Costa Rican Memoir #9

manuelantonio
Originally uploaded by Randuwa

It’s summertime, and while I’m not planning an actual trip to the beach this year, I find myself remembering one from many years ago. It’s a new Costa Rican Memoir, the last being offered in the summer of 2005. This one, in particular, is about a trip with my friend “S” (first mentioned in a post here on 16 JULY 2005). The first important thing to know is that S. is a native Costa Rican.

In Costa Rica there are many holidays. Not as many as, say, in France, but more than in the United States. It was the occasion of one of these holidays that precipitated my adventure with S. S. was always eager to show me his country, and I was more than happy to experience it; so when he purposed that we take advantage of the holiday by spending the weekend at a beach on the Pacific Ocean, I was right on board!

In order to get there, we would have to rely on public transportation, and I in my insightful naiveté, suggested that we purchase our bus tickets in advance. S. was simply appalled by this. He explained to me, his ignorant American friend, that obtaining tickets was no big deal. “Right,” thought I, but having been wrong on other occasions for reasons directly blossoming out of my cultural ignorance, I acquiesced. My mistake.

When the day arrived we met at my workplace, Colegia Métodista at the end of my workday (mid-morning) and with backpacks mounted upon our shoulders, headed toward the central bus depot. Arriving, I noticed how crowded the place was, and when S. finally had his turn at the ticket counter, his attempt to purchase our fare turned into an angry discussion with the vender. I approached and assured S. that there was no need to be angry; and in the end we purchased tickets that worked out like this:

1) We boarded a very comfortable luxury bus with service to an exclusive resort. This bus took us to the edge of the central valley where it dropped us off at a place designated as a pick-up site for the bus to Querpos. When we arrived we discovered that we were not the first people to have been sold this bill of goods. There were five hopeful holiday sojourners ahead of us. As we waited, our numbers swelled to more than a dozen, and then OUR bus arrived…

2) Which was a very unglorified, decommissioned Blue Bird school bus. It was clear that there would be no place to sit, and so we found our slots in the aisle, straddled our backpacks, grasped the safety bars above out heads and prepared for a very long trip to the Pacific. If I was ever tempted to feel sorry for myself, such emotions were completely obliterated by the elderly woman standing directly in from of me on the bus. She was all of 5 feet tall, carried a huge bolsa full of items acquired in San José. She flopped it down in the aisle, straddled it, grabbed the safety bars on the backs of the nearest seats, locked her knees like some amazing old mare, and endured the next 4 hours of bumps, jerks, bounces, and turns without any acknowledgement of peril let alone inconvenience. Men, mind you ~ nay, young, healthy, strapping men in the prime of their lives and virility had seats on this bus. But she didn’t. And no one gave a second thought to this: it’s called Machismo ~ and in the summer of 1984, Costa Rican men practiced it with the ease and non-chalance that I devoted to breathing.

As we made our way further and further into the mountains and further and further away from San José, the roads became more decrepit and thus more of a challenge for the school bus. The blessing was that from time to time we stopped and someone on the bus exited; however, most of these stops also permitted someone else to embark. And so it wasn’t until dusk was finally settling upon our journey and we entered the town of San Marcos were enough people left the bus to finally make way for S. and I to have seats.

What a blessing. To finally rest in a seat. As the bus pulled out of San Marcos we both felt so grateful. Barely had we time to savor the moment when the baby in the arms of the woman in the seat behind us convulsed, and then vomited all over S.’s backpack! I swear to you, it was such a bizarre and yet perfect metaphor for poor S’s response to my request that we plan ahead. In my youthful vengeance, I burst into laughter while he exploded into invective and assaulted the poor woman demanding from her a restitution that she was no more able to provide than to comprehend . . . baby’s vomit, get over yourself rich boy!

In the end, S. was left to sop up and swab off his belonging as best he could. The sun had set during the episode, and the bus was headed down the mountain toward the flickering lights of the port of Querpos.

When we finally chugged to a stop, we grabbed our backpacks and headed toward the National Park known as Manuel Antonio. In town, we purchased a loaf of bread and some oranges for breakfast. I had been to Manuel Antonio once before and so I knew that to enter the park you had to cross a shallow stream; however, in the glow of the moonlight, it was clear that the stream was more substantial in it’s width than I recalled. But I assured S. that it was not a big deal, and we should cross the water to enter the park…. Little did I know.

The tide was fully in, and the crossing was a veritable river. As we crossed there was literally a point where we had to hold our backpacks over our heads to keep them dry with water swirling around our armpits. Once on the other side, we found a place on the beach and pitched our tent. We stripped off our clothes and hung them on a line strung between to nearby palms to dry, and thankfully entered the tent for one of the most restful nights of sleep either of us had ever had.

In mid morning, an American ex-pat in park ranger garb visited our site to obtain from us the park fee (15¢ per day). He asked us how and when we arrived and when we told him about crossing the “river” at night, he faded to an even paler shade of white. It seems that at high tide, the little estuary is a favorite feeding zone for sharks – we missed the warning signs.

Fair in is fair out! I had S. on the whole bus booking thing, but now he clearly had me on the shark-infested river crossing. Like what the hell could I say about that? My bad?

The next two days were spent in restful play. We read books in the shade of palms. We swam in the crystal waters of the Pacific Ocean. We slept in my tent in the platonic embrace of friendship. We were so young, so happy, so good to one another. My experiences in Costa Rica back then and more recently in Nicaragua have taught me that men in Latin America are by an' large so much more at ease in their own skins and with one another.