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We awake with a breakfast of granola on the patio and to cafe con leche at the soda prior to walking a few kilometers to the “Swedish Pools,” a series of tide-pools best explored in the morning. It’s positively beautiful, as most of this country seems to be, and I think I’ll let the photos tell the story. The portion they can’t relate, however, has to do with the millions of hermit crabs. Just like last night, they’re everywhere, although they were much more skittish than the night before, and would curl up into their shells at the slightest provocation. Perhaps because to the tremendous storm of the previous evening had passed?

The’re frequently climbing up the sides of rocks around the beach, sometimes as high as four feet up, but if they detect our presence, they all simultaneously retract into the safety of their homes, and, of course, lose their precarious footing on the steep rocks, and a waterfall of occupied shell cascades down. Surprising, amusing, and we feel bad for negating all the upward progress they’d made.

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Returning to the hotel, Franz informes us that, unless the shuttle service to Playa Samara receives another call for a northbound passenger, we’ll have to pay the price of three passengers for the trip – $105. Cheap by US standards given the distance, but not cheap as in “cheap beer.” Since the taxi driver that dropped us off in Mal Pais quoted us $120 for the trip, and there’s still a chance that another party might sign up, we make the reservation. As the topic of money had been broached, we inquire as to how to pay for the remainder of the hotel fees. He enumerates the problems of currency exchange and bank transfers with paying by credit, and that he’d have to tack on an additional 13% in taxes if we go that route.

Crap. We were planning on credit. We don’t have enough, in dollars or colones.

Back to Cobano, this time in a taxi. I pull out US $300 for the shuttle, hotel, and spending money. I make enough small talk with the taxi driver to learn he’s grown up in Mal Pais and lived here all his life. He points out his abuela’s house when we pass it. Later, we would learn that there not too many original Ticos left in Mal Pais.

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On the way out of Cobano we pass a couple of Americans hitching. I’m lost in thought, trying to remember various phrases and conjugations in Spanish, but absentmindedly nod at them regardless. Not until a few kilometers later do they bubble into my consciousness – breaking breaking through the years of conditioning my mother instilled in me regarding hitch-hikers (and the express forbiddance to ever do such a dangerous thing myself).

I’m disappointed in myself. My awareness was lacking, and we should have stopped for them. They were just a couple of Americans looking for a ride. But we’re nearly in Playa Carmen by now, and it would be silly to turn around. For, if they were just trying to save a couple bucks, then I didn’t help when I could’ve, but it’s not the end of the world. Or, they were truly broke, it’d be better than they were in the only town around with a bank, and therefore the only place to get money wired to them.

As if warning me of my freshly-acquired karmic debt, and that balancing it would require an even larger sacrifice, we passed two prostitutes thumbing for rides alongside a farmhouse.

I didn’t ask the driver to stop.

When I do balance that debt, I can be damn sure it’ll be a doozy.

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It’s 7,000 colones for the ride there and back, and Franz says it’s a good deal, as it usually costs 6,000 each way. This I believe, given the distance, although his estimate before we left was 1,000 each way. Where and when he got this new estimate is beyond me, but I won’t hold it against him. He looked quite unsure of the original guess when he said it, I estimated it’d be 5,000, and I think we both knew it.

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The sun is setting and we’re ravenous. We decide to try the Pizza by Moonlight outdoor restaurant just down the street. It’s named Moonshine, and I wonder if it’s an intentional double-entendre or a result of a rote translation. I feel somewhat conflicted about ordering pizza, considering all the great native cuisine about, but the location was gorgeous and we’d already sampled healthy doses of local foodstuffs.

The Gorgonzola and onion pizza ends up being some of the best I’ve ever had, and for $10 for the whole pie it’s a great deal. The real enjoyment, however, is Bebice. At least, that’s what I think her name was. Bebice was a little trilingual four year old, the daughter of a French ex-pat who just moved into a cabina adjoining the soda. Her mother is helping out for the evening as the owner accidentally took one of his mother’s sleeping pills instead of his antacid pill.

Bebice has an extraordinary amount of energy, beckoning me to follow her around as she points our rocks, sticks, leaves, shells, and soda cap bottle tops filled with sand for me to collect. We frequently curry them from the rocky beach to our table and back. Occasionally, we stop to draw pictures in the sand with a stick. She’s all smiles and excitement, and patiently teaches me the words for various objects.

Her mother tells us that Bebice understands English, French, and Spanish, but rarely speaks English. She usually flips freely back and forth between the remainders, using whichever word of the two languages is shortest. I now realize I have no idea in what language the words I just learned are in.

Her mother also spoke of how Mal Pais still has, for the time being, “magic.” Her old village south of Manuel Antonio “had the magic,” she said, “until foreign interests came in and bought hectares of land for pennies, wires, plumbed, and parceled the lots, and gradually sold them off at grossly inflated prices that pushed the Ticos out. DirectTV came, and the poison was injected, bringing images to the eyes of young Ticos detailing everything they ‘should’ have but don’t.”

“You see how the iguanas wander about on the ground here? They used to do that in my old village, but now they keep to the trees. Iguanas are vulnerable on land, and cease going there when they feel vulnerable. They no longer feel safe there; they retreat to the trees. In Mal Pais, they still roam the ground.”