Another Bonfire - Wednesday 4-15-2009

Leonie left this morning. I gave her a big hug and wished her good luck when she left to catch her bus. I am now the second longest guest in residence at Casa Brian after Catherine, the 19-year old Norwegian girl who is in town to study at the language school and arrived a couple weeks prior to me.

 

 

Tyler Drake Nash

Tyler comes by Casa Brian in the evening. He and I walk around the block to Jimmy’s house to pick him up. Jimmy is the owner of Jesse’s Surf Shop. Jesse started his surf shop a decade ago, Brian told me several days ago. He sold the surf shop to Jimmy several years ago and moved back to the US. Jimmy kept the name Jesse’s Surf Shop and started calling himself Jesse because that was easier than trying to explain to vacationers that no, he wasn’t really Jesse, that Jesse was happily retired in America but he (Jimmy) would be happy to rent you a board or teach you how to surf.

Tyler, Jimmy, and I get out to the beach and the pile of branches and palm fronds we are going to light is nearly taller than I am. Jimmy pulls out some cotton balls soaked in gasoline and some flint. Like an expert surfer turned jungle survivalist, he strikes the flint, lighting a cotton ball. Then he places the lit ball on the pile of fuel, setting a palm frond on fire. The flame quickly spreads and soon the pile is aflame. He also lights a smaller pile and soon two bonfires light the night. Flames from the big pile jump ten feet into the air. I am nearly ten feet from the fire and I am sweating from its heat. We all talk and watch the flames. Three twenty-something women and a twenty-something man come up. They took surf lessons from Jimmy today and also met Tyler today. They are all from New York City and still have jobs. Good for them. The bonfires die down and we all get to talking. Somehow, Jimmy and Tyler talk two of the women into going skinny dipping with them. In a flash, they all run off into the black water. I talk a bit with the pair left on shore before calling it a night, dry and clothed.

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.