Her name was Jennifer and she was 13 yrs old, she lived with her Mother and Father and Grandmother and Uncle and two sisters, all in the same house. She likes to sing, takes boxing lessons, was going to get a haircut later, thought that our blue eyes were pretty, and that she would like to visit Canada some day. Of course this took about 45 minutes to get across to us with the help of charades, facial expressions, and repetition. But like all good visits it was time end this one and keep moving, I am sure she would have talked to us all day. We found the main highway shortly after and blitzed to the coast, Puntarenas was our goal as we had passed by it on the way South.
Jen on right.
Puntarenas is or should I say was a very popular tourist destination situated at the end of a peninsula. Although cruise ships still stop there the town is very run down and dirty. By road there is about 3 miles of beachfront properties before reaching the town itself, then the town has about another 2 miles of beach so it is easy to see why it was a popular vacation destination. The beach unfortunately is not picturesque white sand, but a greyish color not unlike many other beaches around the world. There are numerous cafes and pubs scattered along the beach as well as across the street, that parallels the beach, on the city side of the street. We were checking out hotels when a fellow BMW rider pulled up beside us, he was riding a 1200GSA and after a short conversation we made plans to meet later for a drink.
Once we found suitable accommodations we walked the downtown area to get a feel for the place. It is evident that it is Christmas shopping season as the stores are very busy. The strange part is that the prices are the same if not more than at home, so no big bargains here. As it was getting close to dark we decided to go meet the GSA guy and share some stories.
Javier and Ana are native Costa Rican’s and live in San Jose, they are a wonderful retired couple who enjoy motorcycling as much as we do. He was an electrical engineer and she is an artist, so she is not really retired but has a very flexible schedule which allows them to take short trips around Costa Rica either on the 1200 BMW or on his new Harley Davidson Superglide. He was very proud of his new Harley and asked all kinds of questions about how to customize his once he found out that I also have a Harley, and a similar model to his.
They also explained the history of Puntarenas and how it has transitioned from a top resort town to a resort for the upper low class/lower middle class people of CR. This brings its own set of problems that are hard to overcome without major cash input for maintenance and lots of hard work. The other issue is trying to educate the clientele about issues as simple as littering, which there is alot of. It must definitely be a case of culture shock for the people who come off the cruise ships to experience this type of atmosphere, there are not many other obvious tourists (i.e. Caucasians) and there is a heavy police presence. Even we noticed that there seemed to be an unusually high number of officers for such a small place. Anyway, Javier is a very accomplished motocross rider and still enjoys playing in the dirt, although he says he has toned it down a bit now that he is teaching his 16 yr old daughter to ride.
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