Early in the morning a van collected us and took us off to Puero Viejo, where we’ll be for the next month. The journey was long but fine enough. I listened to three podcasts on Hinduism: one on kingship in low-Himalayan kingdoms during the colonial era, one on small religious sites in Mumbai, and one arguing against the conception of a strong separation between Brahminical and ascetic strains in Hinduism. The first had some very desi anecdotes, such as the queens who would use the threat of sati to get the British to increase their allowances. The second started with a discussion of a Bollywood ‘village’ film set in Bombay which is dresesd up for evey village scene in every movie but was actually a village to begin with and still has an active Adivasi shrine. And the third was very theoretical but did propose that the view of Buddhism and Jainism as ascetic reactions against Brahminical religion is simplistic and in fact they rebelled more against how Brahmanism was constructed than against it as a concept.
In our van, along the whole journey, were two women and their children who became progressively more boistrous but one can’t really blame them over a five hour journey. One of the women pleased me by asking about my sandals.
About halfway through we switched to a different van at a really horrible motorway stop, and the scenery changed almost instantly from grassy forested hills divided by rushing streams and sometimes dotted with tiny pre-fab houses to a lazy wide-leaved Caribbean landscape with banana plantations, slow brown forest-edged rivers and wooden shacks on stilts. There were a lot of banana and, presumably, pineapple, plantations, as we saw thousands of containers marked Dole and Del Monte as we approached Limon, the industrial heartland of this region.
Fortunately we turned off before Limon proper and instead drove through narrow roads along the Caribbean coast, stopping once for a blessed cup of coffee, until we arrived in Puerto Viejo. It was very grey and rainy, and the sea was also grey and with vigorous waves, some forming perfect triangles.
The place we are staying is on Playa Negra, the long black beach that comes just before Puerto Viejo itself. There was no one swimming and later we learned that it is quite a dangerous beach, with a very strong riptide. A shame. We have a rather well-constructed shack to ourselves with an outdoor kitchen and a proper bathroom and a rather more spacious and insect-free bedroom than I had realised, There is a nice big porch which is where I will work for the next month, and a very comfortable hammock. Even the lighting, at least in the bedroom, is not too bad. The only real downside is that drinking water is not provided so we have to bring it in ourselves. Otherwise the shack (a slight exaggeration, it is nicer than most houses we saw) is extremely comfortable, and is surrounded by jungle whilst getting some sun to dry towels etc.
We walked the 15 minutes into town along the black beach and went to a fish place for lunch, then onwards to a bakery for coffee and quite a nice light sponge cake studded with pineapple and banana. Then back for dinner and bed. The town itself is a proper backpacker town, with gluten-free labelling in the bakery alongside tubs of Nutella, moringa powder in the grocery stores, and elephant pants for sale everywhere. The feel of it is definitely very different from Monteverde or La Fortuna. There are, of course, far far more black people here, and the food has more flavour to it, but also people walk more slowly, move more slowly, give each other lazy smiles and slow waves as they pass. It is Caribbean, not Spanish descended Central America. It will be an interesting month or so, settling into this lifestyle (hopefully without work suffering).