Field Notes
Growing up in Osa: from Cortés to San Isidro
I was born in 1972 in Cortés de Osa, a little south of Bahía Ballena. My early years were spent between Ballena de Osa, Tinoco de Osa and Uvita, and in 1982 my family settled in San Isidro de Pérez Zeledón. This coast was very different then from what it is today.
A smell, a road, a breakfast and a lady with an umbrella
If I had to choose one smell, it would be the sea. It is penetrating and specific, and every time I catch it I am back on the beach where I walked with my mother, the day she took us from Tinoco to what is today La Cusinga and was then the Ave Oro farm. I remember trees with purple and pink flowers, crabs, colonchos (hermit crabs) and the waves. It is one of my dearest memories.
The road I will never forget is the one that led from Uvita to our house. We walked along the beach to the colony and from there climbed the Cuesta del Soncho, named that way because on the air currents high above, the sonchos, or vultures, would soar. Then we continued toward Ballena and, before the creek, we had to turn off: we crossed by the hammock bridge or through the creek itself to reach home.
From the table, I remember breakfast most of all. We woke around four or four-thirty in the morning, with my mother’s radio playing from the kitchen: mariachi music, on a program called Las Mañanitas Rancheras. I would get up to help her gather firewood and light the fire, and I watched her cook. Then came the gallo pinto with homemade natilla, made from the milk of cows that had been milked earlier. All the work behind that breakfast is something I never forget.
Among the people of those years, besides my mother and father, the one I remember most is Doña Chabela, a lady who always rode her little horse carrying a small umbrella, and of whom people said she was even a witch. To me, having her in our lives was always a lovely memory.
Before it was a destination
In those years, Uvita and Osa could only be reached by four-wheel drive —the real kind— because all that existed was a trail. From Dominical to what is today Ojochal you got through on horseback or on foot. Life was rustic, and you knew everyone in the villages. Almost everything we consumed was produced or harvested locally: the sea gave us food, and so did the beans, the rice, the chickens and the milk.
There was no tourism, no hotels, no paved road, no restaurants and no banks. But there was peace, quiet and an abundance of nature. From our house you could see the bay of what is today Ballena Marine National Park, with schools of mackerel, tuna and sardines. When diving, you found conchs, lobsters and a great variety of marine life. When we said “let’s have fish for lunch today,” we took the little boat, caught three or four fish in short order, and lunch was settled. There was more peace, more serenity, fewer people and more nature.
Far away and back
Later I lived a year in Oregon with an uncle, attended high school at Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida, and then earned a degree at the University of Miami. I returned to the south coast in 2002.
From Osa I carried to the United States simplicity, a wild and innocent spirit: being open, trusting people and having a big heart.
When I came back I found that Osa was changing. There were more people and more tourism, and the priorities were no longer so much nature, conservation and friendship. The change was so drastic that I still love to remember those days: walking along Playa Uvita without seeing anyone, and recalling how the people and the surroundings used to be.