Time & Tide: Journal from the Osa Peninsula
Costa Rica dispatch number two comes from a deserted, palm-lined beach in a place called Osa. It's one of the hardest places to get to in Costa Rica -- which is saying a lot, because just about any place that isn't a city in Costa Rica is hard to get to. Deep hills, valleys and thick jungle separate everything. Just a few bumpy, potholed roads connect the villages, where less than half of Costa Ricans live.
But here, on the southwest edge of the Osa Peninsula, in Costa Rica's extreme south, not even a muddy tractor path reaches where I am - San Josecito. As the crow flies, where I sit lies just a few miles south of the Panama Canal. It's a place where no definitive town exists, just 40 people who live in one- or two-room houses on the beach or deep in the virgin rainforest that lies beyond the driftwood.
I've taken off my watch, because time stops here.
Getting here, too, isn't directed so much by time as by the tides. The only way to get to San Josecito Beach is by hiring a wooden boat with an outboard motor in a little village called Sierpe. So, the first step of my journey was to find someone with a boat that was heading down the twisting Rio Sierpe to the Pacific Ocean. In Sierpe, this means asking around, often with the resulting answer of "no se -- manana?"
(Actually finding a boat, incidentally, took two days to accomplish.)
My trip down the Rio Sierpe (sierpe is Spanish for serpent) was a memorable journey through eerie mangrove forests that are home to countless water birds and 15-foot-long crocodiles. Next, after crossing the waves at the mouth of the river, our boat would travel to Drake Bay, nothing more than a cluster of lodges perched on a few hilltops. But this wasn't the end of the trip. After dropping everyone else off, a handful of locals, myself and just one other tourist headed for San Josecito.
Arrival consisted of a fast beach landing. This is where the captain guns the motor just as a big wave rolls us in, sending the boat and its occupants flying into the soft sand. I felt like I was riding a whale beaching itself. Once on solid ground, I would hike southeast to my new home for these five days - a small, tin-roofed shelter in a clearing in the rainforest.
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