PUERTO LIMON, COSTA RICA

We had nine hours to explore Puerto Limon and no game plan. So, we decided to avoid the morning cattle call and let the shore excursions leave the ship first. And then we would venture out into the grey town, sitting like a silent mystery right outside the cruise terminal gates. As we stared down on the sleepy town from the promenade atop the Norwegian Jade, we were perplexed. Costa Rica was supposed to be a tropical paradise. It’s featured in all the travel magazines as one of most lovely places on earth. But what we were staring down at was anything but.

And it was our first day of bad weather — bad, of course, being a relative term when it’s February and 75 degrees. It would rain lightly off-and-on all day but it turned out to be no problem. I didn’t even wear any rain gear. Inna took no chances and carried her cute little orange umbrella.

Downtown Puerto Limon was yet another poverty stricken Latin American town that had been washed clean by the rain — clean also being a relative term.

Outside the barbed wire gates there was another shouting mob of tour guides hawking the exact same tours as inside. We had played this game before in many countries and knew that you never jump at the first shiny thing. It’s best to scope out the scene, get the lay of the land, and consider your options.

We smiled and said, “No thank you”, and then headed for a nearby park where sketchy young men tried to show us wildlife in the dripping Mahogany trees — for money, of course. We ignored them and walked toward an ornate faded-yellow bandstand in the center of the park. But the paved path soon ended in a mud bog and we had to turn around and head back through the monkey boys before venturing into the city center.

It was ten o’clock and Puerto Limon seemed to be awakening from a bad dream.

Puerto Limon is home to 375,000 people and is the sixth biggest city in Costa Rica. The capital, San Jose, is the largest with over a million people. We were told that’s where they keep the gold and where the Costa Rican elite reside. They were definitely not hanging around Puerto Limon.

The architecture was dreary and decrepit. Overhead electric lines ran across the streets like spider webs and beggars lay against buildings out of the rain. Apparently they had run out of paint and the nicer buildings were ringed with razor wire fences — even the schools and churches were surrounded with security fences. Why schools? The parking lot attendants wore guns. Clearly, this was not a safe place.

The biggest and fanciest stores were filled with Japanese rocket bikes — perhaps to make a quick escape. And the cubbyhole-cluttered shops sold an odd assortment of plastic and cotton goods that you wouldn’t even see in an American Dollar Store.

We decided to check out the central market area where the locals shopped. There were other boat people sniffing around the entrance with trepidation, but few ventured inside because it looked sketchy. The locals eyed us with something between greedy interest and contempt.

The market covered several city blocks and was a series of dark, musty concrete tunnels jammed with a weird assortment of everyday items like underwear and athletic apparel. Most of the shoppers looked like they had come straight from the village and pawed the merchandise with guarded interest. There were many small shoe repair shops where old men used their metal punch tools to restitch worn footwear. And music blared from every stall like the Latin version of the Tower of Babble.

We noticed a very strange church steeple a few blocks away that was clearly the biggest structure in town. So, off we went. Churches are invariably the grandest places in any Latin American city. In Puerto Limon there really were not a lot of choices and it didn’t seem like the kind of town where you could walk around wherever you liked safely. No one bothered us, and we were never really scared, but we were constantly on our guard.

I’ve seen a lot of churches in my day, but the Basilica in Puerto Limon was definitely the oddest. The entire building, including the towering steeple, was made of grey concrete. There were no ornamental flourishes or bright colors and the spire resembled a smoke stack. It looked like a bunker. And it was ringed with razor wire with only one narrow entrance through a guarded gate. But the wide, airy doorway of the large church stood open and the golden-robed priest was delivering a spirited mass to the sparse congregation that seemed to be politely dozing off.

We stood on the church steps and looked over the now bustling city. The roof line offered no other buildings of note. There was nothing left to see. So, we started walking aimlessly around town, wondering what to do next.

In the Caribbean they measure time in hurricanes. In Central and South America it’s earthquakes. The earthquakes don’t have names, though perhaps they should.

The event that defines modern Costa Rica, and especially an already struggling town like Puerto Limon, was 1991, when a 7.5 Richter scale earthquake crumbled it into ruins.

Up until that point, Puerto Limon was a major shipping port serviced by a big railroad that transported goods to and from the interior. But the railroad shut down after the quake because of the difficulties and cost of repairing the line through the surrounding mountains. Seasonal cruise ships have now replaced commerce as the town’s meal ticket.

But all is not lost, and hope springs eternal. They are finally just getting around to building a new cargo terminal north of town on the Caribbean Sea. And there is talk about rebuilding the railroad if they can just find some investors. Can you say, CHINESE?

We were surprised to see that gas was $6 a gallon. In Panama, a country that produces virtually nothing, it was the same price as the U.S. — 80 cents a liter ($3.20 a gallon). And in Colombia, it had been about the same. I guess the tax structure determines fuel costs in each Latin nation.

Like in Panama, there is no army just police, and they are all over the place. The people are always bragging that they have no army. I’m not sure why, given the police state feel. And even with an army of police, many people are armed and the houses are ringed with barbed wire. It seems criminal to me that tourists in Costa Rica are probably safer than the people who live there.

Which brings us to politics. The big news was the recent election where they narrowed down the field of candidates to the top two — an evangelical singer (rural) and a writer (urban). The previously dominant National Liberation Party suffered its worst results to date ending third in the presidential run for the first time in its history. The biggest issues in the campaign were unemployment, corruption, economics, insecurity and poverty. There will be a runoff in a few months to crown the ultimate winner. Whoever wins will definitely have their hands full.

After an hour of walking the crumbling Puerto Limon streets, trying in vain to find something attractive or interesting, we decided to head back to the ship.

At the cruise terminal we started checking out the local tours in earnest. One guy in particular, who billed himself as Super Mario, caught our fancy. The problem was that he wasn’t actually going to be leading the tour. He was like a tour pimp who steered us to one of his drivers, told them where to take us, and settled on a price.

As it turned out, the cost of every tour was the same $35, or $20 if you took a van with a group. The tour lasted two and a half hours and included a jungle boat ride on the Tortuquero Canal followed by an hour in the rainforest.

So, it all boiled down to the guide. And while Super Mario had won us over, he wasn’t a guide; he was a broker. But he was incredibly persistent and funny. “I give you the best tour in town, and I’ll even let you take some pictures.” He laughed pointed to a red taxi sitting nearby. “We have only licensed drivers in nice cars. See that Toyota. Only the finest.”

We could smell the bs and Inna and I needed to get away.

“Look, Mario —”

“SUPER Mario, like the game,” he grinned through crooked teeth.

“Right. Super Mario. I got it. My wife needs to put on some different shoes if we’re going for a boat ride and a hike through the rain forest. So, we’re going to go back to the ship, change our clothes, and have some lunch. And then we’ll come back in about an hour or so, and if you’re still here, we can talk about a tour. Alright?”

“Super Mario will be right here!” exclaimed the happy-go-lucky huckster.

As we walked through the now almost empty cruise terminal, the salespeople looking bored, rearranging their souvenirs and chatting amongst themselves, I asked Inna what she thought.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like we have a lot of choices,” replied Inna as she stopped to check out a rack of brightly-colored dresses. “We still have over six hours in port. The tours are all the same. So, let’s eat and then come back and try out Super Mario.”