On Costa Rica and Serendipity

I left off waiting for my parents to arrive in slummy San Jose. As I write this entry it is now my last day in San Jose, and I must say that the city is more endearing than I first thought; San Jose, like fine wine, simply takes time. Pregnant street-dwellers aside, the city has a haphazard ecclecticism (this could also read "lack of urban planning") that keeps things, well, interesting.

The night before my parent's arrival I decided to attend a concert/symphony at the National Theater in San Jose, indisputably the nicest building in the entire city. The concert, itself, was unnotable (to a symphonic layman, anyway), except for what happened before entering the building: as I was about to enter through the iron gate that leads to the double-doors of the theater, a black car with tinted windows decided that, in fact, I was not going to enter through the gates at that particular moment. The car wasn't exactly going to run me over -- the driver was driving 5 MPH or so -- but it was very clear that he was not going to stop for me. The vehicle was either official-looking or slightly gangsterish; common sense dictated that I move out of its way. Out of the back of the black car stepped a crisply dressed, albeit short, Costa Rican man. Standing next to me at that point was a Costa Rican guy of about my age who leaned over to whisper to his friend: "El Presidente," he said, pointing at the man who had just exited the vehicle. I looked back at the official-looking man, who had no visible bodyguards, and then asked the Costa Rican boy, "¿El Presidente de que?" "De Costa Rica," he explained, and I realized that I was standing within arm's length of the President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias. I turned to Mr. Arias, said "Hola" to him, and he gave me a polite nod of the head. This was the extent of the exchange; we both then entered the theater (I to the third floor, Mr. Arias to the front row). I would love to have this moment with him again, as there are a thousand things I might have said to the Costa Rican President: "Mr. Arias, as a citizen of the United States of America, it is an honor present to you the McDonald's Chicken McNuggets that, as an American, I carry with me in my pockets. I'm Lovin' It!"

My parents and younger sister arrived the following evening, and the next morning we prop-planed down to Drake Bay in southwest Costa Rica. The town of Drake is undeveloped (our baggage was delivered by tractor to our cabins), and the cabins are designed in a classy, if not minimalistic, fashion. Mornings began with hot, Costa Rican coffee served to our door-step, which overlooked Drake Bay and a rising sun that was early for my tastes (6 AM). The town of Drake serves as a springboard for viewing the absurdly plentiful wildlife of the peninsula, and four of the five days saw our family taking "adventures" to do so. We went SCUBA diving/snorkeling the first day, went for a 2.5 hour hike to a secluded bay for snorkeling on the second day, did a combined horseback ride/zip-line canopy tour that left most of us with horrendously chafed legs and asses on the third day, and on the fourth did a guided tour through Corcovado National Park.

As I mentioned, it is the wildlife that is the draw to this area. We saw three types of monkeys -- spider, howler, and white-faced capuchin -- of which a troupe of the latter decided to spend an evening tromping and stomping the roof and trees of our cabin. We saw a sloth, two crocodiles, birds birds birds (the Scarlet Macaw was king), a Basilisk lizard, Jesus Christ lizards, a racoony sort of thing, and so on. On one of our boat trips (boats are still the preferred method of transportation), we spent about half an hour circling through a pod of 80-100 spotted dolphins, who were polite enough to put on a show for us and left us thankful for the existence of dolphins. After these excursions we enjoyed slow lunches with fresh juice, followed by afternoons of reading and hammocking. Dinners were communal and plentiful, and a beer or two (or gin and tonic or two) was all we needed to put us instantly to sleep not long after last of the sunlight had disappeared. It was a very, very good week with my family.

As the title of this blog mentions serendipity, I will explain the second instance of being at the right place at the right time (for the less perceptive, the first ocurred at the National Theater). After SCUBA diving and snorkeling off of Isla del Cano, a small island off the west coast of Costa Rica, our boat operators dropped us on this (very) small island for lunch. Suddenly, two of my good friends from Seattle, Alex Casey and Ana Torve, walked up and said hello. I had no idea they were in Costa Rica, and last they had heard I was simply "traveling around the world." It was good to see them, and we had about an hour to catch up with each other before their boat zipped them back to the main-land. Sing along! "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears..."

My younger sister and parents flew home, and two days later my buddy Nicko arrived in San Jose . Nicko and I are good friends: we lived in a shared-house together last year, a rental house where Nicko and I managed to spread 125,000 "common mint" seeds in the backyard to see if we could successfully introduce and cultivate this wonderfully invasive species in an urban environment. We were surprised to find that we could not.

We spent a day together in San Jose, and the evening saw us take advantage of one of those San Jose nuances that has caused me to become increasingly fond of the city: there is a video game arcade in San Jose that has video games exclusively from the 80's and early 90's. Street Fighter? Yes. Tekken? You got it. 1943? Dig. I convinced two Canadians to join Nicko and I, and together we drank beer and played video games. Nicko and I placed 4th and 5th, respectively, on the all-time high-score list for "1943."

We then headed to Cahuita on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, a town that is laid back to the point of zombie-hood. The locals have a Caribbean, island-type mentality that contributes to this, but the tourists are not far behind; the oppressive heat, coupled with the copious consumption of marijuana, creates a scene where people seem to be milling about aimlessly all day long. Nicko and I had a very difficult time finding a hotel, as nearly all the hotel owners were nowhere to be found. There is not a paved road in the town, and a couple of drug-selling locals seem to have sampled too much of their own.

Nicko and I were productive, though. Our first day was spent on a beach where, inexplicably, a pack of approximately a dozen horses went racing down the beach; there was no owner in sight. Our second day we took two-hour surf lessons, and on our third day we took a four mile hike through a national park, where we saw a lot of monkeys (and a dead one, still hanging upside down by its tail!).

On day one we also visited the Afro-Caribbean museum of Cahuita, the most improbable museum I have ever seen. Nicko and I first passed this "museum" on rented bicycles: it is in the living room of a dilapidated house, with a bedsheet functioning as a "door" to the living room and music BOOMING out of the house. The music sounded like a Caribbean version of The Doors -- it was very, very keyboard-heavy. As this was unlike any museum I had previously seen (or heard), Nicko and I promptly entered the museum and met Sankey, the owner.

Sankey is a great guy -- he is a big black man with dread-locks and an infectious laugh -- but I have to say that he sort of half-asses it when it comes to entrepreneurship. His "museum" had some old work equipment, as well as an old, Mercedes-Benz bicycle, but it was in the middle of his living room. He also had a sign up for a "sauna" in the back, which didn't seem to ever have existed. According to a local surf-instructor, Sankey also constructed home-made, tent-style accomodations in his backyard for tourists. It was a plan that never took off.

But -- BUT! -- Sankey loves music! It turned out that the keyboard we had heard upon entering the "museum" was Sankey, himself. His real passion was the bass, and after I told Sankey that Nicko plays guitar and I play the keyboard, we arranged a jam session for the following afternoon. Our jam session lasted about three and a half hours and we came up with some pretty good music. All of us were plugged into an amplifier in the living room, and Sanke cranked it up well enough that the neighbors were forced to listen to us. The majority of Sanke's musical repertoire, naturally, is Caribbean music, and his bass-playing reflected that fact. Rhythmically it is a completely different style than anything Nicko and I are used to, but we had a good time with it. Our set ended not too long after a clinically crazy town resident -- a grey-haired, former New Yorker named Michael who somehow managed to get himself down to Cahuita, Costa Rica and then stayed there -- burst in the living room through the bed-sheet door and tried to add his harmonica to the mix. He was terribly drunk and shrieking and almost knocked over the keyboard.

From Cahuita Nicko and I headed to Rio Cuarto, in northern Costa Rica. On my flight from Puerto Rico to Costa Rica I met Carlos Colon, a retired Puerto Rican man of about 45 years-old who now owns a farm in Rio Cuarto. Generously, he extended an invitation for me to visit, and Nicko and I spent two days in Rio Cuarto with him. He treated us to an outstanding, river-lobster dinner in town the first night, and Nicko and I spent a half-day fishing in the lake on his property. (I caught one fish and threw it back.) His farm is 75 acres, he has about thirty head of cattle and a few goats, and everything is green. Absolutely exhausted from fishing (please read this as a joke), Nicko and I retreated to the hills of Rio Cuarto for five hours of thermal pools. We could not find Carlos the following morning, so we caught a bus and headed back to San Jose.

Now I am back in San Jose, Nicko having departed very early this morning. It is my last night in San Jose, and although I would like to celebrate that fact, it is Maundy Thursday and everything -- everything -- is closed. Tomorrow I fly to Belize, where I begin a ten-day excursion with one Joseph Barolo, a friend of mine from California who has been known to wear bunny suits publicly. More to come.