The coast of Utopia: Barefoot life at its best

For me, Little Corn Island, 40 miles off the east coast of Nicaragua, seemed pretty close to perfect. There are fruit trees and beaches, no cars (everything is more or less within walking distance), and no large developments in the offing. After tramping around for an hour or so along unmarked paths through the forest, I managed to find an empty little beach stretching out beneath crystal, calm water. There were a couple of houses and a garden higher up on the shore, but other than three puppies busily investigating an overturned boat, I was alone. Drenched in sweat, I peeled off my sun-protective long-sleeve shirt, sarong, and oversized hat and dove in. While cooling off, I watched the shore. On the porch of one of the houses, a long-limbed young woman dressed only in a T-shirt came out to hang laundry. Aware that I looked like some sort of ghastly North American apparition — wet, fat, pale, yet overdressed — I approached and tried to explain that I had no idea where I was. Could she give me directions back to town?

She smiled. "If you can wait a minute while I get dressed, I'll walk you back," she volunteered. We chatted as I followed her along the trail: I admired the flowers painted on her toes; she agreed that her beach is the island's most perfect. But Yetty was deeply bored. What she really wanted was to be a dancer, yet Little Corn — population 250 to 1,000 — offered little opportunity. She shrugged and, changing the subject, said that if I liked, she'd show me some of the island's other great beaches the next day.

Yetty showed up in the morning carrying four sweet yellow mangoes that she had gathered for me. This was the first time she'd been on the grounds of the Casa Iguana, where I was happily installed in a cool cabin overlooking the sea; she felt very shy about being there. She had also brought a small bag of nail polishes, and she offered to decorate my toes, too.

We then spent the day wandering from beach to beach, drinking beer and eating plantain chips, swimming, and talking about men and life, family and the future, our lives totally different but nonetheless the same. The paradox — that there I was, looking to find pretty much exactly what she wanted to escape — was central. I could travel there, but most of the people I met could not come to the United States; and if they did come, it would be for work and not for leisure, which is why they couldn't get visas.

Although there is as yet nothing that compares with, say, the northerly coast of Mexico's Quintana Roo (now marketed as the Riviera Maya), the Caribbean coast of Central America does have a handful of lively towns patronized by surfers, divers, sailors, and beachcombers. An older generation of local entrepreneurs, developers, and folks from the First World who decided to chuck the insanity have built small tourism businesses, for instance, in Roatan's West End or Placencia, Belize — which is where I headed next. At the high end in Placencia, just above town, are Francis Ford Coppola's Balinese-chic Turtle Inn and the Inn at Robert's Grove, which also manages two small private islands. I preferred, however, to spend a couple of days in town, where I was completely happy at the Ranguana Lodge (owned and managed by Mark Leslie's sister, as it turned out), which provided us a little cottage on the beach, complete with a fridge and a fan and a wee front porch. Placencia, which has one paved street, qualifies as a big town because it has an ATM, a pharmacy, grocery stores, some charming inns, and one standout French restaurant. At a number of establishments, one can even start the day with a latte.

Hershel Lewis on Playa Cocles, Costa Rica

In Costa Rica, along the two-lane coastal road south from Limón, is a series of similarly happening communities, from Cahuita to Manzanillo, each with its own exceptional beach. The largest by far is Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, the only one with a bank (a good indicator in these parts of having made it onto the grid). A town chock-full of fusion and local cuisine, surfers, drinkers, shops, and music, it remains just under the radar of mass tourism. Its growth has taken place over only 20 years — electricity arrived in 1986, private phones in 1996; still no gas station — and all of its development remains small-scale, its West Indian–infused culture largely intact.

South of town, at Playa Cocles, there's a great beach scene, where the young surfers strut, music plays, and people sit on the sand to watch the hotdogging. Perhaps Hershel Lewis used to be one of them. Today he's a mature guy, a mensch who teaches surfing to tourists, drives a jeep, and has a pretty girlfriend, a young entrepreneur. His warmth and humor are disarming, his skills as a teacher inspired. We met because on this particular trip, I had hooked up with my kids to investigate adventurous entertainments — in addition to surfing, rafting, hiking, and zip-lining, all of which are easily available.

Perhaps the areas that are most out of the loop are the autonomous Indian lands — for instance, in Panama, the comarcas of the Ngobe-Bugle and the Kuna peoples. En route to Coral Lodge, an extremely comfortable, low-key, and environmentally conscientious resort, I passed through Kuna Yala, the comarca formerly known as the San Blas Islands. Indigenous peoples up and down the coast of the western Caribbean have, like the Garifuna, been marginal to mainstream Central American life, but the Kuna have been able to control more than nine hundred square miles of their ancestral lands. Because Coral Lodge is owned by a Panamanian businessman, it is not Kuna and is outside Kuna Yala. There are a number of small Kuna-run resorts within the comarca but nothing that approximates a First World conception of luxury.

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