A Manner Intimate and Uncomfortable

After two days of looking down on this remarkable beach, we mustered up the wherewithal to walk down and take it in.  Every other house, it seemed, was for sale.  And, as gringos or chingos or whatever we are, will do, you begin to imagine what your life would be like if you somehow got a place on this coastal mountain road, and lived here, or at least returned here, regularly.  I’m sure there would be that satisfying feeling of opening a window and looking out and taking in the view.  But then what?  You’d go down to the beach.  You come back up.  You go out to eat.  You develop some, “I have a place down the road” affinities, and then perhaps you’d secure an idyllic sense of peace and tranquility.  But more likely you’d be bored. 

I mulled on the differences between Costa Rica and Nicaragua on this walk downward.  Something about Nicaragua’s fragile nobility, it’s defiance, the tragedy of war and it’s implications for the United States, everywhere a coursing clasp of history, this was all alluring for me and, I noticed, for my older daughter as well.  Costa Rica has had peace.  What a blessing.  Costa Rica has had relative prosperity, again, what a boon.  And as a result, there is a smoothness in how one is handled. So much of everything seems to have already been anticipated.  And particularly in this town, I hear the voices of my countrymen, the faces of my countrymen, glaring back at me, in a manner intimate, and uncomfortable.

This is all, my own fault.  I choose to find a place for the last few days where we could “chill.”  This place is chill.  The view is beyond extraordinary, sweeping over to the left up to peninsular rainforest park, and down off to the right considering the endless Pacific coast, with waves forever crash upon the coast.  But quite a few other people have long since discerned this as well.  And so much of the land has already been built on.  So many dreamy gringo versions of falafel joints, and Pilates joints, and live music joints have sprung up and rooted, like so much US soft-power fungus.  

My younger one and I paused to admire an enormous iguana in the tree on the walk down.  Much of the remarkable wildlife of the Osa Peninsula is here as well, though seemingly in retreat.  The beach where we arrived wasn’t crowded, though a dozen people were hard at work planning what seemed to be a wedding reception.  Walking down to where the bus back up the hill was supposed to be, the beach got rockier and the people more pronounced. 

We needed a place for some shade.  “Eight dollars please.” “Where is the Restaurant El Sol?”  “Right his way, I work there.  We have a full bar, senor.”  Out in the water my older one dove into the crashing waves my younger one wanted something more tranquil, out beyond the breakers.  “Hold my hand!”  There were jet skis and body surfing and real surfing and parasailing and an entire menu things to do beside float on your back and consider the clouds.  Looking back at the shoreline scattered amidst the delicate jungle canopy, where all these hotels, and restaurants and tee-shirt shops and houses for sale, lay scattered like broken pieces of a mirror. 

My wife was waving.  It was time to go.  That, unless we wanted to pay another eight dollars for a second hour under the umbrella.  We toweled off and slapped the sand from our feet.   I removed two dead flies from the remains of my gin and tonic.  Two umbrellas over, to our left, a woman with a baseball cap sat with a beer beside her in the sand.  She was staring out at nothing beneath her shades.  My eyes were drawn in her direction because she had some speaker from which she was playing The Doors “Roadhouse Blues” which sounded as loud and presumptuous as always.  “Let It Roll Baby, Roll.” 

“Have you got everything?  OK.  Let’s kick the Dora theme.”