Why Costa Rica?

A gentle reader asks why Costa Rica (CR) and why black pepper? With a follow on question concerning whether this was just an adventure or was there money to be made? There are no short answers to these and they are doggone good questions because almost 30 years later, I’m still asking myself what the heck was I thinking. For any of you who’ve read at least one of my previous posts you may have asked yourself some of these same questions. Let me try to explain how I came to find myself playing 3D chess against unknown adversaries while trying to convert jungle into farm.

This story really begins during my senior year in college when Carter was still in office and due to a bad economy and lack of jobs I decided to move to Santiago, Chile to teach English as a second language. During the four years that I spent under the gentle thumb of Pinochet’s junta, often with a shoot on sight curfew imposed by the benevolent dictator, I learned to speak Spanish en las calles y casas de putas. So quite naturally a decade later with fond memories of those easy days still swirling in my head, my gaze turned to the far south when contemplating where to make my next fortune. 

I had heard Chileans talk about the beauty of their own country and I had seen much of it myself, even driving my cat-puke orange Citronetta one summer from Santiago to Isla Chiloe. I camped out on that trip, skinny-dipping at dawn throughout the southern lake district and, as the top speed of my car was not much more than a fast walk, I also enjoyed the sights for days on end while rolling very slowly past the natural beauty of the country. This trip confirmed what the locals had all told me about their country, it is truly spectacular. 

But many of the Chileans with old money that I met during those years could not say enough about Costa Rica. So that got me thinking if CR is more beautiful than Chile, then that is the place for me. I made a mental note to self to make sure that I got myself to CR one day and never lost track of that goal. Long story endless, the decision to grow black pepper in CR was really a two step process. First the Chileans seduced me into having an affair with Costa Rica, and then all I did was figure out a way to make enough pesos to support my beer and Tica habits.

From there it was an easy and logical decision to grow Piper nigrum, well not exactly. Actually not at all, the specific skills that I had learned in the Marine Corp as an infantry officer did not translate to any civilian job other than mercenary, and I was not looking for that type of work at the time. However on the other hand, I did receive a random and rather sketchy probe from a South African military attaché who mentioned that there were job opportunities in Angola for men seeking adventure and easy money. I did not pursue that offer although I did some patriotic mercenary work with Blackwater for Tio Sam many years later in Herat, Afghanistan.

Actually the decision to grow black pepper was arrived at by the process of elimination; but before I discuss how that went down, first let me tell you a little bit about that magnificent and hardy plant.

How does one “grow” black peppers? Are they a bush, a vine, a tree? Piper nigrum is a vine and as far as I know is always propagated in Costa Rica by cuttings. Supposedly you can grow them by planting the seeds (peppercorns) but I’m told that is really a fool’s errand. It is truly a lovely plant to grow; but, you have to get it off of the jungle floor or it will just spend itself out trying to get sunlight and not produce many peppercorns. I grew it on live posts, and all of my posts began life as branches of trees which I had hacked off with a machete before sticking the thing into the ground. The branches would take root in the soil and try to grow into a tree.

I would keep the posts topped at about 6 feet so workers could harvest the peppercorns by hand without the need for ladders and such. I instructed my Nicas (Nicaraguans) to continuously trim the original branch back so that it had only one additional branch growing from it in order to keep it alive yet minimize the nutrients it was stealing from the pepper plant it supported. My main concern for the black pepper plants was for root rot, which I treated by throwing handfuls of lime around the drip-line of each plant that was struggling against the disease. If I began the treatment of a struggling plant before it became too weak, almost without exception it would fight back and survive. Yes folks it is a fascinating and marvelous plant to grow, and I would encourage everyone to try their hand at it. I promise that you’ll find your fresh peppercorns, como las Ticas, simply intoxicating.