Quepos’ heyday was the first half of the 20th century, when the world began clamoring for bananas and old-growth forests were cleared for banana plantations. An old-world plant, bananas began appearing here in the late 1800’s. The first banana company, the Parrish Farm Trading Company, was purchased by United Fruit Company in the 1930’s. By 1940, United Fruit became Chiquita, and sleepy Quepos was transformed into a busy harbor where almost every Costa Rican banana northbound to the US and Canada passed through. Who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century doesn’t remember those catchy Chiquita Banana ads?
Then came the banana blight, which ruined banana crops, and the massive floods of 1954 and 1955 that devastated the Quepos area. Chiquita moved operations to the Costa Rican east coast. Looking for a more stable crop in the Quepos area, Chiquita replaced bananas with palm trees. We’ve read so much now about the devastation of tropical forests because of the growth of palm plantations throughout the world, yet they don’t degrade the environment nearly as much as bananas do. The departure of the banana plantations here collapsed the Quepos economy, yet it was a boon to the land. While there are still palm plantations now, they are not nearly as numerous as the original banana plantations were.
Quepos’ natural coastline was originally mangroves—red, black, and pineapple (nothing to do with pineapple). Walking around Quepos today, you can still see some of these remaining mangroves in the tidal streams, but they are much degraded, and the waters that feed them are polluted. When the tide comes in, they stink and are full of trash.
In 1998, a Texas man was granted a concession to build a Marina in Quepos. The 2008 crash left him in financial ruin, and the half-built Marina languished until recently. The ocean off the coast is apparently great for deep-sea fishing, and now that the Marina is finished, Quepos is seeing more tourist activity. Tay, my Spanish teacher, and Olga and William (my hosts) talk nostalgically about how beautiful the beach was before the Marina replaced it. As kids, it was their favorite family beach.
Manual Antonio National Park is a mere 7 km over the mountain from Quepos. As the Park’s popularity has grown—apparently the most visited in Costa Rica—Quepos has become the gateway to the Park. Currently, there is one hotel in town, but the Marina plans a 50- to 80-bed luxury hotel. In the last 20 years, the road from Quepos to the Park has become lined with dozens of small hotels and restaurants. Residents of Quepos, like William and Olga, are advertising on Airbnb and Booking to attract more tourists visiting the Park. The area is changing rapidly, with buses running from Quepos to the Park every 15 minutes, transporting both tourists and all the Quepos residents who are now working in the tourist industry.
The Pacific coast to the north, with the huge luxury hotels, may be a preview of what’s to come for Quepos. For now, though, Quepos has the feel of a small local town where everyone seems to know one another, and the shops and restaurants are for locals, not tourists. I wanted to buy notecards to write thank-you notes. I couldn’t find any cards, so they are written on notebook paper. Fortunately, I found white envelopes to put them in. I ended up buying Tay a pair of earrings in the only souvenir shop in town.
And in the mornings, you can still hear the egg man shouting out his car window, “Huevos se venden” as he drives up and down the streets.
