Coco Fifty Years Later

During our recent trip to Costa Rica, I knew I had to return to Playa del Coco. Fifty years earlier, while traveling by land back to California after our two year Peace Corps stint in Colombia, Barbara and I took a local bus to Playa del Coco in northern Costa Rica. It was a small town and we stayed in a very minimal cabin facing the beach. I took two photos while I was there. One of a veranda with a thatched roof and the other of a lone tree on the beach.

            When I learned that this Costa Rica trip would take us near Coco, as the locals call it, I dug around in a box of old photos until coming across those two possible Coco photos. I say ‘possible’ because I hadn’t labeled them.

            So now our group – my son, his girlfriend Laura, his Argentine friend Sebastián, my husband and I and Frida, the rescue dog – piled into the worn pickup truck and bounced the forty minutes into “town”, Playa del Coco, now a rather shabby but bustling tourist destination. Nothing looked familiar to me – until we reached the beach. I looked up and down the curving stretch of white sand, trying to recall the moments all those years ago when I’d stood in that very place. I showed the group my two photos and we set off down the beach to find where I’d snapped the tree-on-beach photo.

“There, those hills bordering the beach look just like these in the photo.”

“You’re right!”

“Isn’t that your tree?”

“Oh, my gosh! It is!”

I ran up to it and wanted to hug it. There was no mistaking it’s broad, deep green leaves and its tilt towards the ocean. It hadn’t grown a lot in fifty years. They snapped several photos of me under my tree. 

I filled with nostalgia for the young woman who’d stood on this spot five decades earlier, never imagining I’d be there again in later life. I was moved by something more that has taken me some time to identify. The place had taken on a special meaning for me. Perhaps it was euphoria or gratitude – not only for the possibility of returning, but also for a deep sense of completeness.

            I still had the other photo to identify and needed to locate someone who’d been here in 1967. Walking along the beachfront, I spotted an elderly ice cream vendor with a friend. Aha!

“Señor, are you from here?”

“Sí”

“Then maybe you can help me. I took this photo here fifty years ago, but I don’t recognize this place.”

“Oh, that was the Playa del Coco Casino. It’s no longer there.”

“Muchas gracias! Would you mind if I took a photo with you to commemorate this fifty years event?”

We posed, smiling, in front of his ice cream cart, Playa del Coco and the Pacific in the background. 

Living with Jungle Critters

Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. The strange noise wakes and frightens me. Something has invaded the sleeping area of our large safari tent. A frog? A large beetle? A snake? All kinds of creatures inhabit this Costa Rican jungle. It could be anything. Kiss-kiss-kiss. My husband sleeps peacefully beside me, so it’s not him. I sit up in bed and shine my headlamp over the canvas walls and high ceiling where a large fan revolves. Nothing. But the noise continues. Finally sleep overcomes my fear.

Costa Rica has between 200,000 and 250,000 species of insects. This doesn’t surprise me. At least a third of them must dwell in this forest. As I ascend the trail from our tent, perspiration streaming down my face, the air vibrates with the deafening, incessant buzz of cicadas. Ahead of me two black beetles with yellow stripes scurry under a log. Tiny insects flutter past. I stop to observe a moving trail of green triangles, just the hard-working leaf ants bearing their cargo to their underground nest. Lizards scamper away as I approach. This air, this soil pulsates with activity.

At breakfast in the main tent, I’m taking in the panoramic view of the blue-green water of the Pacific when I hear the kissing noise again.

“Did you hear that?” I say to the others. “That’s what was in our tent last night.”

“It’s a gecko,” says my son, who, along with his girlfriend, is managing this eco-lodge.

What relief. I can live with the tiny salamander-like geckos which creep about on walls and ceilings. They eat insects. So do some birds, like the flycatcher we spot and the colorful squirrel cuckoo which dines on cicadas, wasps and caterpillars. The white-nosed coati that passed by our tent was no doubt foraging for tasty beetles and spiders. Insects are not even safe at night. Sitting at a small bar lit by a string of tiny lights along its base, we discover a nocturnal visitor, a large warty toad whom we name Kermit, or Rana René, as  they say in Costa Rica. I watch his tongue flick out in a flash to devour bugs drawn to the light. He makes quick work of a very large grasshopper. Later we meet several of Kermit’s cousins further along the walkway.

Other jungle inhabitants prefer hanging out in trees, like the howling monkeys pigging out on the mangoes dangling over our heads. The ceibo trees are in full brilliant bloom, their red flowers attracting a multitude of yellow butterflies.

We descend from our hilltop lodgings to an uninhabited white beach. Well, not exactly uninhabited. Hermit crabs hide in tiny shells while the larger ghost crabs speed to their burrows or into the sea as we approach. I follow uniquely patterned prints in the sand to depressions covering the eggs deposited the night before by two sea turtles. How many will survive? Then I notice wiggly prints in the sand. “A snake!” I call to the others. It’s a yellow-bellied sea snake struggling to return to the water.

My son points out a drama unfolding in the shallows – hundreds of tiny fish fleeing over the surface in leaps and bounds to escape a large dark shadow visible just behind them. Fish face danger from overhead as well, where pelicans glide and frigate birds soar watching for a catch.

The word to describe this landscape is intense. Intense heat. Intense rains. Flamboyant oranges, yellows and vibrant greens. Countless varieties of unique species, all working members of a complex, wondrous living network.  I know that I have only glimpsed an infinitesimal part of this jungle world.

Sweater Weather

Three days into fall and our first overcast day. Fog. Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’d know fog anywhere. The deep bass sounds of the fog horns are rooted in my childhood memories. I can read the sky. The fog will not clear today. I sit sipping two cups of coffee, alternating my attention from Wolf Blitzer to the pairs of doves and sparrows poking in the grass for tidbits.

            Silence pervades our house (aside from the television which I’ve now turned off, totally disgusted with the repetition and evasion of spokesmen and lawmakers). My husband is away for five days, off to a southern lakeside home with his running pals. I enjoy having days home alone. I consider the possibilities of how I’ll spend my time. My first decision is to eat only salads while he’s gone and cycle at the gym across the street every day. This is day three and I’ve stuck to my guns.

I’ve watched more television than I’d like. There’s a TV at the gym and I get caught up in sugary, totally predictable dramas, even hurrying home to watch the finale. An inner voice tells me that I’m not spending my time well. I wrote in my last blog post of my admiration for astrophysicist Neil de Grass Tyson who stated that knowing he’s going to die someday gives the focus to his life. I feel impelled to do something productive in my days. Yet…I tell myself that we all need some lightness and fantasy in our lives. Perhaps watching that silly movie earlier has loosened my writing tongue.

An overcast day spent in solitude encourages thoughtfulness. My thoughts are with my son and his girlfriend, who at this moment are flying from New York City to Costa Rica to a new job and an adventurous change. My son was feeling melancholy these past days, moving out of his apartment and leaving friends and the city that was his home for the past five years. I feel his sadness. New beginnings often start with difficult partings.

So what have I accomplished today? Aside from Pilates class and cycling? Well, I did plant the two lavenders in the large pots by the front door. I look out the window to admire them. And I painted my nails (clear polish) which I seldom make the time to do. I’m overdue posting something on my blog. I tried to call my soul sister in California, but no answer. Think I’ll try again. Then I’ll tackle the pile of papers to be shredded. I’m saving the best for last today. My sister-in-law and I will go downtown to attend a concert by the Orquesta Sinfónica. Tchaikowsky and Greig. Music for the soul on a foggy day.