Relax... It's Costa Rica

Punta Cateral, or the tobolo, in Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica

     The day before I left for Costa Rica I realized I didn't know where I was going the first night.  I was victim of my oblivion again, my inability to forecast anything whatsoever in my life that required choice.  I had gotten my vaccinations and read the State Department warnings, (Nicaragua has been land-mine free for 3 years now!) but forgot to plan a damn thing.  I had 44 days to get to Mexico City.  That is all I knew.

     I messaged my friend, John, who lived in San Jose, three times to ask for his address.  I was worried.  Americans worry.  But Costa Ricans don't.  John replied he would "send somebody for me."  And if that person didn't come, I should take a taxi to San Pedro Mall and wait in the food court.  For who?  I felt like he was batman, and I could never find him, but somehow, maybe, he would find me.

          Worry was something that was new to me at 27.  And I don't deal with it well.  And this makes me worry more.  I worry about choices: should I move to New Orleans; should I change jobs; and which tomato sauce should I buy at the store, should I buy organic, or save a buck, or does it really matter?  Every decision represents an alternative choice, and I can never know which one is better because I can't experience both simultaneously, time won't let me go backward and choose again, and again, and again.  Time is the dirtiest of bastards.  But three years ago I didn't worry.  I was traveling in Ecuador.  I was jumping off things even though my mother told me I'd break my neck. I jumped off bridges, boats, into waterfalls.  I hopped onto buses unsure where I wanted to go or where I'd spend the night. I ate guinea pig and chicken feet and cow heart from dirty street grills.  I never thought twice about it.  What happened?  What is this feeling....is this what my parents always encouraged...is this...dear god...is this maturity?!  

         I hated the idea and so I before I left the airport I bought a bottle of rum at the duty-store free.  When I left security a man stood with a sign, "Sam Nelson."  His name was James Brown, and he was an older, black man who grew up on the Carribean coast.  He spoke Spanish nice and slowly, and everything he did was relaxed except his driving.  He threaded his taxi between trucks and cars at fast speeds on the highway.   He treated several red stoplights as if they were suggestions.  And he taught me pedestrians have no right of way.  He almost hit three of them.  I loved James Brown, and was tempted to hug him instead of pay him, but I knew he would not have wanted it that way.  

           I also learned there were no postal addresses in Costa Rica. There were street numbers nobody knew of because only recently did the capital city start to post signs.   

          "When I get mail, which is almost never, it says I'm two blocks from here and 1 block from over there," John told me. 

       I relaxed.   I had arrived safely.  I was in Costa Rica, the beginning of a two month dream vacation.  But I quickly found other things to worry about. Why hadn't I planned  anything?  Did I pack too many sets of pants? Why wasn't I traveling with my girlfriend in Iceland or Spain or, hell, why not Fiji?! Had I robbed myself of novelty by returning to Latin America?  Why had I quit a good job?  Did I have enough money? What about socks...god, I hate wet socks, did I have enough socks? And why were there so many prostitutes here? Everywhere, a prostitute.  Every question represented a choice, every choice a right and eight wrong answers. Was I on the right track here?  I thought I was...but there were just too many hourly hotels to confirm it.  

         I thought about these things and many more, all the way to the Pacific coast.  Even in my first walk in Manuel Antonio National Park I worried. I was distracted briefly by a green vine snake eating a poisonous milk frog ten times its diameter.  It suffocated the frog by swallowing its face.  I wondered if it would be able to swallow it whole, and decided it would.  Snakes don't second-guess.  Then the frog stopped moving and I resumed my walk and started worrying again.  And why was I so worried?  This, especially, worried me.  I worried I would be full of worry all the way back home and have nothing to say for it.  

        Then the beach confronted me.  Natural beauty has a way of challenging you, but each natural beauty is unique in its confrontation, its arrest of your vision and perspective requiring immediate attention to the details that make it so magnificent and different than all other places on Earth.  Manuel Antonio is special because of its wildlife, but also because it contains a geographical rarity, a tobolo--where the ocean waves deposit enough sand from two directions to thinly connect the mainland with a nearby island, creating a formation that, from above, looks a like a spoon with beaches on both sides of the handle. 

       I stared at the Pacific Ocean.  It went on forever.  If there was an end to it, I saw no evidence.   It is so vast and blank and permanent, it feels as if it has never changed and never will, only the land that meets it will change, and because of this, it feels as if it has no past.  Staring into it, I felt the same quality reflected in myself; I forgot my own past, the mirage of myriad missed choices, all the other places I could have been right now.  

      I swam.  The undercurrent was strong but the water was shallow, and I felt all my worry wash away in it.  I sat down in the waves and looked at the tropical beach bowl surrounding me, small cliffs delineated with palm and manzanillo trees, a bright sun, warm moving water.  I got out of the waves and hiked to the tip of the spoon.  I saw howler monkeys, dozens of chicken of the tree lizards scattering under my bare feet, and a two-foot black iguana sun-bathing at low tide, and then I swam again, on the other side of the tobolo.  

      I found shade on the shore under the toxic manzanillo tree, reading Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano but really just listening to the cicadas and a pair of Laughing Falcons squawking at each other, and the waves washing up, not even caring to think about how far the water traveled to get here, as I often like to do.  I was on a tropical beach in Costa Rica. I hadn't forgotten all my worries, but they had lost their weight.  It was beautiful and bright and full of life, and I felt like the vine snake, its fangs in the milk frog; there could be no second-guessing here.

Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica

Green Vine Snake eating a Milk Frog in Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica

Black Iguana, Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica

Part of the hiking trail in Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica

Chicken of the Tree Lizards (I think) in Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica

If you think this is a trip for young people, please note that Steve is not young, but traveled
from Belize to Costa Rica on his own in 5 months time.  We found ourselves in the same place, going in
opposite directions.