Walk a Molasses Road

A Journal of a First Visit to Costa Rica

a Ron Zimmerman b

k
ONE

Sunday Evening, 16 February 2003

Sunrise over Central America

At the last possible moment, I grabbed a

little red corduroy notebook from the shelf
where it lain for some years. I pushed
a pencil in my daypack. In the end, the
pencil was half its size. This was our first
trip deep into Central America.
Ron Zimmerman

fter a staff meeting at The Herbfarm Restaurant, Carrie and I

depart, winging from Seattle to Los Angeles. From there, an
overnight flight takes us to Guatemala City, Guatemala.
We arrive just as the light of day rolls into Central America, revealing a silhouetted pair of volcanic cones and lighted villages below.
Above Ciudad Guatemala, we see groupings of white shanties that
cascade down the slopes of the fault-line canyons toward the jungled
streams below.
After a two-hour layover on the plane, its on to Costa Rica. The jet
takes off on the nervy, upswale of a runway that launches us into the
morning sky.
What a varied geography is Costa Ricahills and sweeping
coastal beaches, scrumbled mountain ranges, forests, and volcanoes.
The airport in San Jos is chic, clean, and modern. Our taxi creeps
through traffic into San Jos and to our hotel, Hotel Grano de Oro.
3

Grano de Oro refers to coffee, the golden grain that first allowed
Costa Rica to graduate from mere-subsistence agriculture.
We set out immediately, on foot, up to the downtown core and the
Mercado Central. The central market serves up pots and pans, herbal
remedies, T-shirts, snacks, fish, fowl, meat and eggs. We watch a man
buy a skein of pigskins, perhaps to fry crackling crisp for chicharron.
After touring the market, we headed over to the Teatro Nacional,
which was built in the 1890s from pieces brought over from Italy.
The difficulty of this did not begin to strike me until we crossed the
mountains to the Caribbean coast the next day.
Dinner that night was on the patio at the hotel, a $50 affair with
dated but tasty continental fare and a bottle of Riesling from Chile.

and house plants truly the size of houses.

We check into our bungalow at the Hotel Cariblue. Dinner is raw
fish cured with lime, local steak, and custard, which tastes of evaporated milk.
That night tropical frogs and insects call in the darkness.

Wednesday, 19 February 2003

Quarter Notes to Half-Speed Time

T
Tuesday, 18 February 2003

To the Afro-Caribbean Coast

traditional Costa Rican breakfast of fruit with Gallo Pinto (rice

and beans) starts our day.
The Interbus: Really Gooda 9-person vanwill take Carrie
and me and two young women from Switzerland out to the Caribbean coast.
The highway to the coast was finished in 1987 and is a feat of
engineering. The soils are loose and volcanic, the road cuts deep and
narrow. At times the highway perches on the knife edge of a precipitous ridge with shear drops and certain death to either side.
Most amazing, for me, in this fog-laced jungle of mountains is the
shear force of life. Plants grow atop plants in such chaotic exuberance that a man on foot would be unable to find the ground. Here and
there we see revealed waterfalls, impatiens, an odd orchid, tree ferns,

oday we lunched in Puerto Viejo at Restaurant EZ Times, which

is run by a young and easy couple from Holland. J.J. Cale Live
plays as we lunch on the rough-sawn, mahogany veranda. Hold on,
got to hold on, if nothin is real . . . .
We had spent the morning on the black sand beach of Playa
Negro, a long palm-lined sweep to the north of town. The village is a
laid-back and frayed-at-the-edges place, a three-block deep old fishing village that is licked on one side by the warm Caribe and backed
up to the jungle. The localswhite, black, and nativeride their
sturdy old bikes with a slow and rhythmic cadence. A fleet of arthritic
dugout fishing boats languishes under the sea holly trees in the sand
above the edge of the water. The shade and the breeze are welcoming
there.
We rented a couple of sturdy one-speed bikes. They have wire
baskets to carry our gear. Aboard our bikes, we explore south along
the coast toward the Panama border.
That night we see a firefly on the screen of the bathroom window.
It is very hot. The humidity presses down. Sleep is difficult. A great
tropical rain falls at 4:30 in the morning. The temperature drops 10
degrees.

 The crabs spend most of their time in the burrows they dig.
They haul sand from their holes clasped in the front,
downhill appendages, which they use to fling it seaward
when they emerge.
The crabs have two cute, dark eyes on stalks. They can see
very well. Their bodies are the color of sand.
If you toss a dark, chubby stick or fruit near their burrow,
they rush to it with great speed.
They dont respond to light-colored objects tosed near their
burrows.
If you put Tabasco sauce around the entrance of their home,
they dont get the joke. They eat the sauce.
Thursday, 20 February 2003

Land Crabs and Mary Poppins

m writing this by the light of a solitary overhead bulb. I am on a

porch with a palm-thatched roof above. Carrie is swinging nearby
in a hammock. Hammocks make their own breeze. I have none. There
is sweat on my forehead. A host of frogs and insects play a tropical
symphonythe sort of thing you would pay for at home to induce
sleep.
Yesterday we rode our barely trusty bikes south. Their tires thirst
for air, and we are forced to stop and beg for air pumps. We eventually
nurse the bikes to the beautiful beach Punta Uva.
The wild palms, figs, and sea apple push right over the edge of the
beach. Plenty of shade here. Plenty wild, too. There are mountains of
washed up coconuts.
Carrie immediately swims and explores. Me, Mr. White Guy, hangs
out under a palm to study land crabs. A few hours of observation nets
these conclusions:
6

Later we ride our bikes a couple of miles to dinner at a restaurant,

La Pecora Nera, run by an escapist from Tuscany. Italy is not weeping
over the loss.
A great downpour unleashes. We have purchased cheap flashlights, which we attempt to affix to our bicycle baskets. We both have
little fold-up umbrellas. And so, like two Mary Poppins on bikes, we
ride in the dark deluge. Carries umbrella soon soaks through. She
rides on without protection. My pants, backpack, and this notebook
are waterlogged when we reach the hotel. (Thats why Im writing this
with an old pencilink runs.)
We dry off and have an Amaretto in the bar. The bar girl flirts and
pouts, dreaming of adventure in a far-off city. The chef comes to teach
us to play Dominoshis way.

descend from the trees to beg. Dont feed them, says the guide.
Carrie lays out her beach towl and moves about for a good picture. A
monkey scampers across a tree limb, sets himself right over her towel,
and delivers a big, brown gift dead center on the towel. Welcome,
monkeys.
Our guide spies a three-toed slough upside, hooked upside down
from a branch. I am reminded of a little poem fragment, which I tell a
to German walking with us. It is from Theodore Roethke:
Friday, 21 February 2003
Puerto Viejo

The Usual Monkey Business

fter a breakfast of fruit, toast, and scrambled eggs, we take a local

taxi north to the little, wild-west town of Cahuita. This is a rustic
haven for Rastamans, hippies, and escapees from Europe and North
America.
The goal is to do a little fish sight-seeing today.
The embarcadero, if you could call it that, is down a jungle beach
trail. Our take off point is a sandy scallop under overhanging trees.
The small boats are on land and the guides put them seaward on log
rollers.
The 20-horsepower outboard motor propels us through calm
swells toward the Cahuita National Park. We drop anchor in a couple
of spots where waves break on offshore coral reefs. Under water the
visibility is not great, but it is fun. We play with a fast-moving, lithe
sea star and see a large sea fan, plus the typical assortment of fish.
The most fun is landing on the sandy point of the park. Monkeys
8

The Sloth
In moving slow,
He has no peer,
You ask him something
In his ear,
He thinks about it
For a year.
Well, at least the woman thought
it was funny.

h, almost forgot to mention

Miss Ediths. We had lunch at
her open-air restaurant in Cahuita. Carrie had a whole fish, which
was moist and flaky. I had a piece
of smoked chicken in a light curry
sauce. Miss Edith is a geniusthe
best food yet.

For the record, here is the actual poem,

minus my faulty memory:

The Sloth

The sloth is a sloth

and moving slow
he has no fear,
you ask him something in his ear
he thinks about it for a year
And then before he says a word
there upside down
unlike a bird
he will assume you will have heard
A most exasperating lug
but should you call his manner
smug
hell sigh,
and give his branch a hug
then off again to sleep he goes
still swaying gently by his toes
and you just know
he knows, he knows.

TWO

Saturday, 22 February 2003

Assent to a Lost World

e were picked up at 10 in the morning by Eric, our Interbus

chauffeur for the day. Its just us for the first 2 hours. Carrie rides shotgun as Eric avoids washouts, potholes, bikes, people,
animals, and on-coming trucks on the wrong side of the road. With
so much to avoid, no one drives only on his or her side of the road.
Every couple of kilometers there is a shrine to Roger or Jos or
Maria-Theresa, all casualties of the road.
An hour west of Limn and the Caribbean, we rendezvous with
two other Interbuses. We lunch quickly and are off again. This time
we are joined by a couple from British Columbia as well as from Italy.
As odd man out, I now find myself in the last row. Theres way more
bouncing back there, so I suck down a Dramamine stashed in my day
pack.
We travel through palm and plantain plantations, yucca fields, and
plains of cattle, the thin, white Brahmas of the low tropics giving way

10

to the black and white Holsteins of the elevations.

The Italian man in front of me is looking a bit queasy. He fumbles
about and finally opens up the jump seat next to him, slides over so
hes on two seats, grabs the roof handle and says, Now I go coach-e!
We laugh.
While passing a fruit stand he calls out Mango! and presses
his nose to the glass. The Interbus does a U-turn to the fruit. He is
thrilled to stock up.
In La Fortuna, five-and-a-half hours later, we part ways at different hotels. Mt Arenal is shrouded in high clouds. Our cabin, Number
32 at Hotel Montaa de Fuego, has an unobstructed vista of the
purple and gray cone, which rises a mile above sea level. Tongues of
vegetation creep up the volcanic flanks in those spots where recent
eruptions havent rolled down. Arenal had been dormant for centuries, but awakened in July 1968 to destroy the village of Tabocn,
where today there are thermal spas for tourists. Mt. Arenal is now
the most-active volcano in the world. We hear grumbles and rumbles
from it before darkness falls.
We do dinner at the Lava Rocks in town, buy a few supplies, and
are then off to bed.
At 3 a.m. Carrie awakens. Oh, what a magical sight! Like the best
Hollywood special effects, Mt. Arenal is faintly lit by a half moon in a
cloudless night. Unfamiliar constellations blaze behind, and a silent,
white plume rises from the summit. The top of the mountain glows
red. We watch outside for 20 minutes. We are in a lost world.

11

Sunday, 23 February 2003

take the trail behind the hotel down to the river. Much of the path is
hewn from the very steep, sometimes muddy, jungle hill. It is so steep
that there are thick ropes to hold on to and you can almost reach out
to the forest canopy. Howler monkeys boom out from below. In the
stillness of the forest, between roots and vines, we saw a coati, a tropical relative of the raccoon.
The clean T-shirt I had pulled on before the hike was heavy, laden
with sweat when I got back. It was necessary to plung into a cold
shower.
Oh, what a terrific display we had that night from Mr. Arenal.

Rafting the Rio Peas Blancas

s I write this now, the weather is clear right up to the top of Mt.
Arenal. At 5:45 p.m., it is sunset in the interior of Costa Rica. A
few clouds to the north of the volcano are smudged dark beneath and
are painted by a talented colorist in peach and tangerine at the edges.
Mt. Arenal has just erupted, rolling huge red-hot boulders down
his western flank. Tails of smoke and steam writhe off of the hot rock
showers. Another noisy blast, a really big one, sends burning rock all
the way to the jungle fringe.
Anyway, this morning we spent 3 hours in a raft drifting the Rio
Peas Blancas. We spied howler monkeys, the rare two-toed sloth
(sleeping in a tree), toucans, flickers, warblers, herons and egrets.
Our guide pulled ashore and captured a poison-arrow froga
tiny fellow about the size of an American nickel. The little frog was a
gorgeous scarlet-orange with blue jean hind legs.
We had fresh mango and machete-cut pineapple for lunch. Carrie
swam in the river, as did the two small children of a nice couple we
met from France. Luis, a former Venezuelan who now lives in Ottawa, was our other companion in the raft.
Before I started writing this today, Carrie and I had decided to
12

Monday, 24 February 2003

In the Cloud Forests of Monteverde

e leave Arenal and head north around the flank of the volcano.
The highway is swathed in yards of blooming impatiens.
At the clear, deep waters of Lake Arenal, winter home of the white
egret, we load our gear into a boat. It is a 30-minute crossing that
saves us 2 hours of driving. A van picks us up and we begin the assent
into the highlands, the central Cordillera de Tilarn. Here we are in
cattle country, steep hills of emerald grass fenced by living fences
porrolobbed off trees with barbwire stretched between. For an
hour-and-a-half, the van churns uphill, usually in first gear on this
unpaved, rutted road. Coffee grows on the steep western slopes. At the
summit, signs and people appear to announce Santa Elena. The town
sports a number of familiar faces including the couple from Italy.
Our hotel, Montaga de Monteverde, is a bit down the road from the
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plaza.
After a quick check in, we book a 1 Oclock Selvatura canopy
walk. Our guide, Juan Carlos and his young daughter, Daniella, take
us on trails and high suspension bridges through the primary cloud
rain forest, which tops the mountains above Santa Elena. There is
an amazing amount to learnplants grow on plants, tiny life forms
swarm on the gigantic ones. Everyone is hoping to see the elusive and
rare Quetzal, whose feathers once emblazoned Aztec and Mayan royal
headdresses. We spy a toucan and various hummingbird species. We
stop at a huge fig tree to swing, Tarzan-like, from vines. Toward the
end of the three-hour walk, it is evident that we probably wont see
a Quetzal today. So much of their habitat has been deforested that
some scientists think they will go extinct within the next 20 years.
Then we come across a woman looking up through here binoculars. A
Quetzal! But it is so high and elusive I cant locate it with my binoculars. I can only find the odd red leaf. But Carrie sees it, and it is large
and colorful, I am told.
Back in Santa Elena we wander around. Suddenly theres Sara,
Sara Pendergraft from The Herbfarm who has been in Costa Rica
since December.
Hi, Guys. There you are!
We all retire to Morphos Restaurant for a tasty dinner. We swap
stories and she is game to join us for a nighttime jungle walk at the
Monteverde Reserve. We all switch from shorts to long pants, and
pack up hats, raincoats, and flashlights.
A Jeep taxi takes us up into the jungle around 7 p.m.just in time
to see a coati crossing the road.
Our guide will lead four of us into the blackness of the nighttime
jungle. It is misting. Our other companion is from Washington, D.C.
He is Andy Goldman, who operates a relief agency for schoolchildren
in Ethiopia. The children who do well get to put on circuses that teach
14

about health and AIDS to three- to five-thousand people at a time.

Anyway, we meet the Clicker Beetle, which can completely change
direction by doing back flips complete with a sharp click. Even more
amazing to me are the two spots on his back that glow powerfully like
red, electric diode eyes. Holy smokes. It looks like a toy, but this thing
is alive!
The jungle is atypically quiet that night, out guide tells us. Big
mammals elude us, but we come across a number of birds sleeping on
branches, heads tucked under wing. Cute. Our flashlights and hushed
talk doesnt stir them. Various teensy frogs, which hide by day, perch
docilely on damp leaves at night. We watch a snake work his 30-inch
length up a fern, then cross arboreally on twigs and branches in
search of off-guard frogs or lizards.
A golf-ball-sized orange and black tarantula watches from her
burrow. Bats flitter about. If you turn off the flashlights, in places
there are bioluminescent plants, flirting fireflies, and furtive glows
moving through the leaves and undergrowth.
We return to our hotel around 10:30, spread out damp jackets and
hats to dry, slurp down a beer, and turn out the lights on another day
in this varied land.

15

Tuesday, 25 February 2003

The Most-Beautiful Bird in the World

ur naturalists boot camp continues as we fall out of bed at 6

a.m. Not wanting to miss anything, we are signed up for a 7
a.m. nature tour in Monteverde, the same national park we saw at
the length of a flashlight beam last night.
Ian, our guide today, will turn out to be the best yet. Balding,
black, and a bit paunchy, he is a scientific encyclopedia, fluent in
floral taxonomy, fauna species, and English. He was originally from
Belize, the former British Honduras.
Ian sees with his ears, picking up faint chirps, warbles and
thwangs, which he uses to visually hone in on the vocalizer. Ian is
also a marvelous mimic and he can call out to elicit replies from
birds. He slings a big spotting scope on tripod over his shoulder. Serious birders sport Big Glassall the better to amplify the filtered
jungle light.
We learn about all sorts of food and medicinal plantsand just
as quickly forget 80% of it. There are lots of birds to see, thanks to
Ian. We see a sleeping owl; then a sleeping sloth.
Ian becomes animated as we stand under a huge and spreading
wild avocado tree. The fruits are almost all seed, light green in color,
and two to three inches long. It might take a hundred or so of these
wild guys to make a bowl of guacamole.
Anyway, a seed has just fallen near us. Ian tells us, Theres a
Quetzal here! Only the Quetzal throws away the seed.
All eyes turn skyward. We squint, stare, pan and scan with binoculars. There, there, there! Ian whispers hoarsely. He quickly sets
16

his spotting scope to the spot. We peer. A partial view of a distant bird
occluded by leaves. We play this cat and mouse, man and bird game
for 15 or so minutes. Ian calls out in bird speak. The bird keeps moving, branch to branch, tree to tree.
Finally, there is nothing to see. The Quetzal eludes us again.
We walk down the trail, single file, Ian out in the lead, followed
by Carrie and Sara, myself, and Suzie and Lisa, both from Kodiak,
Alaska. Ian is maybe 75 feet ahead in the quest.
Sara stops on the trail in front of me, looks right, and then sticks
her arm straight out. Whats that? she asks. We all look. Theres a
startled suck of air as we all hiss at once, A Quetzal!
Yes, its a big, resplendent maleand, impossibly, only 50 feet
away with not a leaf or branch between. The magnificence of his vermilion breast sets against the metallic turquoise body and neck, dark
blue head and yellow beak. It is of wonder. With our binoculars we
can even see the black bars against white on the underside of his tail.
Without words, without a question, we all instinctively know that this
will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
That night, our Gang of Three goes to Restaurant El Sapo Dorado,
The Golden Toad. Dinner is good. Carrie has sea bass with heart of
palm sauce. I have cow tongue with its own jus, and Sara delights in
homemade ravioli. We exchange napkin folding techniques with the
staff and they treat us to glasses of Costa Rican coffee liqueur.
We walk down the long dark road from the restaurant, star gazing
as we go. The fresh mountain air is brisk.
In Santa Elena you can still purchase a postcard of El Sapo Dorado, the golden toad of Monteverde. I probably should have. It has
now been some years since the last golden toad was seen. The golden
toad is probably extinct. One of these days the last postcard will be
rung up at a cash register and the last golden toad, too, will leave
town on a tourist bus.
17

Wednesday, 26 February 2003

Another Ocean

e could have spent another day, I suppose, in the cloud forests.

There are snakes to be studied at a serpentarium, a butterfly
park, and several canopy tours outside of Santa Elena, where one can,
equipped with gloves and clipped to a pulley, fly through the tree tops
on taut cables.
However, out Interbus van is at our hotel at 8:15. The folks from
Barcelona are on board as well as Francesco and Sonia from Tuscany.
And, there is Sara, too.
Our drivers wife and two-year-old son are up front.
Though it is not a large countrywe could see the Pacific from
our hotel in Monteverdeit is a diverse and often rugged place.
The roads are notorious, and we descend from the mountains on a
winding track, whirring downhill in first gear. It takes an hour and a
half to cover the first 15 miles. A cheer and collective applause erupts
when we finally link up to a paved road.
Except for the occasional one-lane bridge, the road south runs flat
and true. We pull off at a river bridge below Puntarena and join others watching two-dozen big crocs sun below. A man throws a chicken
from the bridge. The water boils.
Sara says Adios at Jaco. Carrie and I are the last ones off at
Manuel Antonio, the end of the road on this part of the Pacific Coast.

18

Thursday, 27 February 2003

On the Pacifics Edge

must admit, my first impressions of this place are not positive.

Within 30 minutes of our arrival, I have been relieved of $45 for
a safe deposit key, beach towels, and the right to occupy a chair on a
beach that looks like Coney Island gone tropical.
However, this beach is the frontier, the end of the road. To enter
Manuel Antonio National Park, you must do so on foot. The hike in
and the $6 entry fee quickly leaves the see-and-be-seen surf culture
behind as you enter a world where the jungle meets the sea. The interior trails of the park cut inland through the forests, and the air there
is still, hot, and humid. I drank a liter of water on the inland trails. My
trusty black T-shirt dries white salt stains.
On our first day in the park we witnessed what I believe is rarely
seen. We came across a mother and baby three-toed sloth in a tree,
which was fun and interesting, but no longer novel at this point.
(They do have irresistible little grins perpetually sewn to their faces.)
However, at the base of another small tree was a little yearling
sloth. The sloth is odd in that it spends its entire life in the trees, coming to earth for a few minutes each week to relieve itself. Strange that
this cant be accomplished from the safety of the arbor canopy, but it
did afford us a close up view of one little sloths intimate moment.
We were also lucky the first day to observe a group of rare and
endangered squirrel monkeys as they frisked and scampered about.
19

20

One of the reddish little fellows had a bum right paw, which meant he
was always last when it came to shinnying down a pole or scampering
on three legs across the ground.
Once again the big howler monkeys more or less eluded us. We
would only occasionally see them high in trees, usually draped over a
branch, asleep, limbs dangling down.
The white-faced or Capucian monkey is another story. At our
favorite little beach, Playas Gemelas (The Twins), a troupe of these
critters would regularly come dropping down from the overhanging
avocado trees and try to pilfer stuff from our day packs. It was my job
to fight back the alpha males, who sport nasty canines.
For several hours at this beach, I had lain under the avocado tree
reading The Mystery of Capital by the Peruvian Nobel-prize-winning economist Hernando de Soto. A large 30-inch iguana and I had
come to some sort of understanding. He wouldnt try to get inside of
my back pack and I would toss him an occasional piece of pineapple
or papaya when Carrie wasnt looking. These vegetarian proclivities
helped assure me of the good intentions of the gentle fellow.
All morning I had been hoping to see one of the big, colorful
bright orange and blue land crabs that live in beach and inland burrows in this park. It was now high tide and as sweeping waves licked
closer to my reading spot on a towel, the big iguana moved up just six
feet away and dropped down on his belly as if to take his siesta.
Shortly thereafter, a particularly energetic wave flicked to the high
point of the day, thereby sloshing into a land crab burrow. Surprisingly, a bright 4-inch crab popped out of the hole and started to walk up
toward the jungles edge. I pointed it out to Carrie. I was just developing nascent thoughts of finding my camera, when the big iguana rose
up and in a blur had the crab in his mouth. It raised its head and with
a sucking gulp, got a better grip, then turned and trudged up from the
shore where he ate the whole crab in a 10-minute period.
As I write this, it now a sunny, late afternoon under leaning figs
on Playa Manuel Antonio. A scattering of brown leaves dapple the

white tan of the crescent of beach sand. To the left is a wave-washed

point of dark, igneous rock, all capped with trees of several jungle
greens. To the right are the ruddy cliffs of Cathedral Point. A nice
breeze flows off of the aqua and berylesque water. The wind waves a
turquoise towel, hung to dry on the leaning palm
We saw a group of coati mundis (another tropical relative of the
raccoon) in the woods on the way here. Only a few human heads bob
in the water now. My towel will be dry soon and we will pack up, put
on our sandals, and leave. In my twenties, I would most certainly have
thought that, as beautiful as this is, I shall someday return.
But with still so much of the world to explore, it is almost certain
that this is my last moment here.
The towel is dry. Time to put on the sandals.

Saturday and Sunday

Pacific Jungles to the Nicoya Peninsula

e stood at the forward rail, our noses pressed gratefully to the

wind, as our ferry crossed the shimmering Gulf of Nicoya. The
hour-and-ten-minute crossing was time enough to dry the accumulated sweat and humidity from our shirts and hair.
By bus and taxi we had reached the old banana port of Puntarenas, on the mainland, around noon. Like a Central American version
of Marseilles, Puntarenas is tired and tattered at its edges. It is not the
sort of place to have a drink on a wharf late at night. But we split a
large chicken leg, rice, and fried plantain in a steamy little luncheonette in Puntarenas. And now we approached Paquera on the other
side of the Gulf.
The Nicoyan Peninsula is drier than the mainland and some of the
trees are deciduous or semi-deciduous. The effect from the distance

21

approaching land is as if the artist had dabbed a brush full of tan

across the forested hills.
Closer up, the jungle reappears, and this sparsely populated land
of folded hills and near endless beaches has its own compelling
charm.
We have a car now. Or more accurately, a cute, white four-wheeldrive vehicle whose daily insurance rate is more than you could rent a
car for in the States. We used our new mobility one day to explore the
southern tip of the peninsula, from Cape Blanco and Malpaise north
to Playa Manzanilla. The wild and beautiful beaches form a linked
chain of crescents that sweep past headland after headland for miles
to the northwest. The geography here appears to have formed in the
past when lava from the interior flowed down eroded riverbeds. Over
geologic time the soft, sedimentary soil between the flows eroded
into lovely beaches. The dark lava now reaches seaward almost like
man-made jetties, protecting and creating the sandy beaches as well
as affording habitat for fish.
During our travels here so far in Costa Rica, we have visited some
of the major natural attractions of the country. It was surprised to
find that most of the tourists we have met have been EuropeanGerman, Swiss, Italian, Spanish, French, and English. American gringos
have been the minority.
But now, here on the Nicoya, we have left the European trail. I
have begun to fret that we may spend the rest of our time in a Disneyesque American enclave. My worst fears seemed to be playing out
when on the first night at dinner. A big, beefy guy at the table behind
us showed up wearing a T-shirt boldly proclaiming U.S. Marine
Corps, Camp Lejune, NC. Talk about insensitivity in a country that
abolished their standing military in 1948, I thought. The next morning the guy had lost his Marine Corps shirt. I noticed he was speaking German to his companion. A German with bad taste? Or just an
ironic sense of humor?
22

Playa de Los Artisans: Nicola and Daniella, proprietresses

Monday Dinner in Montezuma

astiche: a thatched-shed bar with one corner attached to a coconut palm. Green lights in tubes under the counter. Open flame tapers and candles in paper lanterns. Eclectic tables, many two to three
foot rounds of tropical trees. Plates various and artistic; carved wood
platters; rustic ceramics. Most tables under trees. Some have chairs,
others have carved trees or benches for chairs. Some are low and Zen
like. A few are in a low building. This is Santa Barbara, Eden, cannabis
convivium, and tropical dream all in one.
In the distance there come the sounds of the howler monkeys, a
synthesis of dog howl, primal moans, and the last lonely freight train
taking a loved one away in the night. This pierces deep, at the back
of my consciousness. Wave laps, glint of distant ship lights as a ferry
plies south.
We ordered:
Avocado Split in Half with Cherry Tomatoes and a Vinaigrette
Tomato Slices with Fish Eggs (salt-cured and pressed skeins of fish
eggs, sliced thick with 6 fans of tomato)
Grouper
Beef Muscle with Vinegar (it really is a whole muscle, intact from
end to end)
23

THREE

Vague Days and Loss of Time

On the Morning Tide

wice we have crossed Bahai Ballena (Whale Bay) from the tiny
fishing village of Tambor, out at full throttle in our open boat on
the morning swells, around the headland called Crocodile Point, and
north to Tortuga Island.
Tortuga is an uninhabited double island connected by a shallow
stretch of water over which the current runs strong but passably at
high tide. To snorkel off of Tortuga is to enter a tropical fish tank
without walls. Sea life is abundant, with fish of all size and hue, as
well as starfish, urchins, snails, eels and other bathetic critters. Rays
leap from the water (we watched one feed on a sandy bottom) and
the local guides pry loose abalone, oysters and scallops to supplement
lunch on shore.
Ashore one afternoon we met a little wild pig, a peccary of about
six months, whose mother had abandoned him, probably due to his
weak and gimpy hind legs, which wobbled and crossed over as he
walked. The little fellow was about the size of a small terrier dog,
though distinctly flat in cross section, the better I suppose for slip-

24

ping through the bush. Did I detect a smile of sorts as I rubbed and
scratched his little back, covered as it was with coarse guard hairs?
His little white belly was plumped out from generous handouts of
fruit and coconuts.
Pedro, a gregarious scarlet macaw, also makes his home on Tortuga Island. This fancy fellow also enjoys his share of the fresh coconut.
One afternoon, Walter, a local guide with a sweet French accent,
demonstrated how to open a coconut without modern tools. I put
this down here as a service to those marooned in the tropics without
tools.

How to open a coconut without man-made tools

1 Select a nice, heavy coconut. The outer husk should be yellow or brown,
not green.
2 Find a one or two pound rock and pound the coconut husk vigorously
with the sharpest edge of the rock. Smash a line lengthwise around the
coconut hull.
3 Prie loose a small piece of the hull. Hold the loose piece firmly in your
teeth (for Gods sake, dont tell this story to your dentist!), and tug and rip
until the outer fiber tears. Keep in mind that the fibers run the length of the
husk. Continue with the rock and your teeth until the coconut if free of the
outer husk (Walter did this really fast!).
4 Using the same rock, tap a five-inch circle around the upper North Pole
of the coconut. Continue with the rock until the top comes off of the coconut, much like tapping a soft-boiled egg with a knife to open the egg (Walter
did this really fast!)
5 Drink the fresh coconut milk (Walter shared).
6 Crack the coconut in half and cut out the sweet, white meat (this is why
the baby pig is so plump).

25

Vague Days and Loss of Time

Walking on Water

his morning we hiked from our hotel to a waterfall that drops

directly into the sea. Though it was only 9 a.m., the inland path
was already as hot as Eastern Washington in the full heat of summer.
The hotel literature claims that this is but one of seven waterfalls in
the world to fall straight into the seaperhaps an unnecessary exaggeration (or have I really seen half of them in the world?). The calm
stream above the falls harbors dark pollywogs and schooling fry. The
forty-foot falls pools below and we swam in the cool water with the
bright, silver flashes of fish about us.
All day long, platoons of pelicans patrol these coastal waters, as
must have leathery flying dinosaurs before them. The sun and surf
are constant and the on-shore breeze soothes. It is as easy here to
spend an afternoon on an uninhabited beach as it is to find a Costa
Rican who has ever left the country.
Chema, our sea-faring guide, hopes to one day take his daughter and son to Disney World. On the day he told us this, we took the
boat ashore at Curu, an isolated plantation and nature preserve. In a
couple of hours ashore, we saw wild howler and white-faced monkeys, as well as the rare spider monkey. One, a female with a cute and
tiny baby, hung by one arm and ate fruit in a small tree while I took
her picture. Coatis scampered about, wrens and parakeets joined the
kingfishers and macaws. We even saw the Iguana Jesu Christo, the
Jesus Christ Lizard, walk on water.
At dusk last night we drove down to the artistically excreted
town of Montezuma, where surfer culture amalgams seamlessly with
an international, tropical bohemian lan. On a deserted stretch of

26

road above town, we surprised a paca, a giant, oversized relative of

the guinea pig. He was browsing a field with carob and kapok trees.
His slow speed shifted into a hop and rabbit-burst of speed when I
showed him the high beams of the car.
For the second evening in a row, we had driven on rutted, dusty
roads for a half hour from our hotel to Montezuma for dinner. As
noted before, Playa de los Artistas is the fantasy of two women, Nicola
and Daniela, and each night this dreamy restaurant is reborn as dusk
settles on the beach front and paper lanternsred, orange, yellow,
green, purple and blueare lit by candles. About half of the restaurant is under a palm-thatched palapa, the other seating is free form
under trees along the beach, with polished cross sections of the large
hardwood trees making the table tops. Some tables are high, some are
low with benches or even lower with Zen-like mats.
All of this would be reason enough to be taken in by the place, but
the food too is rare and remarkable. One night we enjoyed fish eggs
with tomato. Skeins of eggs from a small fish had been salted whole
and pressed. When cured they were sliced across, forming pieces
about the size and shape of a single daisy petal. A half dozen of these
were radially fanned atop each slice of tomato. The flavor of the eggs
is not unlike that of anchovy. It is delicious with the fruity tomato
splashed with herb oil and touched with raw, minced garlic.
A braised beef foreleg muscle was juicy and meltingly tender with
its own juice and vinegar. A novel appetizer was Fish Ribs, where the
belly meat and one side of a large fish is sliced nearly to the backbone
and cooked. When 6 or 7 of these are flared and twisted, the dish
looks something like a squid or octopus.

27

 Friday, March Something

Despite our focus on nature and wild life, a visitor to Costa Rica can still make significant sightings of hominids, too. Gaggles of lithe, doe-eyed creatures are usually found
near packs of bronzed Homo pecti. Both seem to favor beaches fronted by tables
laden with groaning deposits of pukka shells and other native trade items. After sunset they migrate inland, clustering in habitat posted with the 2x1 Cocktail signs. It
has been reported that some of the females of the species can be attracted with certain
vocalizations in this sweltering land, especially those that sound like air conditioning and hot showers. Other sources are less sanguine, noting the call effective only
when uttered by Homo pectus in combination with the 2x1 sign.

think it is Thursday, March 6. Ive lost track of the time here. Im

writing in the comfort of a white hammock strung between two
trees on the beach at Playa Tamarindo, a hundred-and-some miles
north of our previous outpost at Hotel Tango Mar on the southern
Nicoya Peninsula.
It took six hours to drive here, the first 60 miles on snaking dirt
roads, which included fording six rivers without bridges.
It is near sunset now. A few minutes ago, a troop of twelve dark
howler monkeys passed directly over me, heading south in the tree
tops. In the surf, local fishermen cast their lines, joining the pelicans
that fish just at the surf break.
This is a huge, white crescent of a beach, which links Playa Grande
to the north, home of nesting leather back turtles. A fleet of small
fishing boats lies at anchor in the bay. A sailng boat nears the distant,
purple headland.
Most of the development on this coast is still sparse and fairly
small in scale. I wonder, Is this what Hawaii was like in the 1930s and
1940s?
At sunset tonight, the ocean is wet slate, the sky the inside of an
abalone shell.
28

A Fossil for Eve

ouve got to give this place credit. Just when youve about thought
youd seen it all, yet another wonder is thrown your way. Im
beginning to think that the beauty of Costa Rica is inexhaustible.
This morning we are on Playa Conchal, 20 or 25 kilometers north
of Tamarindo. A few hundred million shells have conspired to create
an idyllic beach here, rife with all of the clichs of the perfect tropical
retreat.
The beach in the active tidal zone as well as the escarpment 300-feet
up in the trees, are bands of pure shells. The beach in between is also
shell, worn to its own version of sand.
The color of the water is perfect. A squeeze of titanium white
makes the bright surf curl. On the horizon, daub in ultramarine blue.
Put a lucid sea green just behind the white and with a big old brush
feather the colors together. Headlands and islands left and right. A
few distant sea mounts. A cloudless sky with pelicans. Picture complete.
Just as the waves here curl ashore on shells, so too does time seem to
fold upon itself on these beaches.
When Chemas skiff skittered us on the sea from Tambor to Isla
Tortuga, we saw sea cliffs, which were clearly the old sea bed, folded
and uplifted to shape the present shore. Similarly, on our return from
the waterfall that drops to the waves, we elected an unmarked return
route that sent us climbing and traversing a sea-licked headland,
which, newly crumbled in places, revealed a coarse sandstone embedded with clam shells. I worked one of them loose and fingered it. It
looked no different than those on the beach 50-feet below.
With a fling to the sun, I sent it seaward again, ready to make the
hundred-thousand-year journey the second time around.
29

FOUR

Saturday and Sunday

On the Molasses Road

erhaps it is a sign that we have been here long enough. Yesterday

we took advantage of the last day of our Jeep to leave the beach
and strike inland. I say this because normally the end of a tropical
trip is when Carrie embarks on M.T.M., my term for Maximum Tan
Management. This is a ritualistic as well as scientific undertaking
involving a half-dozen sunscreen potions, a watch for to-the-second
timing, and dead reckoning (or even a compass) for perfect symmetrical alignment to the basting rays.
As your basic, slow-to-tan (and faster to fade) white guy, I have
finally come to accept and even appreciate the rhythm and cadence of
this pastimea vacation summing up of sorts.
Imagine, then, my surprisewhich I think I managed to gulp
down with near-feigned indifferencewhen Carrie suggested that we
secure a guide and take our little four-wheeler a quarter of the way
across Costa Rica to Palo Verde National Park.
In fact, I wasnt even sure where or what Palo Verde Park was as
we hitched up with our Costa Rican guide, Warren, at 8 oclock on
Saturday morning.
Warrens daddy must have had a sense of humor when he gave
him an English first name. Warren is still working on the w sound,
30

and his English is salted with Ja,Ja,Ja and a sort of buzzing lilt that
would have one thinking that he was Swiss-German had he not told
us that he is a Costa Rican through and through.
We stop in Tamarindo to pick up our airplane tickets to San Jos
on Monday morning. Warren goes into the next-door market to get
bananas for the monkeys. The ticket office lady is also in the market
engaged in her daily tte--tte. Carrie is still next door waiting when
Warren finally eggs the agent into returning to her post.
Tickets and bananas finally in hand, we are on the road, Carrie at
the wheel, Warren calling out left, right and straight ahead. Meanwhile, my surreptitious peek in the miniature Spanish dictionary
reveals that Palo means stick or pole. Of course, we are all going
to Green Stick National Park to marvel at the green sticks. With a
clearing of my throat, I mention the green stick thing to Warren.
Eat ease a kind of tree, he says. You have one next to the sweeming pool at the hotel.
Our little car buzzes jauntily as we wind up into the mountains
and then down to the central plain. Red cinder-cone hills dot this
relatively flat land of cattle, sugar cane, and export melons. It is the
dry season and smoke and fires smudge the distant sky.
Deep in the agricultural countryside the road takes a turn for the
worst. Ruts, rock and dust return. Then, as we approach the pueblo of
Oretega, pavement appears again.
It is from the sugar cane, warren explains. The people here, they
cover the roads with molasses.
Foolishly I ask if insects eat the road? Warren is probably wondering what kind of clients he got fixed up with today.
No, he answers. He notes that nothing has yet evolved to eat the
molasses road. The automobile is still the roads main predator.
We pass under giant mango trees. A one-armed man in yellow
shirt opens a metal gate. Dos, Warren yells out as we drive through.
31

They get $3 a head for letting people on their property, a former

farm that is being allowed to go wild again.
The Rio Caas runs dark and swift here. Who knows what might
be lurking under these roiling, mocha currents, darkened with silt
from sugar cane fields upstream. On the shore of the Rio Caas a
makeshift dock tethers a motor launch. Once on board, our African
Queen casts off and we begin a two-hour patrol of the river shores.
Ibis, wood stork, egret and spoonbills abound. White-faced and
howler sighting become routine.
We sneak up on a big branch along the shore. Tiny, completely
camouflaged bats are affixed to the underside of the limb. I cant see
them until they burst from the bark, flying off in a cloud of wing
beats. Our captain whoops and laughs.
We spy several 2- and 3-foot alligators. The big sighting of the day
is a 3-meter alligator lying up under the brush on the muddy bank.
Warren say, He only eats once every year or two. The energy is stored
in the tail. I wonder if the one-armed man supplied a meal for a year.
Back on land, Warren insists that we see a scarlet macaw. Along
the way to his mystery spot, we learn that mangos only ripen off of
the tree, but that it is okay, too, to eat them green. We spend the better
part of an hour in a forested cow pasture. We hear a macaw, but cant
locate it. The cows all have big horns and eyeballs about seven feet off
of the ground. Luckily I wasnt wearing red and didnt have to execute
a matadors side step. I have not been practicing.
We were all the way to the hotel when I realized Warren had forgotten to point out a palo verde tree. I have looked around the pool in
vain. Nothing looks like a tree I would name a green stick.
I ask the bar tender in my primitive Spanish, Cul es el rbol Palo
Verde? Donde esta un rbol Palo Verde? After consulting with the
kitchen staff, he says, There is no such tree. It is just the name of a
place.
Its a mystery.
32

k
FIVE

Monday, March 10, 2003

The Golden Grain of Costa Rica

ts 9:20 in the morning, and were a mile high in the mountains

somewhere southwest of San Jos. My nose is an inch above a row
of snow-white blossoms, flowers that are perfuming this clean mountain air with their sweet frangipani.
This is coffee in bloom. Or more specifically, Costa Rican
mountain-grown coffee, and only minutes before I had uttered an
unplanned Oh, my God! as Swiss-born coffee-guide-for-the-day,
Markus Schoch, urged the 4-wheet drive Hyundai upward on a
scrawling reach of road crabbed from a mountain cliff. This was no
place to make a mistake.
Our day had begun early, rising at 4:55 with the diurnal creatures
to ride a single engine, 3-blade propeller driven plane from Tamarindo on the Nicoya Peninsula to the capitol of Costa Rica. In less than
an hour, the plane carried us over the familiar mountains, plains and
bodies of water we had come to know in our twenty days of exploring
this diverse country.
Markus Schoch met us at the airport. Tall, trim and lithe at 50, he
has spent the last 25 years working every aspect of the coffee trade
in Costa Rica and Columbia. With twinkling eyes, neat mustache,
and soft sense of humor, he would be a welcome host for the days
33

up-close crash course in the growing and processing of high-grade

coffee.
I couldnt help smelling the blossoms again.
See the bees there, observed Markus. The coffee flower makes
the most wonderful honey. So light and almost clear as water.
In the second week of March, most of the harvest was over for the
year. Now only the highest elevation coffee cherries were left to pick.
Not all coffee cherries ripen at the same time. Some can be red, some
deep purple red, and some greenall packed tightly together in a
half-meter long run along the branch of a tree that looks surprisingly
like a rhododendron.
But now, late in the season, it was a race to pick everything before
the new blossoms erupted.
Back in Markus rig, we growled and ground upward until a bright
red truck blocked the end of the rut. We were surrounded by coffee
trees, six to ten feet tall. The tight forest obscured anything outside
the squeezed parking space. But a JanSport daypack hanging from a
branch, as well as some polypropylene sacks of newly picked cherries,
telegraphed that picking was going on in the area.
In a few moments, Eduardo emerged from the foliage. Eduardos
family has owned this plantation for two generations. His father first
planted these coffee trees 34 years ago. Ideally, coffee trees are pruned
or cut back to the ground every four years. But coffee prices have
been low and Eduardo has let these trees grow too high. Picking is
becoming difficult. He will prune this year, after the harvest, he tells
Markus.
Markus rolls back the top of one of the bags and scoops up a
double handful of cherries.
Excellent, he beams. This is very good for the end of the season.
See how few green cherries there are.
They do look like cherries. Each fruit is about one-half inch long
34

and are shaped like a slightly flattened pie cherry. Ideally they are
dark-red to red-black in color. The color indicates ripeness, and ripeness should translate into rich and robust coffee flavor.
Under the smooth and glistening red skin is a thin layer of pulp
surrounding two seeds, the familiar coffee beans.
Go ahead and taste a ripe cherry, urges Markus. Carrie and I pop
one in our mouths.
Sweet, we say. The white pulp has a green, earthy flavor.
When we squeeze the cherries, the cream-colored beans pop out. They
are coated with a slippery mucous-like layer.
Eduardo and Markus lead us into the dense planting of coffee on this
steep mountainside. We watch a picker, a tall Costa Rican with basket tied
to his waist, strip off the berries. Hes working fast, bending down the trees,
and pulling the clustered cherries off the branches with his bare hands. He
doesnt slow as I try to take his picture. We are told later that pickers are
paid about 90-cents a basket load.
(Here ends the penciled journal of Costa Rica on Tuesday, 11 March 2003.
The rest is assembled from quick notes, though the lists at the end are in the
journal.)

We grind back down the snaking road in the lowest first gear.
Somehow Markus knows which turns to take. We link up with a
rollicking and happy stream that rolls southward to the valley floor.
Here we are shown a modern environmental center with landscaped
grounds, clean and Swiss-like, where they hope to have students come
to stay and study. Theres a big newspaper article on a wall featuring
Miguel Angel Rodriguez Echeverria, el presidente, cutting the ribbon.
The place is lovely--and as empty as a ghost town.
Then we go to a local coffee collection center. These are wooden,
shed-like affairs, each built on a hillside and equipped with a tiny
office. Small trucks pull up bearing coffee farmers, the odd dog or
two, and typically four to six bags of coffee cherries aboard. The men
35

carefully pour the coffee into square bins at the top of the hillside
hopper, drawing a straight wood bar across the top to make the
level fill. The bin is logged, a lever pulled, and the berries tumble
down a chute. They will be taken away in a truck later in the day.
The farmer gets a receipt for each 25-liters of cherries. The dock
manager takes a random sampling of the beans, fills a large glass
beaker to a mark, and then pours the berries in a tray. He pulls
aside the green cherries and puts them back in the tube. Marks
on the side show what percentage is green. This percentage is
deducted from the total brought in. The farmers are paid once a
week.
All of the coffee we saw comes from very high-grown fincas
(farms) in the Tarraz District, south of San Jos. The coffee ripens late on these steep 1200 to 1600 meter (3900-5200 foot) sites.
Much like wine grapes, coffee grown toward the upper end of
its natural range develops more nuance. The clones planted here
are Caturra and Catuai. Because Markuss Palmichael processing
plant is a cooperative, all of the fincas are mixed together to create their export blend.
Coffee processing plants are historically located on streams
or rivers. Water is needed to sort and process the berries. It is a
complicated process involving rivers of cherries, shaking screens,
fermentors, husking drums, more washing, then drying (burning
the husks for the fuel), grading, and bagging. In the old days, not
long ago, the waste pulp was dumped in the river. At Palmichael,
though, they take it next door where millions of worms turn it
into high-quality potting soil.
Markus takes us up and up into the mountains to El Burio,
a large restaurant filled with antiques. It is chilly outside. Safely
tucked indoors with statues and ancient farm tools, we order the
house platters of barbeque meats and other specialties for lunch.
36

Markus says that the restaurant is popular on weekends when

families from San Jos take day trips into this area. We appear to
be the only customers that day, but manage to have a jolly time,
just the same.
After lunch Markus drives us to a most magical finca, Los
Soles. This is an organic, shade-grown coffee plantation. Seor
Enrique Soles is a short and gentle man who graciously shows us
about his familys farm at the side of his son. The red dirt road
wends lazily as we walk in the hauntingly beautiful afternoon
light. His little dog trots at his side as he explains how the interspersed bananas and palms add diversity to his land. They attract
birds. The birds eat insects. And they sing for the farmer in the
field. He leaves the bananas and palm fruit for animal sustenance.
I thought I had seen quality coffee before, but Seor Soles
cherries are dark purple and glisten in this unworldly light. He
tells Markus in Spanish that he could have harvested two weeks
earlier, but that he wants to produce only the best. His wonderful crop will get blended in with the others, but it will raise the
standard of Tarraz coffee, he says. This is a Garden of Eden, a
singular place on earth. We all leave feeling warmed and charmed
by this gentle and wise man and his son.
We ask Markus for a good restaurant recommendation in San
Jos. Do you like Peruvian? he inquires. Gosh, we dont know. Do
they serve Guinea Pig?
So, happily tucked back into Hotel Grano de Oro, we clean
up, take a nap, and then a cab to Restaurant Bohemia. The food
is great. The owner is friendly. The evening sings along over the
colonial hardwood floors, the transomed doors to the courtyard
gardens, the flicker of candles on tables, and the silky swoosh of
the waiters crisp linen.

37

nd so we end our foray to this land. Our plane rises and the
land falls beneath and the deep, deep blue of the ocean runs to
a great volcano and a broad gulf in northern Nicaragua or southern
Honduras. We think of our Mary Poppins ride in the rain, of the magic of Arenals glowing red on a clear and perfect night, of the luminance of night creatures in the jungle of Monteverde, of our audience
with the great Quetzal, of our encounters with monkeys, wild pigs,
land crabs, and iguanas, of days at the beach when time is held back,
of roads paved in sugar, and of the friendly souls we met and who
showed us the beauty of their special place in this world.
A cup of coffee will never be the same.

38

Rons List of Clothing for the Tropics

Ive made this personal list several times before, but here it is again. Of
course, I never believe it when it is once again time to pack for the tropics
and so always take too much. Business travel, upscale resorts, and chic cities
require additional garb.
1. 1 pair wrinkle-free cotton-poly pants, tan, no cuffs (catch sand) and belt.
2. 1 pair fast-drying dress shorts with a zippered pocket for security.
3. 1 pair black Speedo-type swim shorts to wear as underwear or swimming
4. One or two long-sleeve white shirts
5. 1 short-sleeve white shirt
6. 1 black Polo shirt
7. 1 black and one white pocket T-shirt
8. 1 white Polo shirt to wear snorkeling for sun protection
9. 1 pair sandals with secure straps
10. 1 pair black shoes and socks for travel
11. Light black coat for travel
12. Light rain coat that packs small
13. Toilet kit including travelers medicines such as Pepto Bismol, Lomotil,
Aspirin and topical Cortisone. If taking any prescription medications, have
doctor create a generic prescription form to carry in case of loss of luggage.
14. Sunscreen and strong insect repellent
15. Sun hat. Baseball-style hat is best for open boats or wind
16. Sunglasses

39

Recommended Restaurants in Costa Rica

Miss EdithsCauhita
Vella BarManuel Antonio
Playa de los ArtistasMontezuma
Bohemia (Peruvian)San Jos

The Herbfarm
14590 NE 145th Street
Woodinville, Washington 98072
USA
425-485-5300
40

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