When Ecstasy docked in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, I came across the entire Gregg family on the pier, Greg himself towering above the crowd like a mountain over rubble. The two twenty-year-old twins, Chris and Cliff, were trying to convince their mother to go on a jungle tour. Both boys were slender and athletic motocross enthusiasts who had already broken forty-seven bones between them since high school. Chris’s fiancée Amber was equally adventurous and pushed for the jungle, whereas skinny little Square was more inclined to shop for local trinkets with his mother.
Foolishly, Shirley asked my advice.
I placed a hand to my chest melodramatically and boomed, “Once a man swings on a real vine in a real jungle he is forever changed. That tapping into the primal core of manhood, no matter how fleeting, alters outlook and skews expectation. My awakening happened here in Costa Rica, though on the Caribbean shores, at Parque Nacional Cahuita. From that moment on, I knew I would never again sit in traffic on my way to the office, contentedly or otherwise.”
“Shit, Shirley,” Greg complained. “Maybe you should just stick to art.”
“Oh yes,” I continued emphatically, striking a pose as if to bestride the world like a Colossus. “I am now a man who can read Heart of Darkness with deep clarity and understanding. Mowgli of The Jungle Book ain’t got nuthin’ on me—oh, no, sir, I am the last Mohican!”
“Please make him stop,” Greg pleaded.
“I am Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone,” I boomed. “And I declare that nothing short of Kathleen Turner herself will pull be back to civilization!”
Here I stopped, panting and sweating from my fiery oration. A small crowd had paused and were watching, apparently waiting for the authorities to throw me into the drunk tank.
“And it’s safer than motocross,” I added sheepishly.
“Sold!” Shirley cried, elbowing Greg in the ribs. “You could use some manliness like that. Before we married, you assured me that you’re a Tarzan in bed. I’m still waiting.”
“Oh, being a firefighter isn’t manly enough for you now?” Greg retorted. He scratched his thick beard in contemplation. “Hmm... perhaps this is my chance to finally escape. Is a wife’s discontent with her husband’s career legal grounds for divorce?”
“Father!” Square chided with painfully real shock.
“I need a primate in the bedroom,” Shirley continued thoughtfully. “Not in the bathroom.”
“Mother!” Square uttered in despair.
“Don’t panic, son,” Greg smoothed in smarmy fashion. “Your mother’s just being coy.”
Now I understood why they called this poor young man ‘Square’.
Despite my dubious advice, I was invited to join the six members of the Gregg family. I was bidden to hire a tour to take us as deep into the jungle as possible. Thus was chosen a world-class bird watching habitat, complete with aerial bridges, deep in the nation’s interior.
The bus—a large van, really—promised adventure from the start, seeing as it had obviously been repaired more often than the twins. While the vehicle boasted an air conditioner, it was in no way capable of competing with the Central American summer.
Beneath rain-swollen skies we rumbled away from the coastline into the steamy, dense interior of Costa Rica. We chugged along adequate, if poorly maintained, roads for nearly an hour before things went wrong. The bus hit a pothole with great force, jolting everyone into the air like popcorn in a hot-air popper. The vehicle groaned and shouldered roughly off the road, plowing into a vast pool of muddy water. Everybody fell back to their seats as untold gallons of water blasted the windows. As the brown streamed off the dirty glass, we righted, stared, blinked.
“Mom…” Square began to mewl, but his father cut him off.
“Wait, boy,” he shushed. “Wait before you panic.”
The driver’s attempts to reverse the bus from the pool did nothing more than ripple the surface and gently agitate knee-high grasses. The driver tried three times, then gave up.
“There,” Greg said, with an amused grin. “Now you can panic.”
We were stranded.
Mercifully, Square did not begin wailing. He certainly appeared capable of it at any moment. Perhaps he was shamed into silence by Amber’s look of mild disgust.
“Time to take a gander at what we’re dealin’ with,” Greg said. He motioned for me to join him, and the two of us stepped gingerly into the effluent-like water. It wasn’t particularly deep, but nonetheless disheartening. We waded to the edge, stepped back up onto the roadway that had so rudely tossed us off, and sighed.
Behind was unbroken jungle for an hour’s drive. Ahead was supposed to be another hour of the same. Instead we were stuck beside a wide, elemental river, upon the edge of a battered bridge. Concrete walls crumbled in several locations, debris dribbling freely into the canyon with each gust of the humid wind.
“We’d hit that pothole on the bridge,” Greg noted, “And we’d have gone through those walls like paper.”
Even from the broken bus, the view was magnificent. Far down the river valley clouds bullied each other in their haste to be first to rain on us. The valley was exactly the kind of meandering brown stripe wiggling into the hilly, dense green that one would expect from Central America.
“Look at that!” I called to Greg. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“What?” he said curtly. “Breaking down in the middle of nowhere? Yeah, great.”
I gestured broadly to the immense panorama. “It’s so gorgeous, powerful, primal!”
“So’s my penis,” Greg quipped. Then he asked, with impressive pragmatism, “Think the driver’s got any beer?”
“Cervezas aquí,” called the driver over his shoulder, gesturing to the other side of the bus. Greg and I walked around the vehicle and shared a chuckle when we saw a shabby structure nestled in the trees.
“How much you wanna bet the owners of that place put the pothole there themselves?” Greg asked as he scratched his beard. “You really should buy me a beer, you know. It’s the least you could do after getting fifteen thousand dollars of my money. Oh, and stranding my children God only knows where.”
“First let me check out the bridge.”
“Cuidado,” the driver warned, waving his hands in a very international ‘watch out’ manner. “Muchos cocodrilos en el río.”
Greg and I wandered across the long bridge and stared down into the wide, messy river valley. Both sides of the rich, brown river were packed with lush, green trees spattered with the clean white brilliance of birds. The river itself was perhaps fifty feet across, but easily one hundred feet of thick, greasy mud lined both banks. Dozens of crocodiles congregated in small groups at the water’s edge.
“Look at that,” Greg said, pointing into the trees that nuzzled up to the mud flat. “I see a cow. In fact, there’s a bunch of them. Are they really that stupid that they would hang out with crocodiles?”
Sure enough, half a dozen large but skinny Brahman-style cattle blithely munched on grass not one hundred feet from the nest of crocodiles. Ah, this is exactly what I wanted! Stunning jungle views and large, exotic wildlife. Well, minus the cows.
After a while the driver approached us. “El borde es doblado,” the man said slowly, enunciating each word carefully.
Greg looked at me and asked, “Didn’t we hire this tour from a driver who spoke English?”
“We did.”
“And it wasn’t this guy?”
“It wasn’t. I was watching for a switch like this but I got distracted by macking on your wife.”
Greg snorted. He continued his effort to understand the driver, but it was hopeless. The language barrier was solid. The uncomfortable man looked to me for assistance, but I knew very little Spanish. Finally, exasperated, the man pointed to the river.
“El borde,” he repeated. “Allí! Llanta.”
He opened his mouth and bared his teeth, then pointed to the river again.
“What the hell kind of tour’d you
lure me onto?” Greg demanded. “They got cannibals in Costa Rica, or what? What good are you, man?”
“Ask your wife,” I teased. “I think he’s pointing to that crocodile.”
“Sí! Sí! Cocodrilo.”
Glancing down into the valley below, I only saw him pointing to a surprisingly cute crocodile—he was slender and small—resting with his mouth open to the sky. No doubt he was waiting for a bird to come and pick his teeth clean. More important than fable, however, was what rested near the croc: an old truck tire.
“Aha!” I cried in understanding. “Borde probably means border, or rim. I think he’s saying the tire’s rim is bent.”
“Sí,” the guide said, relief flooding over him. He managed to convey to us that it would take half an hour to fix.
“Plenty of time to buy me that beer,” Greg said, satisfied. Soon the two of us were striding towards the shack-like restaurant. It was, not surprisingly, more of a service garage than a restaurant. I suspected Greg was right in his assessment of ‘opportunistic potholes.’
The remaining Greggs followed, but only after Square pleaded unsuccessfully with his mother to remain in the bus. The twins and Amber marveled over a partially restored 1970’s Dodge Charger resting on blocks beneath a corrugated-metal roof. Though the garage had no walls, the side closest to the jungle was defined by a row of corroding oil drums filled with all manner of refuse, garbage, and food waste. Wrinkling his nose at the smell, Greg offered to bring his family a fresh round of beers—on my tab—but they declined.
Thus Greg and I entered the ‘restaurant’ and were pleasantly surprised by just how nice it was. A long wooden deck lined the compound and extended deeper into the jungle, paralleling the river. The posts were shellacked trunks of trees that supported a roof of thatch. Tables lined the railing, offering us a wonderful place to enjoy a Costa Rican beer called Imperial.
The late morning was quiet, and we reveled in the lack of a crowd. Cruise ships are fun, but can be very congested. The only other person present was a wrinkled and nearly black-skinned ancient local in a broad straw hat. His heavily lined face relaxed in a nap, no doubt well deserved after so many years of life.
“Wow,” I commented idly, beer perspiring nicely in my hand. “Have you noticed this guy’s wrinkles? They seem to cover every single Nazca line in Peru.”
“Uh huh,” Greg said, sipping his beer and staring at the chaotic greenery spilling into the river valley. Suddenly the air was pierced by a noisy ruckus from the trees nearby. Two huge, brilliantly colored macaws chased each other from branch to branch, screaming and squabbling, before finally disappearing into the steaming rainforest. Greg was delighted by the birds, but I was more intrigued by Old Man Nazca.
“Really,” I pressed. “I see all sorts of familiar patterns. You know, the mysterious lines in the Peruvian coastal desert that are miles and miles long and serve no obvious purpose? They are best seen by airplane, yet were made about fifteen hundred years before flight. Absolutely fascinating.”
“So’s my penis,” Greg answered again, blowing the foam off the top of his beer.
“Look, I even see the hummingbird on his right cheek! There, below the crow’s feet.”
“Hmm,” Greg said, ignoring me. The man was wise.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright and stared, wide-eyed, into the jungle. The greenery shivered. I frowned, but saw nothing. Eventually Greg stammered, “There’s a goddamn jungle cat!”
“What, you mean like a jaguar?” I replied. “No way.”
“Look, man!”
I scanned the pitching shrubbery, then nearly fell over when I saw a sleek, black body pass behind some fronds. “Holy Cat!”
“You think it’s a jaguar?” Greg asked in wonder.
“No, it’s all black,” I replied. “That’s got to be a panther. It was huge! What, over five feet long?”
“At least. I never saw it’s head, though.”
“Me neither,” I agreed. “But panthers are reclusive and hunt at night. What would it be doing here in the morning, close to humans?”
“Coati,” our napping neighbor suddenly said. We turned to look at Old Man Nazca. His eyes remained closed, his straw hat pulled low. Greg and I spared a quick glance at each other, perplexed.
“That’s no coati,” I disagreed. “It was way too big. Coati are like weasels and stuff.”
Old Man Nazca did not reply. Only an eye twitched, flapping the hummingbird’s wing.
We watched the large creature—whatever it was—slink through the underbrush. Occasional glimpses only reinforced our belief it was a panther.
“You don’t think it would attack us, do you?” Greg asked. His eyes scanned the flimsy wooden railing that separated us from the jungle.
“Well,” I said thoughtfully. “When I lived in Reno, a mountain lion about that size killed a high school football player.”
“Bullshit!”
“No, really. He had been running at dusk along a mountain path. It was on the bank of a canal dug into the mountainside. The mountain lion actually leapt from the hilltop opposite, over the canal, and took him out almost instantly. Totally National Geo, man. He didn’t stand a chance.”
“A football player?” Greg repeated, dubious.
“I used to run that trail all the time,” I continued. “So I know it had to jump waaay over twenty feet to pounce on him. According to the DNR, it had been hunting him for days—he ran that trail every night—based upon its trail through the scrub. Still, the guy wasn’t as big as you, and the mountain lion had the whole thing planned. I can’t imagine this thing would spontaneously attack us here, in the day. Right? We’re not, like, sitting on its cubs or anything, are we?”
With a gentle creak, Greg and I both quietly glanced beneath our chairs.
“You think it’s attracted to the garbage cans, like wild bears are?” I asked. “I’ll bet it can smell the garbage in those oil drums from a mile away.”
The panther moved towards the front of the restaurant, and finally exited the brush to pass the entrance of the deck. It seemed in no hurry, yet moved with a quick, fluid grace that was mesmerizing in an animal so large. There was no mistaking that it was a black panther. It was gorgeous and sleek, powerful, lethal.
“Holy Cat,” I repeated breathlessly, in awe of its beauty and poise. “After this, I swear that I shall never again invoke the Chicken.”
“It’s heading towards the garage!” Greg said, leaping to his feet with a great surge of power and speed. His massive frame pounded across the deck towards the front, shoulders knocking aside hanging ornaments. For the big cat was indeed heading directly towards the old Dodge Charger—directly towards Chris, Cliff, and Amber.
I ran after, finally catching Greg at the corner. We caught a glimpse of the beast passing behind an old, rusted Volkswagen Beetle abandoned at the edge of the forest.
“Where’d it go?” I panted.
“How can something so big hide like that?” Greg marveled, scanning the area with alarm. He jumped off the deck and into the open, where he spread his trunk-like arms wide and shouted. It would be a desperate animal, indeed, that would attack such a giant, prepared beast as Greg Gregg.
Fortunately, the twins and Amber had already gone into the restaurant. After another few tense, breathless minutes he concluded the beast had departed.
“False alarm,” Greg panted.
“Surely this will be our only animal drama today,” I suggested. Greg merely snorted.
We returned to our beers on the deck, and sat down heavily. The excitement was over. Brief as it was, the possibilities had been equal parts frightening and exhilarating. Just as we were putting beer to our lips, a gravelly voice called out.
“Coati,” Old Man Nazca repeated. His eyes were still closed.
“My ass,” Greg snorted, swigging his beer. “I’ll bet it’s trained to come whenever it hears a car running over that goddamn pothole. Like Pavlov’s dog running when it hears the dinner bell.”
“Thank you,” he said smugly, stroking his thick beard. “And you still haven’t even seen my penis.”
2
The remaining wait passed quietly, while I debated relaying this panther visitation to my long suffering mother. No doubt she already had a list of all the dangerous animals of Costa Rica on hand, as well as the statistics of how many Iowans have been killed by them. A mother’s worry is a wonder.
The bus finally fixed, we drove another hour deeper into the heart of Costa Rica’s world famous bird laden jungles. We went up and down several hills so steep I worried the bus would make it. At least the roads were concrete. If they had been gravel and as muddy as a few we passed, we would have been doomed. Finally we ended up at a resort snuggled in the jungle.
The compound was stunning in its beauty, with Spanish-style adobe blending smoothly with the openness one expects from a hut in the jungle. Rather than wall off the attacking vegetation and wilds, the grounds invited the jungle in, gently culling and tapering the growth as it pushed deeper and deeper into the courtyard. Thus the small adobe cabins were shaded by banana trees either wild or planted; one simply could not tell. Flowering plants exploded with color, organized in gentle rows sculpted minimally and artistically to provide a place of calm, Eden-like peace and reflection. Everything was dense, rich, and lively. Costa Rica’s motto, ‘Pura Vida’, was pure life, indeed.
We were introduced to a very short, very handsome Hispanic man named Lucio. He was to be our guide. I had presumed no guide would be necessary, figuring the resort and ‘birdwalks’ would be together. Such was not the case. For the observation platforms and connecting birdwalks were deep: some positioned on the big river atop bluffs, others nestled amid thick hills otherwise inaccessible to man. Indeed, access to man was what it was all about. Lucio was required to guide us over a mile deeper into the jungle—over the river and through the woods, so to speak—just to gain the platforms.
Ship for Brains (Cruise Confidential 2) Page 30