Villa Pacifica (2 page)

I
t was suddenly pitch-black. Unlike everywhere else in the world, here on the equator things didn't cast shadows in the falling dusk. Darkness didn't creep over you crab-like, from the side. No, it hit the land vertically, at a right angle, and without warning it was suddenly night.

The bus driver hadn't heard of a place called Villa Pacifica, and he dumped them in the middle of an empty road. They had passed no signs for the last half-hour. The driver just slammed the brakes and grumbled “Puerto Seco”.

They were the only passengers to get off. Not surprising, since most people had already got off a while before. Only a few men remained scattered inside the dark, smelly bus, fast asleep and snoring. Ute knew there was a special kind of poverty in some parts of the world where sleep is the only commodity left to people. And even their sleep is somehow threadbare.

The driver barely waited for them to extract their packs from the trunk on the flank of the bus, and started moving before they'd even shut the trunk door.

“Wait, wait,” Jerry shouted and, running after the bus, slammed the door, which nearly dislocated his arm. “Dickhead,” he spat out. The bus left them in a cloud of grit and dust.

They took out the large water bottle and drank for a long time. It was dead-dark and dead-quiet, except for the distant barking of a dog. On the other side of the road was the outline of what looked like a forest.

“Well,” Jerry said, “I feel like we've crossed the whole continent, but on the map it's nothing. Now what?”

“It's the roads,” Ute said. She too felt a bit disheartened by the lack of any discernible village. “They make it longer than it needs to be.”

“They're a shocker. Never seen anything like it. This
puerto
better be good,” Jerry said, and helped her put on her pack. “Now what? Where the hell are we?”

“Well, we didn't pass anything resembling Puerto Seco or any other
puerto
, so let's walk this way.” They started walking in the direction the bus had gone.

“Have you got your torch handy?” Jerry said.

“I think it's at the bottom of my pack.”

“Hmm. Might have to stop and dig it out. That dickhead of a driver was a maniac. Do you think he just dumped us in the middle of nowhere to spite us?”

“No. Drivers here can be a bit rude, but they wouldn't do that. Let's not panic yet.”

“True, true.” Jerry went quiet. “I'm starving,” he added after a few minutes of silent walking.

And just then they saw the lights of a village to the right, and the dog was barking somewhere close ahead. Ute realized why Puerto Seco wasn't in the guidebook. Because unless you knew it was here, you wouldn't find it. And last time she hadn't found it. A dirt road branched off the main road, and they took it.

“This Puerto Seco is really just a bend in the road,” Ute said. “That's why the driver dropped us there.”

Jerry was peering ahead into the darkness. They walked for another fifteen minutes before the first houses started to form out of the darkness. They were all built on stilts. Apart from the invisible barking dog and some salsa music blaring out from an invisible house, there was no sign of life. They walked along the dirt road until they suddenly came to what looked and sounded like a beach. It took Ute by surprise because, normally, she could smell the sea from a mile.

There were dim lights along the waterfront, and it felt good to be able to see, at last. They were standing on something resembling a waterside promenade, what the locals called a
malecón
.

“I'm confused,” Jerry said. “Isn't the ocean that way?” He pointed to their right.

“It should be,” Ute said. “It must be a very curvy coast around here…”

“This place stinks,” Jerry said. “And we're stuck here.”

He was looking around. There wasn't much to see apart from the shuttered front of a seaside café and a couple of shops. The façades were different colours and heights. There was a gaping hole where a house had been before, like a missing tooth in a smile. Just then, a motorbike tricycle revved along the dusty road.

“Life!” Jerry exclaimed. “There is life in this dump!”

“
Hola
,” Ute waved to the chunky driver. He stopped and looked at them in dismay.

“We're looking for somewhere to stay,” Ute shouted over the noise of his engine. “Is there anywhere in the town?”

He shook his head. He was lost for words.

“No hotel, nothing?”

Again, he shook his head. He looked a bit wary.

“What about Villa Pacifica? Is it somewhere nearby?”

“Villa Pacifica,” he said and spat thickly. “Yes, I can take you there.” He spoke with that lazy, hard-to-understand coastal drawl that sounded more like Portuguese than Spanish.

“That's OK,” Ute said, “we can walk. Which way is it?”

“It's too far to walk,” he said, and turned off the engine. “It's beyond the end of the
malecón
, that way.” He waved behind him. “But there's no lights. You'll get lost in the forest.”

“I don't like the look of this guy,” Jerry said.

“Do you want to walk then? It's either walk or take a ride with him. I'd rather get a lift. And he's a taxi driver. Doesn't get much safer than this.”

“OK,” he gave up. “He's smaller than me if it comes to that.”

Ute scoffed. The idea of bespectacled, uncoordinated Jerry getting into a fist fight with this phlegm-spitting, thick-limbed ruffian was comical. She dumped her heavy pack on the tricycle's seat.

The man started the engine again. They rode along the
malecón
. The sea was to their right, when it seemed as if it should have been behind them. But soon she didn't even know whether there was any water at all, because there were suddenly no street lights. They rode along a bumpy dirt road plunged in complete darkness, then seemed to get back onto the main road.

They soon swerved off the road again and into a forest. Jerry squeezed Ute's hand. She glanced at him in the dark. She too hated disorientation. Lose your north and south, and who knows what you might lose next.

Suddenly, a bright spot appeared in the shrubs ahead. A massive wood-panelled gate stood before them in a clearing.

“VILLA PACIFICA”, said the large wood-carved letters over the gate.

Some people were standing outside. Two men, locals. They were watching the approaching taxi intently, perhaps even grinning. Ute paid the driver, who rode off without a thanks or goodbye.

“
Buenas
,” the men greeted them, and let them through the heavy wooden gate. After the rudeness of the bus and tricycle-taxi drivers, this was five-star politeness.

Inside the gates, Ute and Jerry stopped in their tracks, stunned. They were inside a live tropical garden, heaving with exotic plants twice their height.

“Oh, hello!” Jerry said. “I think we've come to the right place.”

“This way,” one of the men said. He must have seen his share of new arrivals with mouths agape like this. He led them along a white, pebbled path, and they crunched along behind. The warm, moist air was filled with the sweet, intimate smell of rotting vegetation, reminding Ute of the smell of the Brazilian Amazon. Tiny water jets purred among the plants. Insects screeched and fluttered around them.

Unlit pebble paths were leading off in various directions. There were carved signs painted with wild animals. One sign had a tortoise, others had pictures of a lion, birds, monkeys and an armadillo. She glimpsed an empty hammock at the end of a path.

They eventually came to a large terraced bungalow. It stood on stilts, the way most coastal houses here did, to protect them against floods. They went up the wooden stairs onto the terrace. The man who'd shown them the way had vanished. There was nobody around. In the darkness Ute stepped on the tail of a large collie-like dog lying across the veranda like a pile carpet. The dog growled, shook its heavy fur and padded softly away. The inside of the house was dark, and through the enormous glassless windows Ute could glimpse the outlines of a bar, and some wicker chairs and tables. It looked like a communal lounge.

“
Bienvenidos
!” a voice startled them. They turned the corner of the veranda, and saw a middle-aged couple peering at them through a cloud of smoke. The woman was elongated and spindly. Her face of a wilted sun-worshipping beauty was framed with frizzy reddish hair threaded with silver strands. A pile of ledger books and a large seashell full of cigarette butts lay on the table before her.

“English? Deutsch? Français? Italiano? Español?” The man sprung to his feet and grinned with nicotine-stained teeth.

“English and French,” Jerry said, visibly relaxing, and then pointed at Ute, “Español and Finnish.”

“OK, OK,” the man said. “
Sehr gut
. My English is not so good. My girlfriend speaks English and Espanish. And you speak Espanish?”

“I pretend to,” Ute said modestly. Her Spanish was fluent.

The man laughed and shed cigarette ash as he waved his hands about. Two tufts of grey hair frizzed up on each side of his bald patch. He had grizzled stubble, and grey hair curled out from the opening of his floral-printed shirt. He flip-flopped inside the house.

“How many nights do you want to stay?” he asked in Spanish.

Ute translated for Jerry. “Ten, twenty?” Jerry chanced. He smiled at Ute. Their host waved his cigarette impatiently.

“Come in, come in, I'll give you a key and take your passports. You can decide later. Stay as long as you like.” He switched the lights on inside the lounge.

As Ute passed her, the woman gazed up at her dreamily. There was kindness in her eyes, and also something else, something like a shadow of… wariness. A distant memory. Pity for the flame-faced arrival.

“Well done for finding this place,” Jerry said as their host copied details from their passports into a ledger.

“It was the driver, not me,” she said.

“You came through the back gate, didn't you?” their host asked.

“I don't know, it was a large gate.” Ute said.

“Did you come in a tricycle taxi?”

“That's right.”

“From Puerto Seco.”

“Yes.”

“Those goddamn drivers, they know we don't like people coming through the back gate, especially in the middle of the night like this. They do it to get more money off you, you know. But what can you do?”

“We had no idea. Is there another entrance?”

“Oh yes, just out here, that's the main gate.”

“Is it closer to the town?”

“Oh, much closer. It's a kilometre and a half along the beach. Maximum two.”

“So which way is the ocean?” Ute asked.

Small ticks worried the man's face and hands.

“Ah, you'll see tomorrow morning,” he winked at her. “
Mañana
,” he said to Jerry.

“How much is a double?” Ute enquired.

“Depends how long you stay. If you stay two nights, five nights, ten nights, it's thirty dollars a night. If you stay ten days or more, it's twenty dollars a night. If you stay…”

“Ten days!” Ute chuckled incredulously. “We don't have that much time.”

“Of course, you can stay as long as you like. Some people stay longer.”

“How many guests do you have at the moment?”

“Not many. We're not busy at the moment, it's the off-season. We're going into summer. Normally, it rains quite a lot. We sure hope it'll rain.”

“Because of the garden?”

“You got it. This garden needs lots of water, it's a tropical garden. For you of course it's no good, you're here for the beaches and to get away from the rain. Ah, I remember the misery of autumn rains in Spain… But we pray for rain every day here. This region has suffered from increasing droughts. Every year, it gets worse. Climate change. Last year, we had
El Niño
. It devastated the garden, flooded the front cabins. People lost their houses in the villages, the
malecón
was wrecked, the beach in Puerto Seco was littered with uprooted trees, dead animals, house roofs, all manner of rubbish. Who paid for it to be cleaned up? The local council, you think? No, of course not. It was the rich gringos at Villa Pacifica, as usual.”

Tiny bits of spittle sprayed them. His dopey grin had vanished. A frown split his curved forehead. “Yep, we shelled out yet again. Trouble is, it looks like our prayers will be answered only too well this year, and we're about to have another spell…”

“Mikel,
amor
, come,” the woman called out softly from the veranda. He seemed to reset himself with an invisible button, and the yellow-toothed smile was back.

“I'll put you in The Tortoise. You'll like it. Breakfast is from eight till eleven. We also have a restaurant, so you can have lunch and dinner here. It's the best restaurant in a radius of 500 kilometres, each way. We have Italian, Spanish, local, and only the freshest produce and ingredients.”

“Is the kitchen open now?” Ute asked.

“No, the kitchen is closed now,” their host replied, shaking his head sorrowfully. Everything about him was exaggerated. Then his body jerked joyfully. “But we have lemon cake, if you want.” He waved at an enticing half-cake along the bar counter. They bought two pieces. Just then, a man materialized in the far, darker end of the lounge and beckoned them over.

“
Buenas noches
, good night,” their host said cheerfully, and returned to the table outside.

Ute and Jerry hurried down a dark path behind their guide, stuffing the moist, fragrant cake into their dusty faces.
La tortuga
was a small wooden cabin on stilts with an overhanging thatched roof. It was partially swallowed by huge plants reaching out on every side to the indigo sky. There was a well-used printed-cotton hammock outside. The windows were simply square holes with mosquito nets stretched across. The single light inside was dim. There were a few pieces of wicker furniture, including a small table, and a simple but attractive bathroom with lots of shells and a huge natural sea sponge large enough to towel yourself with. The centrepiece was the large bed, enveloped in a cascading mosquito net suspended from a hook in the ceiling.