The Caribbean's Hidden Paradise

[Wirelizard]

The Caribbean's Hidden Paradise! by WireLizard, on Flickr

Internet was down a few evenings ago (bloody wireless router) so I did this up to keep myself amused. "Costa Guano" is, I think, a name originally used in a Joseph Conrad novel I haven't actually read, but it's too good a joke to pass up. The Republic of Costa Guano and it's various neighbours will, eventually, form the background for some pulp/Banana Wars games and pulp adventure lunacy.

Lost Worlds in the jungle-shrouded interior; exiled American gangsters who've found even Havana too hot for them; the tramp steamers making their regular Caribbean rounds; the rumour of a new passenger zeppelin service from Miami with a stop in Havana; the machinations of Costa Guano's various neighbours, both colonies and independant; internal unrest in the capital, Montón De Guano... expect more from Costa Guano eventually.

[carlos marighela]

Is it anywhere near the Costa Living? I head there was a rising in the Costa Living.

[SBRPearce]

And the second port, just down the coast, the beautiful welcoming city of Carto Verde!

[Operator5]

I'm looking to do some nitrate mining there. Sending my team of "scientists" to set up my secret lair... err... corporate HQ.
 

[answer_is_42]

Cool stuff, I'll be interested to see where you take this.

[Patrice]

Good idea 

[Donpimpom]

internal unrest in the capital, Montón De Guano...

  no way! can't exist a place named like this!
I can imagine the passport
Birthplace: Montón de Guano

[Wirelizard]

no way! can't exist a place named like this!
I can imagine the passport
Birthplace: Montón de Guano

Ah, someone who knows what "montón" means.  Or who can run Google Translate like I did to create the name.

Mercifully, such a place only exists inside my head.

(it means "heap" or "pile", just to save folks a trip to Google Translate...) 

[carlos marighela]

I dunno, fact is often stranger than fiction. There's a wryly named slum in the middle of Duque de Caxias, a satellite city of Rio de Janeiro, that rejoices in the name of Favela do Lixão. That translates as slum of the rubbish tip. Funnily enough, it's miles from the real, and scarily immense rubbish tip at Gramacho (biggest in Latin America) and is actually located next to the main shopping mall in town. For added irony, the living hell that houses the rubbish tip is called Jardim Gramacho or Gramacho Garden. Nothing less like a garden is imaginable.

Gramacho really is somewhere you never want to visit and sadly it's all too real.