Fate Deliver Me

12/16/07 Sunday

Central America is a lot like California…those parts of California that slip between the cracks in the sidewalk and hide amid the faux stucco walls….only much more so. That little hint of tropical flora/death metal Indio biker/eight children jaywalking in heavy traffic so distinctive of East LA explodes here like a symphony of multicolored/chicken in the street/big dirt parking lot pipebombs.

My ride from San Jose was an exercise in trusting the gods of fate to deliver me, unharmed, dreamlike, over waterfalls and through cloud forests, past ten dozen stray terriers and six times as many pollo y cerveza stops. My Spanish is terrible. Given that the main autopista is closed, it is amazing I made it here at all. I remember a clumsy communication regarding that matter, and two hours of wondering where the hell I was going. All this time, strange fields of coffee, zebu cattle, misty slopes.

I exchanged garbled bits of dialog with my driver, Ronnie, and pretended not to be on the verge of carsickness.

Costa Ricans drive like lunatic pirates. It is a shared sense of lunatic piracy that delivers them from one place to another, usually unharmed. We did see an inconvenient-looking car wreck along the way. Later, a tiny ambulance bound for rescue action. Jesus adorns the back of busses here.

The rainforest smells like potting soil. It is so thick with interesting birds that they stud the branches like bad theme wallpaper. Just a few hours ago, a snowstorm,. Now lluvia, gentle and soft.

Later that night.

Fireflies at night, the kind that like second-growth forests in Central America, haunt the path from the cafeteria. They emit single, bright flash, no J-shaped trajectory, and are very bright. Toads, crickets, their sounds are everywhere through the rain. Earlier, under the bridge, a cluster of collared peccaries, tiny rufus-tailed hummingbirds, a chestnut billed toucan. How this vegetation must regenerate (I was told, days later, that this forest was a cow pasture less than twenty years ago). Jan, why do I appreciate you so much more at moments like this? Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

What I am not telling on 12/16 is that, after a beautiful walk home from dinner, I open the door to my room and find an older, Danish couple, sitting on both beds, in their pajamas. This was less surprising that you might think. Earlier that day, about the time I wrote the first entry, I checked into my room, Zompapa 1. Actually, I let myself into Arriera 1, with assurances from the guard that it was “el primero puerta”. It was, for the second block of buildings. Somehow, with some jiggling, which comes natural to any occupant of an old house, I let myself in to the wrong room. Seeing it already occupied, and having read the OTS guide, I knew that if things were crowded, I would have to share a room. I had a lot of trouble figuring out which side of the room the other person wanted, presuming that they did not know they would share the room when they moved in, days ago. I claimed a bed and tried to settle the place in the most innocuous manner possible.

Just before I wrote that second entry, I moved my stuff out of the last room, hastily trying my key here and there, till I found my own room. Alone, and not on a couch at the reception, or sharing a bed with a lovely, but irked Danish woman in starched Pajamas, I fell asleep to the sound of rain.