DRAFT EXTRA Costa Rica Jungle Train to Limon UofA 1977

Costa Rica   UofA students Summer 1977

Jungle Train to Li~mon, Costa Rica (pronounced Lee-moan)

San Jose, Costa Rica to Limon

Rode the train from San Jose down through the Latin American jungles to Limon on the Caribbean/ Gulf of Mexico coast. It was a real experience!

This rail line was built around 1890, the only train in Costa Rica ot Puerto Limon, originally as a freight line inbound to San Jose and a banana train - United Fruit Company- outbound, back to Limon for shipping coffee and bananas to the US. You want to really understand Latin America?; read the history of the United Fruit Company. also Standard Brands, Smedley Butler... Thank you Marines for somebody w/ guts to finally speak up.

The Costa Rican train stations were a walk back in time.... most masonry block and plaster built some 80+ years ago that hadn't been painted in 40+ years.... probably the original paint. All kinds of vendors doing the Costa Rica hustle of hawking anything from ice cream, to cupos - snowcones -, to fried fish in some newspaper cup with platinos... like greasy fish and chips which were actually good. The fare was about $8.

This was an early stop at Pariso, a small town about 5 miles past Cartago.

I think this actual locomotive and passenger cars were from the modern 1940s. The passenger cars were a ruddy reddish brown color. Inside was coach seating, mostly worn out as there was no money for maintenance in Costa Rica for anything. The small ban~os bathroom was like outhouse grade. the toilet seat was like a hole cut in plywood. The toilet hole was open looking right down onto the railroad bed cross-ties and rails. ... you went to the bathroom on the railroad line; no affluent tanks... nothing that modern.

                                            Susan Patterson from Gadsden.

The train engine was a manual transmission... you could feel the shifting of gears on the train route, up and down the mountain grades. The engine was a stick shift! When the engine would shift, you'd get a jerk forward , a pause for a few seconds, then a big jerk backwards when the engine would begin pulling again. It would shake your teeth. If you were standing in the aisle you were thrown off balance and would almost fall down. It was a jostling ride just on the RR tracks alone; you couldn't set a soft drink can on a seat without it sliding off or turning over. ... then throw in the jerks forward and backward from the engine shifting gears.

There were Ticos - Costa Ricans going back to their respective villages/ homes with supplies and whatever bought in San Jose. Some of those items were live chickens - with their feet tied together and held like luggage. When the train would shift or hit a bump, the chickens would sqwak a couple of times and then settle down. One Tico guy had a small piglet that would grunt on the bumps. It was 3rd world rail transportation.

This is how you bought chicken for dinner... live... out of the back of a farmer/ ranchers truck. ... and they carried them home on the buses.  ... You 'd be sitting right next to a Tico with a live chicken.

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We left San Jose in the morning and went about 20mph until out of the city. You saw the affluent parts of San Jose, and the slums. Then picked up speed to about 35 going into the country. You haven't seen green like this.  There were farms and ranches carved out of the thick growth, many coffee plantations and processing coffee beans for export.

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From the train overlooking a coffee processing business. After picking coffee, the  beans were soaked in water vats to swell up and separate the husk from the coffee bean.  The terraces below the red building were concrete slabs for spreading out and drying coffee beans in the sun. The beans would dry for a day then the campesinos - peasant workers (this is 3rd world Latin America; you either own the plantation,... or work on it. No middle class) - would rake and turn the beans over for drying. ... A few days to dry completely so they wouldn't rot from moisture.

Coffee is very labor intensive and the campesinos are paid a pittance of wages. ie... a couple dollars a day. The GDP per capita income in 1977 was  C= Colon 12,158. at a conversion rate of 8.54 to 1 US Dollar   , or US Dollars =  $1,423.69.  That means a couple thousand wealthy land owning families and 4 million peasants making a couple dollars a day.

There were a few stops at small remote train stations. Very isolated and run down. They had been built 80+ years ago with the coffee and banana trade growth at the turn of the century. There was trash all over the place. No garbage service. everybody just burned trash, most just discarded trash anywhere. You have to have a certain mentality to travel in Latin America and accept things as they are.

Note here... The Costa Rican Ticos were not trashy people; they were proud, dignified people in a 3rd world rural country that didn't have refuse/ garbage pick up. Many of the local remote villages didn't have electric service... this is the 3rd world Latin America. The Ticos lived and survived as they could,... most as campasinos working for the local coffee or banana plantations.

On down into the deep jungle of Costa Rica there were few stops/ villages. Went through a few banana plantations and a palm oil/ palm tree grove but mostly hot, humid, sweltering heat. Open windows on the train were good to feel the breeze as you viewed the Latin American country, mostly jungle, but often some vistas of beautiful valleys . Some mountains back closer to San Jose. The overlooks of Costa Rican countryside were absolutely beautiful! Some industrial hydroelectric plants in valleys.

At one of the stops there was a Tica lady with a tray selling fried fish. They looked about the size of bream fish. Out of the window of the stopped train, beside the tracks, i warned her of the oncoming side rail switching flatbed car and she hung close to our car , while the switching cars passed by ... about 3 to 4 feet clearance between rails. Selling these fried fish was her sustenance... what money she would make that day for a living. This was my education/ universality to the 3rd world Latin America of how people struggle to make a living with what they have. This Tica Lady, campasina, had a lot of dignity... to do what she could for her family. I have never forgotten her!

While stopped at a village, while waiting.... This lady campasina came alongside the passenger cars talking to people at the windows. The flatbed train car on the right was moving toward this lady as she was standing on the siding tracks, talking to me about buying some of her fried fish. She didn't know the flatcar was coming toward her and would have been run over had I not motioned for her to step close to our stopped car. Above her in the picture is a person holding a tray also selling/ hawking something for sale.

This child was selling some fresh fruit probably picked an hour before. Fresh fruit in Costa Rica was knock you down fresh, ... the way real fruit is supposed to taste. Most fruit shipped to the US is picked green and ripens over the next month until it's on US supermarket shelves. I'd buy whole fresh pineapples for 1 Colon = 8.54 cents and cut with a knife and eat; absolutely wonderful taste! Most children worked to help their family.

This ride took about 5+ hours. Some 120 miles on the map, maybe 50 miles more going up and down the mountain passes. This train ride took a step back in time to see Latin America as it probably had not advanced/ progressed in a hundred years. You either owned the plantation, or you worked on it as a campesino/ peasant. And Costa Rica is the most progressive of all the Latin American countries. Maybe Panama is more modern from the money from the canal.

The train station at Limon... I walked around and took a few pix of the port and a few streets,.. of the waterfront promenade ... in an hour, we got a taxi/ bus ride to Cahuita... about 15 miles south on dirt roads in sweltering heat

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I don't think there was much of an electric building code...observed this very common unsafe wiring for 4 homes in shantytown. At least they had electricity.

Also see the Cahuita post of where we were going. It gets better... a real 'sperience!