CHRISTMAS EVE IN GOLFITO
Golfito, Costa Rica, Christmas Eve, 24 December 2009

It’s midday on Christmas Eve in the tropics. The sky is still blue with puffy clouds and the temperatures are probably already well above 30oC. I have spent the morning writing and reading the internet as well as doing little jobs around the boat. By 0900 it was too hot to be out in the direct sunshine and doing anything by way of work. Inside the main cabin, I have all the cabin fans going to make up for the lack of breeze outside. It’s a good thing I am acclimated to tropical weather now and have learned when to be outside and when to be in.

The last leg of the trip to Golfito on Thursday last (17Dec09) was totally uneventful. We motored across the placid Golfo Dulce and through the well-marked ship channel into Golfito and finally dropped the anchor in front of Land Sea Marina, and have been able to turn off the engine for days on end and rely on the solar panels for energy even despite the frequent cloudy days and rain. Of course, it’s not really a marina in the sense that there are docks and slips and the like. There are a few mooring balls at $8 a day or you can use the dock to land your dinghy for $5 a day. If you want to use the internet expect to pay $1 per day more. Every ‘marina’ sets its prices differently. But the basic rule south of the U.S.-Mexican border seems to be that the poorer the country or the less on offer, the higher the prices. The mini-gulf (Golfito) is actually itself quite large and I suppose the holding is good everywhere. I am not sure why one couldn’t actually just anchor in front of the village proper or down near the old United Fruit banana docks and just beach one’s dinghy. I am sure there must be a tap where you could get some water nearby. It’s nice to meet the other cruisers, but I thought we were here to get to know other peoples and other countries. This will have to be investigated some more.

Speaking of locals and getting to know the area, I go with Kathleen by bus to Pase Canoa, the town at the Frontera to Panamá. It’s an opportunity to spend a little more time with Kathleen as she catches busses to David and Panamá City and then her flights to Europe, and to see a little of the countryside. Each way cost Es$650, or about $1.30. It being Christmas, the busses were packed and I had to stand for the 90 minute ride. It was packed but nobody shoved or butted in and everyone was quite civilised. People were heading to the towns bigger than Golfito in order to do some last-minute Christmas shopping at the duty free shops at the border. Ciudad Neily, on the way, and Pase Canoa are both considerably bigger than Golfito town.

I met a local couple and got into conversation with them. She is Costa Rican, but he moved down here from Florida years ago to work as a carpenter, liked it a lot and stayed on permanently. He complained that the cost of living keeps going up (Costa Rica is suffering badly from the worldwide economic recession: remittances from overseas workers are down, the cost of oil is up and sales of local produce is off; unemployment is high and climbing; import duties have been increased to 100% to reduce imports, and therefore trade and payment deficits; electricity will also go up 24% soon). On the other hand, he gets a U.S. Social Security pension, his overheads can’t be too high any more and the Colón has been falling against the U.S. dollar. So it was perhaps just knee-jerk whinging. Later he said the standard things that Americans tend to say to establish their bona fides: e.g. “Government can’t do anything correctly or efficiently!” (What about the Panamá Canal? What about Social Security?); “They let the Messkins overrun Texas! (Haven’t you got it backwards? Didn’t the gringos overrun Texas, turn it into a slave state, enslave the free black people already there while making the Latin population subservient? And, aren’t you an immigrant yourself in Costa Rica?) The healthcare proposals in the U.S.A. are ‘socialist’.” (Didn’t you just tell me that you get free healthcare in Costa Rica and stretch your Social Security by living here cheaply?) He was a nice guy, really. I just don’t get this blockheadedness and total lack of perspective.

I was pleasantly impressed at how green and prosperous everything looked all along the highway and in the small towns. Nothing opulent, and we saw no McMansions or starter castles, though perhaps they exist somewhere around here. All the living accommodations we saw (mainly little bungalows, some new-looking subdivisions, but no high-rise blocks) looked well taken care of with fresh paint, the gardens kept up and the lawns cut Nothing like as poor as the coastal areas of Ecuador. We also drove through miles of palm-oil groves and some banana groves. It was of course all very subjective and just glimpses. The Ticos of all ages that we met or saw (local name for Costa Ricans is Tico) look well-groomed, all with good teeth, healthy complexions, and many seem to speak at least some English. Historically, since there was no gold here, the conquistadores I understand more or less ignored this area and society became somewhat more egalitarian by comparison to, say, Ecuador or Peru where a few conquistadores ravaged the gold, killed or enslaved the natives, grabbed up all the land and then imported black-African slaves when the indigenas perversely persisted in dying of smallpox or simply running off to the high Andes rather than work the silver mines, weave the cloth or till the fields. In this area as all over North and South America (including Canada and the U.S.A.), indigenous peoples were of course killed off by disease; this happened at an early stage of Spanish rule. Today, you do see some native people, but not many by comparison with Panamá, etc. The Europeans, amongst them settler families, did not inter-marry with them simply perhaps because there were no indios. The busses we rode were clean and in good condition, unlike the Diablos Rojos in Panamá City. The collection of shops and malls at the border, on the other hand, although packed with goods and shoppers, looked hastily thrown together and, inside, everything was crowded with shoppers. It felt like a giant fire trap to me and I didn’t see any fire-fighting equipment when I looked cursorily. I bought some vodka at the duty-free liquor store and I think it was about one-third cheaper than at a big supermarket in Panamá, let alone the much more expensive normal-shop prices of Costa Rica. Food is much more expensive here, partly of course because CR does not have a FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with the U.S.A. and therefore, unlike Panamá, they don’t get the cheap, tax-subsidised American farm products. Whereas in Panamanian supermarkets, which can readily compare with anything in the U.S.A. including price levels, products or brands and the total size of inventories, nearly everything comes from the U.S.A. and is nearly everything is cheaper for the consumer than a dirt farmer in Panamá or most companies could hope to supply for., in Costa Rica, on the other hand, beer is twice as expensive, imported goods face 100% duties, some staple foods are much more expensive than in Panamá (potatoes, for example, cost a dollar a pound whereas they are half or less than that in Panamá City). Diesel fuel costs about $3.65 a U.S. gallon, whereas it is still around $2.75 in Panamá City, I think. Tropical fruit, mainly bananas, are pretty cheap here! So, potatoes, beer and diesel, all basics for a cruiser, are more expensive. Bananas look like becoming a main food for Vilisar’s crew!