THE BEAT GOES ON AND ON
The Calypso Coast of Costa Rica has a rhythm to life. It’s a beat generations of tourists take away as the more vivid in memory
By Bob Schulman
I'm a nut for old-time calypso music. Harry Belafonte turned me on when I was a kid, the first time I heard his blockbuster hits from the West Indies. I played them over and over, yearning to buy juicy mangoes and casabas at the Kingston market...to hear Angelina play her concertina...to watch Senora shake her body line...to listen to “sounds of laughter everywhere while the dancing girls swing to and fro.”
Years later, when I finally got to the Caribbean, such thrills were not to be mine. Bowing to a hipper age, my sweet calypso tunes had given way to swinging Jamaican skas and reggaes, brassy Trinidadian socas, sizzling Dominican merengues and sultry zouks from the French islands. I admit, dancing to all this is a lot of fun (not to mention a great workout). Still, I miss the good old days that I never got to see.
Recently, though, I found the next best thing – in a little-known spot in Central America. On the east coast of Costa Rica, to be exact.
Caribbean Eden -- Beach scenes along the Calypso Coast are right off the travel posters. Photo by Bob Schulman
Trips to Costa Rica typically start with a flight to its capital at San Jose, roughly in the middle of the country. There, most visitors hop into tour vans or rental cars for a few hours' ride to the fabulous resorts dotting the country's western beaches. Many others head off to the eco-delights of its northern volcanos and rainforests.
A few take a 90-mile ride east (as I did) to a long strip of pristine beaches edging the Caribbean – without a Hilton or a Marriott in sight. First impressions upon arrival: I spotted my mangoes and casabas at thatched-roof roadside stands subbing for supermarkets...I heard people speaking in the Afro-Caribbean-English patois of the old-time West Indies (with a bit of Spanish tossed in)...and best of all, everywhere I went, from bars to barbershops, vintage calypsos wafted through the air.
No wonder they call this place “the Calypso Coast.” It starts at Puerto Limon and runs some 55 miles down the powdery sugar sand beaches to the Panama border. Along the way are towns such as Cahuita, Puerto Viejo and Manzanillo, places where I half expected to find Harry Belafonte sitting on a dock in striped, clamdigger pants telling tales of how a lady named Matilda “took me money and ran Venezuela.”
Instead, in a little cafe in Cahuita, I ran across Walter Ferguson.
Down here, Ferguson is as popular as Belafonte, Ricky Martin, Kanye West and Bruce Springsteen all rolled up into one. Known as the King of Calypso, having written and sung for seven decades about everything from local politics to troubles with his girlfriends, Ferguson at 89 came out of retirement to cut his latest CD, “Babylon.” He says this one is his last. “I'm just too old to make any more,” the gentle superstar said as he autographed a copy for me.
A long time ago, when he was a boy, Ferguson was told by Costa Rican marijuana growers not to walk across their plantations in an area called Babylon. He remembers, “I did anyway, when they weren't looking.” Somehow, that experience stuck in his mind all these years – which, he says, is how he got the name for the CD. You'll find it in stores all over the Caribbean coast of the country and even in the capital of San Jose. Hey, we’re talking about the CD, nothing else
That night, the cool ocean breezes were filled with, you guessed it, calypso songs at the Colon Caribe Jungle & Beach Resort near Limon. Under the twinkling stars, a band belted out my favorite West Indian tunes on an old banjo, a plinkety-plunk “finger piano” and a one-string wash-bucket fiddle.
I finally found it…my tropical Garden of Eden.
Sloths and orchids
Eco-trippers love the Calypso Coast, too. For instance, a few minutes' walk from Ferguson's hangout in Cahuita is the entrance to a 2,600-acre, jungle-covered national park—home to armies of tree-dwelling sloths, armadillos, iguanas, capuchin monkeys, nesting parrots, keel-billed toucans and lots of their indigenous friends.
After a couple of hours of life in the raw, you can retreat to the palm-fringed beaches for surfing, fishing, reef diving or maybe some quiet turtle-watching. Getting hungry? Local specialties include beans and rice, coconut chicken, fresh fish (whatever they happened to catch that morning) and “pati” (a seasoned beef patty).
Perhaps the best part of a visit to the coast is rubbing elbows with the locals, happy to chat with visitors without inferring that being from the north equates to being a walking ATM. Many are descendants of the Jamaican and Chinese laborers brought here in the late 1800s to build a railroad to Limon. You'll also find a sprinkling of expat transplants—mostly U.S. and Canadian Baby Boomers along with aging hippies, surfers and dreadlocked rastas.
One night I slept in the jungle. Well, it was actually a luxury suite (complete with a Jacuzzi) on stilts, one of 24 orchid-covered bungalows in the posh Almonds and Corals Hotel. Tucked away in a wildlife refuge, my room had screens for walls (just perfect to really get to know the howler monkeys).
Besides getting to the Calypso Coast by road, some visitors fly in on local airlines such as Nature Air. A half-hour hop from San Jose to the airport at Limon costs about $75.
Still others come from cruise ships docking at Puerto Limon. Dozens of day-tours vie for the cruise crowd with stops at coffee, sugar cane and cocoa plantations. A tip: Don't miss the recently opened Veragua Rainforest Research and Adventure Park, a 4,000-acre private reserve surrounded by a huge national rainforest.
On the way back to San Jose, our tour bus driver unwrapped a new CD and slipped it into the player. And for the next hour or so we relived happy memories of the Calypso Coast as we listened to tunes such as “Cabin in the Watah” and “Callaloo” on the last recording of Walter Ferguson. My kind of music in my kind of town.
Details: Costa Rica Tourist Board at www.visitcostarica.com.
Reader's Responses
Video on Costa Rica