In search of buried treasure , swashbuckling fortune hunter , Pierre Burleigh , with a fake X marks the spot map for which he paid a bundle , sent this unique dispatch in an empty rum bottle , washed ashore on Magnetic Island .
Unfortunately your correspondent only visited Costa Rica
for a few days, consequently seeing and understanding very little of a country
which is not a ‘top of mind’ aspirational destination among many of today’s
travellers except for genuine eco-freaks, or those who pass for hippies these
days, or who are leaving some illegal activity and passing through on their way
to another illegal activity. Way down the list are those who’ll take on the
journey to Costa Rica to visit a family member, only to have their
preconceptions of the country mashed like a soft banana.
I do know that Costa Rica shares a common border with
Panama, which is somewhere in Central America. That means it’s in close
proximity to the Canal itself, an area with a climate so evil that it took the
lives of 22,000 canal constructors in the 1800s. The Canal concept brought out
the stupidity and greed in investors, Emperors, Popes and Kings alike...and
attracted the worst kind of piratical behaviour.
Given the strategic location of Costa
Rica and Panama and the potential offered by its narrow isthmus separating two
great oceans, trade routes in the area were attempted over the centuries. The
ill-fated Darien Scheme was launched in 1698 by the Kingdom of Scotland of all
places to set up an overland trade route. Inhospitable conditions thwarted this
effort and it was abandoned in April 1700.
According to the New York Daily
Tribune, on August 24, 1843 a contract was entered into by Barings of London
and the Republic of New Granada for the construction of a canal across
the Isthmus of Darien (Isthmus of Panama). ‘The Atlantic and Pacific Canal’ was
a wholly British endeavour. It was expected to be built in five years, but was
never carried out. Soon other proposals arose, including a canal and/or railroad
across Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Nothing came of that plan either. In 1846 a treaty between the
U.S. and New Granada granted the
United States transit rights and the right to intervene militarily in the
isthmus.
In 1849, the discovery of gold in California created demand for a
crossing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and The Panama
Railway was built by the United States to cross
the isthmus. It opened in 1855 and not only became a vital trade link it largely
determined the later canal route.
An all-Canal route between the oceans remained the ideal,
and in 1855 William Kennish, a Manx-born engineer working
for the US government, surveyed and published a report titled The
Practicality and Importance of a Ship Canal to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans. However in 1877 French Navy officer Armand Reclus, and Lucien Napoléon Bonaparte Wyse, both engineers, surveyed the
route and published a French proposal for a canal. French success in building
the Suez Canal inspired the planning for this new Canal in
Central America.
The first attempt to construct a
canal through Colombia's
province of Panama began on 1 January 1881. The project was headed by the
diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, who raised considerable finance in France as a result of the huge profits
generated by his successful construction of the Suez
Canal. Although the Panama Canal would be only 40% as
long as the Suez Canal, the Central American location would prove to be far more
of an engineering challenge, due to the tropical rain forests, the climate, the
need for canal locks, and the lack of any ancient established route to
follow.
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De Lesseps wanted a sea-level canal
(like Suez) but only visited the site a few times during the dry season - which
lasts only four months of the year. He missed – or ignored - the obvious and his
men were totally unprepared for the rainy season, during which the Chagres River, where the canal started,
became a raging torrent, rising up to 35 feet (10 m). The dense jungle, always
alive with venomous snakes, insects and spiders, was a deadly miasma of yellow
fever, malaria and other tropical diseases which killed thousands of workers: by
1884 the death rate was over 200 per month. Public health measures were
ineffective because the role of the mosquito as a disease carrier was then unknown. Conditions were downplayed in France to avoid
recruitment problems, and the high mortality rate made it difficult to maintain
an experienced workforce.
Meanwhile, up here in
2017…
Costa Rica’s capital is much the same
as every other second-world tropical city, and looks a bit like a Pizza dropped
into the jungle. San Jose’s roofs glow rusty brown against the green of the
trees and the undergrowth. The ring of mountains around the edge of the Pizza
are spectacularly jungle-covered and no doubt conceal fabulous beasts. The
‘fingers’ sticking upward from the Frisbee-flat ‘Pizza Plain of Rusty Roofs’ are
apartment buildings, which seem out of place given there is little industry, or
at least another industry besides apartment building. The city doesn’t seem to
have a centre and if there once was a CBD it has been demolished and
cannibalised for apartment materials.
The rough-shod streets are chaotic
with traffic rushing aimlessly like suicidal Lemmings looking for a cliff edge.
A comparatively tidy environment and colourful painted traffic directions
indicate at least a civilised veneer until you notice no one pays any heed to
them. There are no rules. Huge trucks charge through suburban streets at speeds
better suited to aircraft, their horns roaring threateningly from dawn to dusk.
Many houses in the inner areas are moderately grand but many are locked and
empty with weeds sprouting from roofs and pathways. Where are the people? Holed
up in Marie Celeste Street? Even the grandiose arches of the Vatican
Embassy are stained with mould, the windows sealed, the gates
shut.
Fast food is ubiquitous as it is
everywhere else in the world, but the lack of a national or even local cuisine
is a puzzle. The only dish with any detectable claim to a Costa Rican classic is
the grindingly bland ‘Rice and Beans’. It’s advertised everywhere. I stare out
at San Jose from my apartment balcony and realise that apart from a few
curiosities the city seems devoid of stimulus.
The main Canal cutting through the
mountain at Culebra was
continually widened and the angle of its slopes reduced to minimize severe
landslides into the canal. Steam shovels, mechanical and electrical equipment
was limited in its capabilities, and everything rusted and rotted rapidly in the
aggressive tropical In France, de
Lesseps kept the investment and supply of workers flowing long after it was
obvious that targets were not being met. Inevitably the money ran dry. The
French effort went bankrupt in 1889 after reportedly spending US$287,000,000 and
losing an estimated 22,000 lives to disease and accidents, wiping out the
savings of 800,000 investors. The scandal, known as the Panama
Affaire, saw several of the major players prosecuted, including Gustave Eiffel. De Lesseps and his son Charles were found guilty of
misappropriation of funds and sentenced to five years' imprisonment, though this
was overturned. De Lesseps, 88, was never imprisoned. Ah, the rewards of
Piracy…
The first scourges of European Piracy
showed up in 1492 when Columbus and his men blundered into the Americas (he
thought it was India). The news of the New World spread fast. He made four trips to the Americas but touched only the southern
half of Mexico and moved south, leaving the rest of America still
“undiscovered.” At that time, the arbiter of the world was not a king, but Pope
Alexander VI of the notorious Borgia family, and as a Spaniard he decided to
deed all the newly discovered land to Spain and Portugal, both leading maritime
powers and very Catholic.
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Frank Drake , Esq. (Knight), Pirate .
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The discovery of gold in the New
World fuelled a frenzy of exploration and conquest with a steady stream of
Spanish vessels criss-crossing the Atlantic, with gold from Peru travelling to
Portobello, Panama, in mule trains and by boat to Veracruz, Mexico, and on to
Spain. Settlers, explorers and priests came sailing from the Old World to the
new. Meanwhile, other European powers grew resentful.
Holland, France and England were also seafaring nations looking for trade routes
and lands to exploit. In England, Queen Elizabeth I built a navy with the aim of
breaking up the Spanish monopoly.
Francis Drake decided on his first
major independent enterprise. He
planned an attack on the Isthmus of Panama, known to the Spanish as Tierra Firme and to the English as the Spanish Main. This was the point at which the silver and gold treasure
of Peru had to be landed and carried overland
to the Caribbean Sea, where galleons from Spain would pick it up at the town
of Nombre de Dios.
Drake left Plymouth on 24 May 1572,
with a crew of 73 men in two small vessels, the Pascha (70 tons) and the Swan (25 tons), to capture Nombre de
Dios. His first raid was late in July 1572. Drake and his men captured the town
and its treasure. When his men saw that Drake was wounded they insisted on
withdrawing to save his life and abandoned the treasure. Drake stayed in the
area for almost a year, raiding Spanish shipping and attempting to capture a
treasure shipment.After the English Navy defeated the
Spanish Armada in 1588 and set off to claim America, no Spanish colony was safe.
Pirates Henry (Cow Eyes) Morgan , and Sir Francis
Drake certainly spread their unwelcome attentions on both coastlines –
particularly unwelcome to the Spanish - as evidenced by landmarks and historical
documents throughout the Americas. Drake Bay on the southern Pacific coast was
named after the famous 16th century pirate, and the Isla del Coco – or Cocos
Island – is said to be a hiding spot for pirate treasures, the surrounding
waters a resting place for many ships.
Queen Elizabeth had hired Morgan,
Drake and other experienced sailors as “corsairs” to attack Spanish assets in
the new world. Acting as agents for the English crown, they brought terror to
Spanish vessels and colonies. Because of England’s anti-Catholic beliefs at the
time, richly furnished churches were favoured targets for pirates. Forts still
standing in Cuba and South America are today’s tourist attractions but in the
16th century they were protection against British terrorists.
Surprisingly,
pirate companies did sometimes operate under gentlemen’s codes. Pirate captains
faced mutinies and lost their crews if the men were mistreated or cheated.
Pirate ships carried “surgeons” who were not medical doctors but were trained in
amputations, which explains peg legs and hooks for
arms.
Costa Rica faced several invasions by
pirates, and Cocos Island was their sanctuary for several years. With fresh
water, abundant timber and plants and animals, they could live there comfortably
while raiding coastal cities. Stories of pirate treasure on the island and
sunken ships offshore continue to intrigue. The Caribbean side of Costa Rica saw
several pirate incursions in the 1600s. In the 1640s, a pirate army of 600 men
led by Bartholomew Mansfield headed for Cartago, then capital of Costa Rica.
Later, a Caribbean uprising by plundering buccaneers was led by men like Blackbeard, and these pirates pillaged until they met defeat by arms and
economics. Pirates no longer lurk in Costa Rican waters, but their stories,
their sunken ships and their treasure live on in the public imagination, much
like the Bushrangers in Australia.
Back in the Present…
In this 21st century in the seas off Somalia,
the Straits and Malacca, and the Bay of Bengal, heavily armed and trained
hijackers capture cargo ships, passengers and crews and hold them to ransom, The
closest to piracy I witness in Costa Rica is the ruthless behaviour of truck
drivers on the road to Puerto Limon. They take no
prisoners.
Traffic
rushes down impossibly high hillsides curtained in jungle and mist. Engines
scream at top speed up the same hillsides. As it flashes by, your knuckles
whiten with the occasional flicker of a passing speed-blurred giant truck or
car. Your survival depends of how hard you concentrate on the tail-lights of the
hurtling Mack a few inches from your front bumper and the one a few inches from
your rear,,. its siren screaming and lights flashing. This two-lane highway is the
only transport link from the port of Limon to San Jose. Dante would’ve been
proud of it. There are so many trucks there must be a secret breeding ground for
them in the jungle, some fantastic chromiumed crèche pumping out squealing
16-wheelers by the hundred.
The nose-to-nose jam of rusting car bodies
along each side of the road is overwhelming, the quantity surely coming close to
outnumbering the cars on the road which do work. Vehicles are obviously
written off at a frightening rate, yet on our stomach-churning journey we don’t
see a single accident, or piles of bones beside the stripped wrecks. We were
stuck in an interminable traffic jam caused by a three-man roadwork crew who
simply stopped the traffic dead – all of it - and ignored it while they spread
gravel in a layover. Much of the wealth of Costa Rica is using this road at any
given moment and traffic jams must cost millions.
Further down toward the sea, the land levels out and the
‘Sodas’ appear. Villagers throw up temporary – well OK, permanent – lean-to’s on
the roadside selling Coke, Pepsi, sugar snacks, beer, coconut oil and of course
the staple ‘rice and beans’. No one was stopped at a ‘Soda’, but at a few gas
stations trucks gathered to gossip and plan their next assault on the
traffic.
Near the port of Limon walls of containers line the same
two-lane highway; it is the only road between the major port and the capital San
Jose. Its scale in places reminds you of the Great Wall of China. What goes on
behind these walls is anyone’s guess but surely it has something to do with
truck fertility rites.
Wages of Fear, Costa Rica
style
Further south of the Caribbean Coast is the small coastal
tourist village of Puerto Viejo, laid back, cool and undeveloped, with a
plethora of (semi)organized, on-going American diversions. There’s not a lot of
Costa Rican culture on display, but there are dozens of American kids running
massage places, workshops on food fermentation and beekeeping, surf comps,
little theatre groups, ginger-beer brewing classes, community gardens, town
baseball teams, yoga classes, and an annual arts festival that last year featured
a play by kindergarten kids, nude self-portraits, and a belly dancing troupe.
All this is fun, but Costa Rican it ain’t. On the other hand, maybe it
is.
The glassless windows of our rented cottage is like being walled in by Rousseau paintings; the colours are exactly the same. Each ‘window’ looks into a fascinating emerald wall of jungle.
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Unseen Howler Monkeys growl and
hoot all night - or could that have been Tarzan, lost and calling for Jane? Who
knows what’s out there in the foetid dampness? I sure don’t. All I can do is
imagine or look at promotional photos on the Internet. It knocks me out, but I
don’t feel a part of it. The Jaguar Rescue organisation is just up the road
(near the Carib-Bean organic coffee shop (massages $US45 an hour); its logo is a Monkey ! )
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Which is the Rousseau painting and which is real life?
We’ve got free access to kilometres of picture postcard Caribbean coastline, lined with palms, no beachfront development at all; horseback riding in the mountains or on the beach; surfing, snorkelling, excellent fishing and more than enough night spots for those who want to party or take chances on the food. OK, it’s pretty spectacular... but there’s something missing : any Costa Rican character.
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Outback Jack’s
Here’s a bar right out of the northern Western Australian
desert, inspired by the Daly Waters Hotel in the Northern Territory and festooned with painted car junk, curiosities, tourist souvenirs (empty bottles to you) and jury-rigged
refrigeration machinery. Jack is a snaggle-toothed character whose style the
American tourists love. His bar is for sale and he knows his market – he’s no
fool, he’ll do well. He acts like an eccentric beachcomber; and at least the
eccentric part is genuine.
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Jack's joint
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His beer glasses are clearly used by the local cops for
fingerprinting practice – they’re covered in them. But Jack mixes a mean
Margarita and personally tastes each one for quality. He serves them in Mason
jars with mug handles. He has a faithful clientele. Jack is a refugee from
everywhere, including Australia, and tells colourful stories of the mafia,
smuggling, border scrapes, failed businesses and self-destructive tourists. He’s
in love with his own legend, but who cares? His wife Penelope (“Don’t call me
Penny – the Costa Ricans think it means ‘penis’.”) grins knowingly. They’re a
good pair. He’s in his early 60s and looks 80. He has a lot of fun with his
gullible customers.
After a few relaxing days in Puerto Viejo, squinting into
the jungle across from the beach and eating and drinking anything we want, we
find a restaurant which has Lobster. Everyone including Jack told us there is no
Lobster in town – it’s overfished, there’s none left. We should have listened
more carefully, but eventually we find a place with Lobster and greedily eat
half a one-kilo beauty each.
Next morning, early to avoid traffic jams and roadworks
(we are wrong), we set off at top speed to return to San Jose. we have a
driver who laughs at death in all its forms. I begin to plan the plot of a comic
book featuring this guy’s adventures. I close my eyes. The world whirls. I hum a
hymn under my breath. I imagine flying Business Class on Singapore Airlines but
it doesn’t work. I can’t forget where I am, I am surrounded by Pirates. My
bowels loosen with fear.
Our
Australian drivers must have learned to drive on a roller coaster…Costa Rican
truck drivers are chosen for their suicidal bravado on the narrow mountain road
to San Jose but our driver doesn't fear death in any form - including being
strangled by his passenger.
A Disturbed Passage
I depart San Jose without eating anything for three days.
I have been given the gift of food poisoning of the most virulent kind. As I
write this nine days later, a French overcast sky slides over my brain like a Tupperware lid and the rumbling and
cramping in my lower belly continues. I’ll spare you the details, but the only
diagnosis which fits all the gruesome symptoms is that my bowels have been
deliberately infected by the spores of Alien Pirates (as in Alien : Covenant,
currently screening) etc. My food has been intergalactically modified, plundered
of all its health attributes and poisoned…or maybe the lobster had been left
unrefrigerated.
Some kind of pirate is robbing us of our precious bodily
fluids and they are being forcibly ejected from our nether orifices, leaving us
weakened and exhausted. Clearly, I’m a little feverish. Piracy continues to
flourish on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica. Pass the
Imodium. I’ll never be able to look Johnny Depp in the face again .
