To Shake the Sleeping Self

by Jedidiah Jenkins

  “Wow, sounds amazing,” I said, no longer patronizing. Actually interested.

  “Yeah, but it’s better to be sober and have an empty stomach for six to twelve hours before, or you’ll vomit. So I’m starving. But it’s worth it. Makes it last longer. I’ve got to stir for a few more hours; go have a look around this place. It’s beautiful. Go stake a hammock spot. Our homies are down at the beach.”

  “How was your Oaxacan mushroom thing?” I asked.

  “Incredible. This house in the mountains with people from all over. Germans, Canadians. It wasn’t one of those Mickey Mouse hostels for tourists. It’s the real people. We did a full-moon hike, tripping, and I went off by myself and got lost in the woods and I was barefoot and I must’ve been out there for six hours and the sun came up and it was amazing. You wouldn’t have liked the place, though, it was all psychedelics and crystals.”

  I laughed. “You know me so well.”

  I left Weston to his potion and explored the little coastal resort. Cabins made of bamboo and palapa roofs. A main open-air lounge attached to a communal kitchen. Hammocks everywhere. Weston and his salty buddies had their magic juice and the sun got low and the howler monkeys started screaming and I was back.

  Weston stayed high most of the time at Maderas Village, smiling and lying in a hammock, or mixing potions and planting the sliced tops of his San Pedro cactuses around the property. He said he didn’t want to kill the cactuses, just “borrow” them. He filled me in on his travels, what it was like to bus across Guatemala and El Salvador, lugging his bicycle and his dirty panniers. He had spent Christmas on a beach in El Salvador and visited Lake Atitlán in the Guatemalan highlands. “So many rich California hippies renting houses,” he said. “It was too expensive for me.”

  I thought I would be sad, hearing him describe these places I had missed. But I wasn’t. If anything, I was sad I couldn’t brag about having been there.

  We had six days on the coast in Nicaragua to party with our friends, tell stories, and work on our sunburns. January 1, 2014, arrived with a bonfire on the beach. I felt wild. This was the year I would finish my trip, and I was already excited for it to be over. I’d learned what life on a bicycle was like. I’d escaped the office life and learned some shit. In many ways, I’d exchanged an old routine for a new one. No mind-reshaping epiphany had come, and I didn’t feel like it was on its way. I hadn’t read my Bible once on the trip. I hadn’t kissed anyone. I hadn’t tried any crazy drugs. I was excited to see Panama, Colombia, Peru, Patagonia. I was. But the damn bike. I wanted to take more buses. To skip the boring parts. But I also didn’t want to. I felt the duty of the promise I made myself and the expectations of all my friends watching. This trip had become my job. Hourly, my thoughts transitioned from dread to duty to excitement to anxious in a cycle.

  By then, Weston had developed a crush on a Swedish girl, and he wanted to follow her to a surf spot on the coast of Costa Rica. He needed sex, he said. I said that was fine, I’d meet him down in Costa Rica. I was rejuvenated from having spent ten days at home. If Weston needed more time to enjoy the beach, to make his potion, to have some sex, I was fine with that. He would ride with her in a surf van. I would bike alone down the rest of Nicaragua and into Costa Rica. It would be my first time biking alone.

  On January 5, I packed up my bike. The task had become a ritual, robotic and easy. Tie my backpack onto the back. Tuck my sleeping bag next to it, resting them both on the rack between the panniers. Tie my boots by their shoelaces to my backpack. Take my rope, which by now was worn and fraying, and tie it back and forth across my things to secure them. Fill my water bottles. Done.

  I said goodbye to the Nicaraguan beach, to Weston and our sunburned friends, and headed south.

  * * *

  —

  BIKING TO THE Costa Rican border over a few days, I stayed at tiny hotels for cheap. I didn’t talk to anyone except as a means to an end. I listened to Radiolab episodes in my headphones and biked. I passed farms, brown in the dry season. I rode around goats and emaciated horses in the road. I went through towns that looked much like the ones I’d seen in Mexico. At the border check, tourists swarmed off buses to get their passports stamped. I waited in line, and when I got to the front the border agent asked for proof of a departing flight.

  “A departing flight? From Costa Rica? Oh, I don’t have one,” I said.

  “Costa Rica requires that you have proof of a temporary stay. You will not be admitted without proof. You need proof of a purchased flight out,” the border agent said, annoyed that I hadn’t done my research.

  “Well, I don’t have that because I’m riding my bicycle. I’m going to Patagonia?”

  “Patagonia? What is that?”

  “Yes, the bottom of Chile.”

  “You’re riding a bicycle to Chile? Where is this bicycle?”

  I pointed through the glass window to the bike outside, leaning on a railing. My pointing and the agent’s craning his neck caused the twenty or so people in line behind me to turn around and see what we were looking at. A crusty, dusty bike piled with bags.

  “Look, I have passport stamps in Mexico, and Nicaragua, coming in and out, see, temporary,” I said, flipping through my passport in his direction. “I am going to leave Costa Rica in about three weeks, I promise.”

  He pulled his lips into his teeth while he scrutinized my passport. Then he peered out at my bike again.

  “Patagonia,” he said to himself, as he loudly stamped my passport and handed it back. Only then did he offer a flat smile, proud of himself for letting me into his country.

  Costa Rica was quickly greener and the hills steeper than Nicaragua. The pavement was fresh and the country felt different. Richer. I enjoyed the pace of being alone, stopping at a whim, taking an impromptu nap under a tree. I would have been frightened to cycle alone a few months ago, but this was my new life, and life on the road was my new normal.

  Dry season was in full effect, even in the greenness of Costa Rica, and it was very hot. Sweat built up in my helmet and poured down my face and neck and back. By my fourth day alone, my bike shorts had turned into a science experiment of filth. I made it to the coastal town of Tamarindo, where Weston and I had decided to meet up. We had picked a decent-looking hostel online, and I hoped I’d find him lounging in a hammock when I pulled in.

  Close. He was playing cards and smoking cigarettes with some overly tan white boys with beach-knotted hair. I walked in with my bike, and stood there with a big grin, excited for him to notice me. Our little separations were nice. We worked better in doses. He looked up from his cards to take a drag of a cigarette, saw me, threw his cards down, leaped up, and waltzed over.

  “He biked alone!” he said for everyone’s benefit. “Castaway, the sequel!” and grabbed me in a hug.

  “How was the Swedish girl?” I asked immediately.

  “Oh, oh,” he said, smiling wildly, “she drained me right up. She’s incredible. I am empty, if you know what I mean. Empty.”

  “Dude, you’re gonna get someone pregnant,” I said, thumping him on the back and laughing.

  “I hope so,” he said.

  Tamarindo is a tourist trap of themed bars with names like Dragonfly and Sharky’s Sports Bar with fifteen-dollar mai tais, and beaches with Jet Ski rentals and horrible souvenirs. We stayed a few days at a touristy hostel for eighteen dollars a night, the most expensive we’d seen yet. “How are you on money?” I asked Weston while we were lying in hammocks, waiting out the midday heat.

  “I mean, I have none,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Dude, we have another year of this,” I said.

  “I know. But I’ll be okay. I’m getting a little money from my mom soon, and I don’t need much. This is an experiment. Do we need money really?”

  “This hostel is like twenty bucks a night.”

  “Yeah, I’ll n
eed to leave soon. It’s wasted money. I bet I can find a girl, on the beach or on Tinder, and stay for free for a few nights,” he said, grinning.

  His travel plan didn’t include me, and didn’t appeal to me anyway, so I tried to explain my concerns without starting a fight.

  “I know. You have money. I don’t. We’ll be okay,” he said. “Remember, we can split up and hang during the days, that’s fine.”

  I didn’t like this idea, but I didn’t know what options we had. You know someone best by traveling with them. When someone is outside their comfort zone, when they are hungry or exhausted, and when money is involved, you see the sides of them that are often covered up in social niceties. Weston and I were slamming all of that together. And it wasn’t easy.

  Tamarindo was full of Israelis, Australians, and Americans, all of them loud. The Costa Rican locals we saw in the streets, the vendors and staff, seemed vacant, robotically offering us boat tours, zip line excursions, cocaine—exactly what I didn’t want for this trip. And Weston didn’t want to spend another dollar, so after a few days, we packed up.

  The baked-out blonde who ran the front desk of the hostel told us that the east coast of Costa Rica was the real gem. It was Caribbean, with a totally different feel, way fewer tourists, and beautiful. I studied the map and saw that we could cross the country, pass Lake Arenal and the volcano, and drop down onto the Caribbean side. It would take only five days.

  * * *

  —

  TO GET THERE, Weston and I rode uphill for two days. Mile by mile, the dry season gave way to higher altitudes and wetter land. The golden grass turned to green ferns and tangled forest. When we reached the lake, it was foggy and dramatic and dark blue. We dropped our bikes, ran to the shore, and dove in. The winding road around the lake was littered with mansions and cabins ripe for Airbnb, with sweeping views, wildflowers, and waterfalls. Around one corner, we came upon a stopped car in the middle of the road, and a woman with her flashers on. She was out of the car and seemed to be covered in cats.

  No, not cats. Dogs. Jumping on her. As we approached, the dogs looked very strange. Like monkeys. Wait, were they monkeys? What the hell?

  The woman had crackers in her hands and she was laughing as they crawled on her legs. She was talking to them in German. Weston and I parked our bikes behind her car and called to her. “What the hell are those things?” I said.

  “They are coatis! They want my crackers,” she said with a cackle and a thick German accent. She was dropping crackers at her feet, where about twenty of the creatures were frantically eating them. They looked like a cross of a monkey, a dog, a raccoon, and a lemur. They walked on all fours but could stand on their hind legs and had useful little hands. Their snouts were very long, cartoonishly long. They were orangish brown and their tails had rings like a raccoon. They were taller and bigger than raccoons, though. About the size of a cocker spaniel.

  I got closer. I wanted to touch one. I wanted to feel its fur. I wanted it to wrap its tail around my neck and be my sidekick.

  Somehow, in all my Discovery Channel watching and deep Internet diving, I had never, not once, seen an animal like this. I didn’t know this combination of features was an option on planet Earth. And yet here I was, ten feet away from a swarm of them. Alien life forms. In that moment, my fantasy of being an old world explorer felt real.

  As soon as the woman got back into her car, the swarm of beasts turned to me, their tails pointed straight up like shark fins. I would’ve been scared if I hadn’t seen how gentle they were with the German. I reached into my backpack and pulled out a granola bar. A brave one walked right up to me, reared up, put one little hand on my knee, and pointed his long snout at the bar. I held the bar closer, and when he opened his long mouth, I saw rows of sharp teeth. He snatched the bar, held it in both of his hands, and chomped with delight. I heard a rustle and spun around to see two of the creatures on my bike, opening my backpack to find more bars. When I jumped to zip up my bag, they hardly moved.

  Weston had pulled over and was cracking up, but keeping his distance. I was cackling. When I petted them, they ignored me, possessed by hunger. Their small hands had long claws and one of them, on a quest for more granola bar, clawed my leg and drew blood. Once I had gone through a few bars, I affectionately informed my audience that I had to leave. They cocked their heads in sadness, and we rode away.

  We stayed at a little hostel at the far end of the lake and talked about the coatis and drank beers at a little bar. The next day, on our way down the mountain, now heading off the volcanic highlands and toward the Caribbean coast, incredibly strong headwinds nearly held us in place. I had to stand my full weight on each pedal, just to make a snail’s pace. We pushed down the mountain and came upon miles and miles of banana plantations. We biked a good fifty miles and camped in a grove of trees between plantations, then rode another day after that through flat farmland. Sixty miles, easy. That felt good. One more night at a dank and dreary hotel, for six bucks a person, and finally, we were nearing the ocean.

  Entering the port town of Limón, we began seeing lots of black people, and they weren’t speaking Spanish. Instead, they were speaking some kind of Creole English. I could understand maybe 40 percent of what was being said. This side of Costa Rica felt old and unpolished. The buildings were cracked but beautiful, clearly built in more prosperous times. Trees loomed over the streets.

  We biked through town and straight to the port. Weston struck up a conversation with three men who spoke more English than Creole. One of the guys had long dreads, the other two cropped hair and sunglasses. They all leaned against the wall like they owned the street. When I asked if I could take a photo, Dreads replied, “Hayll yes, you can, brothuh. You tell us where to stan’ an’ we will look all de badass.”

  I took their picture and showed it to them and they laughed with approval. One handed me a beer from a six-pack of Imperial at their feet, and said, “Dis man say you rode de bikes all de way from da otha coast?”

  “Yeah, from Tamarindo. Took us about six days,” I said.

  They all found this fact hilarious. “Wow. True athletes. You are professional athletes!” they said, amazed and still laughing.

  Weston didn’t miss his chance. “Do you guys have any…” He pinched his fingers together and made a motion to his mouth like he was smoking something. They laughed, as if knowing the question was coming.

  “For you, da athletes, yes,” Dreads said. “Wait here.” Somehow Weston always manifested ten or twenty dollars for weed. When Weston got his little bag, he was very happy.

  We found a bench by the water, with a plaque in Spanish I couldn’t read, facing the once busy port. I sat there, looking at the ocean, and felt accomplished. We had biked across an entire country, from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean coast. I felt athletic. Those big burly men said I was an athlete. Almost no one has ever said that about me in my life. It felt good.

  I was embarrassed that it felt so good. It soothed an old wound. My thirteen-year-old brain had made a note, “You are not an athlete, and athletes are what you should be.” I grew up and never threw out that note. I became funny and charming and accomplished, and I collected all kinds of notes. But beneath those piles of paper, the original note remained. “You are not an athlete, and an athlete is what you should be.”

  We spent just a day in Limón before heading south. Two days farther on, at Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, we met a woman who ran fishing trips in town. She and her husband had moved from Oregon to live the tropical dream in Costa Rica. She invited us to stay in her house and we became fast friends. We ate meals together and she showed us her beautiful little town. Puerto Viejo was touristy, but without the cheese or intensity of Tamarindo. I loved it there and didn’t ever want to leave. We could walk to the beach and ride our bikes to town. But we needed to get to Panama.

  Two more days’ ride took us to the border.
<
br />   We saw plenty of cars and pedestrians making the crossing, but no tourists. And no one else traveling by bicycle. An official gave my passport a strange sticker, which I assumed was the entry stamp, and said something to me, pointing out the door. I didn’t know what the man said, but he seemed frustrated and hurried, so I left. Weston got his sticker and followed. As we walked out, he shouted out the door at us. But what? We yelled back, “Gracias!” and walked on.

  * * *

  —

  FROM THE COSTA Rican border, Panama curves eastward in a giant “S” before turning down to South America. After a day’s ride along the coast, we took a ferry to a small touristy town called Bocas del Toro, famous for snorkeling and Spring Break drunken fun. We arrived at sunset, and the ground was wet with recent rain and stray dogs trotted along the sidewalk. Palm trees lined the streets and the wooden houses were on stilts, built with steeply pitched roofs and painted bright colors. They gave the place a proper Caribbean Crayola look. It was filled with hostels and travelers and coffee and drunk twenty-somethings. We stayed there a few days, snorkeled, met some forgettable Americans, and then headed back to the mainland.

  I want to write you scenes of people and places I saw as we left Bocas del Toro and recrossed the isthmus again to the Pacific Coast at Panama City. But this stretch of the trip went by in a blur. We were tourists and stayed at hostels and camped in the woods and pedaled over mountains, but it all seemed normal, and I mostly stayed in my head. Can you remember what you did two weeks ago? Two Tuesdays ago? Could you walk me through the day? Probably not, because it was a normal Tuesday and you were doing normal things, and your brain wasn’t wide awake and paying attention. For five months now, I had been putting up my hammock, taking it down, packing my bike, looking for a place to sleep, fumbling through Spanish, replacing popped tubes, explaining my trip to curious strangers, and talking to Weston about the quality of various strands of weed and the injustices of our police state.