are not talking about the sex lives of the residents there). The Pacific side of the country is hot; I mean it is brick-oven hot with summer temperatures often reaching into the hundreds, and there is very little rain on that side of the country. We kept thinking how fortunate we were with all this rain and cool temperatures.
We found a nice hotel and concocted ourselves a rum drink to relax before finding … more shrimp. Alan flipped on the TV and channel surfed until the local news came up.
“Costa Rica gets hit with first tropical storm of the year,” the announcer said. “Torrente Alma golpe el Pacifico muy fuerte.”
The storm path on the weather map stretched from Golfito in the south to Peñas Blancas in the north–the entire Pacific side of the country. We picked our vacation to coincide with a huge tropical cyclone.
Dinner was at a huge roadside restaurant. Lonely Planet says, “The best place for a drink and delicious bocas (appetizer) is the consistently packed Guaycan Real.” We decided to give it a go. We arrived about 6 PM and the place was dark, but the chairs were down–always a good sign. It looked open… barely. We inched forward into the parking lot and someone flipped on a light, presumably to encourage us to come in.
That night we were the only diners in a restaurant that would probably seat 50-60 people, and we ate some of the best shrimp I have eaten anywhere. They were large, they were plump and pink, they had their tails still on (the only way to properly eat shrimp), and they were smothered in garlicky butter. They rested on a lettuce leaf and were accompanied by a crisp salad of cucumber, lettuce, and tomato and a few French fries. After a bit all the things on the plate began to taste of garlic; you can’t go wrong there.
I picked up a single shrimp by its tail and placed it in my mouth. An explosion of sweet garlicky sauce covered my entire palette. One bite and the soft yet firm flesh of the shrimp revealed the savory taste of the ocean. When I finished the shrimp I sucked the buttery juices from the tailpiece and laid it carefully on the side of the plate. I repeated this seven slow times and was crestfallen when I reached the end. I can’t say it was better than good sex, but it was close.
Alan, who is forever more practical than I am, simply ordered another platter and ate them too. We slept like stones that night.
It was still raining in the morning, Thursday, as we headed north toward Liberia and points unknown.
