I packed and unpacked and packed and unpacked and packed my backpack in anxious preparation for my jungle trek. In a brief online chat just before I left, Lulu said farewell with a request: “Don’t die.”
I can no longer deny the truth: I’m completely scatterbrained, and I’m getting worse. No matter how hard I try to hold onto the Reins of Life, they slide through my fingers and fall off the neck of the Horse of Fate.
Don Toí±o had aimed Taxi 34 toward La Cuidad de Guatemala and reached Jocotenango by the time I realized I didn’t bring any travel documents except my passport: no flight info, no idea where I was scheduled to stay that night. I called the dueí±a of mi casa to see if she could find the paperwork but it proved too daunting a task. Luckily, everything is electronic these days so I had no trouble.
As I found my seat on the plane, a welcome message flashed on the tv screen: Bienvenido a Costa Rica. Behind the text was a colorful photo of a giant spider.
The flight people handed out the usual customs forms. This one asked, “Have you enjoyed in the last six months exoneration tributes?” I don’t remember having done so.
For airplane entertainment I bought a sort of Farmer’s Almanac in Spanish: Escuela Para Todos 2008. I’ve been reading about the history of watches. Did you know that in ancient China they used to burn incense to measure time, and even figured out how to make an alarm clock? A medida que el incienso se iba quemando, unas piezas de metal caian y hacian ruido; metal pieces fell and clanked when the incense burned out. Sounds like something Dad would have invented, if only he’d lived in China a thousand years ago.
On the ground in San José I went straight to the ATM to buy colones. I figured 10,000 of them would be more than enough to last a week, but when the machine spat out a single bill I had second thoughts. In fact, 10,000 colones are worth about US $13.
I reached the misnamed Adventure Inn in San Antonio de Belen, where my only adventure was playing with the bidet — the first I’ve seen since I was ten. I would have gotten in big trouble for doing this back then.
During my rice-and-beans dinner at the Moon Glow café down the hall, a Canadian man showed up to be our evening’s entertainment. He cranked up his karaoke machine and in a cracking, off-key voice he accompanied Elvis and Roy Orbison and Ray Charles, occasionally venturing a blast on his horn. I had to admire him. He’d always wanted to live in Costa Rica and now he’s doing it, supporting himself as a lounge lizard. He said he holds a Guinness Book record for playing the most instruments in one sitting — “playing” being loosely defined, it seems. I think his grand total was 146.
