As you probably know, the 4th of July was my first day back in Costa Rica. (I found Independence Day a very fitting holiday upon which to embark on this six month journey into the cloud forest!) By the end of the day, I was too exhausted to worry about my writing being aesthetically consistent, so I decided to grab a pen and bullet-point the noteworthy events of my night. This is what I wrote:
What an initiation.
I was tired, and overwhelmed. I am still overwhelmed. But you know what? I know that you are all counting on me to entertain you with my adventures (right???) so I am sacrificing a much-needed nap in the name of the greater good!! A.k.a glorified chisme with YOU :)
FOURTH OF FIASCO: DAY 1
PART 1, The Journey
Picture this:
- Me, crying in the car with Mom, Dad, and Arty on the way to the Ft. Lauderdale airport.
- Arriving at Departures and unloading said car.
- Walking into the airport, clinging to Arty's left arm like a deranged koala on a Eucalyptus tree.
- Approaching the check-in desk and handing over my passport and confirmation code/email, starting to feel a little more in control.
- Check-in clerk, telling me ever so calmly *and with a smile*, that my reservation does not exist.
- Check in clerk, repeating to me that my reservation DOES NOT EXIST.
- My first after-thought (after the obligatory "Seriously, WTF?") : Who in their right mind expects a teary-eyed girl with two overstuffed duffel bags to react well to a calm assertion that the one-way ticket she booked and paid for a month earlier is no longer in existence?
- Second after-thought: FUCK YOU SPIRIT AIRLINES.
Needless to say, I overcame that obstacle. (Because I am here.) I won't bore you with the details, but just know that if you book with SPIRIT AIRLINES (Yeah I'm telling everyone!), you better double-check that ticket every 24 hours because they are in the habit of sending confirmation emails to people whose "credit card was declined" a month earlier.
After THAT whole fiasco, I entered the plane and passed out on my pillow before it even took off (had never brought a pillow from home before...I highly suggest it, best airplane sleep ever). I felt safe, and in control again.
I woke up 2 hours later and went to the bathroom, where I stood in line next to a nice little set-up of ice and water bottles. Assuming that they were there for the self-service enjoyment of passengers, I filled up a cup of water and drank. I then decided that I would finish the entire water bottle anyway, so I just picked it up and finished it. I have done this many a time on international flights, where they usually have some sort of a self-service area with water, O.J., and pretzels if you're lucky.
Well, not on Spirit Airlines. Not a second after exiting that bathroom, I was accosted by two angry, ridiculously well-manicured Spirit Stewardesses who proceeded to verbally kick my ass into submission. Those water bottles are FOR SALE, just like everything else on the plane! (Except, apparently, the actual plane tickets!) Whoops.
I tried explaining to them that I had been on many flights where you could serve yourself water, and that I had been sleeping during the entire flight (as they probably noticed), which is why I did not hear their announcement. The shock! The horror! HOW DARE SHE? They called another one of their kind over for support. She replied with, "What? She just grabbed the whole bottle and chugged it?!?!?" (scoff scoff scoff, and the annoyed, knowing look that can only occur between two seasoned flight attendants)
So overall, I was pretty beaten down by the whole travelling thing. Once I landed, I still had one more item on my travel agenda: a three-hour drive into the mountains with a Costa Rican man I did not know.
Next chapter:
I wait in the Immigration line for an hour, and then head down to baggage claim and somehow manage to steal a free-standing baggage cart, because after attempting to drag my giant duffel away I realized that I would probably render my muscles absolutely useless for the remainder of my time in Costa Rica. (Picture: 140 pound white girl, carrying 120 pounds of overpacking.)
I manage to push the cart out of immigration and into a mob of crazed, glass-tapping taxistas and con men trying to "help me" con mi equipaje. NO GRACIAS SENOR. After 5 minutes of scanning the crowd for my name on a sign, I started to get discouraged. Just before I surrendered to pessimism, my name popped into view. And there was Leslie Corrales, a nice-looking tico with smile wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. Aaaaah, smile wrinkles. What a comfort.
He helped me with my bags and we drove for three hours, speaking in Spanish and laughing as he imitated Spaniards ("Ostia, Tia! Shoy de Eschpana!"), Germans ("es una locura- siempre quieren lo maximo posible, pero por el menos precio!"), and informed me that I was "blanca, de leche. Porque tu no eres Americana, tu eres Suiza." We stopped on the way to get gas, and saw a troupe of Howler monkeys and a baby! He also schooled me on the various types of strays and cows that populate the sides of the road in Costa, and let me look through his bird books as he told me stories of his favorites.
Part 2, The Initiation.After a few bumps in the proverbial (and physical!) road, I was back in San Luis de Monteverde. I was greeted almost immediately by my former professor and mentor, Diana Lieberman. No sooner had I given her a hug, than she was back in heated academic conversation with a student. I thought to myself, “Wow. She hasn’t changed a bit.” There is no time for catch-up when you are explaining the intricacies of mycorrhizal fungi and its obligate symbiosis with orchids!
After some dragging of duffels and slight unpacking (and I say slight because I discovered rather quickly that I did not have any shelves or dressers into which to unpack!), I decided to be a social scavenger and take advantage of the first opportunity I had to bond with these new nature people. Was what this opportunity, you may ask? Beer drinking, 4pm, at a bar/restaurant called Rancho de Lelo, just down the road. Perfect.
We decided to take a (rather expensive) cab down there, since it was raining. The cab pulled up ten minutes after it had stopped. Oooh yeah.
Once we arrived, I was bombarded with an odd combination of loud, drunken American study abroad students and sober, rain-drenched ticos playing a pick-up soccer game (known here as a merienda). I watched in fascination as a stick-thin 11 year old Costa Rican girl consistently stole the ball away from a shirtless, red-faced gringo with great abs, huge biceps, and a dumbfounded look on his face. (This look soon turned to aggression, then to anger, and finally gave way to shame) There was even a girl playing- barefoot and in the slippery mud- with a leg brace on! People over here do not take their soccer lightly.
After a few more beers and another bout of rain, it was time to eat! Lelo has two gorgeous tilapia ponds on his property, from which he catches all of the fish he serves. You can quite literally catch your fish, hand it to him, and watch him fry it up with some yucca and coleslaw. All the bones, brains, and eyeballs make for quite a tasty tilapia fry J By the time I managed to wrangle out some meat from the huesos, Lelo had plugged in the ol’ multi-colored disco ball (!) and began to play merengue—which all of the study abroad students attempted to salsa dance to, of course. A great honor was bestowed upon me that night: I got to dance with the son of one of Lelo’s neighbors, a beautiful caramel tico with blue eyes, a wide smile, and all of 6 years. I was enchanted. After his giggles and attempts to spin me around (his arms didn’t quite reach over my head), he ran off to go dance with another gringa. I tried my hardest not to take it personally.
After we were sufficiently drunk, sweaty, and dehydrated, us naturalists and a few study abroad teachers decided that it was a good idea to save on cab fare and walk back up to the ecolodge. Well, let me tell you:
That was a mistake.
It was a pitch black night (where were you, moon??!), and the roads were impossibly steep, muddy, and covered in watery potholes. I thought to myself, hey, no biggie- we’re only about a 20 minute hike back to the ecolodge. Boy, was I wrong. After 50 minutes of non-stop uphill trekking, my heart beat was rattling my chest cavity in such as way that I thought it would explode. All conversation had stopped—not only because I couldn’t spare the extra breath required for speech, but because I could not hear anything over the rumble of my own heart pounding in my ears. After what seemed like eternity (and what was actually about an hour), we finally rounded the final incline. There, we were greeted by a random black-and white cow who continued to moo along next to us on the side of the road. Random road-side vacas! Yay for rural Central America!
Thanks to this paquete of exhaustion, I will never again delude myself into thinking that I can walk back home from Rancho de Lelo’s. I gladly welcomed the slightly cold shower that awaited me, and curled up into Bungalow C-1 with Alex (landscape architecture intern)and Claudia (sustainability intern) for a first-night sleepover. They scored the bungalow because their casitas were infested with mold, just thought I'd let you know.
I walked into C-1 and was hit with a fond memory of mine (I knew I recognized that alphanumeric combo!):
I had been in that same bungalow, two years prior, getting my leg patched up by my Tropical Ecology T.A. Marcia. Funny thing is, the circumstance of my being there that night had also involved a drunken, muddy, uphill hike. One of my study abroad peers, a freakishly tall white guy named Chris Morphis (or, as we liked to call him, the Jolly Gringo Giant), had decided to pick me up and carry me back home since it was so dark and I was “so drunk.” He then proceeded to drop me into a pothole, trip on my body, and fall on me. It was equal parts pain and hilarity. I laughed, I cried, and I got fixed up in Bungalow C-1. I had come full circle.
It was Costa Rica’s way of saying, “welcome home”.
