And Here We Go Again...

There is not one latino person on this plane. There is, in fact, no one on this plane that is not white. Like white white, too. Most everyone on this plane, aside from me, is from Quebec. I walk down to the restroom and pass a dozen French conversations.

Welcome to Costa Rica, kids. The Norway of Central America. More gringos per square mile than Iowa.

I am stewing on this fact when the plane finally lands in Liberia. There’s a fire truck at the end of the runway with the sirens going. In the States this would alarm me. Here I don’t think much of it. They like drama, the bombaderos. If you have a siren you should at least show it off once in a while, play with it. A hundred sets of eyes stare out the plane windows in alarm. The fire truck drives in circles, lights and sirens blaring. Weeeee! Have fun, boys.

Liberia airport is an open air pavilion. I get off the plane, down the stairs to the tarmac. I ask a security guard ‘fumo alli?’ and point to a banana tree with a bunch of people in uniforms smoking. The words feel odd, clumsy, coming out. It’s the first Spanish I’ve spoken in months. No, he tells me, fumo afuerta. He points past customs to the waiting herd of taxis outside the front door. No cigarette until I clear customs.

The air is damp and smells like Central America - humid, earthy, a little acrid. It feels good on my skin.

Pretty much everyone knows I’m a little concerned about clearing customs this time. I have supplies for the clinic with me this time, as well as a ton of other crap. I’m the first person to be snaky as hell about the Costa Rica Tourist Infestation but I’m also enough of a wuss that I have my own sheets, towels, conditioner with me. There was an emergency stop on the way to the airport this morning for a shower curtain.

The guy in front of me holds up the line. He left the ‘destination’ line on his customs form blank and the pretty Tican customs woman is trying to get the information out of him. ‘I’m just here to be here, you know?’ he tells her. ‘Just want to go where it feels right, travel some’.

They need to offer courses on how to clear customs for dippy surfers. All the poor woman wants to know is where he’s staying tonight, something to put on the form and instead we are all being held up for a treatise on the nature of international travel. She finally manages to elicit an answer of sorts from him and then I’m up. I haven’t claimed my bags yet and if I get pulled for a search it will hold me up forever - they haven’t even brought them off the plane yet and I have made full use of the baggage allowance. The flight was already delayed and I’m sort of up in the air about where I’m staying tonight. I just want to get through this.

I hand her my passport, my forms, say hello in Spanish. She smiles, asks me the normal questions. Soy voluntario en Nicaragua. Voluntario? She asks. Si. Con animales. She beams at me, stamps my passport, hands it back. Bien. Gracias. Adios.

Sometimes people surprise you.

I get my bags, prop my pack on a box and slide it on. Something creaks, clicks in my back. I’m getting too old for this shit.

Outside the taxi driver hustle is in full swing, dozens of them holding up signs and yelling. I make an executive decision to just go to the crappy hotel I booked and if it’s a nightmare I’ll figure something else out. But right now I just want to be headed someplace with a bed, a shower, access to a bottle of water. All of the French Canadians have formed a huddle in the midst of it and stand there looking lost.

The drivers are yelling out ridiculous prices - $20 American to Parque Central, a five minute drive. Like sheep the Canadians aquiese, peel off from the herd, follow different drivers. A bunch of drivers cluster around me, yelling over each other. Alone and buried under a mountain of baggage, I look like a prime target for a ridiculous fare. Fucking Costa Rica.

Habla ingles? I ask. Necesitto habla ingles. One of the drivers grabs a teenage Tican boy away from a cluster of French Canadians. He doesn’t seem to be a driver, more of a driver referee and translator.

I ask how much to the hotel and he quotes me something ridiculous - $15, more than the room costs. No way, I tell him. It was $6 last time. He smiles, ‘the problem with Costa Rica’ he explains in flawless English, ‘is that the taxes go up all the time‘. I argue with him. The drivers try to interject in Spanish, coming down a dollar or two. Ocho. Ocho y no mas. Diez, one of the drivers yells. ‘He says $10’ the kid explains. And I said $8. Finally one of them steps forward. Ocho. He says. I nod and he picks up my bags.

I didn’t, one of the Canadian women says in accented English when I walk past, know you could do that. I thought it wasn’t allowed.

And all of a sudden I feel good, confident. I know how to do this, how to find my own way.
My driver’s name is Huell. We have a stilted conversation. Between my crappy Spanish and his few words of English we have about one fourth of a language between us. I tell him I’m going to Nicaragua. He offers to take me to Penas Blancas, the border, instead. For a second I consider it. Just go straight there, skip Costa Rica entirely, get through the border, get a cab to Rivas and try to find a place there tonight. It’s a good thought but impractical. I don’t know if the border closes and I don’t much feel like walking through it with over a hundred pounds of baggage. If it is open, will there be a cab this time of night? Will I wind up camping out there? And even if I can make it Rivas tonight, Rivas is kind of a shithole. A Nicaraguan shithole, as opposed to Liberia’s Costa Rican shithole, but a shithole none the less. And I’d be hitting it pretty late at night. And if Huell is already jacking me for a five minute hotel fare god only knows how much he’d jack me for a 78 kilometer trek.

No, the hotel.

The bad news is the place is still the same pit it was last time I stayed there. The good news is I have a lock on my door this time. More bad news: they put me in a room in the way back. By the time I haul my stuff all the way back there and see it has a lock I’m lacking the energy to complain about the fact that it’s the size of a closet. Literally. A very small closet. The single bed hits both walls and the fan is pointed towards nothing and unmovable. The bathroom borders on terrifying. I pile my stuff in, close the door, lock it and sit and think for a bit, be a little melancholy.

My original plan was to skip the Costa Rican Experience as much as possible. Go directly to hotel. Go to bed. Get up. Get the hell on a Tica bus pointed north immediately. But I’m not terribly tired, I have a lot on my mind and I don’t want to be sitting in a small, stuffy room poking through the contents of my own brain. I grab the key, stuff my valuables in the Ugly Orange Nicaraguan Hippy Purse and head off into the night. Five feet out the door something occurs, to me. I go back to my room, take off my sneakers and socks, put on my flip flops, roll my jeans over my calves and head back out into the night.

I stop at the Jumbo Supermercado for a two liter bottle of water which I stick in my bag. Ugly, yes, but highly functional. I savor what will probably be my last glimpse of American-style grocery shopping for a while. Everything is clean, well lit, nicely arranged. Distinctly un-Nicaraguan.

From there I walk the mile into Parque Central. It’s at least 9.30 on a school night but the streets are alive with people. Skaters are trying to do kick-flips across the gazebo. High school kids are walking endless laps around the park, flirting with each other. Older couples sit on the benches and talk. Herein lies the difference between the US and Central America. Public space is truly public space, to be used and enjoyed. Life is lived outside, with other people, not in your house in front of your television. I sit on a bench and smoke a cigarette, people watch. A couple of older men make hissing noises at me. I ignore them and they keep walking. Ten feet down they hiss at another woman. Be rude not to.

And I sit and observe and remember and stew a bit. Think of the last time I was here, think of where I was last night, where I am now, where I will be tomorrow. And then I walk back to my room, pull a chair out into the courtyard and plug my laptop into the only outlet I can find, light a cigarette.