Deadlock Holiday

Another night, another town and another gate we couldn't open.  Shame it was 1.00 am!   The gate was bolted, padlocked and we only had one key.  But guess what?  It was a trick gate - all you had to do was turn the lock and pull open the other gate.  We had to be shown this by the American guy we'd woken up, having been shouting "Ola!" for 5 minutes.  Did someone mention idiots abroad?

We had left San Jose around 10.00 am in a local bus.  And it had been stifling.  The air-conditioning didn't work and the bus rarely got up to enough speed to have air coming through the windows.  Nonetheless, there is something exhilarating, something liberating about travelling down bumpy roads through those unfamiliar tropical landscapes.  It really gives you the sense of being somewhere else.  As for the non-existent air-con, well, you can hardly travel into the heart of darkness in luxury now, can you?

From San Jose we travelled down to Limon on the Caribbean Coast and from there on to Puerto Vieja (de Talamanca), which is a sleepy coastal town, the kind of backpacker place you used to find a lot more often than you do now.   As such, there is still a sizable, shall we say, counter-culture here and the devotees take it quite seriously.  We were in a shop selling T-shirts that promoted the benefits of weed but when I turned round to ask about the price, the shop assistant was on her way outside to share a spliff with someone...

The Limon area is quite different to the rest of Costa Rica because of the African influences.  Brought as slaves by the Spanish, the Africans were originally not permitted to travel outside the region and their descendants generally still live in this region.  When they speak English, it's with a West Indian accent, which always sounds amazing!  Funnily enough, when we mentioned to a mango seller that we were from Australia, he said "Ah, cricket!" and then went on to lament the decline of the West Indies team.

We found ourselves gravitating to a bar on the beach and why would you not?

Other people were clearly there for things other than the view or the beer though.  As night fell and the reggae beats sounded, people at neighbouring tables lit up and it wasn't the scent of tobacco that drifted over.  

But passive smoking of that kind is enough for me, so instead I pored over the beer list (i.e. all four of them) to see if anything interesting could be found.  Now, I must just have one of those thirsty faces because the waitress suddenly asked me "Would you like a good beer?"  I had heard that there were one or two better beers in Costa Rica, one of which was one called Segua, so I asked her "Do you have Segua?" to which she replied "The very one I had in mind!"  I'd actually given up hope of ever seeing it, let alone drinking it, so this was a very nice surprise in our last Costa Rican stop.


The legend of La Segua tells the tale of a woman, who, after being abandoned by her Spanish soldier lover, turned into a monster who still takes the form of a beautiful woman  to lure men, siren-like, to their deaths.  She turns back into the monster just before killing them (so that's woman-monster-woman-monster for those who weren't paying attention).  Now that's all very sad for unfaithful men to be sure, but I did enjoy the beer!