Cahuita

Cahuita grew out of the turtle-hunting voyages of the early 19th century. Afro-Caribbean people from Bocas del Toro in Panama, the Colombian island of San Andrés and Nicaragua came each year to hunt turtles on the coast near Tortuguero, and over time some settled along the southern shore, founding Cahuita, Old Harbour (now Puerto Viejo), Grape Point (Punta Uva) and Manzanillo. The name Cahuita is linked to the sangrillo or cawa tree; in English the settlement was known as Bluff, and Spanish names replaced the English ones when the government made Spanish the national language.

For most of the 20th century it remained a small, isolated fishing village. Roads and services were slow to reach this part of Limón province, and electricity did not arrive in Cahuita until late 1976. Walter Ferguson's parents brought him here from Panama as a small child in the early 1920s, and the calypsos he wrote over the following decades turned the village's daily life into song.

In 1970 the point and its reef were protected as a national monument, and the same year Cahuita became a district of Talamanca canton. The monument became a national park in 1978, and tourism has since become the town's mainstay. In 2025 two shipwrecks long known in the park's waters were identified as Danish slave ships lost in 1710.

Cahuita is known across Costa Rica for its Afro-Caribbean character, visible in its cooking, its music and its language. Many families speak English as their everyday language and are also fluent in Spanish; Walter Ferguson, who sang almost always in English, described the town as perfectly bilingual.

Ferguson (1919–2023), known locally as Mr Gavitt and nationally as the King of Calypso, was the leading figure of calypso limonense, the calypso of the Limón coast. He wrote around two hundred songs, among them "Cabin in the Wata", "Callaloo" and "Carnaval Day", and was first recorded on vinyl in 1982 by the Smithsonian Folkways label. He rarely left the village; when he was in his eighties, producers brought a recording studio to Cahuita rather than take him to San José. His hundredth birthday in 2019 was declared National Calypso Day, and an annual international calypso festival in his name has been held in Cahuita since 2013.

The wider district is mixed. Costa Ricans of Jamaican descent live alongside Spanish-speaking ticos and Europeans who have settled on the coast, and the Bribri people live in the hills inland. Manners follow the Caribbean pattern: greetings first, an easy pace and a relaxed attitude to time.

Cahuita is the main village of a district of the same name, which covers about 235 square kilometres and also takes in Puerto Viejo, Cocles, Punta Uva, Manzanillo and Hone Creek. The district had 8,293 people at the 2011 census and an estimated 13,463 in 2022; the village itself is far smaller.

The town is laid out along one main street that runs from the highway to the sea, with dirt roads leading off it to houses and guesthouses. Tourism is the main source of work, through guesthouses, restaurants, guiding and snorkelling trips, and tourism taxes help to keep the Talamanca municipality afloat.

The day is set by the tropical light, with sunrise and sunset close to six o'clock all year, and life is lived outdoors. The reef has suffered: live coral cover fell sharply in the 1980s and early 1990s, blamed on sediment and agricultural runoff carried by the Estrella River, bleaching and other pressures.

Cahuita's food reflects its Afro-Caribbean roots. The classic of the coast is rice and beans cooked in coconut milk, quite different from the gallo pinto of the Central Valley, served with chicken or fish in a spiced Caribbean sauce. Rondón is a rich soup of fish, plantain, heart of palm and hot Panamanian chilli cooked in coconut milk, and coconut milk, chilli and spices flavour much of the cooking.

The town is particularly known for its grilled chicken, cooked in several local variations, and for dessert crêpes filled with local bananas, strawberries and chocolate. Many restaurants serve fresh local fish, and sodas near the park entrance offer simple plates of rice, beans and meat.

Coast bakeries sell patí, turnovers of spiced minced beef, pan bon, a dark spiced bread, and coconut bread. Agua de sapo, a drink of ginger, lime and raw cane sugar, and home-made ginger beer are the traditional refreshments, and fresh coconuts are sold along the coast.