The Way to San José
by Lynette Chiang

Taking time out from her career at Saatchi & Saatchi Australia, Lynette Chiang is travelling the world with her faithful Bike Friday. After spending Christmas in Denmark, she finally washes up on a South American shore...

February 1999
I did it on Orchard Road in Singapore, and lived to regret it. Now, I just had to do it in San José (that's San José, Costa Rica), despite much verbal and written advice to the contrary. I rode my bike from Zapote, south east of the city, to the Saatchi & Saatchi office in Sabana Sur, pretty well west. If that wasn't enough, I rode back, in the dark. What follows is the first chapter of my new book entitled 'Suicide Rides: Cycling for the Sheer Terror Of It'.

My Bike Friday was looking somewhat arthritic folded up like Houdini in its suitcase, so I decided to show it around San José. Trying not to fill my pannier with could-be-useful-but-probably-won't-see-the-light-of-day paraphernalia as I usually do, I rolled the bike down the drive and promptly got an attack of disorientation. This, despite almost two weeks mooching around the neighbourhood in search of base camp after mundane sorties to the local shop and post office.

After carefully rotating the map several times and shaking the smarties out of my Bata-Scoutish compass (much to the bemusement of the pedal-powered policeman languishing on the opposite corner) I gingerly turned left into a service lane and rolled along a couple of hundred metres. Still embarrassingly disoriented I bailed up a woman to ask, ahem, do you know the way to San José? I was on the right track, or should I say pothole. The road can only be described as all-terrain.

The traffic was mad, but not as mad as I had been led to believe; at least the Ticos drive in vague lanes, unlike the Parisians whirling around the Arc de Triomphe or the Asians driving anywhere in Asia. There was a cacophony of tooting horns, although the timbre was more subdued and polite, as if muffled by some governmentally-decreed regulator. My first difficulty was dealing with riding on the right; I always found myself on the wrong side of the road when trying to cross. My rear-vision mirror, now strapped on the other handlebar gave me a spectacularly useful view of my left forearm. And for the thousandth time in my cycling career, I managed to gouge my shin on the pedal. I long for those clunky rubber pedals of my childhood days whenever this happens.

Rotundas, or roundabouts, are best negotiated with a pair of furiously spinning wheels below your knees. Other hazards include poorly sited parks. This always gets me - I came out the far end not knowing which way I was facing, despite taking a simple left then another left. By now you must realise how crap I am at direction and you probably wonder how I've even got this far.

Fortunately, San José is organised on a grid system - Avenues run east-west and are numbered 1, 3, 5 north of Avenue Central, and 2, 4, 6 to the south. Similarly, Streets run north-south with 1, 3 and 5 to the east of Street Central, and 2, 4 and 6 to the west. Unfortunately, this seemingly well-organised lattice exists only in patches. I found the sequence went a bit spare in many sections, terminating abruptly and restarting somewhere else, with the flow of one-way traffic changing at whim. All the while I endured shouts from los chicos (young lads) yelling out "China Pssst!", which I am told is a mark of appreciation, but it certainly don't sound like it. Apparently, anyone with slanty eyes is labelled such. My first stop was a travel agent to see about extending my visa.

Australians can stay only 30 days in Costa Rica; most nationalities get three months. The easiest way to renew is to leave the country for three days. In practice many people simply overstay, sometimes for years, and on deciding to leave, purchase an exit visa for $45 plus a fine of $1.40 for every month overstayed. My next stop was Saatchi & Saatchi's Costa Rican outpost. I limped into the office, sent some emails, then prepared for the ride back. Several map consultations later (in some disturbingly underlit parts of the city) I made it home, dirty, sweaty and tired. The only positive was that I managed to make it through the day without spending a single colone, because I declined buying two mandarins from a street stall for 100 colones (about 36 cents). After all, I got four for that price last week didn't I? The downside was, I now didn't have any mandarins. Serves you right, touriste.

4th March - Bocos del Toro, Panama
Needing to renew my skimpy 30-day Costa Rican visa, I dragged myself out of bed to catch the 6am bus to the Panamanian border and thence to the laid-back, tropical isle of Bocos del Toro. Bocos is a popular visa renewing destination for many of the so-called 'perpetual tourists' chilling out in Costa Rica. The bus journey took me out to the Caribbean side of the country (three hours) and then along the bumpy and dusty Atlantic coast road to the border. The trip was marred by a few incidents. Near the indigenous indian village of Bribri, a young child riding a bicycle had been run over by a truck; the bus turned slowly past the small form covered in a white sheet.

Immediately prior to this tragic scene I had been wittering away to the man beside me in broken Espanol about pedalling from Nicaragua down the Pacific Coast of the country. An American man in the front seat was mouthing off in Spanklish and it was only when we got off that his concerns were revealed - a woman had distracted them by dropping an earring and her friend had taken their toiletries bag from the rack above. 'Honey, we're never coming back to this shitty country again, they're a bunch of thieves,' etc etc. For most of the trip I had the pleasure of sitting beside a wizened old man from Bribri who reeked of alcohol and fags, and didn't appear to fancy engaging in a slow discourse in elementary Espanol.

At the border a slick el chico, who told us he'd learnt all his English at the border, was busy hustling people through the immigration process and into his friend's taxi. We stopped a couple of times at the request of the American couple so they could restock with bottles of Armani aftershave. Meanwhile young Rico the chico was busy flirting with one of the passengers and fobbing off requests by a young Canadian girl sporting a tongue pierced by a dumbbell for the exact price of the cab ride.

Eventually he told us: $7 for each of us and $9 for the Americans, who didn't relent without a fight. Rico mouthed off a stream of fluent Espanol which, the Canadian girl informed me, was something about $2 being monkey shit for all his running around like a personal valet. Next stop was Changuinola, where we had to buy a tourist stamp from the Bank (a process which cost $10 each and which Rico insisted on seeing to personally), and then to another place where one woman stuck the stamp in our passports with glue, then motioned us to go to another room where another woman stamped the entire page. Jobs for everyone, in this country. Someone said that in this part of the world, the employment strategy is to pay people badly but to have full employment, rather than the converse, as is the case elsewhere. The taxi took us to the town of Almirante, where a $3 water taxi was waiting for us (also friends of Rico's).

By 4pm I was on the island. With no accommodation planned, I followed the Americans to Hotel Las Brisas, an elegant weatherboard shack with a slightly tatty but serene ambiance, and which boasts a marvellous deck out the back which seemingly floats in the water. As I checked into the only available room, a young Dutch bloke who spoke strident Espanol fronted up. A resident of Costa Rica, he'd visited the island 15 times to renew his visa, and always stayed in that hotel. I offered to share the twin room, thus reducing the cost to $7.75 each - always worth doing.

The town of Bocos is a single, wide street with business housed in shacks of varying degrees of repair and charm. The atmosphere is one of relaxed under-development, though I got the distinct feeling it is about to explode onto the package tour map any week now. My new room-mate, who I shall call Jungle Boy for reasons that will be revealed later, took me to his favourite eatery where we imbibed three 50c pipas each. Pipas are a type of green coconut with deliciously refreshing water inside. I read that this water contains just the right balance of salts to replenish what is sweated out in this tropical climate. We gazed across the blue, balmy Atlantic waters punctuated by a lazily moving, bright red and green boat commanded by a slender black warrior. At this point I remarked I no longer needed or desired to go to the Bahamas.

5th March - A Long Walk
As nice as Las Brisas was, the noise of passing cars, dogs, trail bikes and vocal locals kept both of us awake. Jungle Boy decided to go along with my plan of staying in Playa Bluff, a three hour walk north along a coastal track. The camino was spectacular - flowers, golden sand, palm trees, forest and free pipas dropping off trees, which he cracked against the trunk so I could drink the juice. The Bluff Hotel turned out to be a series of abandoned grass shacks where one could hang one's hammock. Further on, we chanced across Finca Verde, a bar-restaurant with three almost-complete cabinas close to a golden beach.

This is not the first time I wish I'd packed the tent. The only accommodation proved to be two hammocks hanging in an open shelter, of which my chivalrous Dutch bodyguard offered me the choice of the choicest. This was the first time I'd slept in a hammock and it took some logistics to get settled. Jungle Boy assured me with a smirk that hammocks flip over only in cartoons, and the trick was to lie diagonally. At 4.30am I woke to take a leak and found he hadn't slept at all. I let him have mine for the remaining three hours, which I spent on the beach, waking intermittently and watching the sky lighten, go blue, then grey.

6th March - Children of the Moon
Today a curious couple turned up who claimed to be from nowhere important because 'what is important, my friends, is that we are all one, brothers, sisters, children of one world, one universe...' I dubbed them somewhat cynically Brother and Sister Moon. The pair eked out their nomadic existence by preying on people's guilt and generosity -- free accommodation and free food, in exchange for Brother Moon's halting flute solos and Sister Moon's sweeping of the already-swept floor. She managed to mesmerise Hanna, the owner's angelic toddler, who responded by proffering her new friend such privileges as television in the family's private quarters and drinks from the fridge. At mealtimes, the pair would sit conspicuously and manipulatively with the rest of us, so that food was automatically offered. The food, by the way, was delicious - grilled kingfish, salad and fried slices of breadfruit, washed down by a glass of tamarind juice. The breadfruit was as addictive as potato wedges; every now and then you'd hear a splat amongst the trees, signalling the timely landing of another large, fibrous fruit. Brother Moon spent some time lecturing Jungle Boy on the evils of drinking, smoking and other vices; that afternoon, Sister Moon approached him and asked if perhaps he had any dope? That night they both eagerly accepted a glass of wine and promptly lit up. Eventually they were asked to move on. They left without thanks.

7th March - The Blue Lagoon
An hour's walk further along the track from Finca Verde is a tranquil lagoon. Riga, our host, gave us a lift there on his little 4-wheeled motorbike. "See, you don't need roads," he said as we carved our own road over small hills and through streams. The place is so tranquil that words cannot describe it, so I won't. Go there.

Manzanillo, the Costa Rica Caribbean
After all the good things I'd heard about Manzanillo I invited myself back to Jungle Boy's newly-completed tree house, just back over the Costa Rica/Panama border and a bumpy dusty ride from the rasta capital of Puerto Viejo. Despite the deceptively short distance on the map, it took almost all day to get from Bocos to Manzanillo on an assortment of buses, boats and lifts. And what a house it was. A hexagonal two-storey timber villa perched on a rise in the forest canopy with toucans, monkeys, sloths, giant butterflies and an inventory of buzzing things able to soar and scuttle through the large unscreened windows. Every stick of furniture, including the spiral staircase leading up to the open mezzanine platform which housed the bed, was handcrafted by local carpenters, one of whom lived in Jungle Boy's former, slightly more modest dwelling below. From the bed one awoke to a six screen vista of sun rising through the jungle accompanied by wildlife in surround-sound.

By this time I had convinced myself that my boyish, blue-eyed 27 year old host who served me homemade bread baked fresh every morning was not a clean living Euro-expatriate eking out a living in a developing country, but a drug lord, or at least the cousin of one. I sat around playing the guitar, while Jungle Boy pottered about his forest garden planting seeds he'd nicked from someone's tree on Bocos. Eventually, the sun went down.

12th March
I'd planned on spending just a couple of days in this paradise but was finding all sorts of weak reasons to stay another day. Doing nothing had become a time-consuming process; waking up, then playing the guitar or listening to tapes until mosquito-fall. Despite meticulous attempts to protect myself against the bitey things I was being well and truly eaten alive. I'd been dousing myself in tropical-strength DDT and taking Vitamin B1 (Thiamin) daily, which is supposed to make the blood smell unappetising, but to no avail. It was just salt and pepper for the new dish on the block, la comida de China (Chinese food). Even Jungle Boy said he used to have to escape to mozzie-free San Jose in his earlier years to recover. Now, he had acclimatised. But in such beautiful surroundings, my suffering was a minor annoyance. Yesterday (or was it the day before?), we walked three and a half hours along the coast to Puerto Viejo, an amazing amble through all kinds of beachscape -- calm, rough, rock-strewn, driftwood-strewn, forested, never crowded. Half way along we started seeing sculptures made from found objects - coconuts, driftwood, fallen logs and stones.

A little further on we chanced upon the artist, a young French lad who told us his work was progressing at the rate of an installation a day, and would be photographed and exhibited in San Jose. I saw many of the works as useful -- one could throw a tarp over and take shelter for the night. I also thought young Francois might have been inhaling da ganja. Jungle Boy repeatedly chastised me for making jokes along the ganja theme. "Gives this area a bad name," he admonished. He has a vested interest I guess -- not many incense-inhaling hippies could afford his swank habitacione should he decide to rent or sell it in the future.

Along the way we left the beach several times to visit his expat comrades; Dutch and German escapees who'd come to Costa Rica on holiday and never left, and wouldn't or couldn't return for unarticulated reasons. Seeing how they lived, in saronds and shorts with the Caribbean lapping at their doormat, toucan flightpaths criss-crossing the canopy overhead, and an endless supply of 5c bananas and 0c pipas, I could see how Europe, where I had spent the last year and a half, could rapidly become a distant, chilly memory. I lumbered several metres behind my strapping tour guide, surreptitiously admiring his tanned, lean frame, fit from five years of swimming, snorkelling, gardening and apparently little else. We'd left the house at 7am but even then we were leaving it a bit late; the tropical heat was already enveloping us like a damp mohair blanket. In my heat-struck haze I found myself fantasising about a tanned blonde boy exiled on a tropical island, whose blue eyes were lagoons of sea and sky, whose skin tasted of sea salt and whose hair was bleached the colour of driftwood and twisted like the matted seaweed washed ashore.

In the storyline I was a sort of Shirley Valentine who could only look and touch, but never really access this young god. This syrupy, Tales of the South Pacificesque nonsense went on for quite a while but enabled me to make it through the soupier sections of the walk. We reached the town, I snapped out of my novella and we found a bite to eat. The popular dish here is gallo pinto con coco, ensalada with salsa and patacones. That's rice and beans cooked in coconut milk and coriander, salad and fried plantain (slices of green banana fried slightly, whacked with a mallet, and fried again).

Puerto Viejo is a ramshackle village of gravelly roads and scattered businesses fronting a calm beach of questionable cleanliness. I felt privileged to be staying in Manzanillo where the beach is calm, clean, empty, and fringed by those tall skinny palm trees which are a cliche only in travel brochures. By now I was convinced that if he wasn't selling ganja he must be selling turtle eggs to the Japanese, exporting howler monkey brains to Hong Kong or gigoloing on the side. I mean, when I was his age I was living in shoebox in t'middle of road (and still am). I finally asked him and got the answer which should have been obvious. "I inherited some money," he said simply, "and I think I have done the right thing with it."

15th March - Tearing Myself Away
Today was the day I would leave my Jungle Boy and head back to San José. Why, I knew not, other than being mindful of outstaying my welcome. As I ate breakfast he called to show me something 'nice'. I descended the rocky path and he pointed up into a tree. Curled on a branch was a sloth, its Telly Tubby countenance regarding us with studied indifference. It moved its head at the speed of a revolving restaurant.

My friend Hannia had a theory about people who live with animals. "They're freer, because animals do what they want, when they like; eat, shit, fight, sleep - they just don't care."

We hugged tearlessly on the road as the bus approached. Then he was gone.