Last Day in Playa Samara Until I Come Back - Saturday 4-18-2009

Jane comes by in the morning to move her stuff into Brian’s car so he can drop her off at her new place on the other side of Samara. When her stuff is loaded up, she pulls out her cat carrier and we all meet her cat. She tells me how he found her. Jane was in Nicaragua, sitting at a restaurant her friend owned about six months ago. Jane was telling her friend wanting an animal traveling companion to ease the loneliness of traveling alone. Not five minutes after her friend suggested she get a cat, they both heard a soft meowing from close by. Jane followed the meowing and saw a snow white cat with blue eyes to match her own. Her animal traveling companion had found her. This morning, her traveling companion meows restlessly and paws at the mesh fabric of his carrier. She unzips the bag slightly so Victoria and Catherine can pet him. His coat is now gold and white and his eyes have changed from blue to gold. Jane has to push him back down in the carrier so he does not escape. Minutes later, Brian is ready to drive her across town. Jane gives me a warm hug and wishes me luck as I craft a new, different life.

I enjoy a late morning swim with Catherine. Her ankle is still a bit unsteady so she hangs on to me as we wade through the surf. Back on the beach, we talk about our families and our lives back home. In the afternoon, I Skype Nicolas who I met in Playa Tamarindo to tell him I’ll be in town tomorrow for a couple days. I ask how his new life in San Jose is going and he says he’s leaving for Quebec when his lease is done. He can’t find any work, he is not happy in San Jose, and he got robbed at gunpoint. He asks if I want to accompany him on a road trip through Central America, the US and back home to Quebec. Wow! And here I was in the mind-set to go back home. Now I have the opportunity to drive through Central America, my own country, and Quebec. What to do? I stammer out that I’ll think about it. Then we make arrangements to have dinner together tomorrow evening and I promise to let him know once I’ve settled into Costa Rica Guesthouse tomorrow afternoon.

I want to spend my last day in Playa Samara walking through the town. I walk along the beach to the main street. I hardly pass anyone as I walk; Samara is a beautifully empty beach town, just like when I arrived sixteen days ago. I follow main street away from the beach, then turn left at the Century 21 office. Following this dirt road, I pass the church, the massage school, and the bank. Past the bank on the opposite side of the street is a two story shopping center. Parents and children are celebrating a birthday party on the second floor balcony. I continue past an abandoned lot to my left, thick with grass, a massive tree in the center spreading its long branches across the property. I cross a bridge over a creek and turn left. I walk past several cabinas, Soda Sol y Mar which is deserted, then past the dirt road that runs in front of Ciclo Samara. I pass pasture with six horses quietly eating the grass. I stop a moment to watch them. I look past the horses and see the line of tall green palm trees on the beach. I pass the Alta Vista Condominiums; two people are on a second story balcony talking and a woman is on a third story balcony admiring her view. No one notices me quietly walk by. Just before I reach the beach, I pass a dirt road to my right and see a familiar figure walking down the road towards me. I walk towards Jane and she smiles in surprise. She asks what I’m doing here and I tell her that I wanted to spend my last day in Playa Samara walking through it. I ask her where she is headed. “To the beach,” she tells me. We walk there together. Jane tells me how much better she feels now that she has moved to this part of town. Now, she says, she can hang out with her friends and have a calm two weeks before she leaves to work in Alaska, where she plans to stay until late summer. Like me, she dislikes conflict and negativity and now she can avoid both. I smile when Jane tells me her cat is out exploring their new neighborhood and that she needs to return home before sunset so he does not come back to an empty apartment. We are halfway down the beach when Jane bids me goodbye with a warm hug and a promise to email.

I walk for a few minutes before I realize I don’t have a single picture of her.

Lazy Vacation Days With the People I've Met - Monday 4-6-2009 to Friday 4-10-2009

Not much to say lately. A few people left the hostel and a couple more people arrived. I spent most of these days reading, sleeping in a hammock, and talking to the other people at Casa Brian. I’m so relaxed here. Part of it is Brian’s hospitality – he really does treat his guests like family. We had another dinner party one night, where Brian lit his grill and we all grilled our own food and then ate together. Another night, we had a huge bonfire on the beach beneath a nearly full moon. We threw palm fronds on the fire and the flames leapt ten feet into sky before dying down again, spent. I stayed out of the sun a few days, content to listen to the ocean from my hammock and feel the warm ocean breezes on my skin. Wednesday and Tuesday, I sat on the beach and talked more with some of the residents. I watched the sun set with folks from the hostel a couple evenings, too.

I talk to the other travelers here a lot. Meeting people and hearing their stories is my favorite part of traveling. Viktor and Charlotte are a twenty-something couple from southern Sweden who planned to stay three nights but got stuck in Samara longer than they anticipated because the Easter holiday made booking transportation elsewhere maddeningly difficult. They’re really nice, their English is excellent, and they’re both quite funny. I laughed when I watched them play Alphapet, a game identical to Scrabble but in Swedish. I’ll be sorry to see them leave on Friday. Juan and Golan are good company, as well. Golan is a professional dancer in New York. Juan is a former video editor from Spain. He’s hilarious. Both are leaving after the weekend, Golan back to New York and Juan to another city on his trip through Central America. Leonie and I don’t talk a whole lot, but you just need to spend ten minutes with her to see she’s a great gal. She studied Spanish at the local language school for a few months, and then has stayed a few months after school because she loves being here.

Friday night, I spent a couple hours talking to Jane. Jane lives a few doors down from Casa Brian. She spent about eight years working for investment banks in London, including RBS, Goldman, Merrill, and other names I immediately recognized. She was asked to be a manager at Barclay’s and said no, then left. She had enough of the high-demand/high-pay banking lifestyle, with its stresses and unhappy people, and used her savings to travel through Southeast Asia and Central America for three years. She picked up massage training in India and uses that to support herself here in Costa Rica. Sounds like she also worked on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska to pick up some money at one point, too. She wants to use Costa Rica as a base from which to explore South America. I loved finding someone with her career background living in paradise and loving it. The thing I’ll remember most about her, besides her Irish lilt, sincere smile, and surprisingly robust knowledge of shamanism and astrology? This sentence she told me after I told her my story over a dinner we made together at the hostel: “Henry, you create your own reality; you can do whatever you want to.” Thanks Jane.