Fear and loathing in La Sierra

It brings up images of the worst sort of travel-related colonialism. Two affluent travellers sitting at a picnic table laid with fine linen & candlesticks as the sun sets over the Serengeti, with Masai in full traditional garb performing a warrior ritual. I remember an evening out in Rio de Janeiro at a famous cultural 'show' where dances originating from a mere 2,000 km further north were lobbed into a cultural potpourri which culminated in our group being called on stage to sing a traditional British song. I mean, you have to throw yourself into things with enthusiasm at that point, but it still makes my toes curl to remember it all.

So it was that I approached my recent visit to a BriBri community in Costa Rica's Talamanca foothills with trepidation. My colleagues share my aversion to performative ethno-Disney shows, so my head knew to expect that this was going to be different. Nevertheless, my heart was still unsure how to picture a good example of community tourism.

Leaving the backpacker surfer-dude sushi & matcha tea vibe of Puerto Viejo behind, the surroundings very quickly changed from swaying Caribbean palm trees to densely forested hills dotted with humble tin-roofed homes. Soon we turned off onto a dirt road towards our rendezvous point at the shop of a village not even mentioned on the occasional road signs. Waze seemed confident enough to keep our driver, Rigo, happy, even as he started to look around as though he'd been dropped in another country. To be fair, we were heading towards the hilly southern frontier with Panama.

By the time we parked up, Rigo was so intrigued that he asked if he could come along too. I took that as a good sign.

Also a good sign was that there were boats waiting for us — wooden boats for six people carved out of tree trunks. Each with an outboard motor and captain... and a living figurehead standing proudly on the prow of each boat holding a long stick. Settling into our tiny wooden stool seats, I was looking forward to water-borne jousting or Morris dancing...

As we set off downstream, we passed a small wooden ferry leading surprised-looking cattle alongside, roped up and swimming across the river. Then we turned up a tributary and the revelation that the man on the prow with a stick wasn't there for our entertainment after all. As we navigated up stronger rapids, that stick became a pole vault delivering a much-needed fillip to the small outboard. Where the river shallowed out, the motor was pulled up and the stick became a punt, channelling superhuman effort to keep us moving ever upstream. Overhanging branches were sometimes guided out of our way, sometimes not... this is a river trip which demands that you keep your wits about you. But that's OK because you are travelling ever deeper into forested hills and away from any signs of habitation. For the best part of an hour, we travelled bouncing between thoughts. "Blimey, he's strong." — "What's that bird?" — "Imagine forgetting something at the shops" — "Why has my stool just collapsed?" — "Where is this bloody village?"

Then we were there. Standing by the side of the river was Kenneth, our 'guide' for the day. First, the order of business: we'd go to meet Miriam, the community leader, then we'd see the cacao, have lunch, go to the river, make a roof & fire arrows at a tree. No, wait... We'll make a roof, meet Miriam before the river and have lunch. Hang on... no, let's go first... You get the idea. It didn't matter; none of us had expectations — we were just fascinated to have ended up in a village this far up a river, right on the Panamanian border, with a population of BriBri large enough to sustain a secondary school of 150 students. 

Wandering up into the village brought us to the main community centre — a thatched, open-sided longhouse. Shoes off and in we went... coffee was served from an open kitchen; the boat crews were already in there cooling off. There were children running around. The kitchen centred around an open-fire stove on which was bubbling an enormous pot of chicken. Kenneth's sister was in charge of the pot, but others — men, women & children — were in various degrees of helping & not helping. A small child patiently helped me navigate the exotic fruits piled high on the table — mangostin, mamones, platanos — all requiring a different method of peeling & eating.

"Time to meet Miriam!" announced Kenneth before leading us not to Miriam but along a pathway through the village and out into the forest to swim in the river. Being Saturday, the children were out and about; Kenneth's children wanted to join us for a swim, and so off we trooped to jump in the fast-flowing cool waters. Jumping, laughing, getting swept downstream or just sitting on a log on the bank watching it all — there was something utterly beguiling about the whole thing. Very random people from one side of the world being invited to play in the locals' natural swimming pool. A man on a mule came past on his way home from buying flour in Panama. We wandered back to the village, Kenneth's tired youngest on my shoulders (riding at lofty height was too tempting for him). We picked up some litter from the sides of the path. The children all wanted to know if we were staying the night in their village as they peeled off homewards once more, taking charge of the small ones, gently delivered from me to them.
 

A stroll through the sacred cacao plantation led to a bit of tropical fruit hanging from a string — and a wooden bow with the world's wonkiest arrow. OK, so Kenneth made it look easy, but none of us got anywhere near the thing. Actually, some of us were much closer to hitting our own feet. We were shown, and then made to repeat, the roofing technique with vines used as string and leaves as tiles. Between the 12 of us, we must have added at least 15 cm to one part of one roof. It called to mind those 'charity' trips where people head off to build a toilet or dig a well in some remote place. You can only imagine what's going through the hosts' minds as they watch well-intentioned visitors struggling through to deliver something in a fortnight which would take them 15 minutes to build themselves.

Lunch, served in banana leaves, everyone eating the same — visitors, workers and hosts — though I did notice that the more exotic internal bits of the chicken didn't feature on our plates.

Pudding was delivered by cacao — dried, roasted and crunched up with our 'help'. Then ground into a chocolate paste, mixed with a tiny tin of condensed milk and oh my Lord... then with hot water to make a drink. Ridiculously tasty and deceptively simple. Demolishing the last of our sweet treat, Miriam finally made an appearance and told us a story.

Twenty years ago, the community was collapsing; a disease was killing off their cacao trees, so people were leaving to find work in the towns and cities on the coast. The BriBri culture and language were fading fast. A Swedish NGO came in to help identify the solution to the crop disease, but what they found was this community. As Miriam put it, 'only with an outsider's perspective could we understand that what we have here is precious, worth saving and worth visiting'. So the agricultural project morphed into a community tourism project. The village voted. The women said yes, the men said no. That's when she said 'sod it', gathered 10 other families and did it anyway.

There are now 40 families involved. Our visit contributes to their livelihoods, but is only part of it — they have other paid work, and at heart they are farmers. The money spreads amongst all the people involved — from the men piloting the boats to the women cooking and the artisans making crafts (exit via the gift shop turns out to be universal). "Thank you for supporting our project; your coming here matters to us." And she meant it, and it really did bring a lump to my throat because there is nothing performative here, nothing staged. You are literally visiting a village for a few hours. A day in the life of a BriBri community — not even a day. But the welcome, the proximity to wonderful nature, the palpable sense of shared community — the sheer bloody fun of it all — made it unbearably sad to leave.