Costa Rica part one
Thursday, Mar. 16, 2006 - 21:16

I had to go back to work today. It was... like I never left, kind of.

I don't know.

Here's some things I wrote while I was gone, I'll post more of them, maybe this weekend, but it might be a big weekend, I might not be on the computer much.

Sunday, February 19
21:26
Alajuela, Costa Rica

It's been an odd weekend - Friday night I was freezing in my bed in Seattle, Saturday night I was on a plane listening to a woman with the croup (every time I'd start to fall asleep she'd wake me up cough cough), and now I'm in some house somewhere in Central America.

I've just spent an interminably long period of time listening to a bunch of talkers talking. And they say impressive things and sound very competent but do they ever shut up and do what they say they do? There are a lot of arrogant assholes who think they're entitled to anything and everything - just buy it, whether it means anything to you or not, whether it means anything to anyone else or not. And then talk about it. Loudly and intensely.

They were talking about real estate, the land they own, the "piece of shit Tico house" that was on their land that they had torn down, how rich they are compared to the Ticos.

Today I mailed a letter in Houston, slept at 35,000 feet, looked down and saw the ocean below me, looked down and saw some volcanoes below me, got blown about by a windstorm in San Jose, watched my sister so easily nearly get taken away by a crafty unofficial cabby, rode in a cab much nicer than the ones in Seattle, sat by a fountain, took a picture of ants, ate purple rice, experienced the barrier lingual, fell asleep on a strange bed, realized that once again - goddamnit - never mind.

What I like most about traveling is the journey, not the destination, but goddamnit.

When I fell asleep this afternoon I was dreaming dreams, nice normal everyday dreams of my everyday life, which doesn't exist anymore. As of today.

And, in the Megasuper here, they were playing Boys II Men.

Monday Feb 20
Quepos

My sister is scared in big cities. Today she wouldn't get up from her bench at the Coca-Cola bus terminal in San Jose after she paid a man for giving her some confidence.

We're on the Pacific coast now.

We took the bus here.

It is humid here.

Last night - no, this morning - after the arrogant gringos from Connecticut left, I talked a little to the other couple that had been talking last night - the guy was nice, and interesting, and not a jerk. And I'm one day older than him! And his girlfriend was born on Sept. 24 - my best friends are always born on Sept. 22.

We connected at the knuckle. Needless to say.

In Quepos we watched a soccer game while eating ice cream.

I can't write what I'd like to write in this little journal. What I'd like to write is: You can't flush the toilet paper in Costa Rica, and other observations.

Not that I have any other observations to follow up with, but that's such a good beginning it just had to be written.

Also I'd like to write about a small town and its star soccer player - not Jose, make it Rafael. Rafael, the star soccer player, he is so quick, so good, he could play for the national team. Everyone in town admires him and is so proud of him, their Rafael. And he is so handsome all the girls swoon. But he doesn't notice. In the park he never walks around the fountain with girls. Instead he always has his soccer ball, at first juggling with his friends, but one by one his friends stop, walk around with their new girlfriends and sit on the benches to make out. So Rafael plays by himself, so aloof, all the girls swoon and they all try to get his attention, to no avail. One day I come to town and Rafael falls in love with me. From his part-time job at the restaurant he earns money to buy me ice cream and bracelets. I iron his black pants and white shirts. "Baby, here is some money," he tells me. "Go buy yourself something pretty." Soon he gets a job at an appliance store, making more money so he can take care of me and the ninas.

He begins to slow down and becomes bitter, never forgetting that he could have been a pro soccer player rather than an appliance salesman. But we have a nice dishwasher.

Rafael spends more and more time at his mother's house. Soon I become known around town as la gringa loca y fea. "Get a mistress," his mother tells him. "That way maybe you will finally get a son."

But Rafael does not. Instead he just mopes and drinks and is eventually killed in a head-on collision with a bus, passing on a steep winding mountain road. Our daughters are 15 and 13. The elder, Maria Elena Isabela, inherited her father's athleticism and is so good at soccer but of course that is impossible so she wants to go to the U.S. to study to be a veterinarian - she is as smart as a bug, or a button.

The younger, Judith, is already the town whore and she terrifies me. The girls hate me but I don't care, as long as I have my cats everything is okay.

I am written up in the 2034 Let's Go Costa Rica guidebook - stay away from the shack at the top of the hill above the cemetery, it says. According to local legend, la gringa loca y fea throws rotten mangoes at passersby, and getting hit in the head with one of these will bring you seven years of bad luck.

2/21 14:20

On the bus:

Bumpy Road Cafe - in between Quepos and Dominical. Bumpy Road is an understatement.

Near Portalon - a river. A bridge, the second half of which is scattered at the side of the road. And so the bus fords the river. We might die, we might have to abandon ship and wade out. Instead we make it across fine. The travelers get out their cameras: on a bus in a river.

22:00 - I don't know where you were Tuesday night and I don't know where the moon was but I was on a beach in Costa Rica looking at the stars - Orion was nearly obscured by all the other stars around him but you could find his belt, and his skirt, and his head. The waves were glowing, whether from the stars or the few electric bulbs that came through the jungle - or both.

The serenity of the evening, though, was interrupted by a minor emergency - "Kelsi, is this a cockroach?" "Why yes it is. Come, little cocky, let's take you outside." [muffled scream] "Kelsi I was just going to comment on how brave you were." "But then it crawled on me."

Previously I had ingested some margaritas - Taco Tuesday! - and half of a la bomba.

La bomba - tropical fruit sauteed with brown sugar and cinnamon, and then flambeed with rum, yum.

Etc etc etc, blah.

"I want to go home!" I thought today. I still do - what's the point? Monkeys will exist whether I've seen them or not, and the hills - it's just like the movies.

However.

I am constantly reminded of the places I've been. The cows - they are part dog, part goat, part camel here - they are skinny - in Australia, one train ride, Brisbane to Sydney - out somewhere, there were these terribly skinny cows, and - what to make of it - in the fields all these dead cows by the railroad tracks - bones, bones covered with hide, dead dead cows, died of a heart attack because of the train? Or starved, like the rest of the herd soon would? Who owned them and what had happened to him?

The trees - Australia.

A little pizza place in Heidelberg - Tony's? You got little pizzas there, very good, and he always remembered you.

The colonialism here, a very vague thing, it can't even be described, but it's here, and it's in Australia as well.

Bus rides, train rides, travel - how you can love and hate something at the same time.

And I am happiest in retrospect.