When did it get away from us?  It’s definitely gone.  Out of the gate and taken off to who-knows-where.  Leaving in its wake a cloud of incomprehensible noise and traffic jams.

Tamarindo.  This is a lament. 

What happened?  In the beginning, we wanted the town to grow, to progress.  Is this progress?  Is this better?  It’s more, that’s for damn sure. But is it better? For whom?

It sure seemed like progress when they first paved the road into town, and for a period of about 20 years you could actually drive on it. But now the traffic jams take longer than the potholes used to, so here we are back at square one. In bigger cars.

We loved Tamarindo.  Remember that?  We loved it absolutely.  Remember when the nights were dark, and we could walk on the quiet streets under trees?  Remember when the beach became “crowded” at Christmas and Semana Santa?  Remember when all of us fit into one bar?  We weren’t all best friends, but we were a family.  I miss my family.

Some have moved away.  Some have died. Some of us are still right here, but the noise and the traffic and the signs and the lights are too much for us, so we don’t get out much.  The restaurants are too expensive. The night life is disturbing. I never thought I would be the old lady bitching about how things were better before they were the way they are, but check it out: that’s happened too.

The Old People who chose Tamarindo are different from The New People who choose it.  Obviously.  The Old Tamarindo is not the same as The New Tamarindo: the Old People would never choose this.  The New People clearly wouldn’t choose that or they would be somewhere else.  And thus the spiral continues, wilder and wilder.

Tamarindo has always been a little wild.  I vaguely recall stories about Tamarindo’s early connections to (someone embroiled in) the Iran Contra Scandal.   And a guy shot dead on the beach by a “stray bullet” from somewhere on the mountain more than 30 years ago when there was barely a handful of houses on the hill.  They said it was a “hunting accident.” Remember, the big blonde ex-FBI agent (or something) who briefly owned Iguana Surf when it was still a surf shop/restaurant on the road to Langosta, and how he chased thugs around on his gigantic quad?  He decided to be the police department, so he was.

The drug dealer and the prostitute, back then, were just neighbors like the doctor, the Spanish teacher, the guy who sold Sansa Airline tickets, and the lady who owned the grocery store.  Remember when the carpenter got so mad at the bar next door for making noise when he needed to sleep, that he plugged in his power tools and started sawing metal during live music?  That was hilarious.  It worked.

The Old People, when we were young people, made due with whatever the little grocery store had that day, and drove each other places because having a car was a thing, and let neighbors borrow the phone because there were about 5 (phones, but also neighbors).  The nearest pharmacy was in Santa Cruz, hours away over the unpaved road.  My friend’s anxious baby was born in the back seat of the car.  Old People, who are now actually aged as well, find ourselves to be well-equipped for an entirely different reality–not so much for this one. 

The New People…  I don’t know.  They are a lot richer than The Old People were when we were The Only People.  You could have bought all of Santa Cruz County back then for the current price of a house in Langosta.  They like air conditioning more than open windows and appear to be competing to see who can build the most miniature apartments in the least space. They have an incomprensible affinity for reggaeton.  Or maybe that’s the tourists?  It’s so hard to tell one from the other.   

People point to Covid, saying that “after Covid” things really got out of hand.   Did they?  I don’t know.  I thought they were out of hand before that.  Covid was a nice reprieve in many ways, but I don’t see the “progress” now as significantly different than what was going on before.  Maybe I’m missing something? 

It all started when they paved the road from Villareal.

It all started with the advent of the internet.

It all started. 

And it just keeps building.  Mountain after mountain gobbled up by cement and swimming pools.  Good bye guacimos, sainos, indio pelados, baby guanacastes, cenizaros, maderos, cedros.  Hello stupid palm trees.

Once upon a time, when Tamarindo was a little fishing village with a dirt road, some small hotels and sodas, and a few public phones, the fancy people lived in Flamingo. Flamingo had the big hotels, glizty houses, up-scale restaurants, and even a discotech.   Flamingo had pavement.

Once upon a time, the nearest rent-a-car office was in Liberia.

Once upon a time, nights were so dark that dinosaur turtles came up out of the bay at night to nest. Here.

I am keeping my eye on you from a safe distance, Tamarindo.  We are old friends who knew each other as children. You have gone mad and I have slunk into the forest, but still, we belong to each other. We remember each other’s joyful innocent days.