The first night there, I met some guys from Canada and went out for lunch and dinner with them (horribly cheesy quesadillas which made me ill, followed by pizza...) They were nice guys, but on a very different kind of trip to me: theirs being hopping from one party-town to the next with the aim of getting as many intoxicants into their system as possible in a very short space of time. I enjoy heavy drinking less and less these days, because it drains me the next day when I will inevitably wake up at dawn and have to travel somewhere. Also it's just not what I'm here to do- I can and will enjoy mass drinking when I return to England and need to comfort myself from the rain and misery of normal working life. I've met a lot of Canadians while away actually; they're generally an adventurous bunch who like to travel a lot but also there are a lot of them who work seasonal jobs- often earning a lot of money working in grotty mining jobs for half the year, and then spending the money travelling for the rest of it. It makes sense therefore that pretty much all Canadians I have met from the first circumstance are the coolest, happy and funniest people around, but unfortunately a whole lot of those which fall into the latter category are blundering idiots who cannot spell their own name but have more money than they know what to do with.
Anyway! That evening a storm broke, (the rainy season has finally caught up with me) and being stuck in the hostel made me not feel like drinking anyway. I watched my group of people do shots of rum to the eyes and struggled to stay up until half ten out of courtesy or something similar. I went to bed, and decided that the next day I would make a new plan...
I´d been looking at a map of the nearby coastline and seen a place called El Ostional. I`d also seen a bus with that name on the front of it. So I jumped on (admittedly three hours later than intended since the first one didn`t come) and imediately felt good. About an hour down a dirt road and I`d arrived in a very small village indeed. The guy from the roof of the bus told me that I had to pay him extra for handling my bag, but he knew as he said it that I wasn´t going to.
[sidenote: on local buses there are always a couple of men whose job it is to haul luggage onto the roof. When someone gets off the bus, they haul the luggage down again, sometimes stop to buy a drink from a road-side vendor, run after the already departing bus again and launch themselves back onto the roof until the next stop. They are always sweating, laughing and fit.]
Now what? I was definitly the only gringo in the village. I asked a man in the street if there was anywhere I could stay the night.
"Sure!" he said, "stay in my house!"
Hmm, staying in a random man from the bus' house didn't seem like the smartest idea in the world, but said I`d have a look and found that he had a nice wife and a spare bed (although now I think of it, they might have kicked their son out for the night for my benefit). We agreed on a price of $4 for the night, and she said I'd be very welcome before very casually mentioning that there was "no running water until the morning". While she prepared the room for me and cleaned out the family wash bucket, I went for a wander to find the beach.
I'm annoyed I don't have my camera memory card with me right now, but not even photos can fairly show how beautiful this place was. A long, rounded bay with perfect golden sand closed inbetween two cliffs. Across the water, no more than a couple of km, was the mountainous coast of Costa Rica. Fishing boats sat on the sand after the day's work, and not a soul was in sight other than me and the crabs. It was perfect, and pretty funny to think of all the surfers and sunbathers crammed onto the beaches around San Juan, while this place sat so secretly and deserted.
Heading back to the group of houses which made up the "town" (which also seemed to serve as one open farmyard- kitchens and bedrooms included), I was told that I could eat my meals at Maria's- the best cook in the village. Indeed, Maria was very skilled at cooking the egg, beans and rice I had for dinner; also the egg beans and rice I had for breakfast, but possible not as good as the egg, beans and rice I had for lunch. What did make the meal however, was the unlimited mango juice: the family were mango salesmen and seemed to use mangos for pretty much everything you could think of, including soap.
Maria's husband was called Doniel. He was shy at first, although suprisingly unsurprised upon seeing a blonde girl at the dinner table. He said very little for the whole meal, but at the end as I paid them and turned to leave, he very quietly asked what I had planned for the evening. I had to admit that I was quite excited about reading my book and falling asleep early."Would you like to come with me to watch the turtles?" he asked.
I had no idea that turtles came to this beach, but it turned out that Doniel was part of a turtle conservation project and voluntarily sat out on the beach almost every night to try and protect the turtle eggs from poachers.
So at around 8pm, I followed Doniel to the beach. There was a huge full moon so no need for torches. We walked up and down the sand, he slowly becoming more and more chatty until he was confident enough to correct me on my spanish and occasionally make fun of my mistakes. We didn't see any turtles unfortunately, but he showed me a closed off area where he was protecting some buried turtle eggs from a few days ago. We sat near the enclosure and talked for a while longer.
I saw a couple of men lingering on the edges of the beach, "are they waiting for the eggs?"
"Yes," he replied
"Do you know them?"
"Of course I do. I see them every night, I've tried talking to them but there's no point", he said wearily.
Doniel explained that most villagers collected the eggs from time to time because turtle eggs are a delicacy and it's what they've done for generations to celebrate special occasions with. The difference is when dealers from the bigger market towns come over and collect all of the eggs, not just the ones they need, in order to sell them on illegally. These poachers do it so regularly that it's impossible for the turtle population to be sustained.
Eventually, I was tired and headed back to bed, but the next morning when I went for a swim I saw several dug out areas of beach. I watched a couple walk along, stopping at each disturbed area and dig through to collect up any eggs. I knew they had some because of the careful way the woman carried her basket.
Despite how sad this was, I had a great morning on my very own private beach, eventually tearing myself away to go for my rice and beans and investigate the bus schedule. But before I reached the road again, I saw a group of fishermen standing around something in the sand. I'd been dawdling along, taking pictures of other fish washed up along the beach and assumed that it was something they'd caught and were proud of. But when I got closer I saw them shaking their heads and realised the grey shape was actually a huge hammerhead shark- dead, it's fins having been cut off by poachers. I exclaimed my surprise to the fishermen, who told me that Asian fishermen from the Costa Rican coast often fished around these parts to collect the fins for soup. One bowl of shark fin soup can sell for over $100 in China, and these people come to the Central American coast especially where the sharks are plentiful and coast is largely unsupervised. It was the saddest and most beautiful thing I've seen throughout my trip. The men told me it will have drowned slowly after being thrown back in the water. I wondered if they were going to take the carcass to eat, but they threw it back in the water out of respect and let the retreating tide take it back out to sea. Over lunch I told Doniel what I'd seen but I got the impression he had seen it a few times himself.
I'd had a fantastic day away from the chaos of the gringo trail, and El Ostional was beautiful, but one day of such intense spanish speaking was enough and I felt it was time to head back to San Juan ready for the next place. The locals told me there was a bus at 3.30, but I sat for an hour at the side of the road before being told that it wasn't running that day after all. It seemed that I'd have to spend another night, which wasn't a huge problem, but then I might be stuck in San Juan longer afterwards... it just so happened that there was a reunion at a nearby school along the way and the police department of San Juan del Sur had come along to watch the goings on (perfect day for pickpocketing tourists back in San Juan). As the event was ending, I saw the police van leaving the village, it's truck back and roof piled up with locals taking the opportunity for a free ride into town.
"You need a ride, white girl?" The chief of police called to me, and I jumped on.
The next hour was the most uncomfortable, but hilarious ride of my trip. Old ladies sitting on young men's laps giggled and shrieked every time the truck turned a corner and we all fell to one side in a pile. Every now and then a local would hail the truck down at the side of the road and I'd think "no, there's no room- surely there's no room?" but they'd climb on and make room. Forty minutes into the journey, the driver decided that time was pressing on for dinner and put the flashing lights on. I received more than a few funny looks from returning surfers as I jumped off the racing truck back in San Juan. The chief of police high fived me, and they went on their way. Best adventure yet.
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