Last night I landed in Costa Rica, the plane touching down at Juan Santa Maria and the heavy door opening to tropical heat. I stood alone on the airport bus as it rattled it’s way to the terminal, disgorging groups of lost looking tourists who searched nervously for their bags and were met by cheerful tour guides. I alone stood near the baggage carousel and waited, looking around at posters tacked to the walls, some threatening to prosecute sex offenders and others promising to reward gringos with the best in the way of shining white hotels and tacky, palm thatched restaurants. Presently my Mum appeared, an amazing occurrence considering we’d flown from opposite sides of the world and still managed to arrive in San Jose within ten minutes of each other. After many hugs we grabbed our packs and headed for the exit where a large brass band was busy playing mariachi music in the underground car park.

This morning I woke to parrots hooting outside the red painted window of Hostel Tranquilo, reminding me of times I spent here last year. Most of the staff has changed and, because it’s off-season, there aren’t any backpackers sleeping on the floor and in hammocks by the reception yet it’s still the dirty pit of inequity I remember. There are the piles of cigarettes in bamboo ashtrays, wine bottles with oozing candles sprouting from them, red lamps hanging from the ceiling. We meet Penny here in her tiny room and Mum is amazed by the leopard-striped tiles in the bathroom and the beds that defy all scientific principles by refusing to collapse in a heap. For breakfast I commandeer a taxi that takes us speeding through the town, past Plaza Morazan with its grand bandstand and cast iron statue of Simon Bolivar and through the barrios to Marcado Borbon.

A sprawling maze of fruit shops and dirty Soda’s Mercado Borbon looks like a dingy Soviet subway system that just happens to sell piles of bananas. Damien, an old friend of mine once said of it, “Costa Rica exports all it’s best fruit, then all the grade #2 stuff gets sent to Mercado Central and what’s left over ends up in Mercado Borbon.” Whether this is true or not, what’s certain is that in this subterranean Aladdin’s cave you can by bags of watermelons, papaya’s, coconuts and bananas for a few quid. After getting as much as I can carry we jump into another taxi and high-tail it over to a bus station on the edge of town, a razor wire fortress of rebar gates that services the small mountain towns of the Tarazzu Valley. It was in San Marcos de Tarazzu that I lived for almost three months last year, carrying my machete and learning to pick coffee from the Robles family. It seems right to me that my first few days back in Costa Rica be spent there.

The ride back to the valley takes us three hours in the thick fog, our driver edging his way along a sheer ravine. I regret coming back at night, I don’t see enough to reminisce and because it’s rainy season the sky opens up just as the sun goes down. We arrive without incident in San Marcos however, though Penny is enthralled by the pastel colored dresses worn by the female Panamanian Indian migrant workers. Once off the bus I search the main street for a taxi that knows where the Vargas’s house is and we heap our bags in the back and clamber in, heading up a rocky path dotted with coffee farms.

‘Tonnnn’ yells Mama when I knock at her door, still unable to pronounce my name. She’s wearing a dressing gown and has obviously just woken up though it can’t have been later than seven. I’ve missed her a lot, this bustling little woman who coo’s over me and starts talking excitedly in very fast Spanish. Calin, her husband, comes to the door next and gives me a tremendous bear hug as he shows me to the guesthouse where I used to live. It takes about ten minutes for them to open the door before I can slide into my old bed and go to sleep and I actually remember when Prouty broke it a year before, the lock never working properly again.

Mercado Borbon


The Robles Family

Elian in his families fields