Down to the Ocean

Apparently, here´s how a fair in small-town Costa Rica goes: the signs mysteriously vanish and there is no fair. This, however, is OK, because then it will start to rain in torrents, and on your way home from the market, you´ll find a group of teenagers playing soccer in the street, and you´ll join them for a fun, wet, several hour game, before eventually trodding back to a small shack in the persistent rain that will continue for the next 36 hours. At least, that´s how a small-town Costa Rican fair goes in my experience.

Anywho, I spent a few more days in El Silencio, before Aaron and his daughter, Velvet, and I went south to the Uvita beach. Aaron´s brother-in-law has a container there with a door cut out of it, and the inside decked out like a house. Only the last guy who rented there stole everything out of it, so while it has running water and a nice bathroom and such, there is no longer a bed, or a fridge, or, well, a chair. Not a lot of clutter. Oh, and the power bill hasn´t been paid, so no light. But--BUT--it´s 5 minutes walk from the beach, and did I mention the place is mine as long as I want it?

It was a fun adventure getting there, as Aaron rode his bike there, while Velvet and I went on 2 buses that added up to 2 hours of travel, and then wandered Uvita on foot until we found the hostel where we were to meet Aaron, and then waited there for a couple hours while he finished his epic bike ride, which involved 3 flats, and him actually tying a knot in the tube to tie out the giant nail puncture that was the final flat. Good thing he´s a bike mechanic with a mind for problem-solving! Our bus ride wasn´t quite so epic, though a mite challenging. Velvet, at 5 years old and having lived in the country for over 6 months now, speaks the language quite well and with a Costa Rican accent. This should have been a great help, however, she was uncharacteristically quite shy about to talking to anyone for me, so I was left to my own devices, and with a kid in tow. Those who have seen my around kids know that, while I can certainly play with them, I occasionally have near-panic-attacks when in a position of responsibility with them. And those of you who know this will be proud to know that I had no such thing this time around, even when the bus driver was commenting to me how she was a beautiful girl with a beautiful mother. Apparently, I now no how to say,¨I´m not her mother,¨ thought not how to say, ¨Nor am I a kidnapper.¨ However, there were no problems.

Once in Uvita, we cleaned up the container, moved in, and made contact with the fun little hostel nearby, owned by a friend of the brother-in-law, and a good haven for English speakers, located between the container and the beach. The next few days, we ate fruit, surfed, napped, played on the beach, and lazed about, until yesterday it was time for Aaron and Velvet to bus back home to Silencio, leaving me with the keys to the container. Having made some friends at the nearby hostel, it´s like I´m totally alone, but there´s definitely a heightened sense of freedom--no time obligation to anyone at all--and this strange blurriness of time is only enhanced by the fact that I don´t have a watch.

I suspect this will make things interesting. For example, I planned to meet up with my new friend India at the hostel today to go watch the World Cup finals together. I figured the game was at noon, so I´d go over maybe around 10. Anywho, I woke up and went back to sleep several times, sleeping in as long as I could. Then got up, sat in the open door, and finished reading Stranger in a Strange Land (perhaps appropriate?). Then I ate a banana. Then I wrote for a while. Then I slowly gathered my things to go out. Then I swept some of the beach back out of the container. Then I rode the bike over to the hostel. Where I found the gates curiously closed. When I knocked and was let into the Flutterby House hostel (check it out at FlutterbyHouse.com) (and yeah, that was an imbedded ad) Pam, the owner, looked a little hazy. I said good morning and asked her the time. Yeah, it was 8am. So I´m a little off. By like, at least 2 hours. Huh.

Anywho, India caught a bus up to Dominical, where we found a crowded little place to have a beer and watch the game. Awesome game, might I say! And then the afternoon rain started, and I went out and swam in the ocean, of course just 100 yards away from the open-air bar. So gorgeous. Pouring fresh water on my shoulders and face, and warm churning salt water tugging back and forth at my waist. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.

So that brings us up to now. I´m soaked, sitting at a rented computer, trying not to drip on the keyboard, while India plays on her own laptop, and we pass the time before the bus takes up back to Uvita. And what then? I´ve noticed that since I´ve come to Uvita, there are so many people to speak English with that I haven´t worked on Spanish at all. However, this is a wonderful place to learn to surf, which, as you know, is another major goal of this trip. I´ve been out a couple of times on the long-board, and I´m standing up on a lot of small waves, in what is called white water (meaning it´s the surf after the waves has broken--not the¨green water¨ half-pipes you see good surfers in). It seems like a lot of fun, but I´m feeling out just how much of it I want to do. I´m definitely not hooked--not yet, anyways. So I´m seeing a trade off. My time can either be spent in locations where I can really focus on Spanish, or in Uvita where I can surf. My thought are, I´ll stay here for at least another week, and play in the water, and see if I can´t work on Spanish here too. And then maybe after that, if I´ve had enough surf, I´ll wander inland to some smaller areas.

So that´s that for now. Got twenty minutes before the last bus to Uvita comes, and yeah, it´s still raining. About the rain, I´ve learned to say, ¨Que fresca!¨(How fresh, or How refreshing!) It really is beautiful. Oh, and the other phrase that I couldn´t help thinking now--a startlingly common Costa Rican phrase-- ¨Pura Vida!¨(pure life! or the good life!) Like I said, there are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Pura vida!