Doña Karen
Our two-fold task: 1) find our way to the village of our choosing that was a significant distance from the La Garita Cuerpo de Paz training center and difficult to get to, and basically ingratiate ourselves to a family of total strangers, getting them to invite us to stay with them for the weekend, or contemplate sleeping in the street; and 2) speak only Spanish.
Poring over the crude map we were given that didn’t show roads, my wife and I chose the village of Tambor on the south coast of the Nicoya Peninsula, simply because we recognized the word, which meant ‘drum.’ Late Friday afternoon we took a bus to Alajuela, and another to the capital city of San José. After a night in a cheap hotel we were up early and boarded a rickety train for Puntarenas on the West Coast of the mainland of Costa Rica. The descent to Puntarenas was occasionally nerve-racking as the single set of tracks carved across the near-vertical rainforest slopes and at other times the jungle pressed through the slow-moving car’s open windows on both sides.
We arrived in Puntarenas at 9 am and made our way to the central market, where we’d heard the Paquera ferry departs for the Nicoya Peninsula. We learned it wouldn’t leave till 3 pm, so we hitchhiked farther out onto the narrow peninsula that juts into the Gulf of Nicoya, to the landing for the Playa Naranja car ferry, and discovered its schedule had changed, with only 6 am and 7:30 pm departures.
Later that afternoon—well after 3—we and some 60 locals packed ourselves onto the deck the small Paquera ferry and watched as eight 50-gallon drums of kerosene were loaded onto the deck amongst the passengers, along with sacks of rice, miscellaneous supplies, and caged chickens. The ferry was sitting low in the water, the lowest point of the gunnels being less than a foot above the waterline. Among the other passengers we noticed a gringa-looking woman, with short grayish-brown hair. She seemed aloof and was dressed simply in local clothing; her two front teeth were missing. We didn’t approach her on the chance she spoke English.
The trip across the Gulf of Nicoya to Paquera, near the southern end of the Gulf, was magnificent. We crossed 15 miles of choppy open water eyeing the Nicoya Peninsula which was shrouded in layers of haze; above the layer-cake mists great thunderheads towered over the peninsula. The mountains and islands at the southern end of the peninsula, clear of clouds, were silhouetted by the sun-swept Pacific Ocean just beyond the gulf.
Since we didn’t know if there was a road to Tambor from the Paquera landing, we talked to other passengers for clues. It turned out that the group of Ticos next to us were also headed to Tambor to do some fishing for the Independence Day holiday (which we learned was Monday), and that they were taking a bus to Tambor. We decided to stick with them.
As we approached the Paquera landing we saw there were a dozen or so people waiting to take the return trip to Puntarenas, but no bus or buildings. A dirt road led into the forest. Our new traveling companions told us the town of Paquera was a few miles from the landing. Once ashore we learned that the same bus that first goes to Paquera would come back to the landing and then head for Tambor. Quite a few of our fellow passengers simply walked up the dirt road and disappeared. As we waited for the bus to arrive the gringa approached us—in English she said her name was Karen and that she was going to Montezuma, farther down the southern coast of the peninsula.
Waiting for bus to Tambor while the Paquera ferry loads for the return to Puntarenas.
After a long wait the ‘bus’ arrived—it was not in fact a bus but a windowed van with three bench seats plus the shotgun and driver’s seat. An impossible number of people jammed themselves and their packages into and onto the vehicle and it lumbered off, but a sizeable group remained, many with various sacks and boxes, as well as fishing gear. I had the thought we were probably going to spend the night at the landing.
A half-hour later, as the bus re-emerged, the crowd pressed forward. Karen appeared next to us and told us to stay with her—she boldly pushed her way to the front of the group, telling us matter-of-factly that the locals expected it. Though uncomfortable, we followed her and got on; she and my wife took seats on one of the benches and as I boarded, the driver invited me to ride shotgun.
Although every seat was occupied, plus a few more people crammed in at odd angles, Karen told us the bus wasn’t crowded at all. Our journey overland to Tambor turned out to be a rough one as the dirt road was not in good repair, and later that night our journey included a stream crossing where most of the passengers had to temporarily get out.
The bus driver, Rafael—Felo to his friends, which we now apparently were—said there were no rooms available in Tambor; and in fact he’d received 60 requests for transportation for the 20 rooms in the village. It was at that point we learned that Tambor was a traditional holiday fishing destination on Independence Day weekend and there was zero chance of finding a place to stay. Karen asked us if we might like to continue on to Montezuma as there was “someone there” who had a pensión, and it might not be as full of holiday travelers. Felo agreed with Karen that the people of Montezuma were more agradable than the people of Tambor.
The sky darkened as we headed southwest along the Peninsula, through Paquera, past the turnoff for Curú, and through the tiny pueblo of Playa Azul; just after sunset we crested a pass. Before us lay the burnished sheet of the Pacific Ocean, pieced into the low mountains of the darkened peninsula like a puzzle. The sky was glowing pink behind twisted silhouetted trees. Felo pointed to a distant, vaguely circular shimmering bay: “Hay Tambor.”
In another 35 minutes we reached the turnoff for Tambor and half the passengers got out. In another hour of slow driving through the dark countryside we reached the small town of Cóbano.
Over club sodas we (we now being my wife, Karen, and I) decided to hire a taxi rather than walk the five miles down to Montezuma. We went to the pulperia to buy some corn flour, jelly, and baby food for breakfast the next day. Felo was behind the counter. We noticed that everyone including Felo referred to Karen as Doña Karen, an address of respect we adopted as well. And when we then learned that Felo also happened to be the Mayor of Cóbano, Felo became Don Felo.
Doña Karen at her finca outside Montezuma
Our taxi—a pickup truck—was driven by Don Felo’s friend Guillermo, the local high school teacher. Doña Karen, my wife, and Guillermo piled into the cab and Don Felo and I stood in the bed of the truck. As we bounced down the rough dirt road to Montezuma he asked me about religion and politics, subjects easily discussed in Spanish with the vocabulary of a 4th-grader. The stars overhead seemed no higher than the treetops crowding our steep descent.
While Don Felo and I stood in the back of the pickup discussing religion and ducking near-invisible branches, my wife later shared with me a scene that played out in the cab among her, Guillermo, and Doña Karen. At one point, Guillermo put a cassette into the pickup’s player and the Michael Jackson song “Ben” began playing. Guillermo was obviously moved by it and told my wife it was his favorite love song. He asked her to translate the words the girl was singing. As gently as she could my wife first explained to Guillermo that the singer was a man, and that the song was about a rat. Guillermo was stunned. After he recovered a bit he asked her if she could at least please tell him where Funky Town was. She decided it would be best to say she didn’t know.
We reached the village of Montezuma and could hear the roar of surf close by in the darkness.
At the little cantina the bartender Francisco made a concoction of raw turtle eggs, lemon juice, and salt for Guillermo and Don Felo. Don Felo handed me a shot glass with a turtle’s egg in it. At that moment Doña Karen returned from her house, having prepared a room for us—there was in fact no pensión in Montezuma—and told me eating turtle eggs was against the law. I thanked Don Felo for his offer but declined.
We walked over to Doña Karen’s house, one of a dozen or so in Montezuma, and talked by candlelight late into the night.
Doña Karen was Karen Mogensen, Danish, the widow of the late Swede Olaf Wessberg. They’d moved to Costa Rica and bought a farm in Montezuma 25 years ago.
A dream Doña Karen had when they were in Mexico lead them to Costa Rica. For two years they’d wandered the New World looking for the right place to live; they’d been in Ecuador, Guatemala, the US (Doña Karen said 65 places in all); and finally, in Mexico they came to a dead end. One night, Karen asked if they shouldn’t see if a dream could help them. Olaf Wessberg agreed.
That night, Doña Karen dreamt she was standing on a high bluff on one peninsula looking south to another. The ocean was to her right. She was very close to the precipice, and a friend of hers she knew from Sweden pulled her back and told her to be careful because it was so steep.
The next morning Doña Karen asked her husband if he’d had a dream, and when he said no, she related hers. He listened and then they looked on maps for two consecutive West Coast peninsulas and found only one in all of Central and South America—Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula is about 125 miles south of the Nicoya Peninsula. He said, “Let’s go then.” That day they went to the Costa Rican Consulate and arranged to move.
After a brief stay on Isla Cedros (a small island just off the coast of the Nicoya Peninsula that they’d bought for 700 colones) they moved to Montezuma, abandoning Isla Cedros because it was in the lee of a point with very little wind, and so was clouded with mosquitoes. She told us they’d spent a dreadful night literally covered with insects before calling it quits.
In the next few years Olaf Wessberg and Doña Karen were instrumental in developing the first National Park and Wildlife Reserve in Costa Rica (and all of Central America) at Cabo Blanco at the southwestern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. They were the original driving forces of environmentalism in Costa Rica and surrounding countries. After they established the first National Park, other parks and reserves in Costa Rica and other Central American countries followed. Their environmentalism however was not appreciated by many, and there arose many enemies to their cause, and to them personally.
Doña Karen paused, then told us that as a teenager she’d once gone to a fortune teller in Denmark with a girlfriend—she explained with a laugh that back then young girls always wanted to know who they’d marry and what their lives would be like. Because she didn’t want to know anything bad, she asked the fortune teller to tell her only happy things.
He told her she would marry a genius and that they’d live in a Latin country, which she said she thought at the time meant France or Italy, for 19 years and then—the fortune teller paused, then continued—she would travel for a couple of years, but return to the same place. Doña Karen said the fortune teller had changed from the plural you to the singular, and it bothered her, but eventually she forgot the incident.
In 1975, after living in Costa Rica for 19 years, Olaf traveled to the Osa Peninsula to survey the virgin rainforest, with the plan to eventually have part of the peninsula designated a National Park.
During the time Olaf was away, Doña Karen was visiting some friends who lived on a bluff overlooking the Gulf of Nicoya. She was standing near the edge, looking south in the direction of the Osa Peninsula, worrying about her husband. The hostess, seeing her at the edge pulled her back and warned her of the steep cliff. Later that day she felt a strong pain in her head, worse than anything she’d ever experienced. She thought to herself that it might be a stroke, and that she’d better take care of herself. But the pain went away. An hour later she experienced a deep pain in her heart and thought for an instant she might die, but that pain passed as well.
Olaf didn’t return on the day he’d told Doña Karen he would. As he became more and more overdue her worry became more intense. Two weeks later she saw a news clipping from the South saying a Swede was overdue, and she left that day. Many, including the police, told her not to go, warned her of the dangers of traveling alone in the South.
When she arrived on the Osa Peninsula no one knew where her husband was. She organized a search party, because at Olaf’s base camp she found all his belongings—clothes, maps, etc. Obviously something had happened to him. She told herself he might have broken his leg, and was waiting somewhere for her to find him, but in her heart she knew he was gone.
She gathered a number of men by offering to pay them whatever amount of money they normally earned working, and by promising that the man who found her husband would earn 1000 colones. She directed them to fan out from her husband’s base camp, but insisted that she go ahead, thinking that she might be able to pick up some feeling or sense of him, or that by following the most beautiful way into the rainforest, she might duplicate his path.
Soon she had the urge to turn sharply to the right and did so. After a bit she came across her husband’s knife laying beside a tree. She excitedly told the two men closest to her that it must be a signal from her husband that he was nearby. Telling us this, she said even as she’d said this to the men she knew it didn’t make sense. There were two streams nearby, one on either side, and she sent the men to search along them, thinking her husband might have headed for water.
The men returned and said they’d found him. The fact they weren’t jumping up and down with excitement confirmed he was dead. She didn’t want to see the body, but the men urged her on: “Oh, you must go see him, he is your husband.” She did and only bones remained, scattered on the forest floor; it doesn’t take long for animals to completely consume a man in the rainforest.
Years before, Olaf had forced Doña Karen to promise if he died before her that she must put his body out to be picked clean by animals; afterwards she could bury the bones if she wanted. She promised she’d try, even though Costa Rican law demanded that a body be buried within 24 hours of death.
Doña Karen told us her husband’s guide was the murderer. His long-time regular guide quite suddenly and nervously told her husband, at the last moment before their departure, he was unable to accompany him on this particular trip. Olaf thought he might hire a local guide in the south, but he was approached by a man at the dock in Puntarenas as he was boarding a boat to the Osa Peninsula, who pleaded to be his guide. Doña Karen said investigators later found that this new ‘guide’ lived in San José. The man’s wife reported he’d run into the house in San José, announced that he was guiding Wessberg, and left without so much as a change of clothes. It wasn’t known how this man even knew that Wessberg might need a guide.
Doña Karen told us that a short time before this trip to Osa, she and her husband had noticed in the annual publication of a prominent wildlife organization that it had paid some 50 million colones for six ‘wildlife reserves’ in the San José area, each of which was about 1/2 acre in size. That worked out to be about a million dollars each. Doña Karen said that of course people around the world had no idea what a colon is worth, so such information would pass unnoticed. They further discovered that the so-called wildlife reserves that had been bought were actually six square blocks scattered within the city of San José, and that the properties surrounding each of them had been purchased as well. Each of the six so-called reserves became a lovely park, which radically raised the property value of all the surrounding properties. Wildlife organization insiders had basically used their members’ donations to create a real-estate windfall for themselves. (I won’t name the organization as I don’t have first-hand corroboration, and further, almost 50 years after the event I don’t want to punish the current staff and organization for deeds performed by long-gone criminal predecessors.)
Mr. Wessberg knew about the dealings of the people within the organization and shot off letters to them, and to others describing what had happened, but in the latter didn’t specifically name the guilty parties. Afterward, he and his wife realized that by failing to publicize the names of those involved they were putting themselves in potential danger—better that they release the names immediately so that there’d be no reason for someone to keep them quiet. The last thing that Olaf Wessberg did before he went to the Osa Peninsula was to send off the names of the people in the wildlife organization and of the co-conspirators in positions of authority in Costa Rica.
But it was too late, as the plan to kill Wessberg had already been set in motion. Afterward, when Doña Karen urgently and persistently pressed authorities to continue to investigate, her own life was threatened—by the police.
Shortly afterward, the wildlife organization bought a large tract of land on the Osa Peninsula for a wildlife reserve and dedicated it to Olaf Wessberg.
When we met Doña Karen, five years after his murder, she was spending much of her time on their finca outside town and her nights in their house in Montezuma. She carried a pistol with her at all times. And she continued her work to create forest preserves.
We stayed with Doña Karen in the village 2 nights. Three buildings stood on the 100-manzana farm (about 170 acres), which fronted the southern shore of the Nicoya Peninsula. One building had a large open veranda, which must have in the past been used for eating, relaxing, perhaps entertaining. The next building, farther up the gradual slope, was Doña Karen’s ‘dormitory’ and room for yoga. Before we entered she apologized for the sparse furniture, as most everything had been stolen. The room (and building) was about 12 x 15 feet and was empty except for a sleeping mat on the floor and four or five small plastic bags of clothing hanging from cords. A couple books lay in one corner.
At Doña Karen’s finca outside Montezuma
The last building was a kitchen/tool shed. The kitchen portion consisted of a pile of driftwood, eight bricks arranged in two parallel walls on top of which sat a scorched piece of tin; there was a sink but no running water. Doña Karen prepared coconut milk for us. Using a large ax she split four coconuts with pinpoint accuracy and used a raspar to scrape the coconut meat into a bowl. To this she added water, squeezed the coconut pulp dry and discarded it. What remained was sweet and very rich; we drank about a half cup apiece. Later, my wife felt faint.
Too soon was time for us to return to La Garita. Doña Karen then asked us to stay with her to help her carry on her quest to protect more of the fragile environment in Costa Rica. But we were already committed to a different path. We never saw her again; she passed away in 1994.
I’ve since seen an alternate history of what happened to Olaf Wessberg on the Osa Peninsula, suggesting a young guide from the Osa region killed him because locals didn’t want a national park to be created. No doubt the locals objected to the land being protected, but I respectfully disagree about the murderer, as this explanation contradicts everything Doña Karen shared with us.
In 2007 I learned that a Danish-language movie had been made of their lives about a decade earlier. I couldn’t find a copy of it; everything I did find about it was in Danish, but I gleaned that the screenwriter was an American, and then found that he was living in a city I often visited on business—I contacted him, shared an unedited version of these notes, and we agreed to meet. I soon found myself in his office and we talked about Doña Karen and the movie, which turned out to be a fictionalized romance about the couple; he generously gave me a short private screening during our meeting, and my wife and I have since obtained the entire movie, which starred a young Penelope Cruz. At the time I myself was interested in writing about the couple to tell their actual story, and was stunned to learn that Doña Karen had kept a diary, in Danish, which was then in the possession of someone in Sweden. But my attempt to temporarily obtain and have the diary translated into English led to nothing, and only our memories of Doña Karen, a few pictures, and this brief narrative of our time with her remain.
In Costa Rica I carried a Pentax Spotmatic F, my first SLR, though during my time there I put no thought into seeing with a photographer’s eye. The in-country portion of this narrative is based on the notes I took in Montezuma.