Food, Fantasies and Friends Pt. 1

I remember looking up places to go to for my annual excursion and thinking about Costa Rica.  Most everyone I had spoken with had only praises to say about this piece of land.  The more I thought about it, the more I felt a voice in my head whispering to me to go there; that for whatever reason this voyage was going to take me somewhere only time would reveal.  So I did just that.  I filled my backpack with everything I could think of, grabbed my phone (for pictures), journal and plane ticket, then onward!

The anxiety didn't kick in until I was at the airport.  Sure I was beyond excited to go to this new country and volunteer for causes I hold near to me, yet that small little voice of doubt kept peaking its head at the worst of times.  "I wasn't going to make it back with my sanity intact."  "I forgot something."  "Some kind of calamity will happen when I land."  All little thoughts, last second attempts by my self doubt that were trying to lay some kind of claim in my head and within my spirit.  In response, I sat down, buckled my seat belt, and while looking out the window of the plane, told myself that everything was going to be fine.

See I always tend to get that split second of doubt before taking that final leap.  It's probably due to the fact that I always travel alone and in the most unusual of journeys.  Ideally I would like to travel with someone, be it a friend, partner or even a stranger I come across, just to be able to share the stories that always seem to come from my voyages; until then however, I just travel alone and try my best to soak everything I can from each trip, all the while doing my best to see if there are some signs that come across my way.

So for my 7th year in a row, I head off on this plane to a country which has had only praises thrown its way from others, yet remained a mystery to me....

I landed in San Jose and it was definitely not what I expected.  For the equivalent of $1, I grabbed the bus from the airport and was zoomed down to the central bus terminal.  While there, I was hustled by vendors every which way I turned.  Besides my backpack being the clear sign that I was an "outlander", I also towered over the majority of the folks around me.  I had been told such wonderful things about Costa Rica by so many, and yet those same people told me to not set my expectations too high for San Jose.  Yes, San Jose is the capital and urban core of the country, so it didn't surprise me that it was different from the rest of its national brethren; the noise and graffiti however did surprise me!  I found some beautiful artwork sketched on many of the old walls of this core, while others were just plain tags; however from this graffiti I felt a strong sense of political expression and this undertone of change and frustration.  When that hit me, I began to find a new found respect for the value of it all.  The noise though was another thing.  The city is just plain noisy, no way to put it any differently.  In the end though, what else can you expect when living in a country's capital?

It took me about two hours walking from the central terminal to find the hostel I was going to stay the night in.  Why two hours?  Well I was eventually told that San Jose had recently gotten street signs; before then, there were no real street names, so monuments, parks, churches and any other semi permanent landmark were used as directional beacons for the lost and wandering.  Bus terminal to Manuel Antonio?  "Oh go to the main street and take a right at that gold looking building over there."  That was the typical response I would get from people when I looked for the hostel.  No one really knew where it was, no matter how much good willed effort they put into helping me.  My one address was 150 meters north of Parque Morazan.  That was it.  Thank God I had that one landmark to go with because if not, I would've been royally screwed.

After I finally reached the hostel (having no door signs but just a simple profile of Van Gogh for a banner), I drudged upstairs exhausted and ready for some kind of bed or just rest.  The nice desk attendant was kind to me and explained to me the rules of the land, which I promptly filed in the back of my head under the "Just Tell Me Where to Put My Bag" tab.  The hostel like most hostels I've been to had a lot of character and a very relaxed vibe to it.  That night my only hostel mate was a Texan named Josh, who had originally traveled to Nicaragua to help a friend with a boat business, and just decided to drop anchor temporarily in Costa Rica.  We spoke about many things, one being our mutual passion of traveling, and he showed me around the capital.  On our walk throughout town, I became well acquainted with what was the typical, if not timely mannered rain storms that would flood the city on an almost daily basis.  I also had the pleasure of visiting a small flea market that I had no luck finding on the last day of my trip, and enjoyed a meal in this small little bar off of la Avenida Central.

I got back to the hostel, enjoyed the last hot shower I would have in almost three weeks, chatted some more with my roomie and crashed for the night; the next day was going to be rough. 

Dreading the possible goose chase I'd have to do to find the outgoing bus terminal to Siquirres, I woke up with two hours to spare the following morning.  Just as I had thought, I had to stop and ask for directions a few times, fearing that possible visual cues had been changed on my route to this terminal.  I finally made it with about twenty minutes to spare and proceeded to fold myself into my bus seat.  By the time I had somehow managed to squeeze into position, I looked like a human origami piece; the poor lady next to me having to deal with my legs rubbing up against hers. 


Around two hours later I had arrived at Siquirres, only to have to look for the next bus terminal in some horribly humid weather.  I learned a very important lesson just in transitioning from one terminal to another...  Over here in the US, we are accustomed to looking for specific structures or signs that translate into some kind of universal indication of a bus stop, terminal or subway station.  In Costa Rica however, I realized that a bus terminal could look like an everyday bus station to a small driveway of sorts; it all depends on the town and its layout.  So here I was looking for this bus terminal, when the whole time I had been walking circles around it without even noticing it was even there. 

I bought my ticket and waited patiently for the bus to show up; while I sat there people watching I observed a pretty curious sight.  There was this man who seemed to be a bit out of his wits, walking around and singing the chorus of some religious song, over and over again.  While doing this, he was pushed away from a corner shop and threatened by a pretty big mural of a guy with a wooden stick that apparently worked at said shop.  I looked around at all the people at the terminal to try and gauge their reactions, and I mostly saw this unspoken nervousness.  The annoying singer was about to get his head swatted off by a giant!  Laughter soon followed though because as much as the giant with the makeshift bat wanted to hurt him, the punishment never came.  The man just continued singing and stumbling around, and eventually left.  The whole situation stunned me though, because of how it was treated.  No one pulled out cell phones and started recording it or provoked some kind of violent response from either side.  Nothing.  People watched in silence at first, then chuckled when they realized no harm was going to be done by anyone; it just made me think, would that situation have occurred like that in the states?  I'd like to hope so, that humanity and its flaws would be respected somehow, but unfortunately I doubt it would have unraveled the same way.


After that awkward incident, the bus appeared and we were off to Las Vegas, my last stop before heading to the island.  After about a 45 minute bus ride, I was at the drop off site for the boat.  Two gentlemen directed me to the vessel that would take me to the island, handed me a life jacket and off we went.  Along the way we picked up what I gathered was a friend of theirs who had been stranded with his bike somewhere along the river bed.  I sat for about 30 minutes taking in the sight of the land speeding past me while the wind blasted my face and the water pelted my body.  I didn't know what to expect when I arrived, but when that boat pulled up to land I took one big breath and said to myself, "this is it."