costa rica i: le deluge

it wasn’t long ago that katherine and i decided that we needed a vacation.

“let us go to a magical place,” she proposed. “a glowing emerald corner of the world—a country in constant stupefaction at its own ineffable natural beauty, its dreamlike topography, its sun-blessed abundance of life—a place in which it is possible, nay, unavoidable to believe in a God.”

(actually, that is not at all what she said. what she said was, “let’s go where there are kitties.” this was literally her only requirement, a condition made even more absurd by the fact that she has a kitty.)

so we went to costa rica, a place that contains kitties, and many other animals, which we spent much of our energy trying to photograph. in fact, a breakdown of our waking hours would resemble this:

20% failing to produce a recognizable photograph of a completely motionless animal
19% loudly and inaccurately pronouncing words on highway signs
12% formulating questions in spanish
11% squinting in confusion at response; muttering phrases intended as solemn assent but with literal meanings like, “i have no arms” and “i love you”
9% exaggerated shrugging; dancing around like a jackass
9% lying prostate on bed quietly hoping that sunburn will magically dissipate, or else that death is nigh
2% trying to determine if the thing in the jungle canopy is a sloth, or some branches, or a clump of moss, or a blemish on our contact lens
<1% acquiring sunburn

our journey begins, at 3am. we had a flight from la guardia at six. somehow this seemed like a good idea when we booked it, but when we left the apartment around 2:45, we were already completely addled. exhibit a: the frankly nonsensical hand gesturing above. exhibit b (not pictured): katherine is wearing a hat made entirely of doilies and used string, and the hat is named “maurice.”

behold our rental car, a jeep. giddy with lack of sleep, the first thing we did with it was go on a night drive through the mountains in ten-foot-visibility fog to a little village where we had not made reservations and ended up sleeping in a near-abandoned compound of houses called, simply, “museum of snakes.” none of this paragraph is fabricated. there were no snakes to be seen, but perhaps they were merely awaiting the return of running water, which was coyly withheld from the entire compound for most of our stay.

the view from our compound of volcán arenal, our first destination. it is one of the ten most active volcanoes in the world. we saw no plumes of fire or streams of lava, but we did hear a lot of what the travel literature describes as “belching,” and i was doing only some of it.

please believe me when i say that i have many, many photos identical to this one.

man oh man. on the drive to la virgen, another mountain village, we saw some cars at the side of the road, and immediately katherine began shrieking with delight. the reason: some locals and some tourists were feeding chips and other human snacks to a crazed gang of coatis, who were tumbling over each other, pawing at children, immediately developing severe cases of diabetes, etc. the coati is a very cute animal similar to a raccoon, and it sticks its tail straight up in the air when foraging. katherine was borderline hyperventilating with the unfettered cuteness of it all, and i too felt a stirring in my heart. driving away, we agreed that, as grave insults to human and animal dignity go, this was probably the most adorable one ever.

here i am relaxing in la virgen, an uncannily humid place. no, that is not foil-backed origami paper i am attempting to conceal with my hands. i did not spend much of our vacation creating modular origami polyhedra. that would be lame! lame, lame, lame. let’s just move on.

this impish look on katherine’s face can only mean one thing: “it’s rafting time.” it also means: “put the camera away or i will hit you.”

specifically, it was time to go rafting in the limpid waters of the river sarapiquí. our guide was about fifteen years old, and the rapids were intermittent and delightfully manageable. we had a lot of fun. please note the limpidity.

rafting was in the morning. we had lunch in a little soda near our hotel, and as i was walking out, everyone in the soda jumped up, started yelling, and came running at me. instinct kicked in, and when i regained my senses i was about fifty meters down the road and completely devoid of pants. katherine had already gone to our room; when we reunited, she informed me that there had been a moderate earthquake. we thought little of this at the time, and an hour later we were exploring the nearby rainforest reserve of tirimbina, which you enter via 300m of suspension bridge over the aforementioned limpid waters of the river sarapiquí. here we are, gaily crossing the bridge. tra-la-la-la! everything looks normal! we traipsed around the forest for an hour, i made wookiee noises at a howler monkey, and then we made our way back to meet a guide for a tur de chocolate.

re-crossing the bridge, however, we noticed that something was a little wrong.

here is the river we had been rafting on early that day. thus far i have refrained from profanity in this blog entry, but holy fucking godmothers of king fuck the third. the water was moving at a ridiculous speed, and it had entire trees in it. fucking look at this shit.

that is a tree. um: jesus. it turned out a hydroelectric dam way upriver had burst as a result of the earthquake, and the river flooded. had we chosen to go rafting in the afternoon, who knows what would have happened. the red cross went racing through town after town before the floodwaters hit to warn people to get out of the water, so actually we probably would have been fine. but still! that’s off the hook, nature. hot damn.

later that night, i saw the biggest cockroach i have ever seen. it moved very slowly, and at first i thought it was an exotic beetle, and i was stoked. but then katherine came over and said, “why are you just chilling with that cockroach,” and that’s when the screaming began.

TO BE CONTINUED