Category: Travel Bob

(To read El Gringo Feo’s Costa Rica Diary from the beginning, start here.)

Wednesday, September 12

Well, it’s been 48 hours since I tore up my ankle, and I’m encouraged by the fact that it hasn’t gotten worse. I didn’t expect much improvement in the first few days, but I figured if things degraded I’d need to head to a doctor. It’s swollen and hurts, but not excessively so on either count. I can hobble down to the kitchen to make food, and I’m spending most of my time reading and hanging with the howlers. It was almost as if the monkeys knew I needed a friend. They came around yesterday and hung out in the trees right next tot he Treehouse, where I watched them for over an hour as I felt sorry for myself. Then they woke me this morning and graced me with a few more hours of their antics before moving on via the arboreal highway through the jungle. They’ll be back.

I’ve already chewed through three books. The first, Cherry, is by first-time author Nico Walker, who I believe is doing time for the antics described in the book. The New York Times talked it up when it was published, and while it’s interesting it also annoyed the hell out of me. It’s a first-person account of a feckless kid from Cleveland who drifts into drugs and then the Army, where he ends up serving as a medic in Iraq circa 2005. (The troops call newbies “Cherries” when they first arrive in Iraq, thus the title of the book.) His descriptions of Iraq are mind-numbing. He returns after his tour and quickly gets caught up in opioids, leading to a career as a heroin addict and bank robber. I’m assuming the narrative is largely based on his actual experiences since he, you know, is doing time for holding up banks. The narrator isn’t terribly likable (even though he says he revised it in the editing process to make the narrator more likable), and the details of the junky life actually get pretty damned boring, or more accurately, predictable. If you’ve read one account of junkies being useless lowlives, you’ve read them all and this one does nothing to diverge from that pattern. (I’d much sooner listen to Ike Reilly’s “Heroin”; same general idea but distilled into 3 minutes and 20 seconds of heartbreak.) His Iraq experiences are interesting, but it leaves you hoping his account is specific to the types of people he gravitated toward and not all the young men and women who served there. It’s extremely depressing. But while he links his service to his addiction, I’m not convinced he wouldn’t have become exactly what he did without ever having seen the horrific stuff he witnessed in Iraq. He was heading down that path anyway, and the Army really just delayed his trajectory for a few years.

Next up was E.M Forster’s A Room with a View.As I’ve been reading and listening to lectures on fiction writing, Forster’s Aspects of the Novelpops up frequently so I downloaded it under a public domain license via Project Gutenberg. While I was digging up Aspects, I stumbled across Room so I downloaded that, too. It’s an interesting look at class, social norms, gender and mores in Edwardian England. I liked it much better than I’d anticipated. Very well written and plotted.

And finally, I’ve launched into Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Spring. I just finished the second section — where he describes his wife’s depression and overdose — with tears in my eyes. Thus far, the book is an extended letter to his infant daughter. It’s also part of a suite of books he’s created, I guess you could call it his version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. After Spring, I’ll probably chew through Autumn, Winter and Summer. I’ve taught Knausgaard to journalism students (a piece he did for The New York Times magazine on the doctors who do brain surgery) and I’ve read the first installment of his autobiography, My Struggle: Book 1. There’s a dark Proustian quality to his writing that I find irresistible, mining the mundane for large, metaphysical statements about the human condition. But without the pretense that the sentence I just wrote implies.

(To read El Gringo Feo’s Costa Rica Diary from the beginning, start here.)

Tuesday, September 11

Low tide was at about 9 o’clock yesterday morning, so at 10 I set off for the Whale’s Tail. What a difference a day makes. After Sunday’s crowds of happy Ticos, the beach yesterday was desolate. I had it pretty much to myself, passing only an occasional beachcomber. By the time I got to the tail, the tide already was coming up, with water from both sides starting to overlap the sand bar leading out to the rocks.

On the way back, I figured I’d swing by Flutterby House for lunch. They have decent fish tacos and wireless, which would allow me to download the latest episode of the Revolutions podcast.

That’s where things took a turn for the worse.

The dirt roads here are often mud pits flooded with water, which describes the route I chose to Flutterby House. It started off fine. I was feeling my way through it and while my Birks were getting muddy, it wasn’t too bad. Then I hit a stretch where about a 18 inches of mud was under the water. I think I was on something rocky and when I stepped off it, my foot slid into the mud, sending me twisting to the ground. I heard a pop in my ankle and managed to lose both of my sandals.

This wasn’t good.

So there I am, ass covered in mud, taking the whole Gringo Feo thing to an entirely new level as I sifted through the mud trying to recover my sandals. I found one almost immediately and was starting to lose hope for the second, dreading the walk home with only one sandal. I already had walked about 4 miles on the beach, and the route home was rocky.

That’s when my saviors emerged, three Ticos pushing bicycles along the far opposite side of the mud-pit road. They were older, maybe 50s or even early 60s, and rather than burst into laughter at the sight of a Gringo groveling in the mud, one of them put his bike down and started helping me look for the missing zapata, which he located almost immediately by noting my path into the mud and looking farther back instead of the spot where I had fallen.

¡Que milagro! I called out. (What a miracle.) I thanked them profusely in Spanish and then started to think about how I was going to get home. At that point, I knew I’d twisted my ankle pretty severely, but there wasn’t much pain. So I decided to head back toward the beach, where I could step out into the surf to wash off the mud, and continue from there. As I walked it was clear my ankle was sprained, but I took it slowly and got back to the house.

Once there, I put the ankle on ice and started munching ibuprofen. It looks as if I’ll be out of action for at least a few days. There’s a good bit of swelling, but the pain is manageable and I can walk on it, though gingerly. I’m hoping if I stay off it and read for a few days it will recover. I’m still worried about that pop I heard when I went down but at this point I’ll have to wait and see. Fortunately, I’m stocked up on food so I don’t have to go anywhere for a while. This morning I’m encouraged at the fact that it didn’t worsen overnight. I think that’s a good sign. And based on everything I’ve read on the Internet, the key from here is to stay off it as much as possible and let it heal. If the swelling or pain increase, I’ll call a cab and go to the medical clinic.

So the next few updates will more likely read like a hospital chart.

(To read El Gringo Feo’s Costa Rica Diary from the beginning, start here.)

Monday, September 10

After a few phone calls back the the States yesterday, I decided to take a walk on the beach. I’ve been avoiding the beach on weekends because I figured it would be more crowded with tourists. And one of my favorite things about Ballena National Marine Park is the solitude it offers most days.

Turns out, there’s something to be said for crowds.

At the Playa Colonia entrance, several vendors were selling ice cream and I noticed a lot more people in the area as I paid my $6 U.S. entry fee. Normally when I arrive, it’s just me and the worker who collects money.

Today, there were Ticos everywhere. Some where local. Some come from other parts of Costa Rica to vacation on the beach. This is the Whale and Dolphin Festival, which runs Sept. 7-16, so that drew even more people. (Ballena is Spanish for whale.)

I saw very few Gringos as I walked. I noticed the tide was coming up and checked the tide chart I’d downloaded on my phone, so I knew I had a few hours till high tide. As I stepped carefully to dodge shell fragments, coconut husks and the occasional rock, I saw people flying kites, children splashing in the surf, dogs chasing each other, young couples … it was a cross-section of Tico society playing in the sand.

At the beach near the main park entrance, there were about a dozen boats loading and offloading customers for whale and dolphin tours. I love watching the mates as they stand in knee-deep water, steadying the boat and keeping the bow pointed into the surf as they wait for the right moment to launch. After a wave crashes past, the mates push off, the captain trims the outboard down and a rooster tail of water erupts, propelling the boat into the surf and on toward the whales. I always worry one of the mates will get mangled in the outboard prop as it screams to life, but they step aside like nautical bullfighters.

At that point, the tide already was too high to venture out onto the tail of the whale, so I tracked south, toward Playa Hermosa. The crowds thinned quickly and after several hundred yards I found a stretch of beach with a population of three: me, a gray-headed kite and a white ibis, who was scurrying frenetically from one crab hole to another, trusting his beak deep inside to try to catch its occupant by surprise. When the ibis drifted too close to the kite, the raptor took umbrage, leaping into the air and herding it away. The kite was just hanging out on the beach, like me, not really hunting for anything in particular. After a while, he flew off into the jungle that ran right up to the beach.

At this point, a pair of young men approached. I greeted them in Spanish, as I always do, and they made the mistake of thinking I speak the language, unleashing a gatling gun of words at me.

“Lo siento. No hablo español bien,” I stammered. I could tell they were official. Each was wearing an ID badge.

“English?” the shorter guy asked.

“Sí.”

He told me it was time to start heading back south, back to the other side of the point where Rio Uvita flows into the sea. Otherwise, I’d be cut off and spend a few hours on the edge of the jungle waiting for the tide to go out.

“The tide is coming up fast,” he said.

And that was true. I walked back the way I came, and when I crossed Rio Uvita where it flows into the sea, the water was almost waist deep. It had been ankle deep on my way out. I also saw several people lying on the beach who were caught unaware as an early-bird wave swept in, swamping their towels and coolers.

At this point, I started re-evaluating my frustration with the $6 park entry fee (Ticos pay a $2 fee). I don’t mind paying, but if you go to the beach every day, well, it adds up. I’d found a way to dodge the toll at an unguarded beach access near Flutterby House, but with the festival happening a toll collector has been stationed there, too.

Now, I’m happy to pay the toll. The guys who approached were good-natured and professional, and the park is an incredible resource. There are regular police patrols in the area and Playa Colonia has bathrooms and basic shower facilities. When I think of the crap I spend 6 bucks on, it’s a bargain.

My most sublime moment of the walk came as I arrived back at Playa Colonia. I walked up off the beach, past a couple who had dug a trough where their toddler was lying while they covered him with sand. The little guy couldn’t have been more than 18 months and had the most beatific smile I’ve ever seen on a child. It was infectious. I grinned the whole way home.

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Clouds crept in as sunset approached, but I walked up to the shack hoping they’d hold off just long enough. And they did, treating me to a rainbow over the jungle and a brilliant sunset. Great end to another day in paradise.