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.