The date for this tour was Saturday March 1.
First disclaimer: This post is my own interpretation and personal thoughts of the San Lucas tour. Some of the information is likely inaccurate, especially because of the language barrier we experienced. I am unsure if I properly identified all the structures, and a few details of the tour information may be mistaken.There are many feelings coming into this post. I am writing here about our tour of San Lucas almost a month after being on the island and looking at the pictures brings all the emotions flooding back. Needless to say, this might be a bit of a somber recollection and definitely a memorable activity, at least for me. Even though I should have been more mentally prepared having been to the Missouri State Penn historic museum and touring slave quarters on plantations, I hadn't really given much thought to the fact that we were headed to Costa Rica's "Alcatraz". After all, it's on an island in the middle of paradise, right?
To start, I want to recall how we came to go to San Lucas. Previously, when we were visiting the South Nicoya Peninsula of Puntarenas, Clark had planned for us to visit a cemetery on a small island near Montezuma which can only be reached by walking on a stone path during low tide. He mixed up the times of the tides and we missed our opportunity. Early that weekend, I had, in passing, mentioned my interest in San Lucas based on scant information I had come across in scheduling other activities.
I didn't have a strong desire to go but, on a whim, he thought since we seemed close, we could try so he bought tickets. But when we got up to the ferry port at Naranja, we realized through some online searches that the only boat transport to San Lucas leaves from the Puntarenas port on the other side of the gulf. We called SINAC (Costa Rica's national park administrator) and they said we could use our tickets anytime.
Then began the difficult process of finding transport. No one seemed to be able to help us. After a couple weeks, I wondered if our tickets could still be accepted. I requested Clark call SINAC again through a work buddy so we could be sure of clear communication. This way we got a couple of recommendations for captains. Thankfully, one captain had a boat going and so our plans were finally set the night before our intended departure. Talk about waiting for the last minute! Come to find out later, boats don't leave for San Lucas weekly, and we observed this seems to be a tour "off the beaten path" even for locals.
To be clear, not just anyone leads these tours. The guides have to be approved by the national park system and it’s helpful to have some passion for the knowledge being shared. I think after the tour it became obvious why there aren't many guides willing to take this one on. Not only is there a general lack of knowledge of the content, but the seriousness of the topics isn't for everyone and as a tour guide, you are repeating these gruesome stories over and over. Maybe this is a reason why the tours are infrequent. There has to be a guide willing to share but enough people to fill the boats. I think the national park regulates the flow of people coming too or maybe they aren't able to provide rangers all the time given the isolation and creepiness of the place? This is speculation on my part.
We had an additional pleasant detail: I made a friendly connection with one of the new students at Academia Tica, Christine. I mentioned her in my weekly post when Andrea took us on a tour of San Jose. Christine came here for her first solo international trip since her children have "flown the nest". I think she is SO brave to come to a foreign country without any contacts besides the school and learning a new language. We decided to invite her along for our weekend adventure so she could "get the lay of land" with some support and she AGREED to tag along!
We left the night before our tour and slept over in Puntarenas since we had to depart on the boat around 8 am. It took us 5 hours to drive to Puntarenas which made Clark feel a little crazy. We had fun showing Christine around the pier and introducing her to Caldosas. The next morning was donut day, so Clark went out of the room early to collect some pastries for us. Then we headed to the port.
We met up with Margerie and her assistants, Clark and ? I don't remember the other one's name, but it was fun to meet a Tico "Clark"! And the guys spoke only a little English and were happy to trade language practice with us which was great! Margerie's father was the boat captain.
Heading out of port. That's Puntarenas behind Rose.
Looking forward
On our way! Still naive.
Map of the island
Looking back at the dock. We were met here by an ARMED security park ranger. We were asked to only bring a non-disposable water bottle, bug spray, our passports/i.d., and phone/camera. They searched my hip bag to make sure there weren't any snacks in there.
This is the "Street of Bitterness" (Calle de la Amargura). Prisoners were first held in quarantine outside near the dock for several days before being led up this avenue into the prison complex.
Prisoners laid the stones of the avenue and then were required to excavate the road. Afterwards they rebuilt it again; rinse, wash, repeat. This was done to give them work.
At this point in the tour, which is pretty early, I already had an eerie feeling. The weight of how harsh the prisoners were treated from the minute they arrived was sobering. The isolation and heat were a foreshadowing of what we would experience next. Our guide was extremely knowledgeable because her father had a long history of visiting the island since he was a child and had been giving tours throughout his adult life. His daughter was following in his footsteps.
I think this was the "schoolhouse". From the windows, we could look down to see the laundry house.
Outside the infirmary, hearing the infamous and creepy story (in Spanish) of the murdered nurse. It was the first story told and afterwards we were instructed not to touch anything anywhere throughout the complex because there likely remained remnants of blood and other bodily fluids. We didn't comprehend everything, but we got the context enough to feel horrified. After Margerie finished, the kids were still a little confused. There was a local man touring with his family who explained on the boat that he and his daughter would love to help with some translating, so we asked our questions to him. He explained some things pretty explicitly but using some crude language which embarrassed the kids a little. Christine and I were feeling grossed out, in shock, and overwhelmed with compassion. I will briefly recap the story here and you may seek out the links at the end of the post to pursue further details. I have to hand it to the guides. I'm not sure if they intentionally tell this story first to set the tone or if the story is first because the infirmary is one of the first structures. But it is highly effective to solidify the mindfulness of the place, its purpose, and who had been there before us.
Second disclaimer: graphic details ahead. If you are squeamish, scroll quickly to skip the part between the asterisks. Just know that a nurse was brutally killed and what is believed to be a portrait of her is painted in one of the medium security cell chambers.
***********************************************************************************
A female nurse was brought to the island. After researching further, I don't think she was the only female nurse or the first one but the way Margerie tells it, sounds that way. I couldn't find how many female nurses were ever employed there. The nurses were under round the clock surveillance for their safety and all the structures up to this point are outside the prison walls. Anyways, one of the medium security inmates became obsessed with her, hatched a plot to bribe the guards to abandon their posts, leaving an opportunity for a kidnapping, which was pulled off successfully.
Before the plan took place a full body portrait of a woman in a topless bikini was painted on the cell wall. The nurse was drug into the cell chamber with the 60-70 inmates and raped repeatedly until she died. How did she actually die? I don't know. Murdered by rape? Murdered by other means? Does it matter? After the prisoners were through with her, they disfigured her body and used the blood to paint the bikini top onto the portrait. It's gruesome, shows how the prison environment fosters animalistic and mob mentality, and reinforces the unpleasant fact that some people are characteristically evil.
***********************************************************************************
This is the patio outside the infirmary.
Looking from the patio into the sick room. Now we have this story of the nurse as we enter this building. There is a myth that her ghost haunts the premises.
Washroom inside the infirmary.
Kitchen sink in the infirmary.
Room in the infirmary.
This room would have held beds for sick prisoners.
A look at the hidden construction inside the walls of the infirmary.
More intricate tile work. Ticos are incredibly talented masons.
Beautiful tile work even in this unpleasant place.
Inside the prison chapel.
The chapel now serves as an art gallery of sorts. On the walls are prints of the graffiti left on the prison walls. These are the mild ones. Others were crude and of an explicit nature, depicting pornographic sketches.
Views outside the chapel. It is a stand-alone church of good craftmanship. Supposedly, the ghost of a murdered priest haunts the premises of the chapel.
Stone bench and telephone booth.
Cottage for prison employees or residents of San Lucas Island, such as a farmer.
Costa Rican motif and crest
Outside the prison yard
The bars appear bent because prisoners would wait here near the main gate to interact with visitors to the prison. If you zoom in, you can see that the bars here are worn almost smooth from so many hands holding and rubbing the bars through the years.
Inside the prison yard. The huts on the ground level are the high security cells. Prisoners only came out for an hour a day. The circular stone in the center is covering a well for collecting rainwater. But it was also used as a solitary confinement dungeon. Here, at ground level it is very hot, in the 90's. One concrete chamber held about 60-70 prisoners. In one of the buildings, there is an obvious groove carved down the center of the floor to funnel urine under the gate. It was very stuffy and didn't smell good, even now. During the prisoners' hour of release, they had to choose to wait in line to bath or hang out in the yard.
Inside these high security cells, I was surprised to see the original sketches of the art we had observed in the chapel gallery. Margerie explained that no living thing was safe from the whoredoms and debauchery of some very sick and evil men housed here. Sodomy of animals was common practice and the sketches depicted some of that.
My friend Christine descending the stairs to the medium security chambers.
Medium security. Interestingly, the rapes and murder of the nurse happened down here but not in this room. I chose not to take pictures of the actual room. It was too sickening. To our surprise, all the original art (in which copies were displayed in the chapel) was still clearly intact and viewable in the chambers where they were created.
When Margerie told the story of the nurse, it wasn't clear to me that the thing happened in medium security. I also didn't pick up on the detail that the original art was still intact, and we would see it later in the cell chamber. As we went into the high security area, I had this story following me and a question of "How on earth did the guys in high security pull off a plan like that?" Everything became clear once I made it down to the medium security cell where I was again shocked to see the actual art still on the wall.
The upper windows are high security, and the middle ones are high on the walls of the medium security chambers.
A well between the chambers.
The one original artwork I took a picture of in the cell where the nurse was killed. The black ink might actually be blood but from what I have researched, the Costa Rican government hasn't officially analyzed the residue of the mediums to confirm what was used to create the drawings. Or maybe they have but have chosen not to release the data publicly. Instead, they just tell people the medium is likely blood from deceased prisoners. I have to give credit to the prisoners who drew the paintings. There was some talent there. It's too bad how the paintings came to be created though. I can't imagine what kind of life these men had as babies and children that could lead them into committing these sorts of acts or even to end up in a place like this. Undoubtedly, they became more corrupted from the abuses experienced in the harsh prison environment.
The laundry room, which is down a trail away from main complex. Lower risk prisoners were allowed to wander the island and were provided work.
Pictures of the trails.
Another cottage. There were some separate buildings to house more privileged prisoners.
Somewhere on the trail near to this place, the guide asked a gentleman to unearth a wrought iron ankle chain the park keeps as an artifact. The prisoners each had an ankle chain with a ball attached they had to drag around. The ball wasn't there. The metal bracelet was at least 10 pounds if not more. Hefting that, I thought of the pain this crudely made, heavy thick metal bolted to your limb and then the necessity to walk with it. My ankle wouldn't last an hour before I had open wounds.
A seed on the trail.
Cacti. Yes, it's that hot here.
Still headed down toward the beach.
This area was used for recreation, one example of which is bull fighting.
This is the corral.
The chute used to bring the bulls from the boat.
Looking into the bull ring from the corral side.
Looking up to the "school house" from the beach trail.
Another house from a different perspective.
An electric pole.
A huge iguana on the trail out. He is unaffected by our presence.
Rose is hot.
Glad to be headed back to the boat for some lunch and beach time, hopefully to cool off.
Barnacles all over the steps of the dock.
Our guide is Margerie. She is incredibly beautiful and kind. In the background, on the dock, is the park policewoman.
Goodbye San Lucas.
Pelicans on an outcrop.
Playa Tumbabotes. These are stock photos because I didn't think to get photos of the beach. We had a nice lunch of arroz con pollo o camarones (rice with chicken or shrimp) and salad after a refreshing snack of pineapple and watermelon. This is the first place we recognized that Ticos use ketchup and mayonnaise for salad dressing. This left an impression on us.
Tumbabotes is the site of several escape attempts, some of which were reportedly successful. One story our guide told was of her father as a 7-year-old child. He rode in a boat with his father to visit some friends on the island and they smuggled a prisoner who only had a machete with him back to the mainland of Puntarenas town. Supposedly no one believed the boy when he said he witnessed this. I think the story ended by mentioning the ex-con continued with criminal behavior, but I don't remember if the man was caught again.
I’ve included a few links for more to read about the prison if any of this has peaked further interest or questions. Also, check out my reflections inspired by Christine about why we are attracted to investigate places like San Lucas and related to our adventuring lifestyle. There is also a book I am searching for in Spanish and English called “The Island of Lonely Men” by Jose Leon Sanchez. At the time Sanchez was imprisoned at San Lucas in the 50’s, he was the youngest prisoner there; only 19 or 20 years old. Sanchez always proclaimed innocence. After 30 years he was finally pardoned and released. He wrote the book on flour bags and smuggled the writing out. Once Sanchez was released, he continued to write other works. The book is officially fiction but based on his experiences while living there. I’m primarily interested in the book to learn if Sanchez mentions other female nurses living at the prison.
https://ticotimes.net/2016/09/02/archives-jose-leon-sanchez-prison-media-writing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Lucas_Island
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25795469
https://tours.co.cr/prison-island-san-lucas-stories-prevail-costa-rica/
https://ticotimes.net/2016/10/07/san-lucas-island
https://blog.micahbrubin.com/costa-ricas-san-lucas-prison/
No comments:
Post a Comment