It wasn’t until the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college that I really traveled. It was a trip to Costa Rica—the product of ridiculous scheming and loose planning by me and my college roommate, Valerie. We wanted to speak Spanish and volunteer. We also wanted a story to tell.
Through my father we were put in contact with the friend of a friend who lived in Costa Rica. An American named Barry, who climbed trees for a living and who offered to let us stay with him. I was surprised we escaped our parents’ clutches with so little information.
After a brief stay in San Jose, the smoggy congested capital of Costa Rica, Valerie and I made our way to Puerto Jimenez. This small dusty town—about a 10-hours drive from San Jose—is fairly quiet by day and a little more rowdy by night. It sits along the route to Corcovado National Park so it acts as a stop-over for all the eco-tourists. The vibe in Puerto Jimenez feels even more laidback than the rest of Costa Rica. A sign painted on the side of a building echoes a common local saying: “Pura Vida.” Literally translated, this means, “pure life’ but many Costa Ricans say it to reflect a free-spirited attitude—a life where, for example, being on time is not necessarily a virtue.
With barely an address in hand, we had our taxi drop us off in the middle of town. We looked around to see if there was any way we could find Barry’s house on our own. I decided to test out my classroom Spanish.
I approached a young dark skinned, dark haired boy. “Hola. Conoces un Americano se llama Barry? El vive aqui in Puertio Jimenez.”
“Eh...BAW-ree?” He looked puzzled. “Eh...si, si...Baw-ree...” He raised his arm and pointed up the dirt road and to the right.
We approached what looked like a cabin at a sleep away camp. We knocked at the front door and peaked in through the adjacent screened window. Nobody answered. We didn’t know Barry so we were reluctant to yell for him.
“Do you think he forgot?” Valerie leaned up against our huge duffel bags, trying not to touch the dirt and sand that lightly coated most of the canvas.
“I have no idea.” I shook my head and smiled. I wondered if this—the trip, coming to Puerto Jimenez, traveling with Valerie—was a bad idea. It was hot and humid. The backs of our knees dripped with sweat.
After a few minutes a mud-splattered jeep screeched to a stop in front of us. A man in the open back seat smiled at us and jumped out, his flip flopped feet creating a cloud of dust as he landed on the ground.
Barry was young, late thirties, early forties perhaps—his true age masked by tanned skin and salty sun-stained hair and the pura vida of an ex-patriot lifestyle. Without words or much movement, he simply radiated “happy-go-lucky.”
“Aha! Hello ladies! You made it! I’m Barry, welcome to Costa Rica!” He kissed both of us on the cheeks and went toward the front door. He pushed it open. It wasn’t locked.
Valerie and I smiled and looked at each other as if to say, “Oh yeah, this guy is nuts.”
He barely asked for our names and didn’t offer to help us with our luggage. We took this as silent acknowledgment that we over packed. Or maybe that man and woman are created equally in the jungles of Costa Rica. Or, maybe, that Barry just didn’t notice.
No sooner did we arrive and Barry show us where to put our things did he leave again.
“Well, girls, welcome. Mi casa es su casa. I’ve got some clients I’m taking up the big tree so I’ll see you later. Not sure if I’ll be back tonight or not. Have fun!”
“Oh...o.k.” I was a little surprised he was leaving so soon.
“If Harry calls, just take a message and tell him I’ll call him back later.” And with that Barry got back into the jeep that had been waiting outside and was gone.
“Oh my god, he’s ridiculous.” Valerie started to laugh but I couldn’t tell if she was amused or worried. “And who is Harry?”
“Ha! If my dad could only see who Barry turned out to be.” I looked around unsure if I should actually unpack anything. Were we really going to stay here?
Barry’s house had all the aspects of a typical suburban home: bedrooms, beds, kitchen, working appliances, living room, chairs, tables, a bathroom with running water. But it was barely a secure structure from outsiders or the elements.
That night, while Barry left us to house sit, we had some visitors.
As if with scripted cues on the set of a horror movie, an array of Central American bugs, insects and reptilian species came out to play.
“Um, that’s a snake! I really think that’s a snake.” I was standing on our bed pointing through the doorway to something that just slithered under a chair in the living room.
“What? Where?”
“Over there. Under the chair I think.”
Valerie froze mid step. Her eyes darted from the chair to the doorway and scanned the bedroom we were in. Overhead something lightly crept across the mosquito net.
“Eeh! I think that’s a spider...”
I’m not usually the squeamish one but this was too much. “Oh, I can’t stay here tonight!”
With shrieks and spastic movements, Valerie and I grabbed our passports and toothbrushes and ran out of the house. Had we needed to lock the door we probably wouldn’t have. We walked towards the center of town and checked into a motel for the night.
The next day, after both Barry and Valerie and I returned to the house, we purposefully did not mention the night’s excitement. Even though we thought Barry was crazy, we also wanted him to respect us and not call us wimps. Shortly, though, Barry didn’t call us anything. He didn’t talk to us. He stayed in bed for 2 days straight, sequestering himself under a mosquito net.
Valerie and I became suspicious. Our eyes conveyed a telepathic discussion of whether or not Barry was suffering through a bout of malaria.
“I don’t know exactly what malaria looks like but I’m gonna guess he has it.”
“Malaria? Malaria?!" Valerie was getting crazy. “How could he not tell us he has malaria? What if we get it? There are mosquitoes everywhere!”
I am usually much loved and sought after by mosquitoes so, like Valerie, this worried me as well. So on the third morning we asked Barry if we could come in to talk to him.
Through the tiny holes of the netting we could see his sweat run off him in tributaries emptying out onto the already repellent-stained sheets. He looked terrible.
“Barry, o.k., so we were wondering if, well, basically...you have malaria, right?”
“Kind of but it will pass. It’s just like a really bad flu. I’ll be fine.” And that was all he said about it. Like everything else in Barry’s-tree–climbing-door-unlocked-world,” it was no big deal.
“No worries, man. Pura vida.”
After Barry recovered from “the flu,” we tagged along with him and his motley crew of friends—a bunch of grown-up hooligans—to a beach house named “La Tortuga” whose geographic whereabouts I never knew. (I’m sure it could be identified by locals if ever I wanted to return.) Unfortunately, I got my period during this excursion and I was without any sort of feminine hygiene products. That is, except for the coffee filter one of Barry’s friends handed to me and with a stupid grin said, “You could stick this up there.”
The rest of our time in Puerto Jimenez and Costa Rica consisted of a variety of exploits. There were runny banana milkshakes with no ice because Valerie was scared of getting sick from the water, lots of gallo-pinto for breakfast and lunch, smelly sticky bug repellent, washing dishes in exchange for a place to sleep just to say we had done it, arguments in the rain on dirt roads at night, Valerie’s first kiss with a dark but pretty local who adopted the enigmatic Anglo-nickname of “Sixxer”, sleeping precariously near active volcanoes, weak attempts at hitchhiking, and lazy efforts at volunteering which found us at a tiny rural hospital where Valerie assisted in medical related matters and I did desk work for all of two days.
I am not sure if we accomplished the goals we had made as we took off from California at the beginning of the summer. We did have fun or it’s how I remember it. Valerie and I still talk and sometimes refer to our absurd trip to Costa Rica. But all I have to say to make her smile is, “pura vida, man, pura vida.”
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