Costa Rica, Part II

I leaned back in the seat and watched Costa Rica pass by in a blur of real estate signs. Even the bathroom stalls were colorfully wallpapered with them. Landscape elves perched on ladders like hairdressers grooming each bush and tendril to supermodel perfection. Meanwhile the treacherous highway chuckled with death on its mind. The left lane became a bottomless pit and a forlorn semi lay on its side like a beached whale. Distracted, Crystal veered off into a ditch and manfully shouldered the car back onto the road. We laughed in relief and remembered the men we’d watched earlier attempting success with some women at an outdoor cafe. They sauntered off in a beer-soaked blaze of glory and backed their van deep into a ditch. Despite heroic pushing and pulling, their van crossed its arms and refused to budge. We stopped at a restaurant intriguingly named “Los Crocodillos” overlooking a pride of giant crocodiles floating like bath mats or extras from a Tarzan movie. Crystal ate one of their brothers in a burger. Back on the road the rain forest submitted to coffee plantations and then we reached the sea. At Jaco beach Crystal parked by a busy beachfront cafe and tugged her beach shoes out of the backpack. Near-naked women wearing dental floss thongs lolled beside our car and we ran down to the water. The sand was cloud-soft and the waves caressed my toes. Crystal waded to her knees. “Let’s put on bathing suits!” she suggested. I followed her to the car, wondering how I could change into the suit without being noticed, when she unlocked the door and exclaimed “What did you do with the backpacks?”The beautiful new backpacks had vanished, taking with them my cell phone, our clothes, Crystal's shoes, toiletries, medicines; sunglasses, binoculars, everything was gone except a little backpack containing our travel papers, and a top I’d hand-washed earlier and left on the seat to dry. We disconsolately listened to the thong women tell the police they had watched three men break into our car, and in the police station we saw a man with a gun type our losses in triplicate. They did everything but dust for fingerprints. It could have been been a murder investigation. "We will try to get your belongings back to you," the detective said optimistically. We slumped. Would the thief enjoy my new bathing suit? Was he even my size? We climbed sadly into our violated car to consider our options. Although we had planned to visit Manuel Antonio National Park, it now seemed safer to return the car instead. At least all was not lost. We had our precious passports and our cameras. The drive back to San Jose was a pinball game with high stakes. The road would suddenly come to an end or split in the center without notice. It became suddenly one way with cars aiming for us like bullets. The highway narrowed, shot down a hill and ended on a cliff. We crept in the dark through a village crying "Where is San Jose?" in abysmal Spanish, and a grandmother said "San Jose? Oh, grande, grande!" and waved expansively in the opposite direction.It was very late before we found Dollar Rent A Car in San Jose and said farewell to our sorry steed. A cheerful driver offered to find a hotel room for us. "Are you willing to spend $150 for a safe room?" He eyed us and lowered the price to $50.00. Starving, we walked through dark shuttered streets to a pizza hut where we watched Barcelona defeat Costa Rica for a championship. At the cheerless hotel we rang the bell endlessly before the clerk unlocked the door and let us in. In the middle of the night I heard something slide into the lock and the jiggle of the doorknob; I shouted and the disappointed intruder went away. At least the hotel had a computer, and in the morning I wrote asking my son to disconnect my cell phone. The thieves might enjoy the backpack, bathing suit and shoes, but if they were phoning their mothers I did not want to pay the bill.

Don't Cry for Me Costa Rica

I will travel anywhere, and I am a good travel companion. I have to be. I do not travel well alone, for I have the sense of direction of a hamster in a salad spinner. I agonize in airports and endlessly recheck my ticket just in case the flight number changed when I wasn’t looking. With a companion I can relax and become a golden retriever with the wind in my fur. Just do not ask me to read a map unless you have an axe or a gun.

On other trips I always packed too much, and unnecessary clothes and shoes became boulders in my bag. Now the sturdy backpack Crystal sent contained only summery clothes and my first bathing suit in years. My chalk-white legs would strike everyone snow blind anyway, so my looks didn’t matter. I even brought medicine, though I had once lived in Indonesia and my blood contains a tiny Statue of Liberty announcing “Give me your parasites and amoebas longing to be free.” Costa Rica is tame in comparison but I obtained the typhoid, tetanus and malaria medicines because Crystal suggested it. I stuffed my passport into a pouch, shrugged on the backpack and became turtle woman, a snail, a trailer with legs. I was ready to go.

I spent an entire night at the SeaTac Aiport using my backpack as a pillow, and the flights did not end. I arrived in Costa Rica three and a half hours before my daughter and knew I would not find her outside in the dark, so I planted myself at the entrance like a barnacle. “What does she look like?” a kind security officer wanted to know. Small, I said, with black hair. “You described everyone here,” he said sadly. Humans swarmed like ants, but I finally spotted my offspring and pounced in for a hug.

We spent the first night at a luxurious Marriott hotel, and I ate my way through the breakfast buffet like a mouse in a cheese factory. We then found Dollar Rent a Car and greeted a quirky four-wheel-drive Suzuki Jimney that was to be our steed for the week. Crystal is a magnificent and fearless driver, but it was hellish getting out of San Jose. There are no road signs and the map lied. Crystal yelled at the road, the traffic and me. She dodged semis and scooters as I, the golden retriever, unhappily balanced a compass on my kneecaps and waited to die.

We finally emerged into brilliant jungles and coffee plantations and sailed gratefully into La Fortuna, where Hotel Pura Vida stood stoutly in the shadow of a purple volcano puffing smoke like a cigar. We joined a tour to Cano Negro National Park near Nicaragua, delighted to allow someone else to drive especially after viewing the unhappy aftermath of a collision between a semi and a horse. We sailed past monkeys and birds. Emerald caimans said cheese for our cameras, and we even saw a bit of a sloth. At least the guide said it was a sloth. It looked like lint to me.

We bade farewell to La Fortuna and drove into the dark through suicidal rabbits and neon frogs that bounced like poisonous marbles. The road narrowed, filled with boulders and seemed to end and we crept back to Los Heroes, an enormous Swiss Chalet that perched incongruously overlooking the jungle. I stood in the dark on the balcony awash in the love calls of monkeys, insects and birds, and we were awakened the next morning by noisy bird feet dancing on the roof. After a glorious breakfast we mounted our steed for the drive to the coast.