Costa Rica, 04-30-2007
We’ve finally arrived! As expected, it took longer than expected. After landing in San Jose, we grab a bus headed for downtown. It took some help from some friendly locals, but we finally found La Coca Cola Estacione. (Is everything branded now?) but it appears completely shut-up. Wanting badly to get to the coast, we walk a few more blocks to orient ourselves, ending up in a neighborhood bad enough that I wouldn’t want to be there after dark. It’s apparently dangerous enough that a local woman stops us out of the blue and seaks with and earnest concern in her voice. I don’t understand her rapid-fire Spanish. She backtracked to repeating a simple “Aqui, es malo. Es muy malo,” and making purse-snatching gestures with her own purse.
Yeah, we’re a pair of stand-out gringos.
We thanked her, but continued on, as we’re convinced the bus to Puntarenas is near. With the help of a few more locals, we discover we’re right. And that bus stations are never in a nice part of town.
$0.75 (equivalent) for the first bus from airport, $1.50 each for the second all the way from San Jose to Puntarenas – a 2-3 hour trip contingent on traffic and construction. Beat that, Greyhound.
Paquera Ferry
After a $2 cab ride to the Paquera ferry, we’re set to hit the Peninsula de Nicoya and Mal Pais. We have some time and hunger to kill, though. Wandering a block or two from the high-traffic ferry “terminal”, we find a locate soda (cafe) and gobble down a home-made lunch of tacos and arroz con pollo. $3 per tummy and we’re stuffed. I love how far the dollar goes here, and I hate how poor my Spanish is. Es malo. Es muy malo.
Lunch at a Soda
One that note; I’m am surprised at how much has come back since my two years of high school Spanish almost 15 years ago. Thank you, Mr. Dunn and Ms. Colter.
In another, more recent flashback, Nae and I were seated on the flight out, a few rows in front of a later-middle aged woman with the worst travel attitude I’ve witnessed. A litany of comments to fellow passengers:
”My daughter just raves about Costa Rica, but I don’t know. I’m here to check it out, but I have my reservations.”
”Why is everyone wearing a sweater? My daughter said it’s always hot here. I don’t like this. Will I be alright? I don’t like this at all.”
”Where did we land? Where’s San Jose? Which side of the country?”
”What season is it here, winter or summer? I don’t understand.”
Lady, did you not do any research before you came? Leave your “reservations” at home, find out your flying into the center of the nation, and realize that you’re nearing the equator, hence, summer and winter mean precisely jack shit, and that wet and dry dry is what it’s about. I’ve never been to Costa Rica before, but I took the time to look up data like that. It’s only polite.
I digress.
From Paquera, we hire a taxi to take us to Hotel Pachamama in Mal Pais, as it’s a winding dirt road to get there, the sun has almost set, and it’s been nearly 24 hours since we left Nae’s house for LAX. Another hour and a half through pastures, crops, and one-store towns – ignoring for a moment some of the progressing foreign-dollar developments – Nae turns to me with a smile.
Sunset on the Paquera Ferry
“Off the beaten path enough for you, baby?”
I smile back, legs and ass vibrating from the potholed washboard we’ve been tearing down in the dark, from edge to edge.
“Sure is, baby.”
Mal Pais
Pachamama is the hotel we’re staying at for the first few nights; the luxurious end of the trip. I’d wanted to save that for the end, but with the schedule Nae’s been working lately, I acquiesced to the request. And haven’t been disappointed in the least. It’s a collection of a few cabinas and a house, some attached and some not, managed by a trilingual surfer Austrian named Franz. The room was small but clean, with a private bath and kitchenette, but perhaps most importantly, it had a hammock on the porch.
Pachamama Cabina
Nae’s asleep right now, and I’m out on the porch watching a lizard I’ve named Gerald – a gecko perhaps – hang upside down from the thatched awning. He’s comfortable but not overly so, kind of a flexible suppleness, hyper-aware without tensing. He’s seeing the world upside down, tongue darting out, tasting the air and catching the occasional dinner. As much as I want to run inside and capture his image with my camera, I realize more than that I want to just let him be. And I realize that, in a year or so, I want to live Gerald’s life: hanging upside down in a world apart, tasting the eddies and currents of my environment.