“You’re either on board, or you’re not,” my boss often says.
Why don’t people who are unhappy just… leave? Some people stay where they are, in limbo, in purgatory—unfulfilled and unproductive. I’m referring to those people who hate something about their lives, be it their job, their relationship, their home, their whatever... but they don’t do anything about it. You know, those people who don’t even try to fix the thing they don’t like. They exist to complain.
Unlike these sloths, who hang around looking cute all day and being all ZEN.
Here's a gratuitous sloth photo. You're welcome.
It’s amazing how applicable that maxim is to life. You’re either on board or you’re not. Don’t ever tell him I said this, but my boss can be a pretty smart dude sometimes.
Don’t get me wrong. I firmly believe in speaking up and effecting change. Not allowing yourself to be mistreated—by your job, your spouse, your family, your friends, or your society. But I also believe in walking away.
I don’t regret my marriage. The fact that I stayed in a dysfunctional relationship says some good things about my character. It says I’m willing to put in the hard work for things that matter. It says I’m loyal, dedicated.
I do regret staying so long after things turned bad. That says a few less-flattering things about myself. It says I don’t know when to throw in the hat and walk away. It says I don’t value myself enough.
Rather, I didn’t. Past tense.
At some point, you have to honor yourself and just move on.
Endings can be beautiful.
I did not learn this lesson, truly learn it, until I started traveling full-time. I never quite got the knack of walking away from unhealthy people or situations until I walked away from everything.
Yes, you should work at it, compromise, fight for what matters. But also be okay with the eventuality of going down new paths.
Leave that bad relationship in the rearview mirror.
Don't look back.
Leave those friends who aren’t really friends.
Close the door behind you.
Leave that job that makes you miserable.
Even if it seems like there is no path ahead of you.
Leave that place where you never felt at home.
New destinations await you.
When your entire life is about travel, you learn to say goodbye. Not only are you always moving on to the next new thing, your friends are, too. Many amazing people I love live all across the globe.
I’m in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, for a short stint. At this very moment, among all the people who are nearest and dearest to me, the closest one geographically is about 540 miles (870 kilometers) away. The farthest is 8,700 miles (14,000 kilometers) away. A good group of loved ones sits at 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) away.
There isn't even a way to use one of these to get to many of my dearest loved ones from here.
I’m in a city where, while I’m making some friends, I don’t know a single person well. And not a single person knows me well. I’m more than cool with that. And I’m prepping the people I do meet for the fact that I will—not might, but WILL—say goodbye. Soon.
The single biggest change that long-term travel has wrought in me is that I react to negativity with positivity.
Traveling, you have to.
Let’s say you’re walking in the countryside. New place. No car. No phone. Miles from shelter. A sudden squall rises.
You have two choices. Get mad, or dance in the rain. I’ve learned to dance in the rain. In fact, I sing rock ballads in the rain at the top of my lungs.
I honestly believe in the adage that tells us to bloom where we are planted.
I used to be dragged down by unpleasantness. My ex was a very unpleasant guy sometimes, and I would spiral into his unhappiness, and the vicious cycle would be almost impossible to break. At work, I would let the shroud of ugly meetings hang over my head when I went home. With friends, I would get sucked into convoluted feelings of wrongness over who was excluding whom. Even a crappy meal had the power to ruin my day.
Looking around my workplace, I noticed a few unhappy people. They try to appeal to my outsider perspective to get me “on their side.” But really, their grumpiness looks like petulance. It’s a big turn-off. “Why are you still here?” I think about asking. “You’re clearly not on board with this place, so why hang around?” When they frown, I perk up. When they act like the job is just too heavy to carry on, I get more energetic. I’ve already written about how I’ve become aggressively peaceful. This tendency has only increased after an additional twenty months of travel since I wrote that. Travel has electrified me with enthusiasm.
Like really. Jumping for joy.
I appreciate everything, even the little stuff, for the gift it is. I laugh in the face of things that make others want to punch someone.
When something doesn’t work, I get off board. I leave. I recently had a relationship with someone that could have gone somewhere special, but it didn’t. So rather than wait around another 10 years to make sure, I ended it, as kindly and respectfully as I knew how. In other words, I got off board. The job I was in wasn’t the best fit. I gave 4 months’ notice and moved on. I got off board. The city I lived in wasn’t suiting my needs. So I relocated. I got off board. The book I was writing wasn’t the one. So I started writing a different book. I got off board.
I don’t sit around and wait for the world to cater to me. I go out and find the world that I want to be in.
It's NEVER the end of the line, unless you accept that it is.
I don’t know where I’ll be forever. Goodness, I don’t know where I’ll be next month. I do know I’ll keep saying goodbye and saying hello until I’m on board with where I am. And I know that as long as I see everything as changeable and fixable, I’ll be able to be on board with pretty much anything.
It’s hard to empathize with people who are perfectly content with discontentment. Even though I WAS that person for so long.
I still make a lot of mistakes. Every new place I go, I’m a slightly different person and I make some old mistakes before I get my sea legs.
But I’m on board with my life. And everything in it. And when I’m not, I get off board.
People ask me all the time when I’m moving back to the States. You see, it’s complicated. Never say never and all that… but I really don’t want to.
Recently I went back to the States for an extended visit. Four weeks I was there. I really wish I hadn’t stayed so long.
It’s getting weird up there these days.
DIVISION AT THE GATHERING
First, I went to my favorite place on earth: Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina. This has been my tenth year going to the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games (a gathering for people of Scottish descent), and I don’t go anywhere twice! I have friends from all over the country whom I only see for 1-2 weeks a year, but who have become incredibly important people to me. I always rave about the kind, giving, accepting micro-culture on what we all simply refer to as “the mountain.” In fact, I started a thread in the event’s public Facebook group to that effect and there are 54 heartwarming comments of the tribal camaraderie that the participants have experienced over the years. Stories of generosity, kindness, and true family spirit among strangers.
But this year, I saw so much cattiness and division. Exclusivity for exclusivity’s sake. Interpersonal drama. Bickering. It really did not reflect the mountain I knew.
Here’s the thing. Recently, the US has been having a talk about racism. Well, some people are talking about racism, and some people are saying there’s no need to talk about it because it’s over, and other people are saying that talking about racism just perpetuates racism so you shouldn’t talk about it.
Sigh.
Aside from some other reprehensible events that have led to a national discussion, right before my visit, there was a mass shooting in a black church by a very clear, very nasty white supremacist. This was in South Carolina. Very close to Tennessee and North Carolina, where I visited.
You see, white southerners perpetuate a myth about their ancestors because the Civil War is embarrassing as hell. They fought and killed for the right to slavery, one of the most universally disgusting things in the whole world. Not to mention they lost. So southerners believe it was about “states’ rights” or “freedom” or “overreach of the federal government” or what have you. But it was about slavery. Really about slavery. Click those links and have a nice read if you don’t believe me.
When I lived in the South, I occasionally got into arguments with well-meaning (?) white friends who loved to fly the flag of the Confederacy. In my opinion, no matter what the flag stood for (ahem—slavery/racism; please see links above) in the beginning, it now stands for racism because of how it came to be used. Not just during the Civil War but later, during Jim Crow, segregation, at lynchings and KKK terrorism events and white power rallies.
The swastika started out as a very different symbol, I’m told. A Buddhist symbol for peace or something. Would anyone with half a brain fly a swastika flag and argue that they did it for Buddhism these days? No. Because it means something else now.
All this has to do with my visit to the States, you ask? Bear with me.
On the mountain, every year there’s like three campsites with a rebel flag hanging. You see, people decorate their campsites with all kinds of flags. The 2 Scottish flags, American flags, military flags, state flags, jolly rogers, diver down flags (me), and more. Pretty much anything except the Union Jack. Because Scots and Brits… well, they’ve got a thing going on. A talk for another day.
I fly the Costa Rican flag too :)
This year, I stopped counting at 25 rebel flags.
People have actually started flying a symbol of racism in the wake of a very turbulent season for racism and culture.
And the weird thing wasn’t the “it’s my heritage, not hate” arguments I kept encountering at campfires. While frustrating and ignorant, those talks aren’t new.
It was the unwillingness to compromise.
In my Facebook thread asking for stories of the “feel of the mountain,” you see people talking about strangers giving them raincoats on rainy days, or offering hot food when they were hungry, or patching each other up when they fell and got hurt. You see 54 different stories of kindness and brotherly love.
But when a girl asked three of the “nicest guys on the mountain” to please take down their Confederate flag because she found it offensive, what did they do?
They put up a second Confederate flag.
These guys. They would do anything to be nice to someone. If I said pink hurt my eyes and one of them was wearing a pink shirt, I absolutely guarantee you any one of them would change his shirt to make me feel better so my eyes no longer hurt.
But the culture of nasty division and the need to stand proud and uncompromising is so strong now, these guys had a yelling argument that ended up resurfacing for days later. It was so sad.
Witnessing this from the sidelines (and if I’m honest, running away anytime the drama got close to me) was when I first started to feel reverse culture shock.
But let me be clear. When Costa Ricans ask me if I miss home, my answer is honest. “No,” I say.
Of course, then they ask, “¿Por qué?” Why?
Well, it’s complicated, I say. But the first reason I give is racism. Living in the South, I never felt comfortable. Ever. The very first meal at a public restaurant I had after moving from the North to the South was the very first time I encountered racism. I didn’t like it then, and I never started liking it.
I saw this divisiveness in other ways on the mountain, too. A potluck that invited everyone but 10 poor souls. A guy who worked super hard to host the group gathering on the last night but was somehow, for reasons completely unknown to me, snubbed at the last moment.
I thought to myself, “This is reverse culture shock.” I was just used to the generosity and openness of Tico culture. I was being hyper-sensitive. “Wipe it off, Jess,” I told myself. No big. I watched all of this but did not participate, did not meddle, did not engage, and did not say a word about any of it.
That’s not usually me. I’m all for having the tough conversation. But I figured my judgment was off a little, so I stayed quiet.
It was more fiery than just campfires
AGGRESSION
I got back to Tennessee and within 2 days I was done being there. Take what I saw on the mountain and multiply it a hundredfold.
The aggressive, no-compromise, angry culture was alive and well here. I was chatting with family and somehow we got on the metric system. I said something to the effect of, “It’s dumb how we still use the imperial system when even the ones who invented it, the Brits, switched to the metric system.” My brother piped in with, “Yeah, well, the Brits don’t get to carry their guns either.” His tone was downright hostile. Yes, this is my brother who does not know how to interact with me without being rude. But it was also his culture, informing him to take any and every opportunity, no matter how tenuous, to bring up a hot-button issue and initiate nasty fights about it.
Going out in town, more people proudly displayed the Confederate flag than didn’t. When they noticed you looking they often gunned their loud engines and did what can only be described as hollering.
“Wipe it off, Jess,” I told myself. “It’s reverse culture shock. You’re hyper-sensitive.” TREATMENT OF CHILDREN
I witnessed two different occasions of child abuse within those two days. Not blatant beatings or anything, but a nasty man being a nasty man to a trembling child.
I remembered when I arrived in Costa Rica, I noticed how Ticos treat their children. As a rule, they’re bundled up, holding hands of mom or dad, clean, and paid attention to. In Tennessee, you often see kids whose noses haven’t been wiped for hours. Kids who aren’t wearing enough to stay warm. Kids who are ignored, and kids who are yelled at for small infractions.
Before you say it, yes, I know child abuse exists in Costa Rica. Boy, do I know. I worked at a daycare in the most dangerous barrio in all of San José. This facility deals with kids who are horrifically abused. One little boy is required to bring two pairs of pants because he was raped so brutally he doesn’t know when he has to go to the bathroom and frequently has accidents.
What I’m talking about is the normal accepted culture, not the outliers. In general, the kids on the street you see in Costa Rica, the ones who have parents with them, look better cared for than the same types of kids in Tennessee.
“Wipe it off, Jess,” I told myself. “It’s reverse culture shock. You’re hyper-sensitive.”
INTERPERSONAL DRAMA
And the friend politics. Oh my goodness, the friend politics. I’m not going to be very public with the details here, but let me just say it was weird. I mean, friend politics were a clear reason that helped me decide to move in the first place; I wasn't happy.
Of course it was gratifying to have people finally telling me stories of my ex being a total jerk to them all year. Vindicated much?
But there was so much weirdness about who hung out with whom, and who went to what social event, and who was dating whom, and… I felt cross-eyed. It raised my blood pressure to think about it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. So I stopped trying to hang out with all of them. I hung out with my mom.
“Wipe it off, Jess,” I told myself. “It’s reverse culture shock. If they want to see you, they will reach out and make it happen.”
CULTURE OF FEAR AND ANXIETY
And lastly, the culture of fear. I had forgotten how pervasive fear is in the culture up there. Not just fear of Isis and fear of ebola and fear of terrorists. The political, news media fear. That I had not forgotten.
No, I’m talking about the fear and anxiety that runs as an undercurrent in almost every conversation you have up there. The worry about what others think. The worry about the doctor’s appointment next Tuesday. The worry that so-and-so was rude to you on Sunday and what that means and whether you should say something about it or not.
As an example, I used to be pretty road ragey. Now I’m not. I don’t drive, and giving up that illusion of control helped me let go of the need to control the people on the road around me. They’re way worse here, trust me, but I care less.
My mom was driving and I noticed this constant anxious stream of words as she drove. “Oh dear, now that truck’s gotten in front of me and I have to slow down.” Or, “Of course he speeds up when I’m able to pass.” Or, “Please don’t turn yellow.” I responded to each one of these with aggressively peaceful comments like, “Well maybe he didn’t know how slow he was going until he saw you.” Or “Ah, it doesn’t matter if we’re one minute late.” She looked at me in amazement.
“It’s like you’re a different person,” she said. And she was 100% right.
But what’s really crazy is by the end of four weeks, I was driving her car and caught myself vomiting the exact same kinds of anxious, angry things at the drivers around me. “Oh, NOW you decide to get off the damn phone and drive?”
I clapped my hand to my mouth. Holy crap, I had to get out of there. It was getting on me!
TO CONCLUDE MY RAMBLINGS...
Some well-meaning (?) patriotic friends of mine will read this and conclude that I’m an America-hating terrorist sympathizer.
I’m not, but thanks for playing.
No culture is perfect. I’ve already blogged about the machismo culture in Costa Rica that drives me batty. (It still drives me crazy and may one day be the reason I leave.) And I’ll get to others soon as well, including the gross misuse of natural resources, water mismanagement, litter, and pesticide use.
The point is... well, there is no point, really. You're reading my thoughts because I process how I feel by writing it down.
I guess the point is that no culture is perfect. If you sit around and beat your chest insisting yours is the pinnacle of evolution, guess what?
You’ll stop evolving.
The States, and the South in particular, and Tennessee/Nashville even more specifically, has some issues. Things that rubbed me the wrong way. Things I hope they become aware of and try to improve. Things that CAN improve. It’s a collection of human beings who are, by definition, not perfect. So this blog may offend you. You may click the “unfollow” button or if we’re friends on Facebook, the “unfriend” button. It’s okay. No hard feelings.
I’m trained as a sociologist, so I can’t help but notice these things, and the psychology of reverse culture shock fascinates me. But here’s the thing.
I asked a few people, “Am I just noticing how bad some of this stuff is for the first time, because I’ve been away for so long?”
Everyone I asked said no. They’ve noticed the devolution, too. Some of this stuff has gotten worse.
I probably won’t be visiting again for a while. I’ll stay in my chosen, flawed little corner of the world and heck yeah, try to make it better too. Hopefully my old home is doing the same thing. I’ll be rooting for you.
I met Jen Sincero, author of You Are A Badass, at UtopYA Con in 2013. I never did read the book.
See how different I look, almost 2 years later.
This morning I woke up and realized I’m kind of a badass. Scratch that, not kind of.
I am a total badass.
The world is my oyster. I have walked through fire and come out the other side glittering like a phoenix. I am tested and tried and equal to any challenge that comes my way. The amazing thing about going through something truly difficult is the discovery that, in the end, it didn’t scar or harden me, and it definitely didn’t break me. It only strengthened me.
Honestly I’ve never faltered too far in terms of self-esteem. Even when I was so depressed I was thinking about suicide, I could find good things about myself, both in the mirror and in the heart. I’ve never been a defeatist, never thought I was a born failure.
But now I have proof.
Moving abroad really put it into perspective. In the States I was actually quite successful for a kid in her late 20s. 2200 square foot house, cars, pool, 7-year cushy job, large circle of friends, decent salary and savings. Outwardly perfect marriage. I had built the picture-perfect American Dream.
My old house... not too shabby for a 29 year old.
And when that shattered, I decided to do something totally insane. In moving abroad, I proved to myself many things.
I am my best healer. Let me repeat that. I am my best healer. I did not rush into the arms of any one of the eager suitors who came crawling out of the woodwork when my divorce became public. (Though it was flattering.) Nor did I saddle myself to any of the amorous admirers I met in Latin America. I remained alone. Even when it was lonely, even when my heart felt like it expanded into an infinitely empty universe and I was tempted to seek comfort and settle for someone who was not worthy… I didn’t.
I moved with intentionality into the land of solitude. It was a rocky road, I’ll tell you. As an outgoing introvert, I live in my head a LOT, but I also enjoy social interaction. I’m an INTJ in the Meyers-Briggs scale, to a tee, and that means I live very much inside my head. Being alone took some getting used to; it’s very loud in this cranium of mine, and it never stops.
But now I know that being alone is actually the way I recharge myself. The way I focus myself. The way I heal my hurts and tend my exhaustions. The way I process and adapt to change. Nothing in my life has been more valuable than this one simple lesson. I know that no matter where I am, no matter who is around me, no matter how little or how much support I have, I’ll be okay. Better than okay.
I will succeed in any endeavor I take on.
What a powerful thing to know!
I can drag myself to a hospital in a foreign city with a burning fever. I can survive a 6-hour public bus ride with food poisoning causing me to vomit repeatedly out the window. I go on hikes through the countryside, cross dilapidated bridges without safety equipment, rappel down waterfalls, snorkel alone on a beach known for thieves, and generally approach life with fearlessness.
I can negotiate housing in a tongue other than my mother tongue. I can be truly, madly happy with very, very few material possessions. I can be 100% responsible for myself with zero help at home.
I can stand up to lewd catcallers, or I can confidently ignore them.
I can handle a coworker who is vicious and furious all the time, exactly like my ex in many ways, with a cool head and calm words (even if I still get fight-or-flight responses dealing with him).
I can learn a new city, with a new bus system, new currency, new language, and new cultural intricacies… and do pretty well.
I can continue chasing the dream of being a writer, despite being busy all the time.
I can make friends anywhere. Awesome friends.
I can find a good job anywhere. I can take on an amazing amount of professional responsibility. I can become “indispensible” in my boss’s words in less than 2 years.
I can lose 35 + pounds and get to a size I haven’t seen since before university.
I can confidently walk away from someone who hurts me or is not good for me. I can close painful chapters without explosives and melodramatics.
I can go with the flow. I can change my mind a hundred times depending on new information. I no longer see that as weak or indecisive.
I can also stick to my guns and not stand down no matter what… and discern when the battle is a hill worth dying on.
People have noticed, too. I’ve been collecting an odd assortment of quotes about me. Things people have said to me lately that made me smile. Words that I have wrapped up with ribbon and tucked away in my heart to take out on a bad day and warm me up.
“Eres hecho de oro.” (You are made of gold.)
“You are an amazing person. Like pure sunshine in human form.”
“Con mi hermosa amiga Jess ya un año de conocernos, que rápido pasa el tiempo, gracias por todos los momentos felices que hemos pasado.” (With my beautiful friend Jess, now a year of knowing each other, how quickly the time passes. Thank you for all the happy times/moments we have had.)
“You would make the perfect sister. Outgoing, big hearted, and courageous.”
“Me alegra que eres rara como yo.” (I’m glad you’re weird like me.)
“Just wanted to say I think about you a lot but never more than on days I hear Sober!” (A reference to a Tool song.)
“I can’t tell you how much more beautiful you look every time I see a picture of you. It is something radiating from within. Everyone likes to think that they are special or different or some other kind of BS just to feel their ego and then there are those few that ARE special, different and stand out in a crowd, that is you. You do not lead or follow, you just ‘go’ your own way. I envy the way you live your life...it is quite wonderful.”
“I wouldn't have survived last year without you. But not just that. You coming into my life made last year a fucken rad year.”
“People love you in many places. You have excuses to smile.”
“You inspire me so much and I value your personal character and perspective incredibly.”
“Tienes un muy fuerte voluntad.” (You have a very strong will.)
“You looked great in November and now you're just plain hot! It is wonderful to see you happy and healthy again.”
“Our realities are worlds apart even though our spirits are so close. You are an awesome friend.”
“I think you are aging backward down there.”
Would I have made this personal journey without moving abroad? I don’t know. What I do know is this: Costa Rica has been very, very good to me.
Solo travel gave me the space to spread my wings and set my dreams free.
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a time, there lived a Type A young woman who loved travel and planned her trips meticulously. In the course of traveling solo long term, I killed her.
I’ve traveled to 15 countries so far; I’ll hit my 16th this month when I go to Panamá for the first time. I could have been a travel agent, I was so precise with my itineraries I designed for myself. Other than three “student ambassador” study abroad trips when I was a pre-teen and teenager, I always did all my own planning.
And boy, was I a planner. I’d research all the cool things to do in the area and map them out so I didn’t go weirdly out of my way. I’d make a printout with the addresses and phone numbers of the places I wanted to go, and check their website to make sure they weren’t closed on the days I wanted to go.
In some ways, this kind of traveling is advantageous. In 2008 I went to Connecticut, at least partially because it was October and I wanted to see a real autumn. (Tennessee, where I lived at the time, doesn’t get a decent fall.) I planned my own “farm tour” by going to the state agriculture department’s website and mapping a large loop around Hartford of any farm that was having a fall festival or pumpkin sale. It was delightful; I spent the day driving my rental car through the gorgeous red and orange countryside, stopping off to have hot cider and pumpkin rolls, pet the occasional goat, and frolic in corn mazes like a mad pixie half my age. I could not have done this without at least some forethought.
But there is also value to flying with the wind. Planning nothing. Packing a backpack with a few pieces of clothing and just going. It’s liberating not to be tied to an agenda, not to be late for anything because nothing is set.
I had a nice long weekend for the Anexión de Nicoya public holiday in late July 2014, and my friend Mateo and I decided to go on a weekend trip somewhere. We both knew we wanted to go to the beach. And that was about all we knew. I tossed a few things in my trusty backpack: a swimsuit, flip flops, short shorts so I wouldn’t sleep naked in a room full of other people but still withstand the withering heat of Costa Rica’s coast, underwear, camera, and tank tops. We got up together and took a cab down to one of the main bus terminals, referred to as the Coca Cola station. We decided the day before to go to Santa Teresa.
Old Me would have bought a bus ticket a month before. Old Me would have booked a room in a pre-selected hostel. Old Me would have known the coolest things to do and would have already made contact with a local operator about something fun, perhaps paid for a tour. Old Me would have paid for an expensive InterBus shuttle ($50) with air conditioning and leg room instead of risking a missed public bus.
Instead, Mateo and I got to Coca Cola and stood in a long line eating empanadas that tasted like sawdust at 5:00 AM. There were tons of people in line, as this was a holiday celebrating Costa Rica’s annexation of the very place we had picked as our destination. Oops. Eventually we got to the front of the line, where the driver was taking money (about $4) for tickets directly instead of having people pay at the window. With a grubby hand, he marked our flimsy tickets with a black Sharpie before palming them to us. We hoisted our bags on our shoulders and boarded the bus.
Mateo climbed up ahead of me, then turned around and said, “Uh oh.” His Aussie accent drew out the “oh.”
I climbed up, too, and passed the electronic bars that mean you won’t get your money back if you disembark. They’re very stern about that here, and heaven forbid you stand between them motionless. I scanned the bus for a vacant seat and saw… none. The bus driver had deliberately oversold about 10 tickets, and I was number 10, the very last person allowed on board. Mateo and I fumbled our way to the back and shrugged off our bags. We sat down in the aisle and braced ourselves for a bumpy 8-hour ride with no air conditioning and no seats.
It wasn’t bad once I had the brilliant idea of turning around so we served as each other’s backrests, our sleepy heads lolling against each other as the heat intensified when we started losing altitude. Due to the holiday traffic, it took us about 6 hours to get to Puntarenas, and by then I had already peeled off my t-shirt, not to be donned again until we hit mountains on the way back home. We got out and stretched in the street—ever do yoga wearing a backpack?—and made our way onto the huge ferry. We didn’t bother to watch to see if our bus made it onto the same ferry. We clambered up to the front deck and planted ourselves in the sunshine to watch the waves and the pelicans of the Golfo de Nicoya. The next hour was spent in companionable conversation as the ferry lumbered across the gulf.
At long last, the ferry docked on the other side at Tambor. There we bought a pipa fría, or chilled coconut, and sipped the refreshing coconut water as we loitered like vagabonds, wondering if we would ever see our bus again. At long last the bus rolled off the boat and Mateo and I lined up first to ensure we had seats for the last leg of the journey. But alas! The driver spotted the Sharpie mark and made us wait until everyone else had boarded; we were branded Seatless. An Irish girl with startlingly red dreadlocks thunked down in the aisle next to me, also Seatless, and scowled her disapproval of the situation. Mateo and I shrugged, put our backs together, and settled in for the ride.
An hour or so later, we arrived at Malpaís (Bad Country) and, hot and antsy, we got off the bus and started walking toward our final destination.
Santa Teresa immediately charmed me senseless.
There was a single dirt road that ran parallel to the ocean. It was a little wilder, a little tougher to reach, a little less crowded than the beach town I first called home in Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio. The midday sun beat down on the dirt road and seeped through the soles of our shoes as we walked. We had no hostel picked out, no plans, nothing urgent but the insistent rumbling in our bellies calling for lunch. I loved the misspelled English translation on the lavandería, painted crookedly on a surfboard. I loved the juncture of the two bars at the main intersection with the road inland. I even loved the incessant ATVs zipping past. I especially loved how not every person I saw was an extranjero (foreigner). There was a strip of dense forest between the buildings and the coast, and I could hear the furious roar of the surf but not yet see it.
We walked Santa Teresa from beginning to end. Anytime we passed a promising hostel, we walked up and asked how much for a dorm, or a shared room. I had to work the next day, so we also asked how good the WiFi was. Sweat poured off our skin in the blistering midafternoon heat. When we reached the end of town, we backtracked to the place we had liked best and booked a room with the blond-dreadlocked German owner. It was a private cabana with two single beds and WiFi.
We dropped our bags, donned our swimsuits, and hightailed it to find food. We ended up at an outdoor taco bar and drank tall glasses of water with our delicious Tico-style burritos and complimented the proprietor on his gorgeous tattoos. We slathered on sunscreen in the dappled shade, paid, and stood up to leave just as the redhead from the bus sat down. We gave her a little wave and finally answered the beckon of the ocean.
We found a little track through the woods and followed the sound of the waves to the water. It was breathtaking. So incredibly beautiful, kilometers of undeveloped forest hugging the white sand beaches. Clearly the weather had been rough; debris of coconut husks and rocks and driftwood littered the beach, but I loved it all the more for it.
A pair of locals had followed us from town and sat in the shade, watching us closely. Not even pretending not to stare. I haven’t ever been so obviously marked for theft as by these two guys. I guess they thought we were stupid. I took a few photos of the playa and walked the camera back to the cabana, then rejoined Mateo, where we popped open some Imperials and sipped them in the filtered sunlight as clouds rolled in. We gave the ladrones a pointed look and asked a nearby family if they wouldn’t mind watching our cooler, and they said “¡Claro!” With a smug look at our would-be burglars, who left in search of their next victim, we went into the water.
It was warm and wonderful. The Pacific here isn’t the frigid Pacific of the States. It’s like bathwater.
The waves were high; our peals of laughter rang out as we got battered by the surf and toyed with by the ceaseless but gentle tug of the rip current.
The beach did not slope easily away from the shore, but surprised us, peppered with sharp rocks concealed beneath the surface. I loved the untamed nature of the place.
Less “paradise” than the placid, peaceful beaches that lie farther south, perhaps, but nirvana for me. No ugly neon blot of hundreds of umbrellas and people listening to loud salsa and reggae on radios. A handful of people spread out along the vast expanse, dotting but not destroying the view from the water. It was so humid, it obscured the far edges of the visible land, made them hazy and indistinct.
Mateo and I eventually got out and started walking. We loved to walk together, sometimes walking a dozen kilometers just for the sake of walking. We walked until we couldn’t see civilization anymore, walked past the point where the beach changed from sand to broken shell, walked along a beautiful outcropping of rock, which threatened to shred the soles of our bare feet, and looked for starfish and exclaimed over the tiny creatures we found in the tidepools. We watched magnificent frigatebirds wheel through the sky like acrobats, pelicans dive into the white foamy waves somehow—miraculously—avoiding being smashed to bits, and whimbrels stalking their prey with patience and precision.
Sometimes we spoke of deep things, life things, the magical beauty of this place loosening our tongues and unleashing long-unsaid thoughts and wishes and wonderings. Sometimes we walked in companionable silence as the quiet majesty overtook us.
We saw the storm coming hours before it arrived.
A purple stain marched slowly toward us from the north, a threatening bruise in the sky. “It’s going to rain,” I remarked.
“Looks like it,” Mateo agreed.
And we kept on walking right toward it. Unlike every other person on the beach, we did not scurry for shelter. We had nothing that couldn’t get a little wet. Let it come. I pulled on my thin green beach dress as the wind picked up. We had almost gotten to Playa Cocal when we found a nice rock and sat on it, leaning against each other, watching the storm approach. When the raindrops began they were light, delicate. But as the sky turned inky above us, we realized it was probably foolhardy to perch on the rock in the ocean itself. Foolhardy even for us. So we retreated a few meters onto the shore. Not far enough to be in the trees, though. Neither one of us spoke, but we both wanted this.
The wind became a gale. It came from everywhere all at once, trying to shred my thin cotton dress in its eager fingers. The rain pelted us mercilessly, bullets of stinging water hurled from heaven.
I stood in the eye of the thunderstorm as dusk fell. No umbrella, no coat, just my thin cotton beach dress plastered wetly to my body. Rivers of water poured down my face and between my shoulder blades.
When they arrived, the lightning strikes were so close, I could feel the electricity as they crackled livid purple and rent the air with thunder so loud it seemed the earth was moving. The Pacific roared and churned against the shell beach, all white foam rage. The mist rose up and cloaked the mountains on the other side of the beach as the storm overpowered the entire world. A manic laugh bubbled up through my throat from the tightness of my chest and was swept away by the squall. I raised my arms to embrace the ferocity of the storm. It quite literally took my breath away, and I gasped as if I were drowning.
The only reason we did not stay until the storm passed was nightfall and the realization neither one of us carried a light of any kind. We moved inland, the wind so strong we had to cling to each other to stay upright. We found a track through the woods that had turned into a raging river. We used the light of a Jeep that was stuck in the mud to pick our way back to the single road of Santa Teresa. The rain was already petering off. It took a moment to realize something was not quite right: there were no electric lights as we returned to town. The power had been knocked out. One restaurant’s brave generator chugged away in the darkness. People began to emerge from shelter as the rain died down as suddenly as it had begun. Mateo and I, dripping wet and giggling from adrenaline, walked among saner, dryer folk.
Back at the cabana, our German friend told us we were not allowed to use the shower or toilet as during storms like this, the weak septic system of Santa Teresa simply stopped functioning altogether. So we toweled off, and I used a bottle of water to try to wash the caked sand from beneath my breasts where it had gathered in my swimsuit, and we grabbed a bit of money and went off in search of food.
We ate at a restaurant, though I don’t recall what foods we chose. The power kept flickering on and off and most of dinner was by candlelight. We wandered through town, but there was so little town to speak of, we exhausted our options pretty quickly, so we grabbed some Imperials and returned to the cabana. We lounged on our beds and talked late into the night.
In the morning you could hardly tell anything had happened. Power was back, water ran clear and did not back up, and the WiFi was strong enough for me to work as required while Mateo went to a nearby soda and grabbed us a desayuno tipico, typical breakfast, with gallo pinto, queso Turrialba, natilla, and scrambled eggs.
After I finished working we met up again and spent some time in the hammocks, and then went to the beach and did pretty much the same thing we had done before, swimming, talking, and walking. We collected shells. We did nothing and it was enough; it was more than enough. It was perfect.
We walked until nightfall, when the sand fleas started biting. After sunset we stumbled on a jazz concert and saw the last song as it ended. We sat watching thousands of tiny hermit crabs scuttling along the dry sand under the trees and did not join into the crowd but remained apart, comfortably so. We had a very cheap dinner together at a soda.
The next day we caught the bus back. Determined not to be Seatless again, we checked out fairly early and went to grab lunch and stand admiring the surf one last time. We had some fun imagining a piece of driftwood in the distance was a shark’s fin slicing through the water. Then we walked north of town where we had been told the bus began. It was blistering and sunny, and our showers were rendered useless by the time we got to the place where we were supposed to wait for the bus.
We found some shade and lay looking at the sky and waiting for the bus. Eventually it came and we paid and climbed on in time to have seats. It moved through Santa Teresa, collecting more passengers every few hundred meters, and soon there were twenty or thirty people standing packed in the aisle, Seatless. Their bodies and the oppressive heat of Santa Teresa made the bus very uncomfortable, hot and smelly with the lack of air conditioning. We got caught on the other side of the Nicoya peninsula in a long queue of literally hundreds of cars waiting to get on the ferry. Our bus driver was a jerk, thankfully, and passed them all on the wrong side of the road, and it only took an hour to get on the ferry. When we arrived, they didn’t open the doors, and a frustrated tourist demanded, “Why aren’t they letting us off? This is RIDICULOUS!”
I knew such a small spark among people who had been standing on an unstable bus, sweating profusely, might be all it took to convert a crowd from stoic to riotous, so I spoke up, smiling and trying to be as friendly as possible while I smacked down his useless anger. “Because he has to go buy our ferry tickets. You do want to get on the ferry, right?”
He settled down, and two minutes later they let us off the bus. The ferry was packed, and we crammed on board with tons of people, barely enough room to move. There were too many people, and they were all in a hurry, rude to each other and only caring about getting themselves to their destination as quickly as possible.
They threatened to take away the healing peace the storm had wrapped around me, but I breathed deeply and remembered the lightning and the rain, and was calm. Calm in the eye of other people’s storms.
We disembarked, our bus finally found us, and we rode in darkness back to San José. As we climbed in elevation, finally the air pouring in from the open windows turned cool, and then even cold. We were home.
Some people may read this account as a horror story, but for me, it was one of the very best things I have done since I moved to Costa Rica. Even being Seatless was a little thrill of adventure, and the storm… well, the storm was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
I am free, free, free. Free to fly into storms with the wind, free to wander kilometer after kilometer, free from all restraints that society may try to use to bind me.
If I ever find myself in a place of internal disquiet, I look at my shells and rocks from that special place and recall Santa Teresa, and the friendship and adventure I found there.
