Dominical Dot Biz

Uvita Costa Rica, where my office is located, is exploding. In the last year we have seen changes in this little coastal town that now has a smooth, pot hole-less highway running through it. Huge changes - nay, massive… what would the word be – revolutionary? One year ago we had no banks in Uvita: we now have two with a third on the way. One year ago we had two small neighborhood groceries; we now have three major ones, fluorescent lights, grocery carts and all. I went to a PDGD (pretty darn good dentist) here in Uvita the other day. I guess I should say PPDGD since she is pretty to boot. I needed a front tooth fixed cosmetically and she did a PDGJ. I used to think that I would have to travel to San Jose for such service, and in fact I/we have made numerous trips to San Jose when my kids had braces.

There is a golf course going in down the way, there are new hotels, cabinas, restaurants, tour companies, storage facilities, car washes and businesses of all types going in all around. In real estate companies we’ve got six in Uvita that I can think of off hand.

Uvita is in the heart of the booming growth that is hitting Costa Rica’s southern zone. Dominical used to be the center of it all, and is still the term most searched for on the web for finding information about these parts. Dominical is towards the northern-most part of the “Zone” that is experiencing this tremendous growth. Uvita is positioned almost perfectly centered between Dominical and Ojochal. This is the zone that has been bought and sold almost in it’s entirety over the last 5 years.

Uvita is a boom town, and I live and work there, in the thick of it, and I find it all a bit distracting.

San Isidro is where I used to live, just inland from Dominical about 35 minutes. I suspect that I can now change this estimate to 30 minutes due to the new 4 inch asphalt surface that is being put on that road making travel that much quicker and easier. When my family and I first moved there in 1999, there was not another gringo family to be seen. When we would go to town to take care of life’s needs such as groceries, bill paying, veterinary concerns and so on attired in our gringo garb and manner, we would feel the street go quiet. My kids would ask me: “why do they stare”?

Now it is not so. Now we do not stand out. Our garb has not changed, but “theirs” has. Our oh-so influential culture has changed the way these people, the Ticos (Costa Ricans) dress, and their manner has changed as well.

The zone is a place that foreigners are pouring into, and the changes this is causing to this once purely agrarian society, are monumental.

Our family lifestyle used to be to go to the beach in Dominical about once a week. We had a box of beach stuff that we would throw into the back of our Isuzu Trooper, ready to go. Two hammocks with these nifty adjustable straps that would conveniently wrap around those thoughtfully placed palm trees on the beach. A cooler of sandwiches and drinks, towels, broad rimmed hat to reduce sun damage, and we would of course, make sure that we had our current book so that the time could be used to the full. Walking on the beach and collecting seeds is what we did. The kids got good at surfing and making crab villages in the sand.

A trip to Uvita was a project. At that time there was no highway connecting Dominical to Uvita. It was a dirt road and the drive would take, frankly I don’t remember how long it took, but it was prohibitive. Bumpy and splashy, it was just easier to stay in Dominical. The beach in Dominical is plenty nice anyway.

I was talking to a long time expat that lives in Uvita the other day. He said that he remembers back in the day, when they would sit in a little Soda (typical Costa Rican café) and observe 2 or so cars pass by during his lunch, or sometime, during an entire day. This is ancient history here now, all of 7 or 8 years ago. There is now a constant buzz of semis, cars, motorcycles, and all-terrain vehicles of various design.

There is a sort of melancholy to having seen the changes. I go to visit our old neighbors in San Isidro. We call them “Los Abuelo”. It means “The Grandparents” but they wear the much deserved handle about them like a mantle and are known as such by most that know them. I’m not even sure that I can remember their real names. Enrique and… nope, don’t remember. Anyway, they are in their mid-70’s. Abuela’s knees are going. I think that she has no more cartilage in them. She is in pain. I can’t imagine the amount of mileage those old knees have seen. They have never had a car, purely a pedestrian life. They prefer cold showers since that’s all they’ve ever known. There are those “suicide heads” here that actually make for a pretty decent shower. It is a little disconcerting to see the big electrical cables running to the shower head though. The Abuelos aren’t concerned about the possibility of being electrocuted, its just that they prefer the cold water.

In a material sense, I guess you could say that the Abuelos are rich. They own nearly 40 acres of land in San Isidro, although they don’t view it that way. They’d never sell. Land is for passing on to the kids. I’d say that they are rich. They have lived simple and full lives, without ever having traveled.

I’d like to interview Abuelo, maybe video tape it. Get him talking about the time before when the big trees were cut down, and about the horse treks over the pass to Dominicalito with their season’s harvest of tobacco. They would sometimes have to wait a month there for the boat to come, so they’d bring plenty of contrabando (moonshine a la Tico).

Abuelo has just had a couple different surgeries. I used to hear him going up the hill just at sunrise, about 5:30 AM to return around 11:00, sweaty and content. He’d bring back something for Abuela to fix over her wood fired stove. No more, his body won’t let him. He’s full of stories though. His father used to own a good portion of the land that San Isidro sits on. His farm encompassed my land and so much more.

I’m not that old, really. It just feels that way sometimes, although I do have a couple of grandkids. But it’s not so much because of any physical limitations or any new aches. It has to do with the changes that I’ve seen. I think that you could take the changes that have taken place in the States over the last 100 years or so, and compress them into about a 10 year time span here in Costa Rica. It’s the living here for those 10 years that makes me feel like an old guy.