Costa Rica Baby
Yuck. And I know better, being a bit of a massage connoisseur, not to book 90 minutes with a masseuse you aren't familiar with. If things go sideways, you can live with 60 minutes - most times it's just a lack of pressure or understanding of the body. But, ignoring all past experiences, with vacation brain firing away (meaning no brain activity detected) I found a random spot and booked a 90 minute one for a few hours later.
Nobody likes the word 'juicy', in most contexts. Like moist, for whatever reason, that's just not a word people rally around. But this woman who never kneaded a muscle with more strength than an 8 year old could muster was lathering me up with squirt (not a crowd favorite either) after squirt of 'oil', just running off of me. Ick, gross, and then her not massaging me but just rubbing me over and over. Ugh, the worst ever, and of course I should have just got up and left but I was like I'm here I might as well get a rub down since I'm already all involved - but tedious, little pleasure, and sort of gross. And she didn't speak a lick of English. Im in a surf town named Jaco.
But, Costa Rica...
In Costa Rica, a naturalist’s paradise. Woke up to the loudest cacophony of sound coming from the thick jungle in Southern Costa Rica - if ever a moment was ripe and true for the word ‘cacophony’, a morning in the jungle is it. A wall of sound, of all sorts including I guess a 'screaming monkey'. It died down after I’m not sure how long, and then pretty quiet all day. I’m wondering if the early evening feeding time will present another round. Judging from what I’m hearing right now at 5:24pm, Monday, possibly. Sounds of all sorts. Hundreds of competing birdsong, from the pretty, to the obnoxious, to the harmonic to the demonic.
Took a couple mile hike up a steep jungle path each morning and really made me think of that book I read back in Africa about Livingston and Stanley, and the frickin’ jungle they had to cross in modern day Tanzania. I kept looking at the size of the brush and undergrowth and imagining trying to get a convoy through, and I kept imagining wondering what was lurking just out of site ready to leap. Those guys were literally crazy to be doing shit like that. Animals, bandits, disease, the natives. It’s hot here, for sure, but in the shade not so bad - a little breeze there and here, a ceiling fan a blessing. I’m stationed on a bay (Golfito) about 4 hours south of Jaco. It’s pretty remote. A lot of people go to the northwest Pacific coast toward Nicaragua. I’m in the south, toward Panama. I was going to hop around a bunch, but after a day of chilling, I think I’m reducing my moving about plans pretty much to zero.
I'm in Costa Rica for 7 days, and then St Pete's checking in on my condo construction for 3 days. The condo was supposed to be done a year or so ago (so unprofessional- (tongue in cheek)), or so I was told when I signed up back in early 2021. While frustrating a bit out of principle and a guy who believes in timelines, in reality, it worked out better since last year was a shitshow of crisis after crisis to keep me busy. I'm more ready this year, and nothing changes the fact that I got in really early, like really early, and I'm probably sitting on a few large in appreciation before I step in the door of the top floor corner unit. That happens, and is happening in our projects too - the people in first get the best deal. Makes sense - more risk I suppose, and sales beget sales (not to get old-testament biblical on ya where Abraham begets Peter begets Sarah begets Amos begets Shrek....).
Anyways, back to Costa Rica. Landed in San Jose, rented a truck since I had a feeling I'd be off-roading, and drove 4+ hours south in this Central American country.
Forgive me, I wrote some of this two days ago and now I can't keep straight what I've already written about.
I chilled, but I had the wrong impression that one can just turn a switch off after 16 hour high stress workday for weeks if not months on end and be relaxed. And the forced 'screen free march' just made it worse. So by day two I got over myself and engaged with the work world a bit which relieved the pressure a bit.
On day two I checked with hotel manager about heading straight west to Drakes Bay and he looked at me like I was sure to fall off the end of the earth. Guess he doesn't get out much. So I took my pick up and within a few miles I was on a dirt road up and down the peaks of Costa Rica with small farms, rusted tin roof houses and like an apparition a young indian girl on horse fording a large stream.
An hour and half later, with a dusty truck, I end up in not quite a town, more an outpost, with some fishing, diving and boat shops. It was out there - this whole area is believed and reputed to be one of the most biological diverse areas of the world. I had no idea. It rains hard for 10 months out of the year.
I showed up around noon, to a dusty town and shops squeezed around a small inlet (think Phoenicia size but with dirt narrow roads, tight turns and an ocean on one side) and poked around for some snorkeling trips, which seemed to be mostly scheduled for the mornings. A little chit chat here and there and I had struck up a deal with a diver to find a boat and driver and off we went snorkeling at an island an hour out into the Pacific. Except he wanted to dive, not snorkel, but I wasn't so sure, so he threw both gear into the boat and off we went.
But not so fast - my boat guide had ordered up some gas, which means someone brings it by motorcycle from somewhere in large plastic gas containers, and just so happened that someone got confused and thought our gas was their gas and so we didn't have any gas, which resulted in a lot of high-intensity conversations in Spanish, small craft in shallow water navigation, and a crowd starting to gather as I'm on a small boat waiting for gas as a melodrama plays out - it matters because the 1 hour out island is 'off limits' after 3 and it was 1:30 and we had an hour out. So you can see the time crunch unfolding.
Anyway, it works itself out, we get our gas, and we head out. We got local pineapple and watermelon and a borrowed knife and eat well on the way out as our trusty driver beelines it to the island you can just barely discern at first, and then slowly comes focus. The guy I'm with wants me to dive, and because I didn't have to sit through a 3 hour class, I was half game, though I'm wary around water ever since I nearly drowned when I was 31 trying to swim across an Adirondacks lake and misjudged the cold and the distance, and only for some strength I summoned from somewhere did I find my way across that body of water blacking out and barely breathing. So that sort of unknowing panic can pop up anytime now when I'm in the water, and once it grips you, it can be quite deadly in and of itself.
So the diver guide threw a tank on me and said 'don't for get to breathe' and then we topped backwards off the boat into the water, into the Pacific Ocean, Nemo-like with it's colorful fish, turtles and even a half dozen sharks about 3 feet long. We were all alone out there and it was pretty glorious.
Headed back to the coast with the sun setting behind us and this very large group of dolphins - 40 or 50 - joining us for some of the way, surfacing and submerging in their arc'ed fluidity.
The humidity is taking its toll on all things paper, my passport included.
Directions from one of the road trips from Golfito to Drakes Bay. Parque Nacional Corcovado is the park with the insane bio diversity.