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Published: December 11th 2010
Hello Reader.
I woke up at four thirty am and after only a couple of hours sleep I made my way to the bus station. I was headed to meet my next hosts in Nosara, Costa Rica on the Nicoyan Peninsula in the Pacific. I figured I’d sleep most of the six and a half hour bus trip, however once we were about two hours away, it turned from a pleasant countryside drive, to extreme off-road bussing. I clenched my teeth as the driver sped around mountain cliffs and bounced from pothole to pothole. With white knuckles I thought about how happy the cannibals, (that I would inevitably meet in the jungle) would be to have my innards pre-blended for them. They’d only need a spoon. Save on washing up.
I got off just a few kilometers past where I was supposed to and hitch-hiked back to Playa Pelada. I met James and Alex(is) in their second floor apartment about a five minute walk from the beach. The place was perfect. One bedroom, two surfboards, a variety of books stacked on a shelf made from driftwood, and a Wii with every game you could think of including Zelda, Super
Bus to Nosara
We were slowed by cattle.Smash Brothers, and – wait for it - Mega Man.
James and Alex are a young couple from New York. They spent the summer working hard in a restaurant on Fire Island, where James is from, to then be able to move down to Costa Rica for six or seven months. James is a musician. Saxaphone. Thirteen years. He’s also an avid surfer and damn good at making pasta sauce. Alex is a writer, a drinker, and sometimes she eats tomatoes like they’re apples. I was their first couchsurfer and the lot of us were all stoked!
We went for a solid two hour walk around the jungle and beach. And that’s pretty much all there is here. A thick, lush, green, dinosaur bug-infested, rain-soaked, sun-dried, bamboo-stilted, dirt road etch-a-sketched jungle. And then suddenly, as if God was painting and completely ran out of all colors but blue because Jesus was running in the house and knocked over all the paint, even after all the times God had to yell at him to stop running and go clean his room… the land stops. And an infinity of ocean rolls out from your feet. And just when you look
Bonfire #1
Alex, James, Cody as far as your mortal eyes can see, a razor sharp horizon cuts you off to provide a tight rope on which distant luxury cruise lines and industrial fishing barges snail along, like miniscule slugs with nightlights on their backs.
We got back to my new friends’ apartment only to be met by their landlord, a septuagenarian ZZ Top looking Californian who more than likely sold his Harley and a bit of his soul to finance living in Costa Rica for the last six years. It was the first of the month and rent was due. However he told James and Alex that he wanted an extra hundred and fifty dollars in rent, starting that day, for each of the next six months, or they had a week to move out. And I’ll go ahead and say what you’re all thinking. Screw that guy! James and Alex decided to look for a new place, but were still distraught by the whole ordeal. This was the first hardship, of a week full of hardships, that James and Alex were going to have to endure.
James had to go to work. Alex did what any mature young lady in her position
should do. She fixed us a drink. We played the card game WAR and got to know one another, and the bottoms of our glasses, very well. The rest of the night followed suit and ended with me falling asleep in the middle of James telling a story. Par for the course.
The next day brought a new hope for finding an apartment in the neighborhood, but most importantly it brought a new friend. Alex and James had another couchsurfer coming, Cody from Boulder, Colorado. Cody is an awful singer and an ever worse dancer, but LOVES doing both and doesn’t care what YOU think about that… in fact, he feels bad for you because you give a crap. Cody dropped out of high school when he was fourteen, did tons of drugs and then got his GED when he was nineteen. He did really well, and so a college in Boulder gave him a bunch of money to come study photography. He found a passion for rock climbing and has been traveling all around the States, Australia, and New Zealand for five years doing so. He made his living as a freelance photographer and growing medical marijuana in
his basement until this past summer when his house (along with one hundred and seventy four others) burned down in a wildfire. He comments often about how beautiful the world around us is, drinks more tea than any human should, and doesn’t hesitate to call me a wank when I’m being one. He believes in karma and wishes he had more direction in his life. But in the meantime, he truly enjoys every minute of every day and hates wearing shirts.
We were instantly friends.
That afternoon Alex and James’ landlord came upstairs again. This time he asked if Cody and I were going to be staying in the apartment because, apparently, no we were not. Because he’s not running a hostel. Wow. Over the next few days he turned off the wireless internet, the hot water, and insisted they pay for each of the extra nights they stayed. James rented a car so that we could move them to their new place, which happened to be their old place except now there would be a bed in it. Upon returning the car, the car rental place said that there was an emergency kit (jumper cables, tools, etc.)
A Grasshopper
I may or may not turn into a little girl when they fly near me. that was missing and tried to charge him three hundred and fifty dollars. I had to call and yell at the guy, who then changed the alleged location of the kit on the car (which I’m sure wasn’t there to begin with), and lowered the fee to one hundred dollars… it appears that James had been walking around for a week with an “I’m a young gringo, take advantage of me!” sign on his back. Oh, and at some point in the week he broke his pinky toe. Poor kid.
Cody and I moved to the hostel just across the street called Almost Paradise. It was run by a German couple, Julie and Stephan whose dream it had always been to run a hostel near the beach. Julie was bubbly and inviting. She cooed at every guest that walked in the door, always with a strand of hair in her mouth. Stephan spoke very little English and less Spanish. He had more of a gruff presence that seemed to soften every time Julie laughed. They were a perfect pair. Julie told us that she was almost moved to tears when she saw our group, a bunch of strangers, going
to watch the sunset together. She is truly touched by the connection of travelers.
The empty dorm room led out to an enormous balcony. Hammocks, Adirondack chairs, picnic style table, an outside kitchen, and an expansive ocean view. It was on this balcony that it set in where I was and what I was doing. I really didn’t live in the states anymore. I didn’t have a job or a house to pay for or a relationship to nurture. I didn’t have an itinerary to keep. Here, I am right where I need to be and I’m never late – which, if you know me, is way out of the ordinary. I decided to stay here for a while.
That night Cody, Alex, James and I made a bonfire on the beach. There were more stars than I could count… probably like a hundred or something.
The next day we met a girl named Kristen in the hostel. She was twenty-six and had just finished WOOFing on a farm elsewhere in Costa Rica where she painstakingly built a small set of stairs for a month. She is a wilderness guide, counselor, and conservationist from Durango, Colorado. She was
super high energy and her big blue eyes and perma-smile fit her shining personality like a wedding dress. She had a spectrum of knowledge about the most random things - from poetry, to anime, to politics, to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. She traveled with a ukulele on which she wanted to learn to play speed metal. And by coincidence she was a couchsurfer… of course. She fit right in. She quoted a poet named Dawn Markova that really hit home for me:
I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom
goes on as fruit.
Pretty great stuff.
We spent the several days listening to music on the deck, playing for hours in the waves, cooking family meals, reading, laughing, bon-firing, writing, and sleeping. We welcomed several others to our group. Adam, a twenty year old junior from UNC studying chemistry and biology. He was a rower the physique of an avatar, but with big poofy blonde hair… so his silhouette looked like a palm tree. French Alex, a guy whose English seemed to improve by the minute and loved driving around on his rented ATV. California Alex, a software engineer who loved to surf and talk college sports. For days, we were all a family.
I spent over a week on Playa Pelada. I got close to my new friends, especially Cody. He’s super duper fun! He told me that he thinks he’s got more to learn from me, and hopes that I can learn from him, too - and I don’t think he was just talking about inappropriate jokes. So I think we’re gonna travel around together. Maybe to Nicaragua… hmmm, we’ll see.
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Dakota
non-member comment
Fires
I was in Boulder when that fire hit! Started a mile from our friend's place. Crazy. Let the good times roll!