The Winding Road

The rain finally stopped as we turned out of the Volcano Lodge for our ride to Puntarenas. The heavy grey clouds lingered close above blanketing the rain forest. The winding road ahead was inviting, each turn gave us a new mountain - one with a small shack, a pasture with cows chewing the grass, small Tico children walking in groups of three on the side of the road. I never knew which would be the last, but without time, without fear, I didn't really care. The winding road may take longer but it's always the one worth driving.

We made it to the main road and followed the sign pointing us west to San Ramon where we would find Route 1 to Puntarenas. A westbound ferry would await our arrival.

The main road twisted in and out of the volcano - I held the steering wheel tightly in my left hand and the gear shift trembled to the rocky road rhythm in my right. La Fortuna disappeared slowly beneath a dip in the road - I watched its decent in the side mirror like a blazing Venice sunset diving into the Pacific.

And as the single-lane bridge leading into the edge of La Fortuna slowly disappeared, the heavy cloud cover split around the volcano and for the first time in two days, without a drop of rain, without a twist in the road, the sky opened up and gave us what it was we came here for in the first place - a volcano.

"There it is!" I shouted to Tanya, letting go of the gear shift and pointing to the mountain to our right. I gently slowed the Suzuki to a stop at the base of the rocky dirt road leading to the waterfall.

"Look babe! The volcano! Finally!"

"Let's drive up the road a little for a better view," she suggested. "We can take a picture." She was drawn to this road - to where it led us yesterday. She followed the road and let the mouth of God swallow her whole. As with each turn in the road, a world anew, we couldn't say "no" to another adventure.

I pushed the gear shift into first and stepped on the gas. The tires skidded on the dirt which created a dust storm that floated over the windshield. I pushed the gear into second and drove through the dust cloud. The car bounced to the scattered holes in the road. Rocks and gravel, potholes and mud, I drove the Suzuki slowly towards the volcano like an Olympian skier flying downhill in the 100 meter slalom. This course was double black diamond, each turn giving us another jolt, bouncing us out of our seats and twisting our stomachs into nausea. I felt like just maybe I could throw up if I wanted to.

I brought the car to a stop at a small little farm. A large skinny cow bent over chewing the short wet grass between his legs. He didn't notice we were watching him.

"The cows are so skinny here," Tanya noticed. "Skinny moo moos. It's because they're healthy here. They're not given hormones and overfed."

She pulled the camera off the dashboard, opened her door, and stepped out of the car.

"He's so cute, honey! Hey moo moo!" The cow ignored her.

I don't think I said a word to Tanya or the cow. I was being pulled once again into the heart of God. The clouds floated overhead, so close I could almost touch them, and opened wide at God's gate. The sun peeked through the soft grey sky lighting up, right there hefore more very own eyes, for the first time in two rainy days, the volcano top. The lush green rainforest stopped at its peak, blackness just above and red hot lava within. The blood of God boiling and turning.

Tanya snapped a photo of the cow. And another. I walked a few steps up the road towards the volcano. The air was thick and warm but breathable. Two small bugs buzzed around my face, I tried to slap them away but they were too quick for my mutiny. I stopped and turned to Tanya who was right there behind watching me through the lens. Click, click - snapping a couple winners for an iPhoto slide show.

She walked up to me and wrapped her arm around my neck. Her skin was soft and she smelled like jasmine. She stretched her left arm out in front of us and pushed her face against mine. Click, click. Two wanderers alone on a dirt road leading up and into the mouth of God. The two of us standing alone in a rainforest without rain. On our way out of town, the clouds had opened the sky and the sun peeked through the mist giving us at long last what we came here to see. Click, click.

The road winded endlessly on our four hour journey to San Ramon. I kept my eyes glued ahead, one glance to a market on the right could have sent the Suzuki in flight into a mile deep rocky ravine. So my eyes straight ahead to the winding road. Once every few minutes though I risked death and snuck a peek to my side mirror. Every so often I stole a glance to watch a cow, or a little waterfall, or a group of three Tico children disappear beneath the winding road like a sunset.

God's Country

And the Texan, "Tex" we'll call him just for good measure, and his little son Joshua. Tex's story was simple - simple for him to tell and simple for me to understand. Once a vagabond, a wild man thirsting for an open road, he stumbled upon the rocky dirt trail leading upward into the belly of God. Tex had covered Costa Rica in its near entirety.

"Oh yeah," he bragged to me in his half drunken Texan drawl. "I've covered this entire country."

"We're heading west to Puntarenas for the outbound ferry to Paquera in the Nicoya Peninsula."

"Aaah, beautiful. Oh yeah, beautiful country."

"Have you been to Mal Pais?" I wondered. We were off in the morning to another unknown; maybe Tex had a little advice to ease our hesitations.

"No, sir. Never been there. Heard it's nice."

I thought Tex had just told us he's been everywhere: "Yes, sirree, traveled this country in its entirety."

He continued: "This here place is heaven. This here is God's Country. I found this place and never left. Lived here for six years. Had myself a little house over there on the other side of that hill. Little back yard with a stream running through - water so clean you could drink it out of your hands. That's how I came to know this guy over here. We're friends."

He pointed to Daniel who was joyously playing with his dog's balls. The little white pup just laid there, rain coming down, legs spread wide open loving every second.

"Bee bee bee bee bee," Daniel repeated with each teste tickle. Tanya got a kick out of it - a wickedly drunk Rasta Tico playing with his dog's balls.

"We became instant friends," Tex continued.

"I can see why," I said. They were obviously a match made in heaven. Tex smiled at me. Maybe he just enjoyed my humor. Maybe he just felt at home with a fellow American. Or maybe once again, here at the House of Hammocks on a rocky dirt road leading into God's Country, good ole Tex found himself a new friend.

Daniel stood up from puppy playtime. "Do you want beer?"

Tanya, quicker than I could lift my head to answer for us, responded with an enthusiastic: "Yes!"

"Si. Gracias," I said to Rasta Tico. Only problem is now we had to buy something from him. We couldn't take these pleasures from them - beers, photos, laughs - and not return the gratitude.

Daniel came out of the shack with two cans of Imperial. We cracked them open and sat outside on the deck covered by sheets of tin. The rain bounced off the tin roof like a handful of pennies shaken wildly in a covered soup can.

Rat Tat Tat - bullets ricocheting off the back of a getaway car. But we sat with Tex, and Daniel, and little Joshua, and the two puppies, and thought about the waterfall. We still heard the explosions of water onto rock. Echoing crashes of these waves one after the other. The not so distant thunder rumbling through me - into me. My body still quivered and it wasn't from the chill of my soaking wet tee papier-mâchéd onto my skin. I trembled with excitement from the stunning power of my waterfall experience. This was God's Country.

"I lived here for six years. A little vacation, man. This is where I met his mother," he hugged Joshua. Joshua smiled and raised his hands above his head and wrapped them around his Dad's neck.

He didn't have to tell me that, I already knew. Joshua had his Dad's smile. His Dad's stillness. But his skin was darker - fair for a Tico but could have been confused for a Mexicano up there in Texas. His eyes were darker - nearly all black - I could barely see a pupil inside. Tex on the other hand, his eyes seemed to get brighter blue every time he smiled. A small freckle, shaped like an upside down Florida, crawled out over his right eye. Maybe only weathered from six years of rain, or a sunspot burned into his pupil from the Tico volcano. Tex and his freckle didn't have to tell me about Joshua's Mom. I had already seen her in Daniel's eyes.

"We were walking along the beach one night. There was a full moon. Oh man was it bright - lit up the sky like a spotlight! It was beautiful. The clouds floated over shadowing the glow on the wet sand under our bare feet. We looked down and there were crabs, everywhere, tickling the sand as far as we could see. Scattering around us as we walked towards the rocks under the moonlight. I was like: 'Oh my God! This is magic!' But that's not all. It didn't end right there. There were shooting stars dipping over the horizon. They looked like they were taking nose dives into the ocean, like a hungry seagull eying kelp."

Tex didn't really say that. I added that for poetic justice. Tex was a simple man - but even the simple man understands romance. Even Tex knew his destiny was unfolding right there on a Costa Rican beach before his very own eyes.

"Shooting stars into the crashing sea, but man, the water! The phosphorescence of the water. You looked at the curling waves under the moonlight and the glow reflected off like a mirror. Looked like the moon was inside shining upwards reflecting itself off the blackened sky."

I only listened and smiled. It wouldn't be until a few days later that I would be able to experience the same for myself. But right then and there, at Neptune's House of Hammocks in a rainforest under a tin roof, I knew once again that this place was special and that the rocky road ahead opened wider into the heart of God.

"Yup," Tex nodded, pulling in a drag of his Marlboro. "We always tell Joshua that's where he was conceived. Conceived in Costa Rica, born in Cancun, living in Houston, Texas."

"He's a Tex Mex Tico," I told him. Tex laughed.

"That's exactly what I say, too."

The time had come, what more to do here really. I swallowed the last swig of my Imperial and looked to Daniel.

"O.K. my friend. We'd like to buy a hammock."

"O.k. let's go. I find you nice one."

"You make all here?" I asked in a way I thought he might understand. " Tú, ahhhh, tú mako los hammocks aquí?"

"Sí! Todos! Los Pequeños para sus perros," he laughed. "Y los grandes para tí."

"Ah, sí, bueno!"

We browsed the shack, weaving ourselves in and out of hammocks hanging loosely from the splintered stilts above. Different colors, different sizes. We picked one. Looked nice, not much different than the others, but seemed just about right. And that was it. Ran to the little white Suzuki through the rain and filled the car once again with a memory.

I'm sure every time I sit on that hammock in my backyard I'll think of God's Country. I'll think of Tex, and Joshua, and Daniel, and the puppies. Or I may just feel the rain on my face. Or hear the waterfall pounding through me like a not so distant thunder.

La Fortuna

I used to be able to say to you: "Don't ask me what it's like to see a sunset in a Costa Rican rainforest."

Until now.

"It's green glorious." I can tell you like a wise man. "Green grass, green trees, even green mountains and a green stream. The rain is green, too. And there's a whole lot of it." I never knew it rained so much in a rainforest. I guess that's why they're called rain forests.

The pounding rain woke me up from I don't know where back into that wet green world with a brutal throbbing hangover headache and a congested left nostril. Forced to breathe through my dehydrated mouth, the bungalow air tasted sticky and stale - like a soaked Spaniel. I lay there in my new Calvin's on top of the tangled white bed sheets. Those briefs were perfectly form fitting, with a baby soft cotton blend and a delicious amount of room for my manhood, which is why I hadn't yet taken them off since Christmas morning. My lady certainly knew how to get me a wearable gift. I had no idea where I was but I recognized the rain and Tanya right there peaceful pretty next to me reading her new book: Eat, Pray, Love.

Tanya snuck a peek over the edge of her open book and giggled at me.

"What?" I asked her. "What's so funny?"

"Nuthin'." She returned to her book with a permanent smile. I ignored her infatuation and rolled myself off the edge of the bed. The wrinkled sheet slid down my leg as I shuffled my bare feet over the cold tiles to the back patio door so I could catch a glimpse of the stormy sunset outside. 

"Where are you going, baby?" she asked.

The rain was pounding so hard out there it was making holes in the ground and those wet whistling birds and hungry moaning cows didn't even feel a thing. A stream danced its rapture downhill from the cloud covered volcano to my right. There was a waterfall somewhere out there - I could almost hear it but the beauty all around me was so loud it was nearly deafening.

In a blink the world outside went to black, like flipping the light switch on to off. One second it was bright light delight out there and everything was wet and green, and the next second it was blackness all around and I only heard the torrential rain and the overflow pouring off the edges of our thatched bungalow roof.

So I was still not sure where I was or how we got there but I remembered a winding road with lots of potholes and hitchhikers, a small Israeli owned roadside cafe where we ordered some green rice and beans and a couple eggs scrambled, and I remember checking into that rainforest hotel.

"What's your name?" the front desk clerk asked. He didn't sound too Costa Rican. Kind of generic. Kind of American. A nice looking Tica girl stood next to him smiling at me.

"Margaritov," I replied. My name rolled off my tongue like I owned it.

"Maaar-gaaar-eeeee-"

"tov," I interrupted. "Like the drink... Margarita."

"Oooh, I like those! Margarita!!!"

"Yes, like the drink. But with an O-V at the end." I wondered how many times in my life I've had to say this to people. Sometimes simple names, like Smith or Jones, work better in the world. Especially in a Costa Rican rainforest.

"Do your rooms have nice views?" I asked the smiling girl. She didn't answer me, just stared quietly and smiled.

"What is that? Your name? Where from your name?"

"Margaritov?" I questioned. "Originally Spain, I guess. And then Eastern Europe. Russia."

"Russia!" he shouted back at me with excitement. "Sprechen ze Deutsche?"

Huh? Do I speak German? "Umm, uhhh, I don't speak Russian. Do you?"

"Sprechen ze Deutsche a little. Very little, actually. Sprechen. Ze. That's all."

And then I woke up to a rainforest rainstorm and certainly questioned my whereabouts and how I got there. But honestly, who really cares, it was all so wonderful. And in that lovely moment - laughing about my day, admiring the view, feeling the rain - Tanya, with her adorable giggle - mischievous and giddy - rolled over to her side, rested her sleepy face in her open hand, and paused. She was sizing me up with those sunshine freckled Hazels.

"So, how many days have you been wearing those chones?" She nonchalantly asked cracking herself up. "How many different countries can you wear those chones in without washing them?"

"What!? I like them! They were a gift!" 

"I know, baby. Who gave them to you?"

Little did she know I'd wear them around the world and back again. A perfect pair of chones, like the love of your life, you just want to keep close to your skin all the time. 

And, believe it or not, I had both wrapped around me there in my rainy Costa Rican rainforest.