by J T Kalnay
The may-sa and see-ya are both made from the same piece of native wood that must have been hewn from an enormous tree. Although the people and dogs are smaller, it appears that everything else is bigger in Costa Rica. Trees reach hundreds of feet into the low hanging clouds. Hundred foot long vines hang down from the towering trees. Twenty foot crocodiles hold their station in the current in a Mississippi River sized torrent hundreds of feet below a mile long suspension bridge. Steep mountains and steeper gorges abound.
I am not in North Carolina any longer. On the drive from the airport I noticed that every house had bars on the doors and windows, even though my research showed that Costa Rica has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. As we approached the coast, I saw dozens of half-finished or nearly finished hotels and condo complexes. When the American economy recessed, gringo investment in Costa Rica dried up and these bastions of American vacationers stand as testaments to unfulfilled greed.
Men stand beside the road holding up large fish that they must have just caught. Women hold bags of fruit in one hand and bags of vegetables in the other, trying to sell the fish and fruit and vegetables to people driving past.
As the drive neared its end, I encountered another of the uniquenesses of Costa Rica. The two lane paved road turned onto a one and a half lane dirt road that lead to the surf camp. On the paved coast road we encountered practically every mode of transportation that I could imagine. Eighteen wheelers, dump trucks, panel vans, F350 pickups down to little Toyota pickups, cars, motorcycles, ATVs, scooters, people on bicycles, many with a man on the seat pedaling and a woman sitting side saddle on the bar, often holding one or two small children, men on horseback, a priest on a burro, people walking.
“Someone is killed on that road nearly every day,” Salvaro said as we turned off the paved road onto the dirt road that lead to his place, the surf camp. Salvaro is the not completely retired national surfing champion of Costa Rica. He is small, tanned, fit, and carries himself like a man who has spent thousands of hours over thousands of days on the ocean, and like a man who has achieved mastery in his passion.
We checked in at the main house when we arrived and then Salvaro offered to drive me up to the bungalow because I had luggage.
“You look fit,” he said. “But it is a steep hill, it is hot and humid, and you have luggage,” he said. I think he was telling me not to expect a ride up the hill every time. He ground the gears and after several minutes and several hairpin turns on a thin track that climbed nearly into the clouds we arrived at my bungalow, the bungalow at the top of the hill.
“Shannon has the bungalow at the bottom?” I asked Salvaro.
“Si. But if she is your girlfriend, why does she no stay here with you?” Salvaro asked.
“She wanted her own room,” I said.
“You snore?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want her to have the closer bungalow?” Salvaro asked. He pointed to the neighbor to my bungalow that was only a dozen yards down the hill, but whose roof was level with my front porch. “It is available tomorrow, and I can change the woman who would be there to the bottom of the hill,” he said.
“No. This way is fine,” I answered.
Salvaro did not press me further.
“Dinner is at six,” he said. He turned, reclaimed his van, and worked his way down the hill, disappearing quickly down and around the hairpin turns. After he was gone, the quiet of the bungalow near the clouds asserted itself. Though I could see the Pacific a few kilometers away, I could not hear it. All I heard was the silence.
Well perhaps ‘silence’ isn’t the right word. Because as I lay in the hammock, delaying opening my luggage, I began to hear the rain forest behind me and all the birds and other things that lived there. My eyes and ears and brain were still recalibrating to this land so close to the equator.
My bungalow has windows on all three sides that face the sun, and only one solid wall on the back, which is the north. The windows are covered with wide, worn sliding brown slats that have gaps between them. There is a blue, yellow, green, and orange hammock hanging on the front porch, where I am lazing. Though I am not moving I am sweating freely. There are beautiful flowers everywhere, but no dandelions in the Bermuda grass. Everything is manicured, or landscaped, but everything is also clearly wild, from the jungle, from the rain forest, and part of both.
A crushed rock walkway leads from the bungalow to the track up which Salvaro drove the truck. The ubiquitous geckos are on the path, and on the high arched ceiling in my bungalow. They chirp, and tick. I had no idea that geckos spoke, except perhaps in a British accent when they were trying to sell insurance...
The place is considered ‘high-end’ for Costa Rica. Yet it is nearly rustic to my apparently pampered millionaire American point of view. There is a small refrigerator that is laboring to keep a few liters of water cold. Though we can drink from the taps, Salvaro has suggested only drinking bottled water. “Just in case,” he said. “You don’t want to ruin your vacation.”
There is a shower inside, but I can’t figure out how to make it work for quite a while. When I do, I realize there is no hot water. My choices are tepid and lukewarm. I quickly realize that I need neither hot nor cold water. Tepid will do just fine.
Tired from my three flights, Wilmington to Charlotte, Charlotte to Houston, Houston to San Jose, and then the hour and a half drive from San Jose to the camp, I am content to return to the hammock in my freshly showered state and to calibrate, to absorb, to come to terms with this place, and the fact that as far as I know Shannon will be joining me tomorrow.
I begin to wonder what she will think of this place. Will she think it too rustic? Would she have preferred to stay at the Americanized Marriott that claimed a kilometer of beachfront property on the drive down from San Jose? I don’t know. But I am sure she will tell me. All I know is that Salvaro comes very highly recommended for teaching people how to surf. Ultimately that’s how I chose this place. Because he was the seven time open champion, now he is the three-time master’s champion, and scores of people assert that he can teach anyone how to surf.
“Signor?”
I partially open my eyes.
“Signor. Es seize.”
“Si,” I answer. I open my eyes completely. I have drifted away for hours and the young boy from the main house has had to trek up to my bungalow to let me know that I am late for dinner.
“Momento,” I say, retreating into the bungalow to don flip flops and to relieve myself. He guides me down the track in the dark with a flashlight. The sun comes up instantly at six in the morning and sets instantly at six in the evening here so close to the equator. Every day is nearly exactly twelve hours of light and twelve hours of sun. It is like every day is the solstice. With the sun rising and setting perpendicularly at the horizon and then climbing until it is directly overhead at noon. Yes every day is like the solstice. There is something magical thinking about it that way.
Shannon
I have come to Costa Rica to surf, and to see Joe, in that order. Since I last saw him in January we have exchanged four letters. During that time I have realized that I do not love him. That I was wrong when I thought I loved him in Wilmington. That it was just the intensity of the storm, and the sick children, and the crescendo of our month together. Our ‘month in bed’ as Cara refers to it.
She has teased me about being a wanton woman, when she knows I am anything but. I was a virgin when I married. I learned little from my ex, although there were a few times that he made me come. Purely by accident I know now. After our ‘month in bed’ I realized how much more there can be between a man and woman. And I realized how many women like me must have confused sex and love. I also realized that many woman must never have had good sex. And I’ll bet that most who do think that they are in love.
What a pity. Good sex is so overwhelming and leaves such feelings that it is practically impossible to separate the sex from love. But they are differen
t things.
They are different things. So perhaps I will have sex with Joe while we are here. Who am I kidding? We certainly will have sex while we are here. I imagine that we will have sex practically every minute that we are not surfing or running or walking on the beach unless it is actually possible to have sex while surfing or running or walking on the beach.
Though I have kept Joe in North Carolina throughout the winter, and mostly have not dreamt about his hands or mouth on me, or about him being inside me, in the last weeks before this trip he has come to me in the night, and I have committed the sin that has no name. I tried to stop myself, but then reasoned that there was no reason to stop. If God gave us the ability to grant ourselves this harmless wish than who am I to go against His design choices? Amazingly I did not go blind...
Joe is sitting in the van beside me, quietly letting me observe the countryside as he must have yesterday. He came yesterday, and took this drive. I didn’t know he would meet me at the airport with the driver. I supposed he would wait for me at the camp. But there he is. Though we haven’t spoken in three months I find I have very little to say to him, especially with the driver right there in front of us. The driver is a beautiful man, there is no other way to describe him. He is deeply tanned, with long flowing black hair, perfect teeth, a perfect smile, a languorous central American way about him, and possessing only a little heavily accented English. I saw how he looked at me when I arrived. Apparently I am not invisible to lusty Costa Rican men.
He must have slept with hundreds of visiting gringos. Is that why Joe came to the airport? So that I would not spend my first hours in Costa Rica alone with this eye candy of a man? Maybe. Or maybe he was simply anxious to see me. I don’t know.
I appreciate that he is not pretending to be a tour guide and filling me in with the knowledge he has gained in one day in Costa Rica. I respect that he is respecting my space, allowing me to observe this through my own eyes, without his filter. He looks thinner, more fit than in January.
“I’ve been doing a lot of swimming to get ready for surfing,” he says when I point it out.
“Me too,” I answer.
There are no more words between us as we ride the remaining way to the camp.
The driver stops the van outside my bungalow. He offers to help with my luggage, and I let him.
“My bungalow is at the top of the hill,” Joe says.
“Dinner at six,” the driver says, dismissing Joe from my bungalow.
I am happy that Joe is leaving, that he is heading up the hill to his bungalow. I am happy to have my own space here in Costa Rica. I will intersect with Joe on this trip. Oh my yes I will intersect with Joe. I will climb the hill to his bungalow and make love to him morning, noon, and evening. But still I will have my space, my own space, here in this lovely rustic little bungalow.
Joe
The driver takes us and the other three guests to town for dinner. We sit outside. I think all the restaurants are outside. I sit beside Shannon and she sits beside me. The driver sits at the end of the table. He has brought us to a restaurant with which Salvaro has an arrangement. Breakfast and dinner are included in the price of staying with Salvaro. Breakfast is a feast prepared by an elderly Costa Rican woman who has apparently enjoyed many a feast in her day. Dinner is at a different restaurant each night. The driver hands out menus that he has brought with him. Yes there is an arrangement between Salvaro and the restaurant. But the arrangement does not include alcohol. Salvaro does not drink and there is no alcohol allowed at his camp. Campers are free to buy their own drinks at dinner, but they are not to bring booze back to camp.
Shannon and I spend dinner learning the things about the other campers that you learn about men and women when you meet them abroad. Where they are from, what they do, have they surfed before. But there is something about Costa Rica and the impending excitement, fear, and danger of going surfing in the Pacific tomorrow morning that makes us faster friends, that accelerates the traditional pace at which Americans (and one Canadian) get to know each other.
They are all surprised to learn that I live in North Carolina and that Shannon lives in Ohio. I think they assumed that we were a couple from the way we were talking and from our body language. Now that there appears to be an opening, one of the men is more transparently interested in her. I douse his flame by casually working into the conversation that Shannon and I have known each other for some time and that she once gave me a surf lesson for my birthday and that we’ve been planning this for a long time. Shannon sees through my ploy and hits my knee with hers under the table. She isn’t really annoyed, but she didn’t like me claiming her either. The man’s interest is somewhat extinguished, though how could it disappear completely? She is radiant once again, and with her barely-there tropical wardrobe she is presenting one of the sexiest aspects I have ever seen in Shannon or in any other woman. An aspect of which I am certain she is completely unaware. I think she dressed in so little simply because she was overheating. Which I understand, having overheated yesterday after arriving from an already warm North Carolina seashore. How much harder it must be for having arrived from a still frozen Ohio.
Shannon
He has marked his turf, told the other surfers and the driver that we have known each other for a while and that I once gave him a surf lesson for his birthday. If I wasn’t planning on sleeping with him at every opportunity on this trip I would be upset. But, since I am planning on usurping any other plans he might have had, I allow what would be my more normal reaction to his claim staking to melt away into the humid tropical night where condensation instantly forms and runs down any cold surface, especially beer bottles. Every visitor is wet. Not glowing, wet. My hair is still wet from my shower and has not dried in this air. It may never dry. In this diaphanous wrap, with no under garments of any kind, I feel the moisture on every part of my body. Only the beautiful Costa Rican driver appears comfortable in this climate, though he appears uncomfortable with the rapid fire English that we speak with each other effectively excluding him from our group.
The man who was interested in me is telling a hilarious story.
“So there I was, a 38 year old freshly divorced man with a cat named Cuddles who had just crapped for at least the tenth time on me and my Porsche convertible as I was driving her to the emergency vet at three a.m. She had snot. A lot of snot. So much snot that she couldn’t breathe. She could crap, but she couldn’t breathe. I was driving Cuddles to the emergency vet, in the rain, at three a.m., covered in cat shit, wondering if she was going to make it, and also wondering whether this car would ever smell right again. It doesn’t, by the way. And this is when I realized that it had been one of my better days in a while,” the fit man said.
He had packed much information into his story. His age, that he was divorced, that he wanted people to know he was wealthy, and that his life was miserable. He was about my age and he had checked me over two or three times. It must have been my outfit, or lack thereof. It is just so hot that I threw on the absolute minimum that covered everything that needed to be covered. And I threw on no bra or anything else. Even I know that men will look at breasts, no matter how tiny, if we women leave them out there to be seen.
Once again I surprised myself by not reacting the way I normally would. Perhaps Costa Rica might have a future for me after all if my ingrained habitual responses are unwilling or unable to assert themselves? I already feel like a different woman. A woman who will wear a loose gauzy top in the tropics and not care that men look at my microscopic forty year old breasts.
Joe
“It is late, so I will drive you all to your bungalows,” the driver says. Like Salvaro, the driver seems to need to have a reason to drive us up the hill. It must be some Costa Rican thing. He grinds the gears and slowly, nearly painfully, works his way up the hill. He drives all the way to the top, to my bungalow.
“We are here sir,” he says to me. “We leave for surfing at six,” he says.
Since
Costa Rica is in the equivalent of the mountain time zone, this equates to eight for me and Shannon.
“Gracias,” I say.
“Gracias,” Shannon echoes.
I was sitting by the sliding door so that I could exit first. All the other campers decide to exit at the top and walk down.
“Can I see the view from your porch?” Shannon asks.
The other campers acquiesce in her little deceit and leave us to walk the few steps to my bungalow. They wait for the driver to start the van down the hill, and then they follow behind.
“Good night you two,” the pretty Asian woman says. “See you at six.”
Shannon
I am walking towards Joe’s bungalow in Costa Rica feeling like I have never felt, acting in a way I have never acted, wearing an outfit that I may only have worn while alone with my sister on the hottest July days in Ohio, and maybe not even then.
No-one knows me here except Joe, and while Joe knows me in July and January in Topsail, he does not know me here. I don’t know me here. They say that ‘no matter where you go, there you are,’ but having experienced just this one day here I no longer think that’s true.
We step up onto Joe’s porch and he steps towards the colorful hammock hanging there.
“There’s room for two,” he says.
I pull a comfortable looking chair from the other side of the porch and place it near the hammock. I take his hand in mine and sink into the chair. The warm humid air is so thick, even thicker than the most humid August day in Ohio, or the hottest day near the Atlantic. I think this air must never be dry. The jungle and its giant plants tells me that I am right.
“How have you been?” Joe asks.