Southern Caribbean Travel Information and Travel Guide - Costa Rica

Southern Caribbean

Southern Caribbean Overview
Places in Southern Caribbean
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Introducing Southern Caribbean

This is the heart and soul of Costa Rica’s Afro-Caribbean community, where Jamaicans brought here by United Fruit to build the backbone of the original banana republic learned to call this country home. For more than half a century, the communities of the southern Caribbean existed almost independent of the rest of the country, turning to subsistence farming and fishing when the banana plantations, and later cacao fincas, fell to devastating blights.

These Afro-Caribbean communities found good neighbors among the ancient indigenous groups, now encompassed by the nearby Cocles/KéköLdi, Talamanca Cabécar and Bribrí reserves. The two peoples, isolated from the goings-on of mainstream Costa Rica, exchanged the ancient wisdom of medicinal plants, agriculture and jungle survival. And thrived.

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